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Astronauts Get Tricoders (Almost)
AzrealAO writes "Space.com is reporting that The Expedition 9 crew aboard the International Space Station are equipped with HP iPAQ PocketPC's, which they are using as mobile productivity tools to record crew procedures, personal memos, check e-mail and calendars. The crew can also listen to music, view photos from home and read e-books. The iPAQs will be left on the station and reconfigured for future crews, and two additional iPAQs will be sent up on the next flight for a total of four."
So how much does it cost to put an ipaq into orbit?
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Why don't they take up one of those performance gaming laptops and we can send them new game CDs every now and then. It's not like every man-second up there is worth thousands of dollars.... they can have a bit of fun.
You'd be pissed if you forgot the battery charger though.
Check emails? view photos from home? what sort of connection do they get in space?
I remember the trouble I had getting ADSL cos I live in the middle of nowhere, but this is something else - surely they cant be using dialup??
My thought exactly. Compare:
Tricoders
TricoRders
Last one gives more relevant results.
Tricorders? Those had more features - like anything you could ever imagine, to plug a plot hole. That list seems unimpressive, if you really ever did watch what they were using them for. This article title should be more like "Astronauts get consumer grade PDA". I suppose the title makes it more geeky Hollywood.
Right here
I thought the whole point of a tricorder was a portible package of a ton of sensors and a little computing power to run analisys of the data. Tricorders are used to measure stuff, not take notes. These things are more like the star trek data tablets if anything.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
I wrote a paper for school on something like this, and also this a few years back, pretty interesting stuff.
While many /.'ers may be crying for a Sharp SL-5600 or CL760 to be on board the ISS, the iPAQ isn't a bad choice. It is fairly rugged (for the every day man) and user-friendly enough.
My first choice would have been the Dell Axim X5 400MHzsince it can accept CF and SD cards (and PCMCIA is an adapter is purchased) and it costs considerably less with a 512MB SD card and a WiFi card than the current equivilant iPAQ (the iPAQ 5555). Of course they probably need those biometric security features. Wouldn't want some complete stranger (or the owner) to actually be able to access their weekly calendar. God knows, they're doing some topsecret stuff up there....
Imagine a floating beowulf cluster of these!
Sorry, I just had to do it.
Setec Astronomy
Can be found here:
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/333/C2797/
The iPaq being used in space is another example where the benefits of technology can be felt as it would reduce the effects of "asthenia" where astronauts experience phases of fatigue, low motivation, hypersensitivty and irritability with the change in environment and lack of social communication. The iPaq obviously aims to provide a solution to that problem to a great extent.
Does it make the funky beep beep whirr that Spock used to get it to do?
Geeks. A personal organizer is no more a Tricorder than my interstellar spacecraft is the Enterprise.
I got an online chat through ICQ to one of them.
Free Firefox news reader.
They may have such functions as this PDA, but they'd be so far below the level of a tricorder's usual function that they wouldn't be worth mentioning, and, being tools for work, never be used as such.
These don't scan (unless they have a digital camera), I would think this is more like a padd from the shows. A nice handy little data storage and display device.
Now I'll be really impressed if they can replicate the function where you can control the entire station from one padd (theoretically).
Good programmers drink beer to relieve job stress.
Great programmers drink hard liquor and work best hungover.
The crew will also be able to listen to music, view photos from home and read e-books, allowing them to have some of the comforts of home on their journey.
To the journey!
that the RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft have formed an alliance to go after the X-Prize.
we need warp engines, and photon torpedoes!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
lol :)
I can't believe on slashdot of all sites this slipped!
But I run Familiar Linux on my iPaq.
There you are, staring at me again.
It sucked and we all agreed to never bring it up again. Besides, it didn't have our precious Wil Whatever in it. :(
Jesus Christ, that's one of the stupidest headlines ever to appear on this site. First, it's spelled wrong. It's "Tricorder" and not "Tricoder."
Secondly, these things are not anything even resembling the functions of a tricorder. I read the headline and was instantly thinking, "Wow, a handheld scanning tool. That should be cool." But no, I read on to find it's a stupid unmodified iPAQ. They don't do sensing, they don't take readings, and they don't scan anything. It's not a tricorder, and it's not ALMOST a tricorder. It's a goddamned PDA.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
...can they detect some sort of energyfield of an unknown kind?
No, definitely not. I'm absolutely certain he was referring to TriCoders.
...I wouldn't use the phrases "self-delusion" and "my interstellar spacecraft" in the same sentence...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As a fan of the shows I just have to exclaim that PDA's are akin to Star Trek's PADD devices. Which ARE PDA like devices. Wikipedia PADD entry I believe that works.
ok, think about it, they are bringing only 2 of them up there, and they have to leave it there. If they have the money to build a rocket and other research materials, why not just give each of the Astronote an iPaq. I am pretty sure the iPaqs cost nothing compare to the space shuttle itself.
are they trying to cut back the cost? makes me wonder.
The ISS uses a
handheld ultrasound device
Are these devices shielded against space radiation? :)
Let's hope we'll see tux up there as well, better yet let us see an austronaunt that modded his iPAQ with linux, I don't think they have bandwith problems up there
Monday: Float about and do stuff
Tuesday: Float about and do stuff
Wednesday: Float about and do stuff
Thursday: Float about and do stuff
Friday: Float about and do stuff
Saturday: It's the weekend! Float about and do stuff
Sunday: Float about and put next week's calendar in
lol :) I can't believe on slashdot of all sites this slipped!
You must be new here.
I pay NZ$65 per month for 128kbps which Telecom New Zealand laughingly refers to as "broadband", and now some damn robot on another planet is probably bitching because its metal-pr0n downloads are too friggin slow...
