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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.
Apparently a "football pitch" is foreign for "soccer field."
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
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!
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.
Because it's a dang more complicated to get each part of ISS separately to a speed of 8 km/s (orbital velocity), than the whole ISS mounted together to a speed of 11.2 km/s (escape velocity) - and that's only to get the ISS out of the gravity field of the Earth. To actually get it to Mars, you need a speed of 34.1 km/s. Imagine the size of the boosters necessary! (And imagine the effort to get them including the fuel up to the ISS orbit).
Outside of the protection of Earth's magnetic fields, everyone on-board would get killed by the radiation.
And you say years at a time. No one has lived in space for 2 years straight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_records). The record for the ISS is only 340.4 days (And 437.7 for Mir).
Also, there is the whole energy problem. Ex: just because you go around earth once a day doesn't mean you could get to the moon easily. Getting back would also be much harder since you have to ship the return rockets to mars.
But assuming you solved those problems (which would cost many billions of dollars) yes you could do it, but for the same money we could do so many more useful things hear on earth, or in space with lighter robots.
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.
>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 *
This XKCD picture explains it all in a very intuitive way: https://xkcd.com/681/
The ISS is on the "low earth orbit" line in the detailed view of the Earth well (on the right).
Using the same analogy, image that you are at the bottom a 100m deep well. It is should be easy for you to walk in circles for 1000m (so horizontally). However, to exit the well you have to GO UP for 100m. That's is a lot more difficult.