another tangent: I was annoyed to hear "I can't believe I'm talking with someone from *outer* space" about a call with people on the ISS.

For me, there's nothing outer about the ISS. It's also as low as you can go, barely above the earth, tightly bound to us. But I think it turns out it's not really wrong to call this area outer space. I'm not sure, for me it would be logical to have different words for being close to the Earth (in orbit or lower) and any other place in space.