
How Many People Are In Space Right Now? - jonmc12
http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/
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a3_nm
According to an unsourced claim on Wikipedia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human>), the largest value ever reached for
this number was 13 (which is surprisingly low).

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sehugg
Here's a citation ([http://www.universetoday.com/27924/soyuz-rockets-to-
space-13...](http://www.universetoday.com/27924/soyuz-rockets-to-
space-13-humans-now-in-orbit/)) it last happened in 2009. Three ISS, seven
shuttle, and three Soyuz. It also happened in 1995 (Mir) and 1997.

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a3_nm
Awesome, thanks! Wikipedia article updated.

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jackfoxy
This is a testament to how damned expensive it is to get into space. There is
no subverting the laws of physics.

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nazgulnarsil
get out of earth's gravity well and you're halfway to anywhere in the solar
system, energy wise.

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jamesaguilar
I just got shivers as I pictured the changes that would occur on this site
over the next three or four centuries were it kept up to date for all that
time.

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lmarinho
Hope the real change in that value doesn't disappoints us. If I travelled in
time from 1970 to today and looked at this site I surely would be
disappointed.

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shii
They make you autofollow once you visit the page and are signed into Tumblr,
not cool.

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sjs
Not for me. (Chrome, OS X)

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dlokshin
More specifically, this is the number of _live_ people in space. I'd be
curious to know how many dead people are in space as well (the ones who had
their body's launched upon passing).

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tripplesix
The number may be larger than we know because of the undocumented
disappearances of early Soviet cosmonauts. Although Yuri Gagarin is widely
believed to be the first man in space, it is highly probable that he was only
the first man to survive space travel.

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InclinedPlane
This is a conspiracy theory with absolutely no solid evidence behind it.

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jgroome
This site may actually bankrupt NASA if they keep hotlinking that 1.7mb
background image.

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savrajsingh
(that civilians know about :))

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zyb09
yea pretty sure there are another couple hundred people on the secret CIA
space ship, conspiring in space about their evil plan to take over the world.

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savrajsingh
The SR71 was a secret for a long time. Now it's in museums. What secret
aircraft/spacecraft do we have now? Beyond the x37? The military budget is
orders of mag greater than NASAs. That's what I meant.

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tesseract
I would guess that the secret aircraft of today, likely as not don't have
people in them.

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prtk
Too many satellites. Too few people. Seems like space is infested with robots.
Gentlemen machines are winning! And it will be my 1001th(in decimal) birthday
before I go where no man has gone before. :(

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btilly
On NPR this morning I heard that the total number who have ever been in space
is about 550. That was a lot more than I thought it was.

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arihant
I think they mean 'Not on Earth'. Being on Earth is same as being in Space.
Earth is in Space.

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ryanklee
No, they mean "in Space". Why attempt to subvert the obviously standard usage
of the word? It's just silly.

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idlewords
Not enough.

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jcnnghm
I think it's kind of surprising how low the number is. Almost certainly
because space exploration is underfunded.

Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about the NASA budget,
and there are a couple of things I think many people don't know. The total
2010 US Space budget was $64.6B. The entire rest of the world combined spent
only $22.5B. NASA's 2010 budget was $18.7B, 83% of the spending for the rest
of the world. It's more than a little ironic when those outside the United
States criticize cuts to US space spending. Europeans, in particular, may want
to consider the paltry $4.6B ESA budget before they criticize the United
States. Space spending does need to increase; the rest of the worlds needs to
start contributing.

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davidhollander
> _Almost certainly because space exploration is underfunded._

Or because there is currently no benefit in conducting exploration using
humans instead of robots.

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jcnnghm
Because we can is almost always a poor reason to do something, but this may be
an edge case.

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davidhollander
I understand the desire for action, but we need to invent another task besides
exploration to engage in. I.e. resource exploitation. Purely observational
exploration of outer space is a task for which we are extremely maladapted
(vacuum, long distances, etc.) that robots will probably always be better at.

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jcnnghm
I definitely agree with what you're saying at the beginning, but I'm not so
sure about the end.

I think there is some value in putting humans in space. It certainly seems
many scientific discoveries are made by a scientist observing or experiencing
something, noticing that it is strange, then investigating. A perfect example
of this is the development of microwaves, which came about because an engineer
working on radar noticed that a candy bar started to melt when near the radar.
Robots are certainly superior by almost every metric once you know what you're
looking for, but I wouldn't be so sure that we actually know what we are
looking for. Boots on the ground, so to speak, can offer insights that a robot
simply cannot.

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davidhollander
Exploring space with humans for the possibility of positive technological side
effects does not seem a reliable, long term way to increase the number of
people in space at any given time, if that is your primary goal. It seems like
a way to temporarily boost the number by around 3.

If the goal is to increase the number of humans in space for the sake of
increasing the number of humans in space, one would probably need to do
research into a colonial business model sustainable enough to get investors
and governments on board.

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horseshoes
Isn't it closer to 4 billion? Probably more, that we don't know about yet?

Edit: Sorry, 6 billion. Didn't mean to make you think 2 bil. people died.

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mtogo
Why is horseshoes being downvoted? He's exactly right, there are about 6.79
billion[1] people in space[2] right now. There are 10 in _outer_ space, but
the domain isn't howmanypeopleareinouterspacerightnow.com

[1] <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+earth>

[2] <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Space>

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Sacrificiality
And this is why geeks are considered 'retarded'.

Do you really miss the point? No. Pedantic bullshit trolls. Wave to the
camera!

