However, the good news is that it comes cheaper than you might think. That 100 billion figure is shared over a period of almost 30 years between all the participants: the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and 10 of the 17 European nations who are part of ESA. The European share, at around 8 billion Euros spread over the whole programme, amounts to just one Euro spent by every European every year: less than the price of a cup of coffee in most of our big cities.

Just that one Euro will have made it possible to develop and assemble in space the ISS, to build the necessary ground infrastructure of control and user centres, and to operate and use the ISS for world-class research for more than 10 years. All this while generating high-tech jobs in European industry and research institutions, contributing to the build up of Europe as a peaceful 'knowledge and information' society, and to the greatest international cooperative project ever undertaken.