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Last Day of Terrestrial Humans
A reader writes: "According to Christian Science Monitor, tomorrow humans will begin their permanent lives off of earth. Starting with the Expedition 1 launch in Kazakhstan at 7:53 GMT, Oct. 31, NASA plans to always have a human on the ISS, which has a projected mission life of 10 to 25 years. So, it is quite possible, that for the rest of history, there will always be humans who are not living on earth. See this ISS Homepage for more information on the mission."
Dude, passage of laws like the DMCA indicate that there is already a measurable segment of humanity who aren't living on this planet.
-Rob
This isn't terribly likely. Life in space is entirely based on life on Earth. Hence, space living, though outside the atmosphere, is subject to whatever political and financial winds are blowing.
Whether it is because of a technical failure that causes evacuation, funding crisis that leaves it unmanned for a time, or political upheaval that removes support, the odds are highly in favor of there being a time with no humans in space within the next 20 years.
What will change this is when life in space is self-sustaining. Then it will no longer be subject to terrestrial issues.
..would be humans who live their lives having never been on earth.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
Who I'd like to see live off of earth.
Well, we'd probably have a permanent station on Mars in a year if Al Sharpton would volunteer to go and not come back.
Seriously, this really could be the dawn of a new era. I've always considered the most noticable thing about humanity is our pure, unadulterated wanderlust.
We were hardly up on our hind feet before we started spreading all over the globe. Long before history began we had spread to the far corners of the globe.
Think about that. Not modern man, but man three feet tall with only the tools that he could fashion with his bare hands simply wandered into nearly every corner of globe. Just when, and HOW, did man first reach Australia?
We travel. Tourism is a major activity. We build bypasses so people at point A can get to point B, and vice versa, for no real reason. We go places for no more reason than " we havn't been THERE before."
When a cat gets bored it takes a nap. When a person gets bored * it paces. * It goes for a walk, it * goes SOMEWHERE.*
UP is the only place left to go, and it's about time we got down to it. Not for science, not for population pressure relief, not to 'save the whales', not for financial gain, but because we are human, and that's what humans DO!
So far, and correct me if I'm wrong, nobody's died in space yet. Challenger hadn't left the atmosphere before it blew up, and Apollo 13 got back safely (although by the skin of their teeth).
With the number of missions needed to put the station together, and the unprecedented EVA time needed, it's just a matter of time before there's a serious accident up there.
With all the trips, the odds of breaking a seal and suffocating, or a pressurised tank exploding, or some other major system failure.
And once it's all running, there's always the chance of sudden illness popping up amongst the station's crew (despite the medical checks, there's always the one-in-a-million chance), and it becoming fatal before medical help can be reached.
I thought I'd seen an article on the risks somewhere before... Google popped this one up, which seems similar enough to what I remember. According to a study, the odds are at least one astronaut will die in the next 15 years.
If I spend a year on the ISS...do I have to pay taxes for my income that year?
A nice touch would be if we did to our lawyers what Douglas Adams reccomends to do with them.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Aside from the obvious and redundant cracks about various political figures (and I'm surprised no one has mentioned Gates yet), there seems to be one overriding theme to the responses... So what?
NASA should take some pride in this response. Those astronauts are undertaking a voyage as deadly as any in history, but the unmitigated success of the US Space Program has reduced public reaction to little more than a yawn.
This will probably be the prevailing opinion for a long time. "We are living on the Moon? So what? We got there a long time ago. We are living on Mars? Great, we should send George W. Bush III out there! But seriously, so what? We are already living on the moon!"
It certainly is fun to be a cynic, deriding everyone else's achievements and laughing at how witty and smart we are. Just try and remember the date when you grandchildren ask when people first started to live in space...
B
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
Here is a related but pessimistic prediction: before I die, there will be no living person who has walked on the moon. This seems incredibly sad to me.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Just read the article last week about what humans going to Mars are going to have to do to survive, and you get a pretty quick impression that life in space isn't going to be that yummy.
Seriously, though. I understand the fascination with space and the "final frontier" but there is NO WAY you're ever going to see those massive sci-fi dreams realized. First off, humans don't colonize worthless tracts of land. There are places in the world today almost as hospitable as Mars - deserts/Ice caps/South Pole/ that are barren of people. Why? No reason to go, and no resources to exploit when they do arrive. Why did men go to Nevada? Silver - Why did they leave - Silver is gone. They had to start casinos and tourism, otherwise the whole state would be a ghost town.
Without a resource to exploit in space, and a MASSIVE energy source capable of reproducing some of life's amenities and making interplanetary travel a bit more liveable, there's no point, no profit, and no way mankind is going to spread to Mars or space stations or any other place. The one thing they might have going for them is Zero G manufacturing, and we'll have to wait and see on that.
And god help us if we ever find a planet with anything resembling a life form. Historically, Humans react VERY BADLY to foreign organisms they've never been exposed to before. (ask the Amazonian tribes, Native Americans, Europeans ) - it'll be the Andromeda strain all over again.
Not a pessimist, just a realist. People don't colonize inhospitable environments cause they want to, they plan to get something out of it. Find a valuable mineral or resource on Mars or in space, and I promise you, private corporations will beat NASA there - but without incentives, it's almost a waste of time. Go to the Sahara or the South Pole if you want to explore.
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Finally, the human race will have an off-site backup facility.
So until we develope a working form of artificial gravity (and a more advanced diaper) there will be no children in space (hey, maybe space really does have potential as a 'vacation destination' !)
NightHawk
Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.
Space Fungus!
"Ah! 30 CCs of Tolnaftate."
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Let's see here, the IIS has a projected lifespan to 10 to 25 years.
That's just what Microsoft wants you to think.
NO CARRIER