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."

Comments

No, it isn't

[drhamad]

"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.

Yay

[Waffle Iron]

In five years, the station has hosted 97 people from 10 countries

That comes out around a cool $1 Billion per visitor. And so much has been accomplished. Such a deal.

Meh.

[Shadow Wrought]

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.

Re:Seems like only yesterday they started wasting

[madshot]

Come on now... do you use any Teflon products? Have you ever used a solar powered calculator?

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.

Re:erm..

[mcc]

Actually it would be reasonable to expect the complete suspension of a major nation's space program to have negative effects on a space station. Skylab, for example, can be directly seen as a casualty of the suspension of America's space program which resulted from the transition to the Space Shuttle. Space stations need active upkeep and visits from crew if they're going to remain in orbit at all. In a hypothetical universe where Russia and America weren't allies in this decade, when the Columbia accident occurred it would have been a serious problem for the space station-- because in the absence of space shuttle flights post-Columbia the flights run by the Russian space program were necessary to keep the thing inhabited.

Space Research has done much....

[hcob$]

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.

Re:Space Research has done much....

[Bogtha]

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.

And think of how much more advanced it would all be if we'd poured the funding for space exploration into those technologies directly instead of waiting for spin-offs.

The spin-off argument is a non-starter. If you want fancy mobile phones, throw the research money into mobile phones. If you want better insulation, throw the research money into insulation. If you want to justify space research, then justify it based on how well it accomplishes its intended goals, not on the tech you might be able to scavenge from it for other purposes.

Re:Five Years and no sex

[rovingeyes]

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 ;)

Re:Five Years and no sex

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know they are not having sex in the space station?

Chris Kraft was right

[Crispix]

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.

Re:Could someone please post accomplishments?

[WindBourne]

If we are going to survive in space, on the moon, and at mars, we need to be able to do it close by. The ISS is about testing our equipment and know how. Keeping the ship in space is a major accomplishment. We have already determined a number of things from it:

• The space shuttle does not work as designed. Had we used it to build a moon station, things could have been much worse than it has alreay.
  
• The stations recently had O2 problems. The generator for it failed in a big way. Most likely a new design will be sought out.
  
• The tin can approach to a space station is expensive. Fortunately, a different design was done in the 90's, that was privatized and will shortly be tested in space. The new station makes heavy use of NASA's work on the ISS to lower its costs. If it proves succesful, it will almost certainly be shipped to the moon and to mars to serve as emergency waypoints/
  
• We currently run the station with only 2 ppl. That is due to no escape capsule. Once, we have several CEV that can be used in conjuction with the station, we will probably bumb the crew up to 4-8 ppl (the IIS limit is not resources as much as escape vehicles).
  
• In order to survive the trip to mars, we will have to surive in the microgravity for 3-12 months. We need to know what will happen and how to countermand the effect. The station has been hard at work at it.
  
• Finally, any real setteling of the moon and mars will have to be multi-national. ISS has shown us where things will go well, and things will go bad.
  

 
And that was just a few things.