Sapporo, the Japanese beer-maker, has brewed "Space Beer" entirely from barley grown on the Space Station. The beer has a 5.5% alcohol content. There are only 100 liters of the special Space brew, so don't look for it in the U.S. anytime soon. There's something enormously fun about the fact that one of the first things humans do upon reaching space is figure out how to make beer.
Establishing a space station has preoccupied the minds of people looking up into the stars since at least the mid 1800s. The famous rocket scientist, Dr. Werner von Braun, published a proposed design in Collier magazine, in 1952. The design used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 1968, closely resembled von Braun's concept.
In 1971, Russia launched Salyut 1, Earth's first space station. Russia boosted two more space labs into orbit before America launched Skylab, in 1973—but both Salyut 2 and Cosmos 557 (a secret project) crashed before the cosmonaut crew arrived. America abandoned Skylab in 1974, because of the seemingly insurmountable difficulty of getting crew there and back. Mir ("peace" in Russian) was the first cooperative international space station effort before finally falling out of orbit in 2001.
The pioneers of those earlier Space Stations paved the way for International Space Station Alpha (ISS) where scientists and astronauts from participating countries combine efforts to establish an outpost in space (and grow barley for Space Beer.) ISS construction began in 1998, and is scheduled to be complete in 2011. The station has been continuously crewed since November of 2000, establishing a continuous, internationally-supported, human presence in space.
The next time you're outside, late at night and far from city lights, look up. ISS is visible to the naked eye from earth. There's even an ISS tracking site online, to let you know when and where to watch.
Finally, I leave you with a clip from "Delivering Destiny"— footage of Space Station history.