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Hopefully some day this number will be so large that it will be impossible to track accurately.
By then it may be quite easy to track accurately!
Most likely.

"Any civilization advanced enough to leave its own plant will be advanced enough to track accurately those leaving"

-- Civilized Tracking Corollary (2017)

...until people start dying and babies start getting born in space.
Well, there may be some speed-of-light issues in getting the latest data. But this problem seems pretty solvable if you link to the right government databases, etc.
Just use MongoDB and shard it for every galaxy. Problem solved.
900B records leaked and broadcasted from the UniverseFax credit agency; now forming a shell around Earth that's 6 light hours wide, and expands at the rate of 600 000 km/s...
You have to take births and deaths into account, which is not straightforward. Assuming fast interstellar travel, "loss of simultaneity" causes the number of people in space to depend on your reference frame (your speed and location).
That is only if we still die which I hope we have moved past then. Perhaps we simply make new humans when we have the need.
Would eternal life not be boring? And ever growing population also leads to issues, even when populating infinite space ...
Would be cool when you're old, transfer your consciousness into a satellite/spacecraft and just fly away into space... then you're like "Oh no...." and get sucked into a black hole.
I don't understand this argument.

1) Literally infinite permutations of entertainment out there. 2) Birth rates have been falling steadily for decades. I don't think it'll be a problem in space unless you think space Catholicism is a thing.

When you get injected with your FaceazonHappinessChip (TM) at birth, it's not hard to track.
exactly my though, hope this goes totally hyperbolic
From where are you getting this data?
We are all floating in space. Duh.
It is currently only possible to be in space on the ISS (or in transit to/from there) right? Does anyone know when the last human space mission farther than Low Earth orbit was? And is any country seriously planning another one?
there's also a Chinese space station but it's not currently occupied.

The last mission past low earth orbit was Apollo 17.

As far as I know, SpaceX are the only ones planning on taking crews further out, first with a mission around the moon, and then possibly Mars

What's the highest low earth orbit manned mission? The Hubble repair?
Wow, whenever I am reminded that a human hasn't been on the moon since 1972 it just blows my mind.

I mean.. I guess it's probably easier and cheaper and safer to send a robot, but I would think that at least one nation would decide to flex their muscles in the "yea that's right, we can afford to do this" way. Oh how I dream of such forms of international posturing!

Space exploration had a lot to do with the development of military icbms. Now it has become almost commodity tech for developed countries so the need to show off is far less.

    > Apollo 17
Jeez, 45 years since the last person walked on the moon.
45 years since anyone has been more than 330 miles from earth. totally pathetic.
Is there a long-term graph of this? I believe the number has been nonzero since 2000, and wanted to see how it's changed over time.
Here's one up to 2014: http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/science/spaceflt.htm

Number of living humans who have walked on another world: https://xkcd.com/893/

so it looks like on average it's roughly doubling about every 15 years?
So the most number of humans in space is 11, which has happened a number of times.
Most number of humans in space is 13 according the graph in the link. You must be looking at second graph, most numbers of Americans in space at a time is 11.
Most number of Americans in space is actually 10 according to second graph :)
looks like 13, at least according to the arcaneknowledge link
> world

[Gumble, grumble, …] I think the Earth, the Moon, and the rest of the universe count as the same world.

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Back in the 1990s, I maintained a "Population of Space" page which showed exactly this. To my knowledge, nothing like it exists anymore, which is a shame. I occasionally think about recreating it, just as soon as the day job leaves me some time...

[Edit: oh cool, there's something kinda like it in the sibling comment! Mine was different, showing a less granular graph wth the population averaged out on a yearly basis. But it also included a table of all missions and notable events affecting trends in the population of space.]

Some nitpicking / philosophical thoughts:

- This can only be a lower bound: There may be privately or secretly "launched" people (e.g.: Chinese military scientists, that missing SpaceX engineer, who knows what the NSA does, Mafia's posh new traitor treatment ...)

- "People" needs a definition here (are dead people still people, what about aliens?)

> that missing SpaceX engineer

what?! Can you elaborate?

That was merely an example of what could have happened and might have been covered up since then
right, it's clear that you meant it as a hypothetical example but what does "since then" refer to? We don't know what you mean by "that missing spacex engineer". If I Google that I get nothing:

https://www.google.com/search?q=missing+spacex+engineer

What is the original story that you're talking about? The other poster and I are just curious what story you mean. Can you elaborate?

It’s all a hypothetical. Reread his post again. It’s not perfect grammar, but should be growkable if you read it again.
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> There may be privately or secretly "launched" people

It's essentially impossible to covertly put or keep anything in space. Getting into space requires expending a rather obvious amount of energy, which there are fleets of satellites from many different nations continually watching out for. Staying in space requires being in full view of, well, nearly 8 billion people. It's not something that anyone is presently doing in secret.

Once there are a myriad of commercial ships zipping around cislunar space, the potential for covert flights to slip through the cracks becomes significantly greater. But for the present Earth-to-LEO regime -- no.

You can't hide space launches but you can sure hide a person in of those classified satellites.
But resupply runs and crew return would be rather obvious.
If you're happy to let them starve, then sure, although that would be a rather pointless thing to do. But if satellites were orbiting and then returning to Earth after a few days or weeks, we'd know. And if they were being resupplied by other satellites, we'd know. It's really not that mysterious up there.
Most artificial satellites are rather small and crowded.
I would have thought at the very least it might say where they are.
There's also a 23.0 MB app (iOS only) that you can download and install — just to display a single number.

(It actually does a little more than that, but still, a perfect example of an app that should be just a mobile web page.)

Was just thinking the same thing. Its unnecessary
All people are in space right now.
It's a bit sad, actually. You'd think we have progressed further…
Well its expensive and there are known deleterious effects associated to staying in orbit at zero g. Space exploration is at minimum budget for a while now.
OTOH, there are young adults now who've never known a time when there weren't humans living in space.
"You promised me Mars Colonies. Instead, I got Facebook."
they promised mars colonies and we got a number that's also available as an iphone app.
Not to nit-pick, but aren't all ~8 billion of us in space all the time?
“How many people are outside the protective confines of Earth’s atmosphere right now” doesn’t sound as good.