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Matthew Moyle-Croft writes "On the ISS the Astronauts have been hard at work building
a kitchen table away from the prying eyes of mission control."
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This is a clear violation of the ISS's EULA. The astronauts are not legally able to use these parts in a fashion to circumvent their original use. And since there were Russians involved, this could quickly become a issue of national security as know-how and other intellectual property has crossed international borders. Good luck fending off the lawyers, Shep. We're all on your side.
"I spend most of my day with a tool in my hand..."
You just don't say that at an interview, do you?
So you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway. The future of humanity depends on our ability to leave this planet (we'll have to do it sooner or later, and leaving it to the last minute is a plan that's doomed from the start). Our ability to leave the planet is solely dependent on how much we spend on space research (barring intervention from alien races, of course :-)
Thus, it's
better to sacrifice a few starving people now to
save humanity in general. Or at least, that's the
theory. I'm personally not convinced that the
survival of humanity would be a good thing for
our galaxy. I'm sure other lifeforms would do a
better job of preventing galactic pollution, and
not overtaxing available resources...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Don't you wonder why they don't make the packaging and holddown clamps out of something that can be stored and made into something useful after the contents are deployed. Does all this extra mass at $10k/pound to orbit really have to go into a Progress and jettisoned?
Good point.
Bill Shepherd is a US Navy SEAL, which are our most highly trained special operations forces. Military people are very mission oriented, and do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission.
There was a good article on CNN why military veterans make good IT workers that explains this.
I'm biased though, as I was in the US Air Force. My personal motto is "adapt, improvise, & overcome."
Not only did the build a table, they built - and I quote - a "fully functional table". D'you think they meant that in the same sense as Data is fully functional? How would that work?
They should send up a bunch of LEGO. It would have great theraputic and social benefits. They could also use it for "customizing" the station if necessary.
Umm, now, i've never tried to hit off a bong in 0g, but it seems to me that with no gravity, instead of getting the smoke to bubble up through the water and into your lungs, you'd just get a mouthfull of bong water.
And nobody likes bong water.
-ben.c
Not even talking about the table (why would they need a table?)
NASA and the astronauts both said that they need more "Hands On" folks.
This, in the era where we are removing things like shop classes in our schools, because we don't need them to get into college. The "I'm not going to work with my hands" mentality
Most school systems in the US no long teach any shop. It's a shame.
Joke is, some of the BEST academic schools out there still require you to take drafting or CAD classes. Maybe you can figure out HOW to build something
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
You would not believe how involved the process is to get something certified to fly. The people who work on projects tend to work on their own piece of the project, and how it will fit into a mission. However, 99% of the flight certification process revolves around safety - AS IT SHOULD.
If that means that people aren't reusing materials optimally, that may be disappointing, but it's much better than creating an unsafe environment. Space, without our help, is one of the most inhospitable environments for humans. Huge amounts of time and effort go into safety precautions.
Personally, I can see why the ground crews would have balked at the table making enterprise. Those "spare parts" that they used were there serving a purpose, most of which was safety related. Simply removing them w/out consulting the people who built them and determining their purpose may have the unintended effect of making something unsafe.
Right now NASA seems to be applauding the ingenuity of the american who created fashioned the table. I wonder how they'll react if the things used end up creating some sort of safety hazard. Remember how critical NASA was of MIR with all of its safety problems.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
We'll be building a spice-rack out of Sputnik
Mind you, it just reminded me of the Rastafarian space station in Neuromancer (you know, the one where hash smoke is piped through the air conditioning, and dub music is on all the speaker systems.)
I think all you Americans ought to come back home right now !!
Great! After the backdoor that microsoft built for them now they have a table too! I wonder when they'll start on the patio...
ISS, IIS... who can see the difference?
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
That makes me wonder if the Russian news coverage is something like:
Following the corrupting influence of American astronaut Bill Shepherd, our two cosmonauts aboard the ISS, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko, have been dupped into helping in a plot to sabotage the station's safety systems.
The trio, who surely wouldn't have partaken on this foolhardy venture if they were under the command of a Russian commander, have disassembled the important aluminum frames that hold the solid oxygen generators in place. Without these generators, people on the space station could certainly die. Why were these unnecessary risks undertaken? In order to build a kitchen table. This represents the true extremity of American commercialized excess.
