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Tour of the Closet Sized Living Quarters On ISS
Phoghat writes "Who knew it could take almost seven minutes to get a tour of the teeny-tiny crew quarters on board the International Space Station? But Expedition 26 Commander Scott Kelly provides an engaging peek inside his personal living space, and an inside look at life aboard the ISS."
Did anyone else read that or is it just me with a one track mind?
Doesn't surprise me that it would take seven minutes, because while the living quarters might be small, the microgravity environment lets you use literally every square foot. On Earth, you can't use your floor and ceiling as shelves.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Mass is the currency of space travel, and more space = more mass (for structural integrity). Unfortunately it doesn't look like this is going to be changing anytime soon, so it's doubtful we'll be seeing space stations with tons of unused space anytime soon, if ever. There's no problem with dreaming about it though.
A one-bedroom studio apartment.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Actually, no, it's news more nerds need to see. Especially the kind who grew up with a boner for space travel, based on growing up with various flavours of Star Trek and its luxury liner accommodations. Even Enterprise NX-01 (I know, I know, nobody wants to remember that one;) only toned it down to two-man rooms for the non-officers.
In practice, well, rent the movie Das Boot, and have a good look. That's likely how you'd live on an interstellar trip. Think a tube with beds on the sides and the main corridor running in the middle. Or ask someone who's on a submarine. Last I heard, even with the huge modern submarines, they _still_ hot-bunk. Not only you don't get a nice room all to yourself, you don't even get the bed all to yourself.
Heck, even in surface ships, on early British destroyers the officers slept in armchairs on the deck. (Which would probably be a better explanation for why Picard is always in his chair when someone hails.) Or a lot of the ships that hauled colonists to the New World actually packed them like sardines under the deck, because space really was that limited.
Face it, when every ton hauled costs a bunch of energy, and especially on a (part time) military ship like the Enterprise, you're not going to encumber the actually useful ship with a luxury hotel bigger than the former. I mean, look at TNG, because they even showed you the separation in the first episode. That's one tiny actually useful warship, and the whole dish is a luxury hotel for the crew.
It's not going to be like in Star Trek.
Even the ISS is probably painting a too rosy image. It's got years of adding modules and it's not going anywhere, so it has a lot more space than you'd actually expect on an early space exploration ship. Still, I'm glad they're showing even that. Might knock the glamour of some people's heads.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Until we can figure out artificial gravity, I would think you would want to have as little space as possible between you and the walls, since the only real way to maneuver is to push off of something. This would lead to a design with a lot of small rooms connected by narrow corridors, such as you see in the ISS.
Primitive?
His space is more than enough for it's needs. In fact humans can live very comfortably in small spaces. I know people that are incredibly happy raising their 2 kids and 2 adults family in a 2 bedroom 640sq foot apartment. They are quite civilized and less primitive than most people that have McMansion homes.
More space = a waste of space. Only badly designed things have lots of open space in them. Until we get a unlimited self renewing power supply that can lift 900,000,000 metric tons for zero cost, ALL space travel will be just big enough for it's needs... On a modern nuke sub even the captain does not have a giant spacious 3 bedroom suite with jacuzzi...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you compare this to the quarters on a sub it's really roomy. If all you do is sleep, work on a computer, and read books you don't need lots of space. In fact, I'm taking up far less space than I have available to me to post this here, and that's after years of taking up far more space in my clothing than is necessary.
For more ISS geekery, check out this video. Col. Doug Wheelock operates the NA1SS ham radio station on board the ISS. Since they are using FM, all the different transmissions are interfering and he's having trouble picking callsigns out of the noise. It is impressive to hear all that traffic in a FM pileup. Contacts start around 11:30 mark. Before that is background and a tour of the station.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h73EYcyszf8
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
He has a Microsoft Windows PC! A MacBook Air would be so much more fitting. Steve Jobs needs to get up there and straighten him out.