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We've gotten several submissions of this Wired story about life on space station Alpha. The story was written from these logs (which we linked to a few days ago) kept by the commander of the most recent ISS mission. So, let me recommend the logs once again - like the Wired reporter, I found them fascinating reading. For instance, the commander describes losing a washer because everyone's hands were full and they couldn't grab it - obviously letting go of dozens of washers to grab one, in zero-gravity, would not be a good idea - and they can't just "put them down" somewhere.
Velcro.
Exactly how would Velcro keep a washer from flying around?
They do.
/. about it back in December, but I'm too lazy to look it up. The Shuttle took up some of those Panasonic mini-DVD players that had been hacked by a company in the UK to accept any region and bypass the FBI warning and all kinds of good stuff like that.
There was a bit on
In the logs you;ll see a comment about how much better DVD is than the Video CDs they had been watching.
they really should use IBM Solaris.
Oh, man. Solaris in the context of Russians on a space station. This is getting entirely too Tarkovskyian for me. Did the dead wife of a cosmonaut show up there by any chance?
I mean, if I'm preparing a server and some laptops for, like, a trade show or something, I'm making sure everything's setup, working, and that all that has to be done on site is plugging the buggers in
They're not going to a trade show -- they're in outer space. The pressure in the ISS is normalized to approximately 19,000 ft (WAY outside the specs for most harware), the atmospheric content is different, the heat buildup is much more substantial, etc.
Stuff just plain stops working, when it should by all measures be fine. This is part of the drawback of using off-the-shelf tech instead of building everything custom within NASA. Much cheaper, but also more likely to fail...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
How much is the time of an ISS crew member worth, if NASA can afford to have them spending time fixing their computers?
The Russians really have had minimal success in their space program. For example, they never made it to the moon like we did. Also, they had numerous disasters aboard the Mir space station, only to have it plummet out of orbit last month!
Huh? Even NASA said they had faith in the planned Mir deorbit since the Russians have more experience in space than they did!
The NASA web site also has full details of the Russian moon landings, including the Lunakhod moon rovers and the unmanned lunar rock retrieval.
I suppose your post was a troll anyway.
So, should there be a comma in there (Sun, AIX) or did Sun just buy IBM?
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Have they never heard of magnets? I'd think one or two of these on a shelf would be a great solution to this sort of problems. Then you COULD put down metallic items (like washers).
--
Charles E. Hill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
What blame are they placing on Microsoft products? The only thing I found was some font problems with the PDF reader, which isn't a Microsoft product but an Adobe product. I couldn't find *ANYTHING* that would have suggested that Microsoft's products were in any way responsible for any of the problems. If you find something, please, share it with us.
BS. The Russians were always the most advanced, and if it weren't for their current economic situation they'd probably continue to be. Mir lasted about three times it's initial lifespan. It's a testament to great engineering. It took an absolutely obscene amount of money for the US to make it to the moon, and we haven't been back since. With the same X billions of dollars, I'm sure Russia could have done the same.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
dude, it's email, if you can figure out their email addresses (hint: hack their families home computers first) you can take over the ISS and send it spiraling down after MIR or something.
How we know is more important than what we know.
They need to get a techy up there! "Bob, my email isn't working" "That's because you use outlook, if you would just telnet to the unix box and use pine I wouldn't have to reboot the exchange server every day" "So, umm, are you gunna fix my email?" "In a minute ok? I'm reading Slashdot." And to think, the Internet access was supposed to stop them from going insane up there in space.
How we know is more important than what we know.
One neat thing about the ISS is that whenever their system problems get really bad, the logs talk about them using Norton Ghost to restore a fresh image of the boot partition on one of their machines.
Their comments on the movies they watch are neat too. They watch 'Used Cars' and comment that they are definately getting into the kind of movies that Blockbuster doesn't carry.
Yeah they already had a name for a pesky server that kept going down. The Wiener server. I have done that too. I will be working with something at work, by remote, then someone, or something decides it's a nice time for a reboot and then I exclaim YOU WEINER! :) All computers get nicknames around me. Usually it's Weiner, screwy, honey, POS (Piece of $hit) or beast. Some nicks are not fit for Slashdot consumption (multiple expletive nicknames for different pieces of hardware when they either don't work as advertise, or do and I am a dumbass and can't figure out the problem.).
