Events have overtaken this report, it's now of value mostly for perspective. I've discussed this aspect in a postscript.
This talk was given by somebody (I didn't write down his name) from the United Space Alliance. This is a private company which operates the space shuttle (sorry, space transportation system), NASA being no more immune to the modern trend of outsourcing than anyone else. They have operations in Houston (whence came the presenter) and in Florida. You may find it difficult to buy shares in them, though, at least directly; they're a subsiduary of Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. So if you want to support private companies who are into space you'll also have to support either airliners (Boeing) or the engines of death (Lock-Mart).
The talk was given at Sydney University (I'm pretty sure ...) on some date I forgot to record, but which must have been about February 1998. The organisers were the American Institute of Aeronautical Engineers, which has just opened a chapter in Australia, its first overseas branch. Some people seemed to think this was something of an honour.
The space station previously known as Fred will, it is hoped, orbit at 220 nautical miles. Yep, nautical miles, it may be international now but it's still carrying a little American baggage around. The orbital inclination will be 51.6 degrees, which he semi-implied was the latitude of Baikonur (cf. 28.5 degrees for Kennedy).
The station isn't the only thing carrying American baggage. Incidental remarks included that Ronald Reagan won the cold war, and that communist party members got all the best accommodation in Russia. The sleek, clean access tuneels of the ISS were contrasted with the ugly, cluttered access tunnels of Mir. The fact that one had been in orbit for many years and extensively modified during that time, while the other was still exploring its warehouse, was not emphasised. The other kind of baggage he had was the space-going kind: uniform patches that had flown on actual missions were distributed to certain notables from the audience.
The first element is planned for June 1998, with assembly in the June to August timeframe. The launch rate is about 1 per month, from each of Russia and the US. Initially the station is very vulnerable because there's no attitude control. After flight 7 or 8 there'll be enough of the station present that it isn't likely to come down. Well, not so you'd notice. Total requirement is 45 to 50 launches, over three years, for a total of 4.4 million pounds. He didn't say whether that was Troy or Avoirdupois pounds, given what this is costing the former might be right.
The Japanese contribution consists largely of stuff the Americans have had to cut from their contribution. This includes a centrifuge: the idea being you can study low gravity as well as zero gravity, it isn't for people to keep fit, if that's what you're wondering.
The Russian contribution is "what would have been Mir 2 except they ran out of money" (gloat, gloat). That is, it's basically a functioning space station, only a lot smaller than the ISS is planned to be. The nice thing about this is that if that bit goes up early you can have it up and running and add the other bits in an evolutionary way.
A typical shuttle mision is commander, pilot and three mission specialists. You can add two more mission specialists if needed. In addition to all this you can bring one extra person back with you should you happen to find them hanging about. The thought that this oh-so-conveniently discovered person is almost certainly either a homicidal sociopath or an alien in disguise simply hasn't been considered, which doesn't make me feel very safe. Crewpeople work their way up from pilot to commander. After six flights they get permanently grounded, though this isn't official policy. The fact that the person responsible for deciding who goes and who stays is a man called John Glenn who got exactly six flights is believed to be related.
The assembly method is interesting. The current method involves using a mechanical arm, with the operators sitting inside the cabin. But visibility is pretty poor in the relevant direction, there being just one small window facing back into the cargo hold. The new idea is to let a computer do the assembly, to which end all the modules have "measles", a patina of dots that's supposed to help the computer's vision system work out where they are. "It's been a challenging project, not entirely successful."
Some suggested applications were oceanography (using synthetic aperture radar?), the effect of zero gravity on organisms and astronomy. Presumably they think this is easier to do from a space station than from an unmanned platform. I don't really believe it, and have a horrible feeling the whole thing's a waste of money. But at least a space station is a stylish way to waste money, which is better than nothing.