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ISS Completes 100,000th Orbit of Earth (phys.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: The International Space Station, the space laboratory that showcases cooperation between Russia and the United States, on Monday orbited Earth for the 100,000th time, Russian mission control said. Traveling at an altitude of about 250 miles (400 kilometers) and a speed of about 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) per hour, the space station circles the Earth once every 90 minutes. The ISS has now traveled 2.6 billion miles "or about the distance of 10 round trips to Mars," NASA said on the station's official Twitter feed. From two modules, it has grown to 15 modules, occupying a space the size of a football pitch and represents around $100 billion in investment. "Such a long lifespan of the ISS proves that mankind has the necessary technologies for constant presence in orbit, that we have the potential for further space exploration," said Matyushin.
I get what they mean... but after reaching orbit, the ISS hasn't travelled any farther in orbit than I've travelled on my treadmill.
>> size of a football pitch
So...about 40 yards then? I think I saw a quarterback throw that far once.
If you want to check out the current location, this website is pretty good...
http://www.isstracker.com/
"The ISS has now travelled 2.6 billion miles 'or about the distance of 10 round trips to Mars' "
Or for comparison, a single one-way trip to Neptune. Or 0.01016% of the way to Alpha Centauri.
The real question is why the ISS matters at all. It's been an excessively expensive project to complete, curtailing NASA's ability to fund other missions. The orbit is highly inclined so it's less expensive for Russian spacecraft to reach it than it is for American spacecraft. A lot of the time is spent doing maintenance and construction instead of scientific research. While the US has found some research that can be conducted on the ISS, it's very limited with respect to the shuttle missions. The shuttles were extremely successful, though quite outdated at the end of their life cycles. The ISS really hasn't been that successful, but its costs have hindered NASA from carrying out other research and missions. Why does the ISS matter? Aside from exploring the long-term effects of spaceflight, very little.of value has come from the ISS, a particularly important point when taking into account the massive costs.
What a waste. Just think of what we could have learned with that money had we spent it on science instead of subsidizing defense contractors.
Scientists theorize the ISS made 100,000 orbits faster than expected due to an unusually high gravitational pull around the USA midwest. In other news, fast food chains are reporting amazing sales of the 1.5 pound cheezeburger in the midwest....
If we hadn't spent so much money on pointless wars we'd be on our way to the next solar system by now.
-- Cheers!
it's done the equivalent of 10 trips to Mars since 1998, so why not send it to mars ? People have proven they can live in it for years at a time, it can obviously take a shove from a rocket. Just fuel up a few rockets and have them meet it along the way with provisions and an extra nudge to move it along.
Nullius in verba
I first read it as "ISIS Completes 100,000th Orbit of Earth". I was thinking, "well that's a good place for them."
Table-ized A.I.
I think that EU and Japan space agencies have also made non-negligible contributions.
I wish that we could cooperate more. Russians and Americans have basically the same values, religion, etc. We really should be great friends. The current situation is just a huge misunderstanding on both sides.
Anyway, off to Saint Petersburg tomorrow.
It was cool in the 90s and early 00s but now it's old hat stuff. As a European kid it was very inspiring. The US was that benevolent power with Shuttles and Hubble and cool stuff, joining hands with other nations to build the biggest abd highest tech station ever, then ITER and who knows what. A nice "end of history" it was, until the US decided to invade and attack countries at random and unleash hell on Earth that is.
Now the US is the biggest threat to world peace and security, and all that soft power from big space projects has been pissed away. I wish you could keep your terrorist wars and "treaties" where they belong. Fuck the EU, those corporate shills, and fuck NATO a.k.a. Al Qaeda's air force.
There's no USSR anymore, but who needs it when there's the US? How does it feel now that you are the bad guys?
I could go on and on but my point is I don't think any new SLS or asteroid stuff etc. will have the same impact it could have had.
On the other hand you motivated a country as poor as backwater Africa and frequently described as the world's worst country to reach orbit, which makes me laugh. Also Russia collaborate with NATO countries anyway, with Soyouz rockets launched from French Guyana.
The International Space Station, the space laboratory that showcases cooperation between Russia and the United States
and Europe and Canada and Japan...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Most travellers don't just walk to the nearest park and spend a year walking laps of it. That's not travel.
What park are you going to that is traveling 4.6 miles per second 300 miles above the Earth's surface? The ISS is a vehicle, not a park. If you want an analogy it's like taking a rocket to a jet that is already flying around the globe, making an in-flight transfer and then spending several months in the plane while it flies around the world. Just because you aren't standing on terra-firma doesn't mean it isn't traveling.
The ISS is effectively parked. (parked in an awesome spot.) Sure it is moving relative to the centre of the earth, but so is the car on blocks. 24 hour circuit vs 90 minutes.
The ISS is moving relative to every part of the earth at a ludicrous velocity. Your car on blocks is fixed to a point on the Earth's surface. You seriously can't see the difference?
The whole describing-distance-traveled-in-round-trips-to-mars strategy gets much more pathetic when you realize that all that glorious travel is occurring in an orbit so low it barely clears the atmosphere; rather than actually going anywhere interesting.
br. If we just want to mash numbers together; it's be about as meaningful to add up the distance covered by American commuters over the last decade and describe that in terms of the most appropriate interplanetary voyage.
Everyone knows the earth is flat.
yet again arbitrarily celebrating base 10, i never get this.
celebrating the 1,000,000th revolution of my truck tires.
That's $1M per orbit, or about $25 for every kilometer of ground-distance travelled, or about 2.5c per meter.
I don't see why this is news. It's not like it's a nice round number or anything, and even if it was it's no more or less significant than any other lap.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is that and factors and powers of 10 are reasonably composite. 6 is nicely composite too, but we use that sufficiently for angular measure. There are 10 commandments...
to a winning game of "graviton" on CERL's PLATO IV novanet system. Awe crap... now I need to renew my avatar addiction.
Sure I get the (attempted) joke, but it doesn't help answer my question: what does he mean when he says its not moving?
No. Obviously you don't get the joke. The part where he says it's not moving is the joke . Either that, or you were just really struck hard by the need to act like a pedantic asshole.
My money is on the latter.