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ISS Earth Space Science

Humans Have Been Living In Space For 20 Years Straight 56

Posted by BeauHD from the global-triumph dept.
Since 2000, there have always been humans living and working on the International Space Station -- and the streak could just be getting started. National Geographic reports: On Halloween in the year 2000, a Russian Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and flew into the history books, carrying one U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to the nascent International Space Station (ISS). The crew arrived two days later, and the space station has been continuously occupied by humans ever since, a 20-year streak of living and working in low-Earth orbit. "There's kids now who are in college who, for their entire lives, we've been living off the planet," says Kenny Todd, NASA's deputy program manager for the ISS. "When I was a kid, that was all stuff that was just dreams."

The orbiting laboratory is among the most expensive and technologically complex objects ever built: a $150-billion pressurized habitat as long as a football field, whizzing 254 miles above Earth's surface at 17,000 miles an hour. Over the decades, 241 women and men from around the world have temporarily called the space station home, some for nearly a full year at a time. "It's pretty crazy -- I'm surprised we haven't, like, really seriously hurt anybody," says retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent nearly a year on one ISS stay. "It's really a testament to the seriousness [with which] people on the ground take this job, the attention to detail."

Upward of a hundred thousand people have worked together to design, build, launch, and operate the sprawling station, says David Nixon, who worked with NASA on ISS designs in the mid-1980s. "When you compare the station to the procession of great structures and buildings built by humanity since the dawn of civilization, it's up there with the Pyramids, the Acropolis -- all the great structures and edifices," he says. The future of the ISS remains uncertain. "The station is currently slated to run until at least 2024, and much of its hardware is certified to operate safely until at least 2028, if not longer for its younger components," the report notes.

"Will the ISS be disassembled and scavenged in orbit to construct a future space station? Will it be turned over to private companies as nations venture farther into space? Will the whole structure go out in a final blaze of glory, steered into a Pacific crash landing like the Russian space station Mir?"
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Humans Have Been Living In Space For 20 Years Straight

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  • Better watch out for debris (Score:3)

    by dwywit ( 1109409 ) on Friday October 30, 2020 @04:04AM (#60665070)

    People wrote a TV series about the toilet from the Mir causing problems.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 30, 2020 @05:01AM (#60665150)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Remember Apollo: Our progress since is depressing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jaa101 ( 627731 ) on Friday October 30, 2020 @05:24AM (#60665190)

    Itâ(TM)s actually quite depressing. Who would have thought, while the Apollo program was active, that there would come a time again with no living memory of what itâ(TM)s like to walk on another world. Weâ(TM)re almost there now; the youngest moon walker is in his eighties. The 50th anniversary of humans leaving the moon is two years away.

    • Re:Remember Apollo: Our progress since is depressi (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Friday October 30, 2020 @06:15AM (#60665250) Homepage

      Space in general is depressing. Anything that isn't a dead rock is way too far away, and the laws of physics are a cruel bitch.

      All the more reason that we shouldn't fuck up our only home.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Europa is within reach.

        Mars may be dead but we can change that.

        • Yeah, but... ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE

          • Yeah, but... ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE

            Beat me to it :)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Subm ( 79417 )

          All the more reason that we shouldn't fuck up our only home.

          Mars may be dead but we can change that.

          Earth is alive, but we're changing that.

          Let's learn how to sustain this planet's ability to support life before exporting a practice of exploitation and extraction.

          • Not sure what would have to be there to make it profitable, but we might save this planet by mining a dead one instead. If Mars had accessible rare earths or something perhaps it'd be worth setting up an automated mine. Since humans seem incapable of reigning in the greed for ever more stuff, it pays to think about alternatives to ravaging this planet to feed the need. Not saying it'd be easy, but I think still easier than trying to terraform and live on another world. Imagine a fleet of mining vessels

            • Mining mars isn't a good idea, mining an asteroid would be the profitable idea.

              Contrary to planets, asteroids don't have enough gravitational pull to have buried deep their rare metals, which means it's easier to locate and access those precious materials.

              Also going to and from an asteroids doesn't require dangerous and expensive landings and launches on Mars.

              Also no point bringing our trash to Mars. If you launch it to space, jettison it there instead of trading mars, and is stupid in the first place since

            • Rare earths are not rare. That is only a name.
              Mining them on Mars only makes sense if they are used there - e.g. for li-ion batteries. Shipping them to earth is pointless, as we have more than enough raw earths than we ever can use.

