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5 Years of Habitation on the ISS
An anonymous reader writes "The International Space Station has marked five years of continuous human habitation. People started living on the station on November 2, 2000. In five years, the station has hosted 97 people from 10 countries, including 3 commercial passengers. It survived through the Columbia accident and the suspension of shuttle flights. The station is a testbed for long-duration missions to live and work on the Moon and Mars."
"It survived through the Columbia accident"
You don't generally notice space stations disappearing when a shuttle explodes. You generally see them stay right where they are and continue to be space stations. Very few people would go "oh lets just knock it out the sky, who cares?" when it's the only space based human colony (small though it is).
I like muppets.
I disagree with you, but this is just my opinion: :D
1) Our population is increasing almost exponentially. If we dont get started researching permanent rehabitation now, we may not be able to sustain ourselves in the future
2) assume a cataclysmic event happened on Earth. If we have people in space when it happens (like, colonizing mars or something) then we may survive as a species to see another day
there are more reasons. If I missed some, reply with more
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"The station is a testbed for long-duration missions to live and work on the Moon and Mars."
How is it a test bed for that? Sure, the structure is still up there... I'm pretty sure that isn't the hard part about getting to Mars, or even the moon. The hard part is keeping a human alive in there without resupply, in-gravity exercise, etc. None of which the station helps with.
-Daniel
That comes out around a cool $1 Billion per visitor. And so much has been accomplished. Such a deal.
I think that if humans don't destroy themselves first something will happen to Earth naturally. Maybe the government already knows what is going to happen and isn't telling anyone. Maybe the sky will start to fall. The movie deep impact comes into mind.
Exploration is key to survival. You never know what we'll find or how many aliens we'll talk to ;-)
Plus, living on the moon could get expensive, especially if you have to lease the land from some old fart that bought their kids land on the moon and actually demand payment for land use. http://www.lunarregistry.com/
Obama = Socialism.
Ask yourself this, when you think of the ISS are you filled with pride, satisfaction, or a general, meh. Yep, it is the most expensive "meh" in history.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Yes, I agree, NASA does cost a lot of money, however I disagree that it's a waste of my money.
Why would someone build an entire city under sea level knowing full well the ocean might someday come in and destroy it? Ask the residents of New Oreleans.. Any my tax dollars are going to help clean that up.. b.s.
Why would someone continue to give money to the homeless for years and years and the homeless situation not improve? I'm sorry, but if you're still homeless after 2 years of us trying to help you then you should be deported to Canada. Let them deal with your sorry butt instead of my tax dollars.
Why should you keep a person on death row for 30 years before putting them to death? I'm sorry, but their needs to be a time limit on that. Again, why waste my tax dollars.
At leased we have something to show for the space program unless the thousands of other programs that are just draining our system.
Yes, I know.. I'm gonna get bad Karma for this.. Not all people are equal, not all choices are correct, we need to help our fellow man(woman), we need to balance the budget. Remember, the USA wasn't built on political correctness, it was built on us kicking out the brits.
Obama = Socialism.
"Let's fix the oceans and live in them, that's more feasible than the moon and mars."
Assuming the planet isn't destroyed by asteroids, global warming, or a nuclear war, this would be an awesome idea.
"Derp de derp."
Think of all the "space-age" technology you have today. Your cell phone, compact radios, great insulation, etc etc. All that was developed from technologies made for the original moon-shot. Expecting benefits from pure research and development in 5 years is insane. Although the station does suck allot of money, it will pay off in the future in new synthesis technologies, habitat sustainability, launch, and commumication technologies.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
There is absolutely no realistic way that "space colonization" will help with the worlds population problems, at least not in the forseeable future.
Once robots are ubiquitous (definitely in the forseeable future) and "the singularity" (not M$'s) happens, I think humanity will become more like benign pets anyway.
