Slashdot Mirror
Space Stations That Suck
beanerspace writes: "Move over Vincent Flanders. In an article on Ananova.com, it was reported that the International Space Station 'sucks'.
Apparently, someone got their hands on some leaked documents that reveal astronauts having to deal with dozens of irritating problems aboard the International Space Station. Things got so miserable that Bill Shepherd, who commanded the outpost for five months, reportedly told ground controllers that life aboard 'basically sucks.'" I don't see why this would have to be 'leaked' -- 5 months in cramped quarters hurtling through the vacuum of space seems sucky on the face of it.
It's not all Russian built.
Alot of it comes from Boeing. Later on there will be Japanese modules and ESA built modules. The big robot arm that doesn't work right is from Canada.
In fact, it's delayed because of the Russian modules.
It's not a Mir 2.
All the shampoo stuff aside, does anyone find the above statement indiciative of a major screwup? How hard is it to agree on a power socket, and make sure all the stuff that gets sent up there (at a cost of thousands of dollars per kilogram and undoubtedly safety-inspected to the nth degree at a cost of thousands more) has the right friggin' power plugs?
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Oh boohoohoo - there's no shampoo, and the DVD screen is too small, and there's all this velcro...Dude! You may have lost sight of the fact that you are LIVING IN SPACE. I would donate my right nut to science to live in space for five months. Unfortunately, the market being what it is, spare nuts just aren't worth what they used to be. But the offer still stands.
Have some perspective.
"I mean, my God, we have to use chili sauce!"
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Well, it cleans YOU out if you eat a lot, doesn't it?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
If you think life is so bad up there, don't go.
I mean, these guys are supposed to be great explorers? No shampoo? Shave your damn head, whiner.
Too much velcro? Cover it with something.
DVD player not working? God, I'm not even going to start on that one...
I mean, for god's sake, you're in space, not a MiniVan on a ride to the mall.
How about that Dennis Tito guy? (or was it Tito Puente?) That guy paid $20,000,000 of his own money for a short trip to space - I bet he wouldn't be whining that the station doesn't have enough cup holders and doesn't get ESPN2.
How many people here would happily go up and promise never to whine about a little inconvenience?
Whatever...
MMDC Mobile Media
-- My Weblog.
this brings up the question:
Just why did they bring chili sauce in the first place? Would you want to be in a cramped space station with your fellow astronauts eating bean burritos and chili sauce?
great way to stress test the air filtration system I guess.
5 months in cramped quarters hurtling through the vacuum of space seems sucky on the face of it.
Reminds me of a job I had once.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Out of curisoity, does anyone know if the ISS has an "offical" language? I mean, how the hell do they expect people to know what's going on if there's, what, 5-10 languages being used up there.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
Noisy Machinery? Try working in a factory. Or in a server room...
/.ed...
In another article (tree form), it says that the machinery (carbon filter thingy to provide breathable air) is right next to the sleeping quarters and goes "ka-chunk!" every 10 minutes.
No Shampoo? Aww... I really feel for ya buddy.
They found that the soap was difficult to use in zero-g so they used the shampoo to clean themselves instead, so they ran out quicker. NASA refused to send up fresh supplies in the next cargo shipment.
Velcro pads are supposed to stick to things.
Yeah, but not food.
There's other wonderful things like the detailed instructions for reattaching a panel are printed on the back of the said panel, service nooks that are inaccessable without breaking things, etc.
I assume this extra info is published on New Scientist (who have the uncensored bits), but they've been
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Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
"5 months in cramped quarters hurtling through the vacuum of space seems sucky on the face of it"
but is not as sucky as having 5 moderator points on slashdot, and only stories like this to moderate
neverfuckingmind
<---[singularity sig]
I'm sorry, but at what point do you suddenly decide that chili sauce would make a great cleaning gel?! Maybe that same logic would explain why the cleaning gel was missing in the first place:
"Damn, we're out of chili sauce. Wait a minute...is that cleaning gel I see over there? Cha-ching!"
The problem is that the financial input does not exceed the financial output. It is a money loser. Sure we get some very interesting knowledge about our origins and future, but how the hell do you package that and sell it to the mass market. Only so many people are going to read about the origins of the universe or the effects of the solar wind on the martian atmosphere. Do you honestly think that if you start charging people to read those documents (read Intellectual Property) that you are going to be able to recover the 200+ million dollars it took to get a spacecraft to make those measurements?
For profit science degrades the scientist because all they will end up pusuing are new products. If something cannot be incorporated, repackaged and distributed then it will not be investigated. Do you think that the income from selling teflon and Tang would pay for the Apollo missions? Would the royalties from pretty pictures of Saturn pay for the Cassini mission? I doubt it.
Some science is a money loser. You do it for the warm fuzzy feeling of expanding human knowledge. It may not be practical ("In three billion years...") but it allows us to grow as a culture. I agree that some of NASA should be privately funded. The aerospace companies have much to gain in the R&D for advanced spaceplanes. Earth sciences is also an area for potential profit (mining, farming, etc). But planetary exploration will not have a payoff and if left to business, would not happen.
