How many people are in space right now | Hacker News Reader

How many people are in space right now

howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com

185 pointsmgdo66 comments

Is 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.

Here's one up to 2014: http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/science/spaceflt.htm

Number of living humans who have walked on another world: https://xkcd.com/893/

so it looks like on average it's roughly doubling about every 15 years?

So the most number of humans in space is 11, which has happened a number of times.

Most 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.

Most number of Americans in space is actually 10 according to second graph :)

looks like 13, at least according to the arcaneknowledge link

The xkcd graph is kind of sad.

> world

[Gumble, grumble, …] I think the Earth, the Moon, and the rest of the universe count as the same world.

Back in the 1990s, I maintained a "Population of Space" page which showed exactly this. To my knowledge, nothing like it exists anymore, which is a shame. I occasionally think about recreating it, just as soon as the day job leaves me some time...

[Edit: oh cool, there's something kinda like it in the sibling comment! Mine was different, showing a less granular graph wth the population averaged out on a yearly basis. But it also included a table of all missions and notable events affecting trends in the population of space.]

Hopefully some day this number will be so large that it will be impossible to track accurately.

By then it may be quite easy to track accurately!

Most likely.

"Any civilization advanced enough to leave its own plant will be advanced enough to track accurately those leaving"

-- Civilized Tracking Corollary (2017)

...until people start dying and babies start getting born in space.

Well, there may be some speed-of-light issues in getting the latest data. But this problem seems pretty solvable if you link to the right government databases, etc.

Just use MongoDB and shard it for every galaxy. Problem solved.

900B records leaked and broadcasted from the UniverseFax credit agency; now forming a shell around Earth that's 6 light hours wide, and expands at the rate of 600 000 km/s...

You 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).

That 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.

Would eternal life not be boring? And ever growing population also leads to issues, even when populating infinite space ...

Would 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.

I 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.

When you get injected with your FaceazonHappinessChip (TM) at birth, it's not hard to track.

exactly my though, hope this goes totally hyperbolic

There'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.)

Was just thinking the same thing. Its unnecessary

It 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?

there'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

What's the highest low earth orbit manned mission? The Hubble repair?

There 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/Human_mission_to_Mars#Current_...

Wow, 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!

Space 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.

    > Apollo 17

Jeez, 45 years since the last person walked on the moon.

45 years since anyone has been more than 330 miles from earth. totally pathetic.

There seems to be at least one Chinese spacecraft in orbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_large_modular_space_st...

"You promised me Mars Colonies. Instead, I got Facebook."

they promised mars colonies and we got a number that's also available as an iphone app.

Not to nit-pick, but aren't all ~8 billion of us in space all the time?

“How many people are outside the protective confines of Earth’s atmosphere right now” doesn’t sound as good.

*that we know of

DuckDuckGo does this as well:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+many+people+are+in+space

From where are you getting this data?

I 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

I believe the website maintainer follows the news and manually updates http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/peopleinspace... as necessary.

Probably from http://open-notify.org/ , it provides free space data.

Open 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

It's a bit sad, actually. You'd think we have progressed further…

Well its expensive and there are known deleterious effects associated to staying in orbit at zero g. Space exploration is at minimum budget for a while now.

OTOH, there are young adults now who've never known a time when there weren't humans living in space.

I would have thought at the very least it might say where they are.

spoiler: 6

ah, very useful app for astronauts

that we know of :)

Prior discussions https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=howmanypeopleareinspa...

It's no http://howmanydayssincemontaguestreetbridgehasbeenhit.com

We are all floating in space. Duh.

All people are in space right now.

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