On Mon, Mar 04, 2002 at 02:13:11PM -0600, John Scherer wrote: > > Check out the picture below. It's of Astronaut Duane Carey, but > that's not what's funny. Take a closer look at the 3COM pcmcia > network dongle floating above his notebook. It's thin-net! On the > Shuttle! Who would have thought. http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-109/hires/s109e5059.jpg I looked at the picture in some detail, an the one thing that struck me was the 3-ring binders of schematics, flowcharts, diagrams, etc that these guys have to manually browse through to do their job. Given that each additional kilo of mass cost $1000+ to get into orbit, wouldn't each of them simply carry around a PDA with all the reference data in a searchable format? No. Space flight is a nasty business, small accidents can quickly turn deadly. When some sort of radiation knocks all your transistorized electronics on their butt, you'll be glad that you still have a pen light and paper manuals to get you home again. I have heard people rag on NASA/Space Shuttle for years about their outdated technology...but most of the technology choices where made for reasons of robustness. It has to be very frustrating for the shuttle crew(mostly PhDs), to have to do so much manual labor in space, when there is a lot of technology which could help them...if it wasn't earthbound for environmental reasons.
