How many people are in space right now?

http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/

by hjc89 • 13 years ago

105 58 13 years ago

howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com

runn1ng• 13 years ago

It was nice while it worked, now it switches from "Error 503" to "0".

BetaCygni• 13 years ago

Very Sci-Fi. The fontsize will have to be reduced once we reach >999 people in space.

supermatt• 13 years ago

Down for me :(

I believe its circa 7 billion, if we only count those humans present on or around our own planet.

clord• 13 years ago

In one sense, we're "in space" more so than people on the space station — there are no walls between us and the stars, just a gas that tapers off to zero with us clinging to our rock by the merest force. It gives me vertigo when I try hard to comprehend that.

jotaass• 13 years ago

I think most of us are probably behind several layers of concrete, glass, wood, etc.

techdmn• 13 years ago

Arg, opening links in new windows by default! I can do that myself if I want to, thank you very much.

wil421• 13 years ago

Got an error 503. A refresh loaded the page fine the second time, as did subsequent refreshing. I couldn't repeat the error.

stevoo• 13 years ago

looked interesting ... too bad it doesnt work. I assume capacity issue .... HN must have brought it down

the1• 13 years ago

www.howmanypeopleareonlinerightnow.com

jbrooksuk3• 13 years ago

Ooh, I've been wanting to make an iOS app for something for a while now. This should be a nice easy thing to sink my teeth into.

jbrooksuk3• 13 years ago

Why the downvote? Having this but in an app would be cool :)

CoryG893• 13 years ago

I didn't downvote, but I'm not sure why cloning this into a native IOS app is such a cool thing. As long as it works in the browser, it's not really that interactive or performance intensive so you wouldn't get any of the benefits of a native app. If you just need something to use to learn to make a native IOS app, this will work, but I don't see any reason to do it other than that.

richforrester• 13 years ago

Hah. 503 people in space. I must be the only one who finds that funny.

momchenr• 13 years ago

Was hoping someone hadn't beaten me to this. :) Well done.

mkhalil2• 13 years ago

I want to laugh :( explain...

mkhalil2• 13 years ago

nvm, I'm assuming the server was down at some point and it was a 503 error.

recycleme• 13 years ago

He is referring to an HTTP 503 error which is shown when a service is unavailable.

techaddict009• 13 years ago

Aha it has gone down. This proves most of site which come on front page of HN go down with ease due to heavy traffic !

chromaton• 13 years ago

Can it update quickly enough to support the suborbital Virgin Galactic flights?

d64f396930663ee• 13 years ago

A few years ago when I was living in China I was told about this, but it never worked.

Then on a hunch I fired up my proxy and discovered that the Chinese government was actively censoring it.

WHY

bbbrad2• 13 years ago

Really?! That's crazy to hear especially since we list the Chinese astronauts when they fly just like everyone else!

I'd love to have a screenshot of what the site being blocked looks like.

flexie• 13 years ago

I believe there are 2 Americans in space right now.

Speaking of space - in a restricted sense - there are around 2.3 million Americans in prison.

Peroni• 13 years ago

Correct. If you click the image or just scroll down you can see the names.

StavrosK• 13 years ago

I have Ghostery, and I just get a big blank page with a "0" on it. I'm assuming the GP has the same.

rposborne• 13 years ago

Expedition 37 with a crew of 6 are in space right now. 2 America, 3 Russian, 1 Italian. The last three launching Yesterday

"Expedition 37 Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov, NASA Flight Engineer Michael Hopkins and Russian Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy to the International Space Station."

http://www.nasa.gov/content/expedition-37-soyuz-launch/#.UkQ...

Edit: CORRECTION this is the SECOND half of the Expedition 37 crew launching 25 September 2013, 20:58:50 UTC aboard the Soyuz TMA-10M. They are expected to return 12 March 2014. The other three were launched in may.

knowaveragejoe• 13 years ago

I'm seeing '0'. That can't be right.

Kronopath• 13 years ago

It was showing me '0' until I refreshed a few times. Now it's '6'.

wldlyinaccurate• 13 years ago

Dear website owners,

Please take the time to set up a service like CloudFlare[0]. It's free, and will prevent your site from going down during traffic spikes. There's really no downside.