So we can have some relativly untainted science at taxpayer expense or we can look forward to seeing the Microsoft logo superimposed on those pictures of Neptune from the "Texaco Planetary Explorer... improving life through exploration".
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
We think that life on the ISS might be great, but think about being up there for months with...
The guy that farts all the time.
The one guy that hums only from the soundtrack to Aladdin. All. Day. Long.
The guy whose nose whistles.
The guy who has nightmare fits while he sleeps during the shift you're trying to work in.
The guy who never pees completely in the tube.
The guy who always races down the module with arms extended ahead of him like Superman, rudely bumping everyone else out of the way.
The one who always looks out the port window and yells "Aww gawd! NO! what is that?!? Nevermind."
The one who thinks no one is watching when he masturbates in the dining module.
The guy making rude racial comments every time they pass over the same part of the globe...dozens of times a day.
The guy who mumbles "something something gotta end it something something" while floating near the airlocks.
The guy who never thinks that it gets old to watch Jell-O float out of the pack into his mouth...and misses.
Trying to tell ground controllers what you really think and then realising that school kids across the country might be watching NASA TV.
The other two guys think you can't understand their language and constantly insult you in it.
And, of course, having the guy from the opposite cold-war nationality constantly throwing stares at you.
That might just suck, but the view has got to be killer.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Hey, don't put down the label, It's responsible for holding together 3 components!
Somehow though, I suspect life on the ISS is a lot better than on MIR, but Bill Shepherd probably doesn't realize it, just like someone who has a broken air conditioning in Minnesota and has never experienced the Sahara desert in the dead of summer thinks life sucks.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
'a lack of shampoo'
'missing cleaning gel'
What did they expect hotel guests always take the soaps and shampoo? For 20 million bucks, I would have taken a bathrobe and a towel too.
I lost my copy of the green golf ball joke can anyone find it for me?
Ever try Taco Bell hot sauce on metals? It works! It actually cleans tarnish and funk off of silver and such.
The news has recently reported that NASA is again in funding trouble. Since they already used "oh my god...there might be life on mars" ploy to get their last round of funding, they decided to go for a more believable ploy this time...
"This space station sucks ass and as it is supposed to be an international hallmark do you think that you could fork over a few more billion so that we can get the kinks out..."
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
rimshot
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"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
This article about Dennis Tito points to the same thing. He says that life is pretty mundane and the astronauts get little done outside of all the things they need to do just to keep the space station running.
And if there was going to be an objective eye about life on the space station, a 'non astronaut' is probably one of the best bets. His opinions aren't going to hurt his career.
I doubt anything new was leaked, seeing as how a link to the Alpha Crew's logs were already posted on Slashdot once. NASA has been quite open in posting the logs, and is only removing small portions of the logs that they feel would keep the crew from givng their true feelings if they were to be posted for the public. Having read most of the logs, its very apparent that life aboard the ISS is not luxurious. But I also don't think that any of the astronauts heading up there were expecting maid service either.
Until a couple years ago, I was a submariner. Five months of living in cramped quarters, things breaking all the time, floating around in a hostile environment, sounds awfully familiar to me.
:)
At the end of my first cruise, I conned the ship into La Maddelena at dawn. Sun coming up over the Med, glistening of the waves; biolumenescent plankton leaving a glowing green trail behind; the only sound is the water being pushed out of the way by the bow, with an occasional splash of a sea-bird landing or a fish jumping. All that beauty, juxtaposed with the realization that you're sitting on (commanding, in fact!) one of the world's most powerful warships. That moment (and others like it) made all the crap worth it.
Of course, I eventually quit 'cause I was sick and tired of it and couldn't take another second. And I'm sure my friends and family got pretty tired of hearing me bitch once I got back. But looking back now, I don't remember much of the crap.
Got a lot of good stories, though
Lack of creativity is no excuse for not having a
The big problem with our present age is that we are too worried about having to do without cleaning gel. We don't want to leave our home network, for fear of the roaming charges. We only want to go places that McDonalds has already collonized. We are afraid to have it suck even a little. And that sucks a lot.
Because when you are really exerting yourself, it often sucks. That's how adventure works. And we need to adventure, since there are a lot of places you can't get to by sitting in your living room, no matter how good your graphics card is.
We know where there are enough resources to make every single person on Earth as rich as Mr. Gates is at this moment, but most of us have gotten fat eating lotus leaves and we're afraid to go get it. I'm glad there are still a few nuts trying to launch themselves into space. And I'm glad there are people with more brains who actually manage to get into space, and go, even though it sucks a little.
-- MarkusQ
I'll bet outside the station probably sucks a whole lot more.
"The general contract of the method run is that it may take any action whatsoever." -- Java 2 API
What's interesting is that the article doesn't investigate the science or engineering or even the economics of the station, but concentrates on the very shallow word of "sucks".
Gee, no wonder why newspapers haven't been replaced by TV and the Web. It's likely because news on TV and the web, well, sucks.