In the age of cheap facts, we now inhabit a world where knowing something is possible is practically the same as knowing how to do it.

The Mir space station itself is ten years old. It has had at least one fire on board. No one has any idea how to “de-orbit” the decaying station safely, but the Russians hope that American money and American technology will keep the station running through the turn of the century. The Soviet tracking ships, which once kept a global communication net running for the sake of space exploration, have been sold, scrapped, or have ended up rotting in the harbors of the breakaway Ukraine. The Mir station can only speak to Russian ground control in ten- to-fifteen minute bursts, broken by up to ten hours of enforced silence as it flies over areas of the globe where Russia no longer has radio presence.