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Astronauts Successfully Install Parking Spot At ISS (phys.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: With more private spaceship traffic expected at the International Space Station in the coming years, two U.S. astronauts embarked on a spacewalk Friday to install a special parking spot for them. Americans Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 8:04 (1204 GMT) and floated outside the orbiting laboratory to begin the work of attaching the first of two international docking adaptors. The spacewalkers finished the task in just over two hours. "With that, we have a new port of call," said NASA commentator Rob Navias, as the space station flew over Singapore at 10:40 am (1440 GMT). NASA describes the docking adaptor as a "metaphorical gateway to a future" that will allow a new generation of U.S. spacecraft -- the first since the space shuttle program ended in 2011 -- to carry astronauts to the space station. The second docking adaptor is expected to be installed in 2018. Built by Boeing, the circular adaptor measures around 42 inches (one meter) tall and about 63 inches wide. The adaptors will work with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon, two spaceships under construction that are planned to ferry astronauts to the space station. The docking adaptor is more sophisticated than past equipment because it will allow automatic parking instead of the current grapple and berthing process, which is managed by astronauts.
But given how many times they repeat the procedure on Earth before doing the real thing... It may be even easier to do it in space!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
To learn how to do it for the next space station. To learn what works well, what works poorly, and what doesn't work at all.
And perhaps this capability will extend the life of this station.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
This is a waste of money. There are plans to decommission parts of the ISS in the pretty near future. Why do this for something that's not going to be around all that much longer?
Why? Just to piss off humbugs like you. Totally worth every penny.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
You won't be around much longer anyway.
Is there even a successor to ISS planned?
there will be a parking warden hovering to check if someone has overstayed by 5 minutes and pounce to hand out a ticket. Those pains in the ass are everywhere!
Is there even a successor to ISS planned?
Sure there is . . . the Chinese are working on it already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Maybe the Chinese will rent out rooms on it on Airbnb . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...the circular adaptor measures around 42 inches (one meter) tall and about 63 inches wide
Wow, circular things didn't used to be like this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is this the new std_troll? Claiming there was a dupe when the current story is about a thing having happened, and the prior story was about the thing about to happen?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The comments here are the same as the old article. As a school teacher would say, compare and contrast.
We are going to do this.
Why, is it worth it?"
We did this.
Why, is it worth it?"
The about to happen/did happen is irrelevant to the content of the comments. We're basically discussing the same stuff that we did a couple of days ago.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Is there even a successor to ISS planned?
If we sell ISS on decommissioning it, then there will be.
Amazing how the Chinese are planning to do everything.
I'm glad the headline simplified docking ports to parking spaces, as otherwise I would not have understood what it meant.... Now, where are my crayons, I have a Sarah Palin show that I need to watch.
Clicking your link, it says their space station is similar to Mir except with much shorter stays. It does not have capabilities or size remotely comparable to the ISS.
This space intentionally left blank
This is a waste of money. There are plans to decommission parts of the ISS in the pretty near future. Why do this for something that's not going to be around all that much longer?
They are required to add a handicapped spot.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
It isn't: the parking spot costs 1 USD/hr to use, with 24h forfait available. With some careful advertising and by adding other amenities (it seems that a new location for the restaurant at the end of the universe will be opened there) NASA will soon get a good return from the investment.
I wonder if they got the parking meters installed too ;-)
To make sure it works once you use it somewhere else. This new docking system is supposed to be the new international standard docking system
Ezekiel 23:20