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The International Space Station Is Getting Its First Printer Upgrade in 17 Years (mashable.com)
Lance Ulanoff, writing for Mashable: Somewhere, 254 miles above us, an astronaut is probably printing something. Ever since the International Space Station (ISS) welcomed its first residents in November of 2000, there have been printers on board. Astronauts use them to print out critical mission information, emergency evacuation procedures and, sometimes, photos from home. According to NASA, they print roughly 1,000 pages a month on two printers; one is installed on the U.S. side of the ISS, the other in the Russian segment. ISS residents do all this on 20-year-old technology. "When the printer was new, it was like 2000-era tech and we had 2000-era laptop computers. Everything worked pretty good," recalled NASA Astronaut Don Pettit, who brought the first printer up to the ISS. But "the printer's been problematic for the last five or six years," said Pettit who's spent a total of one year on the station. It's not that the Space Station has been orbiting with the same printer since Justin Timberlake was still N'Sync. NASA had dozens of this printer and, as one failed, they'd send up another identical model. But now it's time for something truly new. In 2018, NASA will send two brand new, specialized printers up to the station. However, figuring out the right kind of printer to send was a lot more complicated than you'd probably expect. NASA has turned to HP for its IT supply and needs. The agency requires the following things in its printer: print and handle paper management in zero gravity, handle ink waste during printing, be flame retardant, and be power efficient. HP, Mashable reports, has recommended the HP Envy 5600, its all-in-one (printer, scanner, copier, fax) device that retails for $129.99. The model has been modified, according to the report.
Most..expensive..ink...EVER!
$35 a cartridge, but man, $150M in shipping costs.
The paper isn't cheap either.
We've tried the paperless office. *I've* tried it and desperately wanted it to work well. I've tried hand writing recognition apps on tablets but, depending on what you do, it doesn't work all the time. In my day to day work, I work with a lot of theoretical math and statistics, modeling, forecasting etc. I've tried to use software to make myself more efficient and productive, but nothing works better for me than writing out a theory on a notepad, making a bunch of scribbles or changes in real-time and then going back to Minitab or Excel to input it. The problem I have found is that none of the stylus' have the precise / accurate contact that a nice pen has. The lines end up being too thick, or it misses contact. That can really break concentration when you're working on a complex formula because now you have to troubleshoot why the stylus missed something. OR you end up with massive writing just because the stylus can't pick up equations or formulas when trying to cram everything in a small space. With a pen and paper, you just automatically adjust your writing size to the available space without even really thinking about it. I imagine on the ISS, working out calculations or check lists is much easier if you can write next to the printed output rather than struggling to use a stylus and that's probably the reason they're using that method. It's NASA and astronauts - if there was a simpler, better way to do something, chances are they'd have done it already.