In the early 1980s, with the space shuttle completed, NASA proposed the creation of a large, permanently manned space station, which then-NASA-Administrator James M. Beggs called "the next logical step" in space. In some ways it was meant to be the U.S. answer to the Soviet Mir. NASA plans called for the station, which was later dubbed Space Station Freedom, to function as an orbiting repair shop for satellites, an assembly point for spacecraft, an observation post for astronomers, a microgravity laboratory for scientists, and a microgravity factory for companies. Reagan announced plans to build Space Station Freedom in 1984, stating: "We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful economic and scientific gain"...... A big plus according to NASA was that the Station now could be manned almost immediately, as soon, as the Russian FGB and Service Modules had been launched. In contrast, Space Station Freedom would not have been capable of supporting a permanent crew before a dozen or so modules had been launched. Aerospace mergers plus increased emphasis on commercial space made it easier for the new NASA Administrator, Dan Goldin, to reform the Space Station and NASA in general. The Space Station Program Office in Reston, Virginia was cancelled as NASA selected Boeing (which bought the space divisions of other Station contractors such as McDonnell-Douglas and Rockwell in the 1990s) as the new Station prime contractor. Boeing's contract from 1995 contained less NASA oversight than usual while giving the company and its Space Station 'integrated production teams' some financial rewards in case the projected goals were met. The Johnson Space Center now hosted the Station's new program office. All this greatly simplified the project's cumbersome management structure, although the efforts to avoid cost overruns and delays were not entirely successful.Its on-orbit assembly began in 1998. The space station is in a low Earth orbit and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye: it has an altitude of about 350 km ....The ISS is a joint project among the space agencies of the United States (NASA), Russia (RKA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and eleven European countries (ESA).The ISS is a continuation of several other previously planned space stations: Russia's Mir 2, the U.S. Space Station Freedom, the European Columbus, and Kibo, the Japanese Experiment Module. The projected completion date is 2010, with the station remaining in operation until around 2016. As of 2008, the ISS is larger than any previous space station. On March 9, 2008, the European Space Agency ESA launched an Ariane 5 with the first Automated Transfer Vehicle, Jules Verne, toward the ISS carrying over 8,000 kilograms of cargo. ......