Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The Atlantic, On The ISS

8 Comments

The magazine, that is. I’m still reading it, but this reminded me of the book:

Astronauts never tire of watching the Earth spin below—one wrote of stopping at a window and being so captivated that he watched an entire orbit without even reaching for a camera. “I have been looking at the Earth, from the point of view of a visiting extraterrestrial,” wrote another. “Where would I put down, and how would I go about making contact? The least dangerous thing would be to board the International Space Station and talk to those people first.”

As I note in the book, the ISS would be “…the first line of defense, a picket, in a space-alien invasion.” And note, as always the fascination with watching the earth below, and marvel at the foolishness of people who think there would be no demand for public space travel.

8 thoughts on “The Atlantic, On The ISS”

  1. “And note, as always the fascination with watching the earth below, and marvel at the foolishness of people who think there would be no demand for public space travel.”

    Count me among those who would gladly pay for a ride up high enough to watch the earth spin below me. I would probably also be among those who would be willing to stay a weekend in an orbiting hotel, just to be able to sit and gaze down at the planet for hours on end without worry of interruption. Of course, I would probably be tremendously sick for most of the journey, given my inability to handle rough seas on a cruise ship, but I would find a way to mitigate that as much as possible if given the opportunity.

    I might even be willing to pay to get up high enough to at least see the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space, but there’s something extra about being up as high as the ISS, and I don’t think that a 62-mile-high journey would do anything other than whet my appetite to go higher.

    Any time I look at the “Earthrise” picture, I simultaneously wonder if I will ever be able to have that same experience, and marvel at how stagnant we’ve become as a spacefaring people.

  2. Pingback: The Atlantic, On The ISS | Today in Space

  3. Rand says: the ISS would be “…the first line of defense, a picket, in a space-alien invasion.”

    This puts me in mind of the excellent Niven / Pournelle novel Footfall, published around 1988 I think and set around the turn of the century, in which the Soviet space station “Kosmograd” is where the aliens make first (violent) contact (that’s a minor spoiler at worst). A fun read, holds up well in all the ways that matter (the characters are very believable), reminiscent of Lucifer’s Hammer, which is not a coincidence – supposedly they were working on Footfall, got really interested in the effects of a large asteroid strike (this would have been around 1974-75), and suspended work on Footfall to write a novel about a comet strike. Not available as an ebook to my knowledge unfortunately, but I’m sure it will get there at some point.

    1. Cthulu, that was downright evil! What I’m referring to, of course, is the horrendous spoiler that a novel about alien invasion (says so right on the cover) has aliens in it!
      🙂

      Actually, I love that book so much that it’s one of the very few I’ve reread.

    2. The book was interesting. I have always liked reading alternative timeline stories. I liked Worldwar by Harry Turtledove as well. Been meaning to read The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick but have not found the time yet.

  4. Sorry Rand the idea of the ISS as a space-station picket line of defense against an alien civilization capable of interstellar transport and executing their own version of General Order 24 is ludicrous beyond taking seriously. So I will dispense with it.

    What interested me most about this Atlantic article is the idea of station autonomy. The current C&C of ISS is not set up this way. In fact its not clear at all to me that the ISS AS CONSTRUCTED could every operate with any serious degree of autonomy. And yet this is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for any future exploratory missions beyond LEO. Even for future Lunar colony missions I would argue. Again this seems grist for the idea of a next gen space station, whose capabilities are more in line with autonomy as a goal. I keep coming back to the Nautilus-X as a base line model for a next gen station.

    As Henry Spencer once pointed out, the biggest challenge for NX was the lack of a viable propulsion module. But seems to me that goal could be pushed further out pending yet to be conducted research in this area. The REAL value of NX would be the short term development of a habitation module in LEO that COULD be used for solar system excursions. A model of operation that would be so vastly different from that of the ISS today as to be day and night.

    1. Sorry Rand the idea of the ISS as a space-station picket line of defense against an alien civilization capable of interstellar transport and executing their own version of General Order 24 is ludicrous beyond taking seriously.

      If you read the book, you’d know the comment was tongue in cheek.

Comments are closed.