    • Itâ(TM)s actually quite depressing. Who would have thought, while the Apollo program was active, that there would come a time again with no living memory of what itâ(TM)s like to walk on another world. Weâ(TM)re almost there now; the youngest moon walker is in his eighties. The 50th anniversary of humans leaving the moon is two years away.

      This is a good point, but I'm also thinking few other countries could justify A) the trip, and B) the cost. I mean, just how much are you willing to pay for the "cool" factor of keeping a moonwalking streak alive, taxpayer? By 1969 the US had a war to prioritize. Unfortunately, hasn't changed much since. It's a miracle we've managed to find the funding to play on the ISS for this long, even with the help from other countries.

      Yes. It is depressing thinking about all the planets we could have visited by

      • Re:Remember Apollo: Our progress since is depressi (Score:5, Interesting)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday October 30, 2020 @07:33AM (#60665380) Homepage Journal

        It could have been so much cheaper.

        Kennedy wanted it to be a joint effort with the Russians. Plan was to share technology and research, with the two programmes each developing their own rockets and spacecraft, and eventually meeting in lunar orbit for a joint trip to the surface. That idea died with him because only he had the necessary good relationship with his Soviet counterpart to make it happen.

        A joint effort would have greatly reduced the cost and kept the race going, with more joint missions to build a permanent habitat and more.

        • And not to forget, great potential to improve relations between both nations.
          Like showing that Americans and Russians are just people, regardless of government hate-breeding.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by robi5 ( 1261542 )

            Wild-eyed naivety. It wouldn't have mattered that very very few pilots and slightly more researchers had collaborated or worked shoulder to shoulder. There's ample bandwidth for scientific research outside miltech and even that one hasn't brought these countries together. It would've mostly been a vector for learning from and spying on one another's rocket and military technology, and usually, the less advanced nation is the beneficiary of "swapping notes", which happens to be the adversary of the US to thi

      • They did not have a war to prioritize. What the hell did they have to do with a country completely unrelated to them, halfway around the world? Nobody forced them. They *chose* to meddle. "Because the Communists" is not a valid justification. A winner does not beat down who he opposes. That is a desperate action of somebody who failed. He makes them look up to him!
        Guess what would have done that ...

        Also, landing on the moon is not done for the "cool" factor. Like any foundational research, it is done to cre

        • They did not have a war to prioritize. What the hell did they have to do with a country completely unrelated to them, halfway around the world? Nobody forced them. They *chose* to meddle. "Because the Communists" is not a valid justification. A winner does not beat down who he opposes. That is a desperate action of somebody who failed. He makes them look up to him! Guess what would have done that ...

          Guess who wanted the hell out of that? President Kennedy. And he was eliminated for his "meddling" with inevitable warmongering for profit, driven by the MIC. Eisenhower warned the entire country about that, and we didn't listen. And Americans fell for every bullshit excuse used to "justify" the Vietnam conflict.

          Also, landing on the moon is not done for the "cool" factor. Like any foundational research, it is done to create opportunities. To tink ahead. To find out what it possible in the first place.

          Yeah, I'll give you that last part, but the rest of your statement is utter bullshit. If it was so valuable and created so many opportunities, then why has it been half a damn century since we'

    • Blame the idiots who voted for Nixon, one of the worst presidents in history IMHO. Reference: https://www.planetary.org/arti... [planetary.org]

  • "Will the whole structure go out in a final blaze of glory, steered into a Pacific crash landing like the Russian space station Mir?"

    Beware the toilet seat.

  • I am off to watch Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets again [insert pleading face emoji here]

    Also will look for some nice documentaries about life and experiences on ISS...

  • But let's face it, they know where the cameras are, so there can be some gay stuff we don't know about.

  • The only worthy repacement is a base on the moon (or Mars).. anything else is lame.

    • Seconded.

      And we need one of those rotating bases. A large one. You know: A *proper* space station!

      BTW: I'd prefer one in the nice part of the athmosphere of Venus over Mars. Because you can go outside there, with just a light breathing mask. I'm not sure if clothes are even needed.

      • And we need one of those rotating bases. A large one. You know: A *proper* space station!

        The ISS is there to tell us whether our next space station will need to rotate and if so, at what rate.

      • > BTW: I'd prefer one in the nice part of the athmosphere of Venus
        > over Mars. Because you can go outside there, with just a light
        > breathing mask. I'm not sure if clothes are even needed.