It was only through the quick-thinking of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev that true disaster was averted. When Bill Sherpherd suggested that they use the airlock door as a table, Sergei stepped in and said such an action would be totally unacceptable.
Furthermore, in order to prevent intervention in this dangerous undertaking, the group chose to hide its actions from Russian ground control. It is the belief of the Russian Space Agency that this secretive nature is a direct result of using an American who was once part of the special commando force, the Navy Seals. It is likely that the Russian cosmonauts also feared for their life and thus had to keep quiet about the mission.
(Seriously, though, I got the impression that they actually built the stuff from packing material rather than stuff that was still being used. But I couldn't resist attempting to spin things the other way.)
"Next on Bob Villa's Home Again, we'll be travelling to the ISS to visit the first off-planet furniture factory... The technicians here spend hours laboriously arranging spare parts to build a variety of tables, chairs, and barca-loungers..."
Or maybe Junkyard Wars... "Ok teams, you have 10 hours to build... a table."
I think it is definately a good sign for the space program in general, especially since it's generating good publicity. Also, perhaps they could find some new sponsors? "This wing sponsored by Home Depot..."
I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
NASA is costing each and every US citizen around $742 EACH YEAR, and yet the people on the space station cannot even follow orders ?
0 3-HQ.html:
Ok, you are clearly trolling but i still want to set the record straight.
From http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTML/FS-0
NASA has the smallest budget of the major agencies in the Federal Government. Its budget has represented less than 1 percent of the total Federal budget each year since 1977.
The above link also mentions a total budget of 14,035 million dollars. This amounts to about 56 dollars per US citizen per year. Not quite your quoted number of $742 per year.
OK, since they have a table on the ISS, how does the stuff stay on the table?
Here on the bottom of the gravity-well, 9.81m/s make sure the cup stays on the table if i put it there. But which force works up in the ISS?
... whenever a text is transmitted, variation occurs. This is because human beings are careless, fallible, and occasiona
This paves the way for Son of Kitchen Table.
I am a Russian engineer. I was working for joint high-energy physics experiments in Fermilab, USA in 1991-1995. There was a number of situations, when we had to fix something or to come up with a solution to a problem under tight time and budget constraints. Usually, it was Russians who solved the problem in a non-standard way, without waiting for lengthy approval or purchasing process, going instead to the heap of old scrap for parts and materials.
This tradition comes from the days of the centrally planned Soviet economy, when aproving and purchasing something might take 1-1.5 years(!), especially in non-military fundamental science area. We had to reuse everything, sometimes in very interesting ways.
I bet someone on the I.S.S. will fashion a "tobacco water pipe" out of odds & ends before too long.
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
This is pretty funny, and cool. Now they need to get a fourth up there to play euchre.
Hi! This is the Sig, blatantly attached to the end of this comment.
The men drilled holes, bolted the pieces together, covered the top with duct tape and, after weeks of working on it a bit at a time, finally had a table on which to eat, cook and work.
Has it occurred to any of you that are questioning the use of a table in space that you might not be thinking "outside the box" when you read this? What is the (probably incorrect) assumption that you made about the tape?
The tape is probably stick-side up. This type of thinking is why they're up there and most of us are just reading an article about them.
Now that NASA is considering billing the Russians and that Tito dude for wasting astronauts time and endangering the ISS, I wonder if the Russians will respond in kind??
One thing is for shure. If the furniture designer had been a Russian we would be in the middle of a regular shitstorm of NASA critiscism.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Is it just me or the report more or less forgot to talk about the role of the Russian cosmonauts?
They probably spent as much time as the American guy, and probably had as much initiative... isn't CNN a bit chauvinistic in this?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
You'd think that if the astronauts on the space shuttle were able to think of using container frames as table parts, the people down here might have been able to think of a way preparing to do that.
Considering the enormously high cost per unit mass to send things to space, I would hope that they would be maximizing the materials (plan to have packing materials fold out into other useful items, etc). Enough waste material to do things like building a table that's "too bulky to send up" or a muffler sort of scares me.
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.