>>>>> "FZ" == Fred Zellinger <Fred.Zellinger at seagate.com> writes: FZ> 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. FZ> http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-109/hires/s109e5059.jpg FZ> I looked at the picture in some detail, an the one thing that struck me was FZ> the 3-ring binders of schematics, flowcharts, diagrams, etc that these guys FZ> have to manually browse through to do their job. Given that each FZ> additional kilo of mass cost $1000+ to get into orbit, wouldn't each of FZ> them simply carry around a PDA with all the reference data in a searchable FZ> format? FZ> No. Space flight is a nasty business, small accidents can quickly turn FZ> deadly. When some sort of radiation knocks all your transistorized FZ> electronics on their butt, you'll be glad that you still have a pen light FZ> and paper manuals to get you home again. FZ> I have heard people rag on NASA/Space Shuttle for years about their FZ> outdated technology...but most of the technology choices where made for FZ> reasons of robustness. It has to be very frustrating for the shuttle FZ> crew(mostly PhDs), to have to do so much manual labor in space, when there FZ> is a lot of technology which could help them...if it wasn't earthbound for FZ> environmental reasons. It's not just manned space that has this issue. Hardware and software for civilian aviation that has to be flight-certified also has this issue (not biz jets and general aviation --- they're a little more flexible). For many such products, the MAJORITY of the development cost is verification, validation and certification. Actually, the stuff you see the astronauts carry is WAY MORE ADVANCED than the stuff that's bolted into the shuttle. The portable stuff is almost by definition not flight critical, and doesn't have to go through years and years of review. A little technological backwardness is the price you pay for safety. Another issue about the manuals in binders is that they often were prepared before the days of document formats that are friendly for PDAs. Yeah, you can fit tons of manuals on a PDA --- UNLESS the manuals have to be scanned as images, because they were generated by ancient text-processing programs (that may not even exist any more). If you've gotta carry gifs or jpegs of your manual pages, your PDA isn't a whole lot of help. Plus looking things up without text search makes binders actually more efficient (I can speak to this issue from personal experience, having downloaded manuals for some of my obsolete computer hardware!). R
