Space inhabited non-stop for 20 years

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TL;DR

The last day without anyone in space was 31 Oct 2000.

People under 20 have never lived at a time without at least two people in space. Exactly 20 years ago, on Halloween 2000, Soyuz TM-31 launched the first long-term crew towards the ISS to start Expedition 1. They docked 2 November. Since then the ISS has been inhabited continuously.

This was by no means guaranteed. Especially the US side planned to stop the ISS program a few times and faced interruptions in spaceflight - first from the Columbia disaster then from the retirement of the Space Shuttle. The Russian Soyuz stayed available the whole time and provided most crew exchanges. Since this year the US side has the capability to launch crew again thanks to Crew Dragon, Boeing's Starliner is planned to join soon.
ISS timeline

It is planned to run the ISS at least until 2030. By that time Axiom Space wants to have its own section that can survive as independent commercial space station when the ISS program ends. Blue Origin has long-term plans to get more and more people to live and work in space. SpaceX wants to send people to Mars by 2027. The Chinese work on a space station, too.
If nothing catastrophic happens on Earth it's generally expected that we will have many more people living away from Earth in 30+ years, but the time in between is less clear. Will space keep inhabited non-stop? The last time ever where all people were on Earth (or in Earth's atmosphere) might have been in 2000.

 

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It would seem that we have a long term commitment to space exploration and travel with the Artemis project and all that goes with it.

 

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I didn't list Artemis because it's still focusing on individual shorter missions - weeks initially, maybe 2 months around 2030, but no permanent crews anywhere. And it needs a rocket that's so expensive that it will get really hard to justify the costs of that program.

 

[gleem]

Well, It wouldn't be the first time that the gov't pulled the plug, but would they let China put a base on the moon first?