This week marks 20 years since the first inhabitants arrived on the International Space Station (ISS). Since then orbital residential houses have been occupied.
Twenty years of direct life in space makes the ISS the ideal “natural laboratory” for understanding how societies work outside of Earth.
ISS is a collaboration between 25 space agencies and organizations. It hosts 241 crews and a few tourists from 19 countries. This is 43% of people who have ever traveled in space.
As future missions to the moon and Mars are planned, it is important to know what people need to evolve in a remote, dangerous and closed environment, where there is no easy way back home.
A Brief History of Orbital Residences
The first fictional space station was Edward Everett Hale’s 1869 Brick Moon. Inside were 13 circular living rooms.
In 1929, Herman Noordang theorized a wheel-shaped space station that would spin to create “artificial” gravity. The Spinning Wheel was championed by rocket scientist Werner von Braun in 1950 and featured in the 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Instead of spheres or wheels, real space stations became cylinders.
The first space station was the USSR’s Salute 1 in 1971, followed by six more stations in the Salute program over the next decade. The USA launched its first space station, Skylab, in 1973. These were all tube shaped compositions.
The Soviet station Mir, which began in 1986, was built with a core to which other modules were later added. Mir was still in orbit when the first modules of the International Space Station were launched in 1998.
Mir was brought down in 2001 and crashed into the atmosphere. The survivors probably ended up under 5,000,000 meters of water at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
ISS now has 16 modules: four Russian, nine US, two Japanese and one European. It is the size of a five-bedroom home inside, with six regular six crews serving together.
Adaptation in space
Yuri Gagarin’s voyage around the earth in 1961 proved that humans can survive in space. Really living in space was another matter.
Contemporary space stations do not rotate to give gravity. There is no up or down. If you let go of an off-budget, it floats away. Daily activities such as drinking or washing need to be planned.
Sites of “Spanish gravity”, in the form of hand or foot straps, straps, clips and velcro dots, to protect people and secure objects.
In Russian modules, the earth-facing surfaces (“below”) are colored olive-green, while the walls and surfaces facing away from the earth (“up”) are painted. This helps the crew to direct themselves.
Color is also important in other ways. The lack of color in Skylab, for example, was such that astronauts broke the monotony by staring at the color cards used to calibrate their video cameras.
In movies, space stations are always sleek and clean. The reality is very different.
ISS is smooth, noisy, messy and shed skin cells and decaying. It’s like a terrible share house, unless you can’t leave, you have to work all the time and no one gets a good night’s sleep.
However, there are some permissions. The Coppola module provides perhaps the best view for humans: the 180-degree panorama of the Earth passes below.
‘Mini World Micro Society’
The crew uses all sorts of objects and objects to express their identity in this mini-world, as a 1972 report called the dwellings of space. Unused wall space, like your refrigerator door, becomes cluttered with individual and group important items.
In the Zvezda module, orthod thodx icons and pictures of space heroes like Konstantin Tsilokovsky and Gagarin create a sense of connection and connection to the home.
Food has a huge role to play in binding. Food sharing, holidays and birthday celebrations help create a camaraderie between crews from different national and cultural backgrounds.
It’s not all a plain trip. In 2009, toilets briefly sparked international conflict when ground decisions meant Russian crews were barred from using U.S. toilets and exercise equipment.
In this “micro society”, technology is not just about work. It plays a role in social harmony.
The future of living in space
The ISS is incredibly expensive to operate. NASA’s spending alone is $ 7 billion a year, and many argue that it is not worth it. Without further commercial investment, ISS could be de-orbited in 2028 and sent to sea floor to join Mir.
The next phase of space-station life is likely to take place in orbit around the moon. The lunar gateway project, planned by a group of space agencies led by NASA, will be smaller than the ISS. The crew will be alive for up to a month at a time.
Its modules, based on the formation of the ISS, are set to launch into lunar orbit over the next decade.
The design of a residence for the Lunar Gateway has four extended crew cabins to give people four more spaces. But sleeping, exercise, toilets and dining areas are all very close together.
The ISS crew prefers to make improvised visual displays, so we can suggest the inclusion of spaces reserved for such displays in next-generation housing.
In popular culture, ISS has become Santa’s sleep. In recent years, parents around the world have taken their children out on Christmas Eve to watch the ISS pass overhead.
ISS has shaped the space culture of the 20th and 21st centuries, symbolizing post-Cold War international cooperation. There is still a long way to go to teach them how to live in space.