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Space Station Astronauts Gain Internet Access

cyclone96 writes "Internet access on the International Space Station went live this morning. The crew now has full browsing capability via a special LAN and the Ku-band data link on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network, as described in the NASA press release. Flight Engineer T. J. Creamer used the access to post the first tweet from orbit about 7 hours ago. Previous astronaut tweets had been posted by a third party on the ground via email."

9 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Great... by Pojut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...now they are gonna be so busy lolcatting and 4channing it up that nothing is gonna get done.

    GG.

    1. Re:Great... by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Can you imagine the latency?

  2. Infection in 3.. 2.. by TubeSteak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Remember the last time(s) the Space Station's laptops got infected?

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  3. Space tweets? by BenoitRen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So they finally get Internet access, and one of the first things they use it for is a tweet on Twitter? Talk about useless.

    1. Re:Space tweets? by Grygus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      When funding is on the line, PR becomes important work.

  4. Re:Latency? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The latency probably isn't as bad as one would expect. Sure, it seems far, but it's a straight shot. Also, a link between US and Europe would be significantly farther.

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  5. Re:Latency? by antifoidulus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I shudder to think what kind of mess porn in space would leave.... Nothing quite like floating around in day old cosmonaut cum...

  6. Wasted opportunity by Evildonald · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't believe with all that time they've got up there, they wasted their first tweet not writing

    That's one small tweet for man. One giant tweet for mankind.

  7. Re:ISO country code by sconeu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's the "International Space Station". Seems to me that iss.int would be good.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.