Today on "Impossible Engineering"...
The international space station,
the largest structure ever built in space.
The engineering that's gone into the international space station,
it is phenomenal.
To create a base that's out of this world...
To see this amazing invention fly
into the international space station
is the most incredible thing I could possibly hope for.
Engineers must turn
to revolutionary innovations of the past...
Oh, my god, it's actually flying!
To make the impossible possible.
Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com
captions paid for by discovery communications
space exploration is entering a new era.
After decades of innovation, aerospace engineers
are preparing to send the first astronauts
to Mars and beyond.
And this giant leap could provide the key
to colonizing the galaxy.
And central to making this possible
is the International Space Station.
The International Space Station's hugely important
in the future of human space flight and exploration.
We have to master a number of things, though,
so we can go further into space.
For astronaut major Tim Peake,
his first visit was career-defining.
I had a huge "wow" moment when you look and see it
in all of its glory in the sunlight.
It is a marvel of human engineering.
Orbiting the planet every 90 minutes,
the $100 billion cosmic laboratory
is the largest human-made object in space.
Measuring over 320 feet end to end
and weighing around 450 tons,
it has the same habitable space as a Boeing 747.
Powered by over 32,000 square feet of solar arrays
and producing its own air and water,
the I.S.S. can host six astronauts in a completely
unique working environment.
And the interplanetary work being done here
has never been more crucial.
We're conducting research into how humans and robots interact.
This is going to be very important moving forward
for lunar missions and for our martian missions.
So, five plants from the top.
We're also growing food in space.
We're trying to learn how can we make
a closed life-support cycle.
This is the kind of research that's going to help us
with those future space exploration missions.
But as research intensifies,
so too must the journeys to the station.
And back on Earth, private aerospace engineers
like John Curry must overcome a specific problem.
The space shuttle was retired in 2011.
And when we lost the space-shuttle capability,
we lost a huge amount of capability
to service the space station.
To make the journey, astronauts must now travel
to Kazakhstan for a costly ride
aboard the Russian's Soyuz rocket.
So NASA is turning to the private-space-flight industry
for a more cost-effective approach.
Re-usability of hardware can play a really important role
in trying to reduce the cost
and improve access to space.
So, how do you build an inexpensive reusable spacecraft?
To do this, engineers must look to the pioneering
innovators of the past.
Space historian Amy Shira Teitel is exploring Edwards air force
base deep in California's
Mojave desert to discover the breakthrough engineering
that seemingly defies the laws of physics.
Oh, wow.
Okay, this is awesome.
Nicknamed "the flying bathtub,"
the M2-F1 was a prototype plane built in 1963.
If you look at, it doesn't look like it should be able to fly.
But in reality, it actually pioneered
a whole new way of flying.
American engineer Dale Reed designed this unusual aircraft.
Because of the high cost of disposable space capsules,
NASA wanted a reusable vehicle that could land on a runway.
But the wings of a traditional aircraft
would burn up during reentry from space.
So engineers had to completely rip up the aerodynamics handbook
and start again.
The shape of a conventional wing
is what gives an aircraft its lift.
As air flows over the curved top, it speeds up,
creating an area of low pressure
while airflow underneath remains constant.
This pressure difference between the two airflows produces lift.
But Reed got rid of the wings altogether.
And in April 1963, he tested a prototype that relied
on the turbulent airflow underneath the body,
hoping to generate lift.
Now, because the M2-F1 didn't have any motor,
he had to find an alternate power source...
A Pontiac Catalina.
The plan was to tow the lifting body behind the car
to see if it would actually generate lift.
So even though the vehicle itself doesn't have wings,
Reed hoped that because the body is shaped like a wing,
it would fly under the same principles.
During the original test,
the Catalina towed the M2-F1 across a dry lake bed.
All right, we're rolling.
And it's rolling, and that's exciting.
It looks like it's trying to nose up every so slightly.
Ooh!
Come on, come on!
It looks like it might get off the ground.
It's flying!
Oh, my god, it's actually flying!
I can't believe it actually got off the ground.
As the M2-F1 reached 86 miles-per-hour,
it lifted off the ground.
Although only by a small amount,
Reed's theory stood up to the test.
