Apart Together
October 31, 2000 was the last day all humans were together on Earth. That day, the rocket containing the crew of Expedition 1 lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and carried them to the International Space Station for a long-term stay. Fittingly, the mission left from the same launchpad that was used to launch Yuri Gagarin into space on April 2, 1961, which was the first time in history that all humans were not together on Earth. Ever since the Expedition 1 crew docked, there’s been an uninterrupted human presence on the ISS, which may continue until 2028 or 2030, by which time there may be humans on the Moon or Mars on a permanent basis. Will humans ever be only Earth-bound again?
BTW, I guess you could argue that the ISS isn’t really separate enough from Earth or that since regular commercial airplane flights began, humans have been separate from the Earth. You could also say that at any given time, thousands of people are in the air while jumping and therefore not on the Earth with the rest of us. I don’t find any of those arguments meaningful. Perhaps someday if space travel is more routine — “just popped up into orbit to visit my daughter” — and the human population is much more distributed, these same distinctions won’t hold, but for now the ISS is definitely apart from the Earth in a way that flying or jumping are not.
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