15 Years Continuously Living and Working in Space - Much more than 'watching the grass grow.'

During my ~17 years at NASA, I was often able to participate in the celebration of a successful space-shuttle mission, with the flight crew and my colleagues at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.  The astronauts would fly in from Houston using their T-38 aircraft, thank the NASA and Contractor teams for their work, show a video of the mission, sign autographs, and pose for a few photos.  They would be dressed in their (very) familiar blue flight-suits, emblazoned with the NASA logo, the specific mission patch from the particular flight we were celebrating, and patches from their previous flights individually as well.

The crew would also sport a very small but visible patch with "Mach 25" written on it, and a swoosh trailing behind the space shuttle.  A small reminder that the wearer of the patch - and our representatives on the flight - had indeed 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth,' were propelled at 25-times the speed of sound, and experienced the thrill of spaceflight, returning safely to tell about it.

Over time, however, I noticed a small but unmistakeable change in these events.  The "Mach 25" patches worn by the astronauts were slowly supplanted by a patch very similar in shape, size, and color.  But these patches did not contain a "25" and the swoosh of the Space Shuttle.  The nearly identical design was changed, to incorporate a "100" and a swoosh with the International Space Station.

Sometimes a measure of just how far we have come can be subtle, or almost undetectable.  But the measure here - as evidenced by the change of one small patch - is unmistakeable.

Instead of saying "We have been to space," we were saying "We have lived and worked in space, and for 100 days or more."  Space was becoming less of a place to visit, and more of a place to call home.  Visiting was still exciting - and quite risky.  But our goals had changed - or at least they had evolved.  It clearly was not enough just to visit any more.  We were there to stay.  To live.  To work.  

Sometimes it seemed (at least to me) that this transition took much longer than it should have.  It was perhaps "less exciting" than gearing up for any single shuttle mission - say to launch the Hubble Space Telescope, to deploy the Gamma Ray Observatory, sending Magellan to Venus, or launching Galileo to Jupiter (Not to mention going to the Moon!).  It was, as some colleagues have said to me, 'comparatively like watching the grass grow.'  

It required a different cadence, a different definition of 'endurance,' and a different mindset - one of steady progress, incremental advancement, some setbacks, and continuously (but carefully) extending the envelope.  Few, if any, "giant leaps" for mankind.

Nevertheless, this somewhat small change in patch design was among the most profound (at least for me!) outward signs of a significant transition from the early days of one-off space shuttle missions, to building, operating, and living in an International Space Station.  It was a small-but-undeniable sign of progress, which was evolutionary, long-term, and very difficult.  Some may have felt like we were watching grass grow.  But on this side of the historical fence, I find that the grass is indeed much greener.

This week, we celebrate the 15th anniversary of continuous human occupation of the International Space Station.  It may have not received much fanfare outside the community already interested and invested in the space program.  But it is indeed a human milestone of epic proportion, worth noting for the fundamental change it represents in our world.  And it also begs the question "what next?"

As to the change in our world brought about by this milestone, consider this: There has been a human (and an American) in space for every second, of every day, of every month, for the past 15 years.  Every child on Earth under the age of 15 has lived completely in a time when people - men and women from around the globe - have continually lived and worked in space.  Our "new patch" would show some 5,500 days collectively.  Roughly 132,000 hours.  Or, 7.9 million minutes.  Over 475 million seconds.  And we are still counting...  

Spaceflight used to be episodic.  It is now continual.  It is no longer about how fast we go.  It is about how long we stay, and what we do when we are there.

And so "What Next?"  Of course we do not know exactly.  But it is worth thinking about the difference between having a strategic resource at one's disposal "episodically" versus having it "continually."  In my part of the world, we are fortunate to have nearly all essential infrastructure available on a continual basis:  power, water, communications, 24 hour grocery stores, any-time gasoline, food, and ATMs.  (Even McDonald's serves breakfast in the afternoon now.)  This persistence is something that we often take for granted here.  But it is not the norm in many places throughout the world, and is something we would miss tremendously if it were lost.

Without this continual working infrastructure, our commerce would stagnate, our economies would be less efficient, our interactions would slow, and opportunities for growth would be much more scarce.  To this list of continual working infrastructure, through our efforts of the past decades, and whether to a greater or lesser extent, we can now add the persistent economic resource of "space."

Commercial activity in Low-Earth Orbit is coming.  Many would say it is already here.  Depending on your point of view, it may be off to a roaring start, a timid emergence, or somewhere in-between.  But the use of the ISS for the deployment of commercial satellites, the emergence of start-up companies in commercial imaging and high-bandwidth communications, the advent of commercial low-cost launch providers, 'analytics companies' using satellite data for forest management, maritime awareness, crop assessment, and more - these all point the way to a (literal) expanding sphere of the global economy, which requires us to think of space as a continual resource to be leveraged, and in which we work and live.  Space is no longer a place we visit episodically with great interest and fanfare, it is a persistent and strategic tool for betterment of the human condition.

If you have a child under 15 years old, perhaps you can take them outside.  Point to the night sky.  Tell them, "When I was your age, most of the time, nobody was up there.  Now we're up there continuously, 24/7/365."  Maybe some day, they will get to go themselves.  But if not, their future depends on leveraging the tremendous progress we have made - from merely visiting space, to living and working there continually.  Like the power-grid, water supply, and the Internet, space can be forever-more a persistent resource, from which they can build their own future.  

Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass that "A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars."  And why not?  Through the utilization of space and commercial activities in low-Earth orbit, we can secure ever-more verdant social, economic, educational, and quality-of-life outcomes for everyone here on Earth which are unattainable if space is only a place we visit episodically. With the proper stewardship and usage of the continual resource of space, we are hardly just continuing to 'watch the grass grow.'  We are, in fact, making the grass greener still.

Ad astra per verde faenum...