Gorkman
Okay, I'm no NASA engineer, but would attaching zipper pockets to their suits to allow people to "put things down" in zero g be so difficult?
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Up early. We were working late last night with the PCS configuration "patches", and wrestling with the UNIX commands. Laptops were reloaded and left shut down while other files were uploaded to the MDM's. The word from Houston this a.m. is to wait another rev to connect the first laptop so that we're sure the changes to the C&C computers are complete.
They really do have system administration problems.
The Russians really have had minimal success in their space program. For example, they never made it to the moon like we did. Also, they had numerous disasters aboard the Mir space station, only to have it plummet out of orbit last month!
...perhaps NASA should step aside from the ISS, and allow other space agencies to take over.
Give credit where credit is due. The Russians had some impressive "firsts" in space, and they have had a lot more people in space over the years than we have. Mir had a lot of problems, but it also outlived its design by many years. And plummeting out of orbit? That was planned, Buckwheat. It didn't take anyone by surprise except you, apparently.
Other space agencies like...? Who, the ESA? We should just turn over a few billion worth of hardware to another country? Or maybe you mean one of the dozens of other American space agencies, like... Oh, wait. My memory is failing. Maybe you can name some for me.
One line from the article got me thinking...
> The log seems to indicate that the crew is using Microsoft Outlook as their e-mail client.
Ok, they're not only using Windows, but Outlook as well? What kind of security implications might this have? I'm sure the use of the e-mail to and from the space station is fairly well regulated, but then again, government web sites and e-mail servers have been compromised more times than anybody can count. One would figure, though, that such problems would be considerably more serious if they affected a station orbiting miles above the Earth...
There can't be dvd on board. The regional encoding doesn't extend to "space." :)
I really only see one specific reference to a Windows NT problem in the logs...
At about 2200, we were reconfiguring some mail files which, with a lot of help from Windows NT, got put in the wrong place during the backup procedure.
Beyond that, they seem to be complaining about a lot of hardware-relating things.
When we finished restoring the files, the network was down and would not come back up. We worked this for several hours. Finally, jiggling some cables brings just a part of the net back. (that really instills confidence in the stability of your network). And when they're not jiggling cables, they're bitching about the wireless nodes on the LAN.
They also run Unix, so where can we find more evidence of Wired's claim that "Most of the problems appear to be related to Microsoft's Windows NT"?
Okay, there is the Jan 21st entry: "We are continuing to see some strange things on our e-mail". But I see strange things on my e-mail every morning. They should just run a Inbox Rule to filter out references to "credit rating", "get out of debt" and "hot teens". That would eliminates much of the strange stuff.
I bet NASA rates a copy of the NT source code. no incident support required, the NASA techs would have to okay any changes anyway, they might as well ferret out the problem as well.
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
...they appear not to be using a mail server, but instead they seem to be sending/receiving it by transmitting .OST files (which is Outlook's internal binary storage format for all the e-mail messages), which presumeable get opened in Outlook on the ground, dealt with (send messages in Outbox, recieve new messages), and sent back up. That's what I've picked up from the logs, anyway.
;)
Sounds like a hack to me - guess they didn't want to set up a real server. I really wish NASA would post details on how this whole network thing works so we could properly dis it.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
My best guess is they're using Solaris.
From the Dec logs...
"Sergei swapped hard disks from Russian Laptop #2 to the operating laptop on the central post. It is back in working order. However, we do not have a backup for the Solaris/Unix OS which gave us the problem and we are operating on our only working load. We request that 4A bring at least one complete hard drive as a backup for the Russian laptop."
...
"Approx 1930 experienced a "crash" with the Russian PCS laptop. Attempting to reboot the PC gave indication that the Sun OS would not load. Boot s/w can not read root directory correctly. Even Sergei didn't understand this one. Talked with TsUP and decided to wait for specialist advice tomorrow."
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
How does one lose a washing machine? I mean how big _is_ this International Space Station?
Aparently the old saying "You have to be a rocket scientist to run linux" isn't true after all...
-EvilMonkeyNinja
a.k.a. Joseph Nicholas Yarbrough
Security Grunt by Day
Programmer by Night
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night