John Curry and his team
at the Sierra Nevada corporation in Colorado
are taking Reed's concept to a whole new level.
This design is one of the most incredible pieces of engineering
I have ever been lucky enough to be part of.
It is going to change the world of space transportation.
The all-new dream chaser is revolutionary.
This reusable lifting-body spaceplane will carry both cargo
and up to seven crew to the space station.
To make this epic journey,
it will launch on an atlas V rocket.
Once in space,
it will make the two-day voyage to the I.S.S.
Using it's own propulsion.
We use our thrusters to get us there.
Nitrous and propane, 22 of them that can both orient the vehicle
and can actually push the vehicle through space.
Wonderful capability.
But the return trip into the Earth's atmosphere
is where Reed's innovations come into play.
When you start in space, you're moving at 17,500 miles an hour.
As you go through the atmosphere now,
the dream chaser then is able to take
that 17,000 miles-per-hour
and absorb all that heat that the atmosphere creates
onto this shape
and protect the cargo and the crew inside the vehicle.
The wings here, they're just on the edges
and they're just providing the control
like sails on a sailship.
Whereas all the lift is being provided by the body itself.
And in October 2013, that theory is put into practice.
Engineers conduct a series of drop tests high above
the California desert.
Three, two, one, release release release.
When the dream chaser returns from its first mission in 2020,
this new spaceplane will touch down
using a unique nose skid landing system.
The great thing about the lifting-body design
is it does so well at the high altitudes
and then also does well at the low altitudes
such that we can touch down at about 200 miles-an-hour,
and then roll out to a wheel stop on any conventional runway.
Because of its transformative design,
each dream chaser will be used for at least 15 missions.
The opportunity for us to get to see this amazing invention fly
into space to the international space station
and back again is the most incredible thing
I could possibly hope for.
But to ensure regular cost-effective missions,
NASA needs more than one type of spacecraft.
And to design them safely, engineers must look to
the trailblazing innovators of the past...
Oh, my god!
It looks like it could potentially break his neck.
To produce more impossible engineering.
The international space station...
The largest structure built beyond Earth.
Travelling over 17,000 miles-per-hour,
this cosmic laboratory
orbits the world every 90 minutes,
providing a staging area for deep-space exploration.
Liftoff of Tim Kopra, Yuri Malenchenko,
and Timothy Peake.
That 8-minute 48-second ride into space
is just the most thrilling ride you could possibly imagine.
But with increased demand for travel to the I.S.S.,
cost-effective spacecraft are crucial.
And the American aerospace company Boeing
is rising the challenge.
Aerospace engineer Melanie Weber is helping to design
the company's first reusable space capsule.
The Boeing CST-100 starliner is a space-transportation system
which is comprised of a pressurized crew module
and a service module.
But unlike NASA's capsules that landed in the water,
the starliner will be the first U.S. crew module
to land on solid ground.
This is going to be incredibly difficult.
In the past, water landings were favored
because water was good at attenuating the impact.
But unfortunately, it's not really good
at reusability of a vehicle.
Landing on land, or course,
presents a unique set of challenges.
And there's been a lot of analysis and models
that we've had to go through.
There is no second chances when it comes to landing on land.
So, how do you design a module that can survive a ground impact
after travelling from space?
To attempt this feat, engineers must look
to an unexpected innovation from the past.
Once upon a time, crashing wasn't really a problem
because the world moved so slowly.
- Ooh. - Oh, terribly sorry, old chap.
Not at all, old bean.
But as transport became faster...
Yee-ha!
Accidents became more dangerous.
Aah!
Consarn it!
However, it wasn't until the invention of the automobile...
Yoo-hoo!
Hey, girls!
That safety was taken seriously.
And in 1959, Swedish inventor Nils Bohlin
released the patent for the three-point seat belt
that we know today.
But as the automobile really took off,
it became clear that more safety was needed.
At the Thachum vehicle testing centre in the south of England,
physicist Suzie Sheehy is investigating
how the need for better car safety
led to an engineering breakthrough.
We're about to run a test simulating a frontal impact
as if this rig was being hit from the front
exerting a force of 16 gs on our dummy friend here.
