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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.
Bingo !!
The Apollo program was only 100 billion and considerably more significant.
A short list of things the ISS is doing for humanity in general:
1. The practicalities of human habitation in space, something that cannot be reproduced on earth.
2. Construction techniques on earth and in space
3. All that tech developed that NASA licenses to anyone who asks
4. A detailed look at how gravity influences any number of physical processes both in and out of vacuum
5. Probably the best cover of Space Oddity ever made
6. Showing the world concrete proof that they can accomplish great things if they work together (oh, except for China, but they take it as a challenge of equals instead of a condescending geopolitical stance which is nice at least)
7. An orbital launch platform for commercial microsats
8. A rationale for the commercial space industry to exist in any capacity beyond satellite launches
9. The secure knowledge that someone will be around to witness the end of the world and appreciate it
Never forget what we traded it for. Three times more energetic than the LHC.
OK, but not really worth $100 billion.
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....
I already thought about it, and the answer is not much.
100 billion over 17 years is peanuts to the USA.
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education_in_the_United_States#Cost_and_finances)
The total cost of higher education was 289 billion on 2002, over 17 years that would be 4,900 billion. We all know that costs have risen much faster than inflation, but let's use the low number.
If you gave all the ISS funding to higher education, that would take it from 4,900 to 5,000 billion. shrug.
Want to spend it just on science?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending
The US spends 470 billion a year on that, or about 8,000 billion over the last 17 years.
Cancel the ISS and that would bring the total to 8,100 billion.
Americans spent about 1.5 trillion on beer over those 17 years.
170 billion on romance novels.
here's some more:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/31222/numbers-how-americans-spend-their-money
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
What are you comparing it to? How would you have spent the money differently? Personally even if it was just the research on long term exposure to microgravity I would have said it was worth it.
The research around Osteoporosis that was conducted on the ISS can't be replicated anywhere else.
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.
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.
>OK, but not really worth $100 billion.
But the Iraq war was worth 1.7 Trillion dollars and counting ? Afghanistan was worth the 1 trillion bill it had run up in 2014 already ? I imagine it's a bit higher now.
For comparison - Bush never actually counted the wars against the deficit (worst accounting ever) - Obama did, figuring if America spends money on this stuff it ought to be written down somewhere. Think about that. It means the wars alone make up a third of the deficite increase written up during his terms (ironically, representing money the guy before him actually spent but didn't write down).
Nearly three trillion dollars spent killing brown people. Another trillion odd paying all the other soldiers and military staff and defense projects and the rest of a killing machine 13 times larger than anybody else has (because twice as large while just as effective would not be as good for hawkish politician's egos and their friend's pocketbooks).
What has the military cost, in total, since the ISS was launched ? I can't find a clear figure but even in 1998 when the ISS was first launched the military budget for the year was 399 Billion - FOUR TIMES what the ISS has cost us in TOTAL.
I would argue that if we can afford to spend apparently about half the global GDP on trying to kill each other over 20 years - we can damn well afford to spend a hundred billion on developing the techniques and technologies for long term space exploration - which is the ISS's single most valuable research contribution.
You can't just say "X" is a big number, whether a number is big depends on context. In the context of government spending and priorities, the ISS is near the top of the list of the BEST things ever done with your tax money.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Well, um, they just produced some promotional fluff for snapchat... And before that there was that astronaut who did a David Bowie cover and some youtube videos: In Space!
Clearly a worthy investment.
Yep... turns out the only thing worst than two power-mad empires battling for control of the world with their quasi-religious economic ideologies lifted to the point of cultlike unquestioning adherence... is ONE power-mad empire battling for control of the world with it's quasi-religious economic ideology lifted to the point of cultlike unquestioning adherence.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
But the Iraq war was worth 1.7 Trillion dollars and counting ? Afghanistan was worth the 1 trillion bill it had run up in 2014 already ? I imagine it's a bit higher now.
Nothing says +10 Insightful than what you just wrote. Not much more to add but well played, sir - well played.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
yet again arbitrarily celebrating base 10, i never get this.
I thought about it too. Your post misleads because you compare ISS cost to the total public and private R&D spending of the US. Most of that isn't science. That's things like Charmin engineering a softer pleat of toilet paper. $100 billion over 17 years is approximately the money spent on the National Science Foundation over that time. We could have doubled the NSF budget for the last 17 years. That would have been something. NSF budget history: http://proposalexponent.com/NS...
to a winning game of "graviton" on CERL's PLATO IV novanet system. Awe crap... now I need to renew my avatar addiction.
My contention is not that the ISS has done no science; just that it's done an awfully mediocre amount of science for its price. Yes, they haven't wasted all the time they've spent up there; but for something that ranks as one of the most expensive research devices ever constructed, the ISS' list of accomplishments is kind of thin. I'm all for research funding; but I'm also all for spending it on the projects that deliver more science for your dollar. $100 billion worth of space station hasn't done a terribly encouraging job.
I didn't mislead.
It was exactly my intent was to put in perspective the total amount of money spent on the ISS funding by comparing it to the total amount of other things we spend money on. I showed that the ISS cost is small compared to the total spending on higher education, science, (or as you correctly pointed out, R&D), beer, romance novels, or various trivialities.
We're a big country. It's not an either/or situation. We can do many things at once.