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How many people are in space right now
- mattchamb 9y agoHopefully some day this number will be so large that it will be impossible to track accurately.
- bcjordan 9y agoBy then it may be quite easy to track accurately!
- ronilan 9y agoMost likely. "Any civilization advanced enough to leave its own plant will be advanced enough to track accurately those leaving" -- Civilized Tracking Corollary (2017)
- maho 9y agoYou have to take births and deaths into account, which is not straightforward. Assuming fast interstellar travel, "loss of simultaneity" causes the number of people in space to depend on your reference frame (your speed and location).
- staticelf 9y agoThat is only if we still die which I hope we have moved past then. Perhaps we simply make new humans when we have the need.
- johannes1234321 9y agoWould eternal life not be boring? And ever growing population also leads to issues, even when populating infinite space ...
- jcun4128 9y agoWould be cool when you're old, transfer your consciousness into a satellite/spacecraft and just fly away into space... then you're like "Oh no...." and get sucked into a black hole.
- Density 9y agoI don't understand this argument. 1) Literally infinite permutations of entertainment out there. 2) Birth rates have been falling steadily for decades. I don't think it'll be a problem in space unless you think space Catholicism is a thing.
- mattmanser 9y agoWhen you get injected with your FaceazonHappinessChip (TM) at birth, it's not hard to track.
- dddw 9y agoexactly my though, hope this goes totally hyperbolic
- sunilkumarc 9y agoFrom where are you getting this data?
- cyrux004 9y agoI dont think OP is the person behind the website. The website has been in existence for many years now. Also, I don know what the source is
- raldi 9y agoI believe the website maintainer follows the news and manually updates http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/peopleinspace.json http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/peopleinspace... as necessary.
- allensallinger 9y agoProbably from http://open-notify.org/ http://open-notify.org/ , it provides free space data.
- phillc73 9y agoOpen Notify has an API for this and some other space data. Here's a few more APIs I've collected into a small R package: https://github.com/phillc73/rinspace https://github.com/phillc73/rinspace
- dogruck 9y agoWe are all floating in space. Duh.
- paxy 9y agoIt is currently only possible to be in space on the ISS (or in transit to/from there) right? Does anyone know when the last human space mission farther than Low Earth orbit was? And is any country seriously planning another one?
- ilogik 9y agothere's also a Chinese space station but it's not currently occupied. The last mission past low earth orbit was Apollo 17. As far as I know, SpaceX are the only ones planning on taking crews further out, first with a mission around the moon, and then possibly Mars
- nsxwolf 9y agoWhat's the highest low earth orbit manned mission? The Hubble repair?
- dwetterau 9y agoThere are plenty of other programs with "planned" missions to the moon and mars. You can question whether or not they'll happen, but you can do that about SpaceX too. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mission_to_Mars#Current_intentions_by_nations_and_space_agencies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mission_to_Mars#Current_...
- jaredandrews 9y agoWow, whenever I am reminded that a human hasn't been on the moon since 1972 it just blows my mind. I mean.. I guess it's probably easier and cheaper and safer to send a robot, but I would think that at least one nation would decide to flex their muscles in the "yea that's right, we can afford to do this" way. Oh how I dream of such forms of international posturing!
- ekianjo 9y agoSpace exploration had a lot to do with the development of military icbms. Now it has become almost commodity tech for developed countries so the need to show off is far less.
- raldi 9y agoIs there a long-term graph of this? I believe the number has been nonzero since 2000, and wanted to see how it's changed over time.
- kristianp 9y agoHere's one up to 2014: http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/science/spaceflt.htm http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/science/spaceflt.htm Number of living humans who have walked on another world: https://xkcd.com/893/ https://xkcd.com/893/
- kristopolous 9y agoso it looks like on average it's roughly doubling about every 15 years?
- zeristor 9y agoSo the most number of humans in space is 11, which has happened a number of times.
- princetman 9y agoMost number of humans in space is 13 according the graph in the link. You must be looking at second graph, most numbers of Americans in space at a time is 11.
- yuvalr1 9y agoMost number of Americans in space is actually 10 according to second graph :)
- yuvalr1 9y agolooks like 13, at least according to the arcaneknowledge link
- jrimbault 9y agoThe xkcd graph is kind of sad.
- dmichulke 9y agoSome nitpicking / philosophical thoughts: - This can only be a lower bound: There may be privately or secretly "launched" people (e.g.: Chinese military scientists, that missing SpaceX engineer, who knows what the NSA does, Mafia's posh new traitor treatment ...) - "People" needs a definition here (are dead people still people, what about aliens?)
- jypepin 9y ago> that missing SpaceX engineer what?! Can you elaborate?
- dmichulke 9y agoThat was merely an example of what could have happened and might have been covered up since then
- logicallee 9y agoright, it's clear that you meant it as a hypothetical example but what does "since then" refer to? We don't know what you mean by "that missing spacex engineer". If I Google that I get nothing: https://www.google.com/search?q=missing+spacex+engineer https://www.google.com/search?q=missing+spacex+engineer What is the original story that you're talking about? The other poster and I are just curious what story you mean. Can you elaborate?
- jsjohnst 9y agoIt’s all a hypothetical. Reread his post again. It’s not perfect grammar, but should be growkable if you read it again.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nkoren 9y ago> There may be privately or secretly "launched" people It's essentially impossible to covertly put or keep anything in space. Getting into space requires expending a rather obvious amount of energy, which there are fleets of satellites from many different nations continually watching out for. Staying in space requires being in full view of, well, nearly 8 billion people. It's not something that anyone is presently doing in secret. Once there are a myriad of commercial ships zipping around cislunar space, the potential for covert flights to slip through the cracks becomes significantly greater. But for the present Earth-to-LEO regime -- no.
- cup-of-tea 9y agoI would have thought at the very least it might say where they are.
- perilunar 9y agoThere's also a 23.0 MB app (iOS only) that you can download and install — just to display a single number. (It actually does a little more than that, but still, a perfect example of an app that should be just a mobile web page.)
- michaelmwangi 9y agoWas just thinking the same thing. Its unnecessary
- return0 9y agospoiler: 6
- silvether 9y agoDuckDuckGo does this as well: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+many+people+are+in+space https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+many+people+are+in+space
- ssttoo 9y agoPrior discussions https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=howmanypeopleareinspa...
- cube00 9y agoIt's no http://howmanydayssincemontaguestreetbridgehasbeenhit.com http://howmanydayssincemontaguestreetbridgehasbeenhit.com
- cerealbad 9y agothat we know of :)
- PikelEmi 9y agoAll people are in space right now.
- surfsquid 9y ago*that we know of
- DmitryOlkhovoi 9y agoah, very useful app for astronauts
- jwr 9y agoIt's a bit sad, actually. You'd think we have progressed further…
- kwikiel 9y ago"You promised me Mars Colonies. Instead, I got Facebook."
- bgdnpn 9y agothey promised mars colonies and we got a number that's also available as an iphone app.
- sova 9y agoNot to nit-pick, but aren't all ~8 billion of us in space all the time?
- oliveshell 9y ago“How many people are outside the protective confines of Earth’s atmosphere right now” doesn’t sound as good.