But unlike traditional methods of crash testing
where the test car moves towards an object,
this pneumatically-powered
sled will fire the test car backwards,
replicating the forces of a head-on impact
at 31 miles-per-hour
in a mere 125 milliseconds.
Do you think he knows what's coming?
Three, two, one.
That was so fast!
It almost gave me a heart attack!
Playing the footage back in slow motion
reveals the true force of the collision.
So, I can see him sliding forwards
really violently towards the dash.
It's quite disturbing.
Oh, oh, his head's come all the way down, craning his neck.
Okay, that looks painful.
It looks like it could potentially break his neck.
Early attempts to solve this potentially-fatal problem
had little success.
But then in 1968,
explosives expert Allen breed
discovered a dynamic solution.
Breed that realized that an explosion
could create a lot of gas really quickly,
so what he used was a trigger sensor
and a compound called sodium azide
which releases a lot of nitrogen really quickly when it's heated.
And that was all packed into a section in the center
of the steering wheel.
But that didn't solve all the problems of the airbag.
This is the problem that breed had to overcome.
This roasting bag here represents my airbag.
If I squeeze it, rather than being soft,
the air pressure inside makes it actually quite hard.
And rather than absorbing the impact of the crash,
you would just bounce straight back off it,
which would potentially make the injuries much worse.
What Allen breed came up with
was a system of vents specially
designed to let gas escape after it had been inflated.
So if cut some vent holes in this one...
this time, the bag deflates slowly,
cushioning the blow and absorbing the impact.
It's a simple but ingenious solution to the problem.
To test the effectiveness of breed's design,
engineers run the test again.
I feel nervous.
But this time, the team installs a modern airbag system.
Three, two, one.
Oh, my god!
In slow motion, the explosive breakthrough becomes clear.
Just there, just before he hit the bag,
it was actually already deflating
because the vents in the side are designed to release
just the right amount of gas
and then start deflating so that as he hits it,
the deflation is absorbing the impact of the crash.
It's estimated this incredible innovation has so far saved
the lives of over 40,000 people
in the United States alone.
Boeing engineers are taken the principle of Allen breed's
revolutionary car airbag and super-sizing it.
What we have in front here is a flight-like
full-scale outer airbag assembly.
As we're reentering the atmosphere,
we'll be going supersonic
and the parachutes will decelerate us to about 10
to 30 miles-per-hour on landing.
And that's where the module's air-cushioning system
comes into play.
Positioned underneath the capsule's heat shield,
six giant airbags inflate
as the capsule drifts back down to Earth.
They are filled using a series of high-pressurized gas bottles
that are flowed into the airbag assemblies
through a series of manifolds and valves.
And just like breed's car-airbag innovation,
ensuring the vent size is correct is crucial
to the capsule's safe landing.
As we land, the airbags will cushion the vehicle
and vents will open up to allow the gas
in the airbags to escape.
That's important because if they didn't escape,
these bags would be rigid
and you could actually bounce off upon landing.
Although this may appear to be an abrupt landing,
this breakthrough system cushions the capsule
so effectively that each starliner
will be able to make the 250-mile journey to the I.S.S.
Up to 10 times.
In my opinion, the airbag-inflation system
is one of the most unique engineering marvels
to come out of spaceflight.
Providing cost-effective travel to the space station
is one challenge,
but maintaining its structure once there is quite another.
This step requires more help from history's innovators...
to create more impossible engineering.
The international space station.
As the latest cosmic laboratory ever built,
it is a hotbed of cutting-edge research.
In any six-month period, we will conduct about 250
to 300 experiments on board the space station.
Orbiting the Earth for almost two decades,
this monumental piece of space hardware
is the definitive proving ground
for all future space technology.
And NASA project manager Rajib Dasgupta is focusing
on one of the station's most epic challenges.
Eventually, when we go to moon or the Mars,
we will need long-duration habitats
for the astronauts to live.
Habitation modules like those on the station
are 26x13 feet high-grade aluminum,
and were delivered by the space shuttle.
But as the emerging fleet of new space vehicles
only have a fraction of the shuttle's capacity,
engineers are developing a mind-boggling solution...
Expandable modules.
What you see is a full-scale mockup
of the Bigelow expandable activity module.
