Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Today on the International Space Station
Another daring step for space-science!
With the expected arrival of the space shuttle in a few days, life must sure be exciting on the international space station. The $100 billion dollar outpost of science. It's likely that with company coming the crew will have finally found the laptop power cable and have moved on to other daring feats of science, like how to bake a cake for your guests in a micro-gravity environment. No need to worry about the fact that with the shuttle retiring in 2010 we won't have the means to finish the station, or to get to it....it's science, so details like that don't matter.
Actually looking at today's schedule it appears that some house keeping is in order before guests arrive. Smoke detector inspection seems to dominate the agenda as does cleaning. They even appear to have some 'space paper towels' (Brawny no doubt) but in science terms they call 'em 'Dual Sorbent Tube Sampling".
At cost of $9,506 per minute* you gotta work fast.
Daily Space Station Schedule:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/122134main_07_12_2005.pdf
*Per minute cost of the space station assuming a total cost of $100 billion and a 20 year life-span.
With the expected arrival of the space shuttle in a few days, life must sure be exciting on the international space station. The $100 billion dollar outpost of science. It's likely that with company coming the crew will have finally found the laptop power cable and have moved on to other daring feats of science, like how to bake a cake for your guests in a micro-gravity environment. No need to worry about the fact that with the shuttle retiring in 2010 we won't have the means to finish the station, or to get to it....it's science, so details like that don't matter.
Actually looking at today's schedule it appears that some house keeping is in order before guests arrive. Smoke detector inspection seems to dominate the agenda as does cleaning. They even appear to have some 'space paper towels' (Brawny no doubt) but in science terms they call 'em 'Dual Sorbent Tube Sampling".
At cost of $9,506 per minute* you gotta work fast.
Daily Space Station Schedule:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/122134main_07_12_2005.pdf
*Per minute cost of the space station assuming a total cost of $100 billion and a 20 year life-span.
