Slashdot Mirror
The International Space Station Turns 15 (time.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Today marks the 15th birthday of the International Space Station (ISS). Since Nov. 2, 2000 the ISS has hosted more than 220 people from more than a dozen countries. Time reports: "The ISS was little more than three pressurized modules, some supplies and a couple of solar wings to help keep it powered on the day the first crew climbed aboard. Today, the station is a flying piece of cosmic infrastructure the size of a football field, containing 15 pressurized modules, which afford the astronauts as much habitable space as a six-bedroom home. It weighs 1 million pounds (454,000 kg), runs on 3.3 million lines of software code and required 115 launches just to carry all of its components up to orbit."
I love how Slashdot is a hotbed for people arguing that:
A) People who think that ISS, a permanent human presence orbiting our planet, is a huge financial boondoggle that we never should have done; and
B) Establishing a permanent human presence on the surface of Mars will be cheap and we should have done it long ago.
"Oh, goodness. Look at my wrist, I have to go." "But what about your clothes?" "I don't love these."