The main advantage of an expandable module
is to provide a permanent habitation system
that could be launched at fraction of its final volume.
Right now, this module is on the international space station.
Packed for launch, this module measures
just eight feet in diameter.
But once inflated, its internal habitable volume expands
to an impressive 550 cubic feet.
Composed of two metal bulkheads and multiple layers of fabric,
including the same Kevlar-like material
used in bulletproof vests, this expandable module
withstands both internal air pressure
and the extremes of space.
When you put air in there,
the Kevlar-like structural restraint
is taking the loads
that resists the action to burst.
In April 2016, the Bigelow expandable
activity module begins its two-year trial.
After docking, air from inside the station inflates the module.
Once it reaches full length,
eight tanks inside the module open
and fill it to the appropriate air pressure.
The expanding process was very interesting to see.
It actually sounded like popcorn going off...
as slowly, the air pressure expanded the module,
breaking the small straps that were keeping it compacted.
Astronauts will monitor B.E.A.M.'S
performance with a view to colonizing the galaxy.
Expandables can really revolutionize
deep-space habitats.
Kevlar or Kevlar-like restraint materials,
they actually offer higher strength
than aluminum on an equal-to-equal weight basis.
So because of that, the structural integrity
of these expandable modules are extremely good.
As the station evolves in the harsh conditions of space,
engineers must maintain its structural integrity
in the face of constant threats.
When you think about how the space station started
and the demanding, harsh environment of the vacuum,
the thermal extremes, the radiation,
the micrometeorites,
it's truly a remarkable feat of engineering.
You can see chips in the window.
For example, in the cupola window,
one of them has a significant chip in it
caused by space debris.
The I.S.S. Is vulnerable to damage
from even the smallest particles.
An object the size of a speck of paint
made this chip in the glass.
To make repairs, astronauts must perform risky spacewalks.
But to enter an environment so completely hostile
to human beings, astronauts need extremely complex hardware.
And aerospace engineer rob Boyle is fitting them
for the many challenges.
The spacesuit has to allow you
to locomote around the spacecraft.
It has to provide pressure.
It has to keep you thermally comfortable.
And it has to allow you to communicate
with your other crew members.
So every subsystem you think of in a normal spacecraft exists
in a spacesuit.
One of the most complex problems
is how to provide astronauts with enough oxygen
over a long period outside the station.
You need an enormous amount of air to do a six-hour
spacewalk with straight tankage.
So, since oxygen's such a critical resource in space,
we want to use it as efficiently as possible.
With oxygen in limited supply, how can engineers provide life
support for astronauts on an eight-hour spacewalk?
To keep astronauts alive,
engineers must look to a great innovator
from the past...
to make the impossible possible.
The international space station is the largest machine
ever built in space.
But to keep astronauts alive outside of it
in the harsh environment of space,
engineers must look to a great innovator from the past.
Engineer Luke Bisby is diving in an aquarium
in Manchester, England, to discover
how scientists first mastered the art of breathing underwater.
But in 1878,
when pioneering dive engineer
Henry Fleuss experienced these problems firsthand,
he developed an ingenious solution.
When we breathe, we convert oxygen into carbon dioxide.
But not all of the oxygen that we breathe in is converted.
In fact, about 75% of that oxygen remains
in the air that we exhale.
Now, Fleuss' idea was to recycle our breath,
filtering out the carbon dioxide
and topping up the oxygen.
This breathing apparatus once used by firefighters
reveals Fleuss' radical innovation.
When they exhaled, the gas would pass through this tube
and down into the scrubber bag here.
And this is where the carbon dioxide is removed.
The gas would then pass up through this valve
where the oxygen levels are topped up
using this tank of oxygen that's on my back.
And the air then passes into this chamber where it mixes
before then passing back up
to the mouthpiece to give the makeup air for the diver.
And this is called a rebreahter, and it allows divers
to safely use all of the oxygen in the air
rather than just a small proportion of it.
And on the biggest engineering project of his time,
Fleuss had to use his revolutionary
but still untested rebreather.
I'm inside the Severn tunnel underneath the Severn river.
And this was a project of astronomical proportions
when it was first conceived.
