Lift-off and once again Hercules and a Cocoon Cargo Carrier clear the launch pad at the start of their joint journey toward space. It has been nearly 15 years since Robert Carter was invited by a previous US President to become Director and Chief Administrator for NASA, the American Space Agency. In those 15 years Carter has slowly and methodically moved forward with his long-term plan for taking America back into space after the end of the space shuttle programme. One of Carter’s early and now achieved goals was the extension of the American section of the International Space Station so that it could play host to NASA’s Orbital Shuttle’s Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour along with the storage module which is used to house the pods which contain fuel for the Orbital Shuttle’s manoeuvring systems. Additional extensions to the station have also included crew quarters for US astronauts and facilities for the ML-1 and ML-2 spacecraft which are currently docked at this now massive construct in space. Carter has always known that there would come a time when the stations mass would become so great that near daily re-boosts would become necessary to keep the huge construct in orbit and with still more elements of his grand design yet to find their way into space a means would have to found to counter the effects of gravity on the huge mass of the ISS.