Regards, Frustrated User

[0] https://www.cloudflare.com/

JoshTriplett• 13 years ago

No need for a CDN for a site like this; the content should be completely static and regenerated whenever it changes.

4lun• 13 years ago

The server can still tank from too many requests, static or not.

jpswade• 13 years ago

Using nginx reverse proxy would probably solve this.

gabemart• 13 years ago

It's not true that there's "no downside" to using CloudFlare. They've had outages in the past which have taken client sites offline [1], for one thing. Speaking personally, I've experienced subtle errors that have disappeared when I've moved my sites off the service.

CloudFlare may well be great for some people, but it's not perfect.

[1] http://blog.cloudflare.com/todays-outage-post-mortem-82515

calinet6• 13 years ago

Also, if you have a faster server than their infrastructure, it slows you down quite a bit.

Also, it catches bot traffic for a while but then they figure out how to get around it.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

Just today I went to a site that uses cloudflare and they were down - because of cloudflare. Now I don't doubt that the cloudflare people will be right on top of something like that and will fix it asap but they're not a 100% solution to prevent your site from going down during traffic spikes because sites can and do go down, cloudflare or not so the coincidence with a traffic spike can still happen.

The downside is clear: it's a more complex system, so the mtbf will be lower (now it is the combined downtime of 'you' versus 'you+cloudflare').

hidden-markov• 13 years ago

http://howmanyhedgehogsareinspacerightnow.com/

tgb• 13 years ago

Is there an API available for this data? Would be useful.

richardjs• 13 years ago

Site's broken. Clearly there is one hedgehog in space, as illustrated by the site.

kps• 13 years ago

   You attempted to visit a site that is in violation
   of $COMPANY acceptable use guidelines or may pose an
   Information Security threat to you and $COMPANY assets.

OK, just what are the hedgehogs up to now?

ianstallings• 13 years ago

Lies. Hedge hogs are dominating space right now. They've recently taken over half of Europa.

drdeca• 13 years ago

Apparently the people currently in space have been there for NaN days.

raldi2• 13 years ago

Cool. Now give me a graph over time, so I can see the last date that there was nobody in space.

zbyszek• 13 years ago

That would have to be a different URL, like www.howmanypeoplewereinspaceatanygiventimeinthepast.com (sorry, coldcode).

coldcode• 13 years ago

www.whyarepeoplemakingdomainswithsuchridiculouslengthsthesedays.edu

minikites• 13 years ago

All the short ones are taken.

coin• 13 years ago

Blank screen on an iPad. Oh wait, I have to scroll down to the bottom to see anything.

bbbrad2• 13 years ago

This is my site! Nothing better than waking up to the front page of HN. And thanks for all the hilarious 503 error jokes. ;) Thanks for the submission.

Couple side notes:

+For those asking about using our data, go for it! We've got a json file you can tap into: http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/space.json

+We are currently churning along on an iOS app that we are VERY excited about. Think: Notifications every time the number changes plus some cool social content integration.

Anyway, I'm a daily HN reader and honestly this has made my week. Thanks for all the posi vibes!

gprasanth• 13 years ago

Some people are gonna be really really happy they felt lucky.

Wow, now that I think about it for a moment, I realized no one ever feels lucky these days. As soon as the search bar on Google's homepage is filled, the form is auto submitted.

raldi2• 13 years ago

I think you posted to the wrong thread. (What thread were you trying to post to?)

CoryG893• 13 years ago

He's referring to the fact that the URL is in spoken question form. So people going to Google and querying "How Many People Are In Space Right Now" and using the I'm Feeling Lucky search will be brought directly to the site.

CoryG893• 13 years ago

I feel lucky all the time. You can change your search settings so that this doesn't happen. Kind of strange that they even show the Feeling Lucky button when this feature is enabled though. You can also use I'm Feeling Lucky via the URL by adding the query parameter btnI

ie. for the query "How Many People Are In Space Right Now"

google.com/search?q=How+Many+People+Are+In+Space+Right+Now&btnI

jccalhoun• 13 years ago

This is just what the lamestream media wants you to think! Wake up sheeple!!!

return0• 13 years ago

For the record, it's 6 (today)

How many people are in space right now?

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