Starting in 1873,
this rail tunnel, more than four miles long,
was designed to connect England and wales,
but soon, disaster struck
when workers on the welsh side hit an underground spring,
flooding the tunnel completely.
A series of watertight doors had been installed to isolate
any serious leaks.
But in the rush to escape the flood,
the workers didn't manage to get them shut.
Engineers couldn't begin pumping out the water
without closing the doors.
Desperate to get beyond the limitations
of a surface-fed breathing tube,
the tunnel engineers summoned Fleuss.
With Fleuss' experimental rebreather,
a diver was able to go a much greater distance
to close the doors,
spending nearly three hours underwater.
Today, the great spring is safely sealed
behind the tunnel walls.
With the tunnel secure, the water could be pumped out
and the work completed.
For 100 years, this remained the longest underwater tunnel
anywhere in the world.
And this incredible engineering achievement
couldn't have been possible without Henry Fleuss
and his amazing rebreather.
Back at NASA, the team is expanding on Fleuss' invention
to create a one-person spacecraft.
This is the NASA e.M.U.,
or extra vehicular mobility unit.
It's what astronauts use on the international space station
when they do a spacewalk.
The NASA spacesuit has life-support backpack.
That's on the back.
Like Fleuss' rebreather, the primary life-support system
worn on the back provides breathable air.
A centrifugal fan draws exhaled breath into the unit.
Carbon dioxide is filtered out,
and humidity is removed before more oxygen is added
and fed back into the helmet.
A supplement of only 1.2 pounds of oxygen
is all that's needed for an eight-hour spacewalk.
The oxygen tankage, as far as efficiency in this suit,
is very state-of-the-art.
You can't build a smaller oxygen system
that would provide what we need.
It's an incredible piece of engineering.
But to work inside them, low air pressure must be established,
so the astronauts must breathe pure oxygen
for several hours.
This rids their bodies of nitrogen,
which alters at low pressure.
Once conditioned, they're ready to de-pressurize and go outside.
The advanced spacesuit teams,
they come to us for state-of-the-art.
They say, "what are you guys doing, and how can we adapt
that to go back to the moon, to go to Mars..."
Go wherever they want to go.
It's fantastic to be part of it.
But this is only part of the challenge.
To take the next giant leap in space,
engineers must look to
the trailblazing innovators of the past...
Wow. This is cool.
A testament to the brilliance of the men and women involved
in this incredible piece of engineering.
To create more impossible engineering.
Constructed over 13 years across 40 missions,
the international space station
is the largest human-made object in space.
Consisting of 15 revolutionary pressurized modules,
including three science labs, the I.S.S.
Has the internal volume of a six-bedroom house.
But not all of the scientific work is conducted inside.
For the crew to leave the station,
flight operations engineer Aaron Decker
must prepare them for a complex procedure.
You can imagine if you just opened up a hatch,
all the atmosphere in the space station
is going to go out into space.
So we need the ability to break off just a small volume
so the astronauts can go outside
and we don't waste all of the atmosphere
that's in the rest of the space station.
So, how do you maintain the pressure inside the station,
but allow the astronauts to walk outside?
To do this, the team at NASA must rely
on another great innovator from the past.
This is amazing.
Physicist Andrew Steele is on top of the Eiffel Tower
to unEarth the groundbreaking design
that keeps this iconic marvel standing.
Wow. This is cool.
Normally, you'd never be able to come here.
And this is a beautiful view of Paris.
Built by renowned French engineer Gustave Eiffel
and standing nearly 1,000 feet tall,
the Eiffel Tower is one of the most
well-known structures in the world.
But actually, although this is a great view of Paris,
it's not what's up here that we're interested in looking at.
Work on the towers' foundations
began on the 28th of January, 1887.
And for the south and the east towers,
the condition to the ground were perfect.
Compact Clay and gravel provided solid support,
but the ground under the north
and west towers, nearest the river seine,
was much more problematic.
This side of the tower was waterlogged.
If Eiffel's tower was going to get built,
they'd need to find a way to dig through
that waterlogged soil to the solid bedrock beneath.
To prevent water from flooding these excavations,
French mining engineer Jacques Triger
developed an innovative pressurized tube system.
Originally, he designed it to prevent groundwater
from flooding mine shafts.
