
5,200 Days in Space - markmassie
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/12/5200-days-in-space/383510/?single_page=true
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fchollet
Interesting to note: whenever the ISS comes up in European or Russian media,
it is presented as an international, collaborative scientific enterprise. When
it comes up in American media, it is presented solely as an American
achievement. The same is true for the coverage of all other international
scientific collaborations (the ISS being one of the greatest example there is,
alongside ITER).

Most Americans who know about the ISS aren't even aware that the ISS is not a
NASA-only, American project. Ask around you, you'll see.

Case in point in this article:

 _" It’s a little strange when you think about it: Just about every American
ninth-grader has never lived a moment without astronauts soaring overhead,
living in space. But chances are, most ninth-graders don’t know the name of a
single active astronaut—many don’t even know that Americans are up there.
We’ve got a permanent space colony, inaugurated a year before the setting of
the iconic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a stunning achievement, and it’s
completely ignored."_

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kiba
_Most Americans who know about the ISS aren 't even aware that the ISS is not
a NASA-only, American project. Ask around you, you'll see._

If you are willing to do a randomized survey to prove or disprove your claim,
than I'll believe the survey.

I don't take personal experience or anecdote or impression of what people
believe about people as evidence.

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skybrian
If anyone really cares, it looks like you could do it for about 10 cents per
data point:

[http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/pricing](http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/pricing)

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kashkhan
so $150B/5200 = 28MM . So $1.2 million per hour. and for 3 occupants, $400,000
per hour each.

I am sure the experience is awesome, but i wonder if space could have been
done better.

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rwallace
Space could certainly _be_ done better (I think the key advance would be the
ability to upload human minds to solid-state substrate - that would make a lot
of the problems of living in space dramatically easier), but it doesn't follow
that it could _have been_ done better. It's part of life that we have to try
inefficient ways of doing things in order to learn what we need to know before
we can figure out the efficient ways.

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informatimago
Dumb question.

The right question is: Why people still want to get out of the planet? Because
they are people. And because of other people.