The next replier, who mentions the Moon as a mining source, hits the nail on the head. Also, scientific research in zero-g is the way to go. Thats really what any space station should be about.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
When you come back to earth and go to a bar, you can say that you are an astronaut and look around for the hottest chick. But when you go to a bar after reading slashdot...well you know what happens next ;)
How do you know they are not having sex in the space station?
a) We need to learn to use other planets as resources so that when the population of earth is say... 16 billion people and the average life expectancy is say 5 times higher than it is now or even the possibility of death being a thing of the past, that we can ship people off into the universe like its no big deal.
b) Diversify, diversify, diversify. Right now we keep all our eggs in one basket. One meteor, one huge earthquake or mega volcanic eruption could wipe out anywhere from 25% to 95% after all of the side effects are taken into account (i.e. tsunamis and climate changes). By living on other planets the chances of our extinction as a species becomes much smaller.
c) Exploration and knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Sure we can do most of that stuff with robots, but what fun is that... and while living in space we may learn a thing or two about the robustness (or lack thereof) of our bodies and ability to adapt. Perhaps new methods of farming or food creation will become the norm. There are many other benefits but I won't list them now.
d) Like it or not, not only are we an intelligent species, but a moral one. The intelligence factor leads us to dominating our surrounding environment, the problem is we are smart enough to not be happy with what we have and instead modify it to our needs (I see nothing wrong with this, we are a part of nature, whatever we do is natural despite however many animals may die, even if we do it in a viral manner). As a result of this extra level of comfort we tend to take up more space and consume more resources. We also tend to live longer and longer... eventually reaching the point of no death according to many in the sciences. This is where the moral part kicks in... we won't enforce population control, we won't just start killing people for the sake of killing people. Therefore our population is bound to spiral out of control at some point within the next century or so.
Any one of those points is worth sending civilizations into space.
Regards,
Steve
I think maybe part of the underlying "meh" to the ISS is the fact that it is so fragile. People think of space stations as self sustaining settlements in space and the fact that people are staying over night in space is not enough to fulfill that image. If you are feeling down, just realize that the ISS is a necessary step to that dream of the self-sustained space city.
5 years? Big deal? Chris Kraft (former "Flight" in the early days of NASA) summed it up in his autobiography: the space shuttles, the space stations, they are all a cop-out and pretty much a waste of time. We should be on the moon, on Mars, not wasting time in low orbit! We already know how to stay in orbit with a zillion satellites and launches under our collective belts. We need to get back to the hard stuff.
Money wasted on the space station in no way advances any of the things you are concerned about. Being in LEO and constantly resupplied from the ground, it provides no information on how to build a Martian or Lunar colony, or how to support a crew on a years long mission to Mars.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
And that was just a few things.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"We need to know what will happen and how to countermand the effect. The station has been hard at work at it."
The Russians did 12 months long before the ISS came along and at a tiny fraction of the price on Mir. About all thats really come out of all the zero G physiology research is aggressive exercise is important, we didn't need to spend $100 billion to learn that. Build a craft big enough to use a centrifuge for artificial G is the only other option so far. It should be noted if you are going to Mars you are going to 1/3 G which is way less trauma than going back to 1G on earth. If you go to Mars to colonize and stay you never go back to 1G so the gravit issues is a lot less of an issue.
"ISS has shown us where things will go well, and things will go bad."
Yes it mostly showed NASA bad, Russians good. NASA has been an obnoxious partner throughout who has failed to deliver on every front. The Russians are the only ones who kept the ISS alive in the face of the disaster that is the Shuttle. If it were not for the Russians the ISS would have been abandoned already and probably burned, though that might have been a blessing in a lot of ways.
"The stations recently had O2 problems. The generator for it failed in a big way. Most likely a new design will be sought out."
You really don't need a $100 billion space station to perfect oxygen generators.
Bottomline, as someone else said, the ONLY area in which the ISS and Shuttle can be considered a success is as a lucrative multidecade jobs program for aerospace workers and contractors.
@de_machina
The French provided a lot of support, but until the last few years, they weren't involved militarily in the US revolt.
Sounds like the US in WWII. Doesn't stop plenty of Americans trying to claim all the glory.