This is awesome. If you'd like a live video tour, I recently sat down with my 5 year old to watch a wonderful video from NASA [0].
They talk about some of the facilities in a way that kids can understand, and there's something wondrous about seeing how they move around, regularly changing their orientations, etc.
Wow, I never realized how cluttered the ISS was. Stuff all over! Lots of Thinkpads as already mentioned, but lots of lots of things: cameras, lens, etc. I surprised at the amount of duplication. (I do realize that redundancy is key when you can't just run to the store to replace something, but still...)
If you zoom in on the images you can see why they have so many cameras: loads of dead pixels everywhere. They don’t last forever up there because of the increased radiation. I would assume they don’t really fly stuff like still functioning cameras with loads of dead pixels back. (Even some old iPad seems to get good use as a wall clock next to the dining table.)
Also, if I remember correctly (from some interview with some ESA guy, I think) people on the ground would prefer it if the station were kept tidier – but the people up there are busy people with more important things to do than to keep everything always super-tidy. But inventory management is apparently a big topic and they do have a system for it. (I think even including a barcode scanner to catalogue items.)
I mean, even still, looking at those images, I do have to say everything does seem … tidier than usual. I think they cleaned up before they took them. Those more improvised tours of the station from astronauts you can find on YouTube show a station that is substantially more cluttered. Or at least seem that way. Looking at those pictures and being familiar with others and videos of the station my first thought was not how cluttered everything is but how tidy. Compared to the usual state of things, at least.
I'm going to put the audio-book version of Seveneves on (just started listening to it for the second time this morning) and have a good browse around this.
This entire tour is interesting and enjoyable! Just spent an entire evening -- almost three hours -- looking around and watching the videos. Many kudos to Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti for her very concise explanations and demonstrations.
The panoramas are of very high quality (except for the inevitable dead pixels). It is nice to see all the Ethernet cables, electrical outlets, stopwatches, valves, tools or just the video projector connected via VGA to a notebook in Node 1, just before you fly into the Russian module. And yes, there is a striking contrast between the Russian and the US/European/Japanese modules.
I especially recommend watching the time-lapse video shot by Alexander Gerst:
gives you a string encoding the current position. You can restore that position by copy and pasting it into the "pano.openURL()" method. Examples:
pano.openUrl("{node5}","216.49016925709486/38.116922404005344/47.440801242792304") // The IMAX...
pano.openUrl("{node5}","288.6799234893748/17.169120787478608/17.33030268127927") // ...and its CF cards
After a bit of digging, I foudn that the wall behind the cluster of Thinkpads in the Columbus module is made up of European Drawer Rack modules[0] which are basically 19in racks. NASA has its own International Standard Payload Rack (ISPR) module system[1]. It would be interesting to see some articles on the power and data infrastructure of the station.
There's a lot that goes into space worthiness rating even beyond the technical spec requirements. There's probably a bid request available for when they were first considered too. No idea where to start hunting that down though.
There was a really good article[0] (plus a video talk I can't find) on a team that modified an Android phone to go to space to interface with the SPHERES mini satellite experiments. A short list of the things they had to do includes:
- No Lithium Ion battery, it takes 2+ years to get a LIon battery certified for the ISS
- Had to put a screen protector on, broken glass screen becomes an inhalation hazard in zero G, BUT many materials are considered flammable in the high oxygen environment on station.
- Had to lobotomize the Wifi and cellular chips to ensure they'd never turn on. Just removing the software that would control and allow them to turn on wasn't enough.
In addition to everything in the article they have to worry about off gassing from all the various materials that make up anything sent to space.
Requirements include thermal management (ie. cooling working in microgravity environment, without convection), power supply compatibility and EMC.
I assume that the thermal management part is significant reason for use of thinkpads. On another brands one can see that cooling is significantly dependent on orientation (usually with the best orientation for cooling being something other than "standing flat"), while thinkpads are able to get incredibly hot in any orientation, but I've never seen one overheat.
Another thing is the whole reliability and serviceability thing.
It's interesting to see some differences between the US-and-everyone-else and Russian part. One that was most striking to me is cabling and piping between modules: on the Russian side, the pipes go through the hatches, which complicates closing the hatches but makes the cables and pipes easier to access/repair and makes it easier to install new ones. On the other side, there are no pipes or cables going through hatches.
There's also a hatch in the deck of Unity that seems to have nothing on the other side (the one labelled Hab). Is it a place where a module will be added?
