How many people are in space right now?

[bbbrad]

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!

[richforrester]

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

[momchenr]

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

[mkhalil]

I want to laugh :( explain...

[flexie]

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]

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

[supermatt]

Down for me :(

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

[clord]

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.

[hidden-markov]

http://howmanyhedgehogsareinspacerightnow.com/

[tgb]

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

[kps]

   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?

[richardjs]

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

[ianstallings]

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

[wldlyinaccurate]

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/

[jacquesm]

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').

[gabemart]

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

[JoshTriplett]

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

[jbrooksuk]

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.

[jbrooksuk]

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

[rposborne]

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.

[jccalhoun]

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

[d64f396930663ee]

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

[bbbrad]

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.

[wil421]

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

[techaddict009]

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 !

[techdmn]

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

[raldi]

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

[zbyszek]

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

[runn1ng]

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

[BetaCygni]

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

[gprasanth]

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.

[CoryG89]

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

[raldi]

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

[knowaveragejoe]

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

[Kronopath]

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

[stevoo]

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

[coin]

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