Astronauts Open ISS Station Room 90
mikesd81 notes an ABC News report that astronauts aboard the ISS have opened the new station room. Commander Peggy Whitson and astronaut Paolo Nespoli delayed their lunch so the event could happen before the station's orbit temporarily blocked the ability to send a video downlink to Mission Control. From the article: "Nespoli... joined Discovery's crew to personally deliver the Italian-made pressurized chamber... Astronauts added the school bus-sized room called Harmony during a 6.5-hour spacewalk Friday, using a robotic arm to lift it from the shuttle's cargo bay and install it on the station. The compartment will serve as the docking port and nerve center for European and Japanese laboratories that will be delivered on the next three shuttle flights. It also will be a power and thermal distribution center, providing air, electricity, water and other systems for the space station. Racks of computer and electronic equipment are already inside the cylinder, which will double as a living space for the crew... The astronauts will have to undo more than 700 bolts [which held down the equipment during flight] to free up the equipment."
Lift? (Score:1, Interesting)
Uh... I don't think anything was "lifted". In zero G, there is no up and down, AFAIK.
Re:Lift? (Score:3, Interesting)
Thrice-damned multi-billion dollar rathole (Score:1, Interesting)
Fucking low-earth orbit rathole. We could have another hubble or the Next Linear Collider, but instead we get a damn hamster habitat in space.