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Using Outlook From Orbit
Pigskin-Referee writes with this excerpt from Office Watch: "On the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station they use Microsoft Outlook 2003, but not quite in the same way that us earthbound Earthlings do. The space shuttle Atlantis is orbiting the earth right now and the crew exchange emails with the ground a few times each day. Bandwidth is a constraint and you don't want the busy crewmembers bothered with spam or unnecessary messages so NASA has a special system in place. The crew use fairly standard laptops running Microsoft Outlook (currently Outlook 2003) with Exchange Server as the email host, but they don't link to the server using any of the standard methods."
In space, no one can hear you scream at Microsoft Outlook...
They are using Outlook/Exchange like a BBS that sends in digest mode only.
Actually the comparison is pretty much spot-on. When they're in transmission range, they download the day's messages as a QWK file...
Bow-ties are cool.
When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that Mozilla thunbird would not work in zero gravity.
To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a drunken weekend and $12 billion on Microsoft Outlook and Exchange licensing to develop a mail server that works in zero gravity, upside down, covered in stale beer, and old pizza boxes, and at temperatures ranging from below 10 to 25 degrees Celsius.
The Russians used Mutt.
For all those years i wanted to shoot outlook into outer space, and they already did...
Just knowing Windows is running in space kind of gives me the willies.
I am a Martian prince from the Splugorthian region of the Xylerom. I have inherited a bountiful estate worth 1.8345E8 drow'xlian that I must hide from the ruthless Prxyzzilic crime family. I am willing to share 20% of my fortune with you will allow me to deposit fund in your account. Please send me your account information if you wish to do business. Live long and prosper! Prince Ryzzriwz
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
...to use Microsoft software.
Because there’s limited bandwidth up to the shuttle it’s important to keep the OST fairly small so occasionally you’ll hear NASA controllers ask the crew to clean out their Outlook files
They ask them, over a realtime voice connection, to clean out their Outlook files to save bandwidth. That's like sending "You've got mail" as a WAV file after transmitting a 1kB mail file.
Do they have something to automatically change that every 30 seconds?
They have to be very careful in a close environment such as the shuttle or the space station to keep the air healthy. Using mailx like you do would give off too much smug for their filters and cleaners to handle.
...I can understand the link, but why would I want to GZIP my gold?
If only that headline used "Nuking" instead of "Using" Outlook from Orbit.
My company recently switched from a really screwball lotus notes install to msexchange and thereby screwed every unix and mac user -- which is to say, 95% of the technical staff. Some of that I can't blame MSFT for, we do have some real chimpanzees on our email team, but the experience does have me shaking my fist in Redmond's direction even more than usual of late.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I noticed you pushed a button on your console. Are you trying to steer your spacecraft? Please wait whilst Clippy ShuttleBuddy extensions for .NET 3.0 SP6 is installed, then after a reboot we'll get right on with that.
The question then is why use Outlook for such an awkward, for that tool, setup?
It came pre-installed on the shuttle computers?
You and your command lines, I receive my email as boxes of punched cards!
Hey they are rocket scientist, not IT techs.
What do you pretend next, that they know how to build a rocket?
Oh, wait ....
From: Oleg Kotov
To: CC Ops Ground Control
Subject: Check out what the toothpaste does in zero-G!
Location: COLBERT Room
Start Time: 2009-01-13 1745
End Time: 2009-01-13 1800
[Accept] [Decline] [Decline with comment] [Delegate]
I use a 2400 modem to call google voice and record the e-mail. Then my computer uses dragon to transcribe them back to digital, then print. I use fed-ex (Hey, not too many donkeys around anymore ya know?) to send them to my mail box. I retreive them from the mailbox by walking up hill in the snow both ways! (but replies go back to the mail box on a belt system).
BEAT THAT!
**note above challenge was tongue in cheek, nothing was real, and if you so much as are reading this post today, you've already won.**
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
We also would have accepted 'UUCP'.
[weeps nostalgically]
Dear gawd. can you imagine typing the "bang path" to get your mail to the ISS?
Same reason you bzip your bronze...
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
The idea of NASA ground control needing to tell astronauts to "close outlook" on their massively expensive mil-spec laptops so they can do file transfers of OST files gives me acid reflux.