Tour of the Closet Sized Living Quarters On ISS 76
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."
No, it's news more nerds need to see (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Ham radio on the ISS (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [youtube.com]
-molo