I love the disconnect between science fiction and reality. There's no beautiful Kubrick-esque set design here. The whole thing just looks like someone's garage, full of nick-nacks, tools, and little projects. It just a giant mancave, really. This is why I'm a little bored with LEO space exploration. I can't wait for the SLS to go live and try something that isn't this.
That said, I would love to see a ISS-like structure on the moon, perhaps also serving as a dark-side radio telescope.
The mundanity is what makes it real and also very cool to me. I don’t think manned space exploration will look any different in the future … until maybe it starts looking mundane in other ways (think mundanity of commercial air travel). Even if we do go to Mars or other places. LEO has little to do with that … and SLS will look just the same on the inside.
Good point. I guess what I was trying to express that just floating in LEO is fairly boring. My example of a moon base would be much more thrilling, especially if it could serve as a dark-side radio telescope or even as a space-port for deep launches.
A lot of little experiments an LEO ferrying back and forth is something we've been able to do since at least the 60's. I would love to see some next-gen stuff and with the SLS I will. I think NASA is very committed to a manned asteroid mission and a return to the moon.
There's also more realistic / near-future sci-fi, see for example Neal Stephenson's excellent 'Seven Eves', which I recommend for anyone interested in spaceflight.
Had to laugh about the tools on board... both a set of metric and english. :D And apparently the english set are used more often (not sure what to take away from that... heh)
There are Soyuz constantly docked to the ISS with enough seats for everyone on board. Those are where you would exit the station in case of emergency. The signs show the way.
I assume that’s the case, since that is the only explanation that does make sense given the design – with the red stripes – and the consistent placement of the signs. The station has two other obvious exits – the two air locks – but those wouldn’t be used in case of an emergency and don’t need signage throughout the station showing you the way there.
There is an exit sign right next to the US airlock, but that could also just be there to tell you to turn left when you exit the airlock to get to the docked Soyuz: http://imgur.com/8UJP11Y
If you look around you can see that the red stripe design is used throughout the station to show you where things are you would need in an emergency, like “Portable Breathing Apparatus”, “Fire Extinguisher” and “Fire Port” (all for use during fires). There are also some signs with red stripes that have different directional arrows and pictograms on them. Oh, I just zoomed in on those and look what I found: http://imgur.com/3Qyl3bE
That’s your definite answer! The pictograms are an elaboration on the Exit signs, showing you the directions in which you can find the Shuttle and Soyuz. Obviously, that Shuttle pictogram – it was always docked at the other end of the station – is kinda outdated by now. They can hopefully put some nice Dragon/CST-100 stickers on there soon.
It seems they use red/white stripes to indicate emergency routes and equipment and yellow/black stripes for warnings and caution signs. Blue signs to show you where up and own, backward and forward, left and right is. As the station is always in free fall that’s obviously arbitrary, but consistently defining those directions in some way obviously also helps with orientation (and, I would assume, communication between everyone working up there and those on the ground communicating with the station). Look for the OVHD, FWD, AFT, DECK and so on signs around the hatches. Also, look at the hatch where you enter the Russian sector (directly beyond that and down are the Soyuz). You can see many round glow-in-dark patches around the hatch, obviously also used to show you the way to a Soyuz ship, especially if, say, power and lights are out.
It seems someone moved the equipment for some reason and patched over the emergency sign, adding a handwritten note with the place the equipment was moved to.
I know that they do have a printer on board but, eh, I guess a handwritten note will do. (I love looking at all of those all over the station.)
(Cosmonauts in the Russian part of the station apparently have an innate sense of direction in space and as such do not need signs, or at least not as many. And definitely none with such gaudy designs!)
Later this evening when I get home I'm gonna fire it up fullscreen in VR Desktop (Rift rather than Cardboard). It's not 3D but 360-panoramic can still be cool to look at.
Duct Tape spotted! Zarya module. look up! three hose fittings? covered in tape. I think i'd live in constant fear of bumping the wrong knob/pipe/lever while floating from one module to the next.
I wish there was a way to link to things in this by "room", angle, and zoom level.
I'm really curious what some of this stuff is, like that green box in the middle of that cluster of Thinkpads on the Columbus module, the blue box and other stuff "beneath" the oven. Power distribution modules? Computers in hardened cases?
They talk about some of the facilities in a way that kids can understand, and there's something wondrous about seeing how they move around, regularly changing their orientations, etc.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k