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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?
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?
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.
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We'll be building a spice-rack out of Sputnik
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.)
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!
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.
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.
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