CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA couldn't have staged it any better: 10 people in orbit for Thursday's 10th anniversary of the world's most elaborate and expensive housing project, the international space station.

On Nov. 20, 1998, the first part of the space station was launched by the Russians from Kazakhstan. NASA followed up two weeks later with piece No. 2 carried up by a space shuttle. Astronauts and cosmonauts moved in two years later, and the rest, as they say, is history.