The Tech Aboard the International Space Station

CNETNate writes "With its own file server for uploaded Hollywood blockbusters, a 10Mbps Internet connection to Earth, and around a hundred IBM ThinkPad notebooks, the consumer technology aboard the $150 billion International Space Station is impressive. It's the responsibility of just two guys to maintain the uptime of the Space Station's IT, and they have given CNET an in-depth interview to explain what tech's aboard, how it works, and whether Windows viruses are a threat to the astronauts. In a related feature, the Space Station's internal network (which operates over bandwidth of just 1Mbps) and its connected array of Lenovo notebooks is explained, along with the tech we could see in the future."

Comments

Re:Issues with such networks generalize to Mars

[2.7182]

Colonize? I think you mean conquer, and enslave the troglodites populations to mine dilithium for our fast than light ships. Hopefully we'll be able to genetically modify navigators for them. Or find some handsome young captains to fly around and defeat gods.

Hmm

[Jeek Elemental]

"Crew members aboard the ISS can request specific films and TV shows to be uploaded to a central file server, which they can then watch on any of the Station's laptops."

Space pirates!!

Re:Hmm

[grub]

"NASA, can you beam up Zombieland.2009.R5.ScENeGr0up.avi? That shitty TS is driving us nuts!"

Re:Hmm

[dfxk]

And we thought the dvdrips were coming from Russia.

Re:Interesting thought

[sakdoctor]

Imagine a Beowulf satellite constellation of those.

Pentium 4...

[rhsanborn]

housing 68 IBM ThinkPad A31 laptops from 2002, each boasting a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB RAM and a 40GB hard drive.

It turns out these double as the main heat supply for the ISS as well.

Re:Issues with such networks generalize to Mars

[DarkFencer]

In the very long run, after we colonize Mars and possibly the Moon, latency issues will become even more severe. It will be interesting to see whether we will simply give them separate networks or have those networks as part of the internet. If the second occurs, we may need new protocols to deal with the large latency and related issues.

We already have networks with latency comparable to round trip Earth/Mars connections. Its called Time Warner Cable.

Re:One server?

[swanzilla]

the better question is why they have a hundred laptops for a crew of 3-6 max.

One Tang spill could render several laptops useless. Perhaps this is a redundancy measure.

ISS colocation facility?

[kimvette]

Hey, I have an idea! Maybe thepiratebay.org could relocate their servers to be colocated on the ISS. I think the upper stratosphere is out of the Swedish court's jurisdiction! ;)

Re:ISS spotting

[rockNme2349]

a few minutes? you will at least be able to see it for several degrees.