        You're kidding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        > The Venusian atmosphere supports opaque clouds of sulfuric acid, making
        > optical Earth-based and orbital observation of the surface impossible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      The big question is why should there be a moon base? This is one that nobody can easily answer except the same bankrupt answer "to prepare for humans to Mars." Whenever Mars is used in the same sentence, people immediately begin working on lunar exit strategy before we even have the means to get to the moon. Humans to the moon is difficult to provide a quick answer. It worked in 1960s because if we didn't beat the Reds to the moon, they would have got there first and then able to enslave the earth in commun

  • Which was also continuously inhabitated until the ISS repaced it.

    And "straight" implies that it was straight *per human*. That is where the clickbait factor that you deliberately chose this headline for comes from in the first place!
    Which, clearly, is not the case.

  • I hate to be negative, but I don't think it's fair to say "we've been living in space for 20 years" because no individual has been living in space for 20 years. The statement is only technically true because there isn't a period in the last 20 years when the ISS has been unoccupied. But that's not quite the same as "[certain] humans have lived in space for 20 years" which is what the headline implies. By the same technicality, humans have been living in the sky for 100 years, simply because at no point in t

  • Seems a trifle hyperbolic (Score:3)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday October 30, 2020 @11:01AM (#60665872) Journal
    Call me an awful cynic; but "humans have been living in space for 20 years straight" seems like hyperbole that's just on the edge of being a lie by omission.

    People have been puttering about low orbit for a while now; but the duration record for a human remains 437.7 days (Valeri Polyakov, 1994-95, on Mir) and, despite efforts at special exercise equipment to compensate for microgravity and both Mir and the ISS being well below the Van Allen belt, initial studies aren't exactly glowing on how people respond to the environment. It's not like we are cutting missions short because people are on the brink of death; but even the stupendously expensive ISS environment(and a steady supply of supplies from earth, so far even approaching 'closed loop' life support systems hasn't been an objective) does not seem to be good for one's health; and while we have the ability to keep putting replacements into the ISS when the last batch is ready to come back; nobody seems to have plans regarding increasing the viable duration of an ISS stay or even plans for the ISS or ISS successor that can compete with various robotic and space telescope proposals on science-for-money. Maybe I just have a shriveled heart of ice and hatred; but the fact that we've had ISS astronauts doing youtube videos of David Bowie covers and cosmetics company advertising [spacenews.com] doesn't fill me with a deep and abiding sense that we have a good idea of exactly what to have the humans driving the most expensive company car in human history actually do. (in that vein, the "it's up there with the Pyramids, the Acropolis -- all the great structures and edifices" comparison seemed a little too apt for comfort; all those things were great monuments to our ability and willingness to build great monuments; but were also massive resource sinks without even remotely proportionate direct utility or any particularly visible trajectory toward future improvement. If the ISS ends up on the same list as the pyramids that will be a massive failure: an impressive exercise in aerospace engineering and the political and diplomatic effort required to keep the space-relevant nation states of the world spending money on the project and playing nice with one another; but ultimately just a monument unless it can serve as the foundational iteration for something else.)

    I certainly don't wish to deny the significant engineering effort that goes into building a large satellite, keeping it within habitable ranges; and keeping up the launch cadence required to keep it crewed and supplied(all are impressive and significant); but let's be honest here: mostly through sheer willingness to keep cutting checks/a desire to give the aerospace guys something to do while they "preserve capability" for manned launches we've kept at least someone in space at any given time, but mostly different people and in stints of under a year, sustained by supplies almost entirely from earth, inside the Van Allen belt, for 20 years.

    The headline makes it sound a lot more like 'bold and noble space colony finishes second decade of success!'; rather than 'we haven't missed any retreads of very similar man-in-a-can missions in a couple of decades'; which is still a big achievement; but a much smaller big achievement.

  • it's been in a highly precarious environment, reserved to a few selected people (or a very few very rich people, actively opposed by NASA), and not in any sense sustainable without nation state level resources. I'd be more impressed by routine commercial flights for (admittedly wealthy) tourists that were beginning to make the whole thing accessible.

    We're still at the T-Model/Wright brothers stage, where things are handmade and not especially reliable or routine. What would it be like at the Toyota Corolla/

  • The LEO is getting old and crowded. Time to move to a lagrange point.

  • What to do with a 20-year-old space station?

    1. Build a replacement, ISSv2, in low earth orbit, alongside the ISS, reusing the design lessons.

    2. Refit the previous ISS(v1) version for Mars/Target exploration support.
    Then boost it into a long trajectory, using ion engines, etc... and insert into Mars/Target orbit.

    3. Rinse and repeat this process indefinitely, because well... duh... science in Space needs habitats...

    Viable Targets include, Mars, Europa/IO, The Asteroid belt,

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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