So, imagine that this tank
represents that waterlogged ground.
Obviously, we can see it's not really working out
very well here for our little worker, Claude.
So what we need is this thing, which represents Triger's tube.
And I just pop that into the water there.
It's got a little hole in the bottom
which you can poke through.
But as you can see, so far, not much use.
He's still very much under the water.
So what we need to do is increase the pressure inside
that bottle and force the water out.
And I'm just going to do that by blowing.
Ooh, there we go.
And as long as I keep my thumb safely over the end here,
then that pressurized air stays in there
and forces that water to stay outside the bottle.
But we quite quickly encounter a problem,
because once he's finished with that pickax he wants to go home
and have his dinner...
How is going to get out of this bottle?
Well, let's imagine that he wants to come out of the tube.
Then, we open it up.
Oh, no. Poor little guy.
The water level just comes back up
to where it was, and I think he's drowned.
So, obviously, what we need is some kind of mechanism
that can allow him to leave that chamber
without changing the pressure.
That thing was called a pressure box.
And these days, we call it an airlock.
To leave the working chamber,
the central chamber was pressurized
to that same atmospheric pressure.
Workers then entered the central chamber,
which was gradually de-pressurized
to the normal atmospheric pressure.
They could then open a second door leading outside.
To enter, the process was simply reversed.
Triger's revolutionary metal boxes,
or pneumatic caissons,
worked at the Eiffel Tower with great success.
When they eventually hit the bedrock about 22 meters down,
they poured quick-drying cement into the holes
and topped it off with limestone
and layers of cut stone.
When construction was completed, Eiffel had the names
of 72 engineers, scientists,
and mathematicians who he thought had been essential
to the success of the project engraved
on the side of the tower.
And one of those names is Jacques Triger.
But using Triger's innovation
below Earth's floor is one thing.
Adapting it for the harsh conditions of space
is another story.
To make the airlocks on the I.S.S. Work without a hitch...
It's probably the moment of most apprehension,
when you know that you're losing all the air
from the space around you.
Engineers must make the impossible possible.
The international space station
is the largest machine built in space.
But transitioning astronauts
from Earth's atmospheric pressure
to the vacuum of space relies on an innovative
breakthrough of the past... The airlock.
And at the Johnson space center in Houston,
NASA engineers are giving airlocks
a 21st-century makeover.
This is the joint airlock module
on the international space station.
This module gives us the ability to go out and do a spacewalk.
Measuring over 16 feet long and 13 feet wide,
the airlock is the astronaut's doorway
into the vacuum of space.
They'll go into volume here, which is the crewlock,
and then we close this hatch.
And that allows us to de-pressurize
the crewlock portion to vacuum.
When the astronauts step outside and perform
a spacewalk for the first time,
it's an outstanding feeling.
And Tim Peake has experienced this firsthand.
For a rookie spacewalk, it is probably the moment
of most apprehension
when you know that you're losing all the air
from the space around you.
And for me, when Tim Kopra then opened the hatch
and the sunlight kind of flooded in,
that was the best moment because I was just
so ready to go outside
and get to work and start the spacewalk.
It was wonderful.
All right gentlemen, looking great.
Glad to see you both out there together
on the tip of the world.
Spectacular.
Every spacewalker gets a few minutes
just to adapt to that new environment
at the beginning of the spacewalk.
Great news. Thanks, Tim.
For me, that was a wonderful opportunity
just to look down on planet Earth.
And that was just wonderful to be able to see that.
The international space station is humanity's gateway
to the rest of the universe.
The engineering that's gone into the international space station,
it is phenomenal.
Our future in terms of humanity's exploration
of the solar system, for me, is very important.
And the space station is going to help us
take those next stepping stones.
And supported those steps are some of the brightest minds
in aerospace engineering.
I'm extremely excited to be a part of this.
It's something that I've lived my whole life for.
I love being part of human space exploration.
By drawing on the innovations of the past,
adapting them,
improving them,
and making discoveries of their own,
these groundbreaking engineers
are making the impossible possible.
Whilst on the ground there can be differences
between the nations involved,
it seems that in space we have a great example
of how we all work together towards a common goal.
And it's a huge privilege to be part of that.