I believe the term is "a fucking PDA"
TOS has taught me that one can never underestimate the power and many uses of the Mark II phaser.
Tricorders are for all those Next Generation do-gooders. Hand me a hand phaser, and I'll explore space the Kirk way.
One dead alien at a time.
While they don't have a full complement of sensors, the practical limit being perhaps sensing some coded IR signals, their display technology far outstrips any tricorder's. HP should rework them into a version where the TFT display is removed, and replaced with a random assortment of LEDs and bargraph displays which convey information via flickering coded signals.
...
No - it's clearly a PADD!
Absit Invidia
Although I own a Pocket PC and like the range of available software, the Palm OS has always been less hassle. Windows Mobile has many of the weaknesses of Windows on the desktop.
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Are the astronauts shielded by radiation?
The humans and the devices are inside this thing called a space station that's designed to block space radiation.
Good, now maybe they can scan the structural integrity of the ISS to find out exactly what part of it is falling apart and detaching into space or perhaps what the loud metallic noise is.
What? They will listen to mp3s? Will RIAA raid ISS for pirated music?
Tricorder gather data with sensors, and analyze it. These do not! They are more like PADDs.
j pg
http://toshitin.hp.infoseek.co.jp/library/padd.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I wouldn't be surprised if there are some pretty hefty EM fields in the ISS, which would probably impact really really small transistors running really fast (such as modern processors). After all, heavy industry often needs to worry about EM interference in factories, and thus cannot use some of the high speed transfers that consumers have. Humans, of course, are impacted by big EM fields; like all those reports of people getting cancer living under big powerlines....
but they're more like padds than tricorders aren't they?
Workarounds:
1. Stock each PDA with a 1GB mem card
2. Dock early and often (automatic backup on docking)!
3. Wifi to the ISS servers.
Finally an obligatory Trekkie comments: They're more like PADDs not Tricorders, you insensitive p'tahks!
The one iPaq (really a string of three of them - more later) I've had experience with was anything but rugged. In fact, the damn thing was so fault-prone the iPaq alone was all the convincing I needed to quit even thinking about switching away from Palm.
A bud of mine bought his iPaq about a year and a half ago. Twice since then, the iPaq has gone completely kaput - wouldn't turn on, couldn't be revived. He got it replaced both times, but a device that fails after 7 or 8 months of normal use isn't exactly what I call rugged. (He does take care of them, btw.) This current one isn't without problems, either - most annoying of all, it can't maintain a reliable 802.11b connection even from a few feet away from the WAP. That, and it's about due for its critical failure, too. We'll see in a month or two.
Damn those pesky terrorists
The iPAQs will be left on the station and reconfigured for future crews
Note to self: delete pr0n before leaving station!
-Styopa
Something the fileshare networks haven't considered... orbital filesharing (nice big sat with a big nasty raid, lots of shielding), outside the jurisdiction of - well - everyone excepting the military.
meh
This has to be the most over-embellished headline that I have ever seen.
Better call NASA and tell them!!! The sceintists there might not have thought about it!!!
Or is this because the Space Station is actually funded by Microsoft and is just a floating Exchange server with the world's most efficient cooling system?
...This is a tricorder...
I did R&D on its mercuric iodide-based predecessor in the early 90's, although that was more of a "luggable" xrf analyzer...
*** Quantum Mechanics: The Dreams of Which Stuff is Made ***
Yeah, definitely. It only gets to be a tricorder if you add the sensor package.
What I want to know is why I can't buy a tricorder if I want one... the technology is there for a basic model. Take a standard PDA -- doesn't matter if it's PocketPC or Palm. Make sure it's got a camera (preferably with IR capabilities) and a very large stick of flash attached, then create some sensor modules. Temperature, pressure, and maybe magnetic field sensing could be built in, along with hookups for probes of various sorts -- presto, a 21st century tricorder. I garon-damn-tee they'd sell like crazy to schools and colleges for science lab use, not to mention the custom sensor packages you could create for industry.
I did a search and came up with this. Not precisely what you wanted as it is missing the temperature sensor and the camera, but it has the electromagnetic field sensor as well as other sensors which seem very useful. And it's called a tricorder.
Instead of calling it a "Tricoder" [sic], call it an "AstroNote"
PADDs were the PDAs they had since TNG.
Judging by the use of the term LOL, he's definitely from AOL. And he's really an overweight 45 year old woman from Iowa, with a yappy little dog named tippy sue.
(When someone says LOL, that's what I think of.)
I do not remember.
man, they make my b/w palm look quite primptive in comparison. These things are more like a real pc.
THank you palm for destroying your marketshare by not innovating. Sadly I hate ms but they have the better beast. A windows pocketpc can even run dvd divx's!
http://saveie6.com/
WHOOOOSH!
The station doesn't do anything to shield against EM radiation. The station relies on the same thing that you do for shielding against EM radiation: the Van Allen Belts.
soon there will be 4, then 8 then 100. When will it end ? When all the free space of the ISS is packed with IPaqs?
Astronauts using PDAs to do what PDAs were designed for... who woulda thunk it?
A site devoted to the tricorder:
http://www.tricorder.cjb.net/
Please note - I did not use the uppercase form :).
The lowercase lol-bearers actually are from the fertile plains of IRC, not the underpriveleged AOL lowlands.
Just watch out for the LoL!1!-ers. They came from this obscure realm known as Quakenet, riding their floodbots.
"LOL" is okay, but following it with a smiley? That's just sad.
Are they going to create scientific tools to add on? That way use them for more than just connectivity and entertainment. Much more Tricordy as well.
Record temp, magnatism, pressure, various environmental variables, noise, radiation, etc... Plus add on a camera with IR and other capabilities. Have all data run via WIFI at points to save to a large hard drive. Let the scientists on the ground review later.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Would have been better?