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An Astronaut's View of Space Station Tech
An anonymous reader writes "Here's a chat with a NASA astronaut about how they fix system outages on board the International Space Station, what kind of computing tech they use on board, and how he would like to see the iPad used on the ISS." He talks about using 5 year old laptops because they had been tested to handle the stresses of space travel, as well as the importance of being able to read emails and send pictures to family while aboard a space station for months at a time.
Would the iPad orientation sensor get confused when used in zero g environment? Does it use gravity to determine which way is up? What about gps do you get wimpy gps readings when using a gps receiver in space?
Except most civilian GPS chips don't work above 60 or 80k feet or so and definitely not at orbital velocities. I assume this is so you can't put your Tomtom in a SCUD missile.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
The signal would be stronger (well, except for the walls of the ISS), but most consumer GPS chipsets are utterly confused at high altitudes and high ground speeds. No real reason it couldn't be made to work given suitable GPS firmware, but it won't work out of the box.
In 2001 A Space Odyssey, in the first scene onboard the Discovery when Bowman and Poole are having dinner, they're both watching a BBC broadcast on iPads!
Full size flat screen video tablets that look suspiciously like an iPad.
In 1968! That was 42 years ago!
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
I remember reading about an interview with one astronaut, who said that the most spectacular sight he saw in outer space was when his urine was ejected from the capsule. It immediately froze, crystallized and exploded, and was brilliantly illuminated by the sunlight.
I tried to google for this reference, but only came up with this: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090911-space-water-dump.html
It's nice to see that astronauts use their precious bodily fluids to entertain stargazers.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'm not sure durable and iPad belong in the same sentence without a negative, you are looking for something more like this: http://www.ruggedtabletpc.com/
But... the future refused to change.
add extra shielding to compensate....
Ah! Do you know what happens if you add lots of shielding to try to stop a high speed particle from causing a single bit error? :) Apparently it turns one high speed particle into a shedload of other slightly slower but still stupidly fast particles, that instead cause a shedload of bit errors. (IANARS but I knew one once, and I made the same assumption as you til he corrected me! :) )