ISS Crew Install Cables For 2017 Arrival of Commercial Capsules

The Associated Press, as carried by the San Francisco Chronicle, reports that NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts have attached more than 300 feet of cable to the exterior of the International Space Station in a series of three planned spacewalks; in total, the wiring job they're undertaking will involve 764 feet of power and data cables. The extensive rewiring is needed to prepare for NASA’s next phase 260 miles up: the 2017 arrival of the first commercial spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to the orbiting lab. NASA is paying Boeing and SpaceX to build the capsules and fly them from Cape Canaveral, which hasn’t seen a manned launch since the shuttles retired in 2011. Instead, Russia is doing all the taxi work — for a steep price. The first of two docking ports for the Boeing and SpaceX vessels — still under development — is due to arrive in June. Even more spacewalks will be needed to set everything up. Mission Control left two cables — or about 24 feet worth — for the next spacewalk coming up Wednesday. Four hundred feet of additional cable will be installed next Sunday on spacewalk No. 3.

Comments

Re:Russian steep price

[Opportunist]

Everyone has lazy and unproductive workers. Why should any worker give half a fuck about his company if he can clearly see that even the CEOs are trying their best to milk it for all it's worth and then move on to the next corporation to pump and dump?

There is no work ethic left. On no level of the work force. What I see today in our economy reminds me in a stunningly way of what went down in the former communist countries. Same shit. Same mismanagement with the same disillusioned workforce, with everyone trying his best to waste as little energy as possible doing work, knowing that if he put in more all that would be his reward is more workload shifted onto him. Mostly because it just doesn't friggin' matter whether you try to work hard or whether you slack. Your chances for promotion are zero, your chances to get fired are not influenced at all by how you work. So why bother with anything?

There is simply no identification with your workplace anymore, and no faith in the ones steering the company's course.

And bluntly, whether you think your politicians are greedy, selfish idiots with zero qualification for their job and no well being in their mind aside of their own, or whether you think your boss is like this, where exactly is the difference between public and private sector?