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Space

Home Improvement 155

Posted by michael from the more-power dept.
Matthew Moyle-Croft writes "On the ISS the Astronauts have been hard at work building a kitchen table away from the prying eyes of mission control."
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  • No pic? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have to see a picture of this table... Anyone know where to find one?

  • Picture (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A picture can be found here [tablese.cx].
  • [pedantic student studying for exams] In this context, I think 9.81 Newtons per kilogram would be more suitable units

    These are the same units... Study harder

  • Violation of EULA (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:26AM (#222247)
    This is a clear violation of the ISS's EULA. The astronauts are not legally able to use these parts in a fashion to circumvent their original use. And since there were Russians involved, this could quickly become a issue of national security as know-how and other intellectual property has crossed international borders. Good luck fending off the lawyers, Shep. We're all on your side.

  • Quote from the article.... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:30AM (#222248)

    "I spend most of my day with a tool in my hand..."

    You just don't say that at an interview, do you?
  • Specialization is for Insects!

    Let's hear it for us Generalists!

    ttyl
    Farrell
    BBS SysOp, Novell Admin, OS/2 pro, Linux Guru, Unix Adept, Practicing Druid (ADF), Calligrapher, Home Music Studio owner, Musician, SF Faan, SF Convention organizer, etc.
  • In future could you please check your links before posting, that one is broken.

    ;-]
  • The space station's current handyman is NASA astronaut Jim Voss, a 52-year-old retired Army colonel. ... "I spend most of my day with a tool in my hand," ... Voss said recently from the space station.

    Hehehe... He said Tool.
    The real Threed's /. ID is lower than the real Bruce Perens'.

    --Threed
  • Note that your cost figure is an order of magnitude too high. NASA's FY 2001 budget is on the order of 14.253 billion (see reference below). It's proposed FY 2002 budget is 14.511 billion. The latest census reports that there are roughly 281 million Americans. Doing the math, that averages out to $50 and change.

    NASA Budget
    ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/budget/2002/budget _s ummary.pdf

    Census figures
    http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2000/cb0 0c n64.html
  • the table is made from aluminium and duct tape
    and then
    If the table was made from a more conductive metal for magnets, or covered in some velcro-friendly fluff, fine.

    Ever considered that maybe the duct tape was sticky side out?


  • Does a table in a zero G environment really make sense? It says "kitchen" table, so I assume they want to eat off of it. I don't know, I've never been in space, but it just doesn't seem to make sense to me.


  • Why must we fund this monumental international waste of money when there are people starving here on Earth ?

    So you're a troll, but I'll bite anyway. The future of humanity depends on our ability to leave this planet (we'll have to do it sooner or later, and leaving it to the last minute is a plan that's doomed from the start). Our ability to leave the planet is solely dependent on how much we spend on space research (barring intervention from alien races, of course :-) Thus, it's better to sacrifice a few starving people now to save humanity in general. Or at least, that's the theory. I'm personally not convinced that the survival of humanity would be a good thing for our galaxy. I'm sure other lifeforms would do a better job of preventing galactic pollution, and not overtaxing available resources...

  • This is an obvious hoax, maybe just the astronauts winding up the journalists. What the heck use would a table be in zero/micro gravity? A cupboard or a drawer, fine. But a table? Why? You can't put things "down" on it, you can't chop anything, mix anything or lay crockery on it. In the article it is stated that the table is made from aluminium and duct tape so you can't even use it for magnetised items. You can't even use it to play cards or board games. If the table was made from a more conductive metal for magnets, or covered in some velcro-friendly fluff, fine. But an aluminium table covered in duct table? In space? WHY?

    --

  • "Smoking anything would be problematic in space, first of all, there is no convection, so smoke doesnt rise, it would just kind of cluster in a ball around the lit tip of your cigarette until it goes out. "

    Better tell the Russians - _Dragonfly_ made it pretty clear that the Russian cosmonauts on Mir had both cigarettes and vodka available.

    sPh
  • "What the heck use would a table be in zero/micro gravity? A cupboard or a drawer, fine. But a table? Why? You can't put things "down" on it, you can't chop anything, mix anything or lay crockery on it."

    Need for table: (a) to sit around while eating a meal, meals being as much of a social event as a fueling stop, particularly on long journeys in close company (b) to provide a common plane of spatial reference for social activities and for looking at stuff.

    Can't put things "down": Velcro(r) is I believe banned due to flammability, but they use clips and other devices developed for ships to hold things in place.

    Can't mix or chop: why not? These aren't gravity-dependent actions. A mixing bowl might have to be closed to prevent the contents from splashing away, but you would still want to put it against something to give your mixing arm leverage.

    Question: for simple tricks, how does a yo-yo behave differently in zero-g* ? Answer: it doesn't. Not everything we do depends on gravity.

    sPh

    * yes, yes, I know: "microgravity". As Harry Stine once said, only NASA could make space travel boring to the general public.
  • Nicholas Chauvin, who all these years I had thought to have been an actual person and officer in the French army who had a blind, unthinking loyalty to, and belief in the superiority in all aspects of, Napolean (the first one), turns out, apparently, to have been a character in a play. Real or fictitious, he still felt that way about Napolean, and it is that quality of "(country, race, sex, religion, etc.)X is (insert superlative here), and any and all evidence to the contrary won't convince me otherwise." which has come to be known as Chauvinism.
  • if the bottom falls out of the space program

    Hey, it won't matter -- in 0G, if the bottom falls out, you'll just float there...
  • Hmmmm, I have this vision of a torous filled with water, fitted to a hollow axle of some sort, with a bowl mounted to another tube on the spin axis with a pipe extending into the water. Some kind of tube leads to the hollow axle. Spin the wheel, light the bowl and party on! Gyroscopic effect might make it kind of hard to pass though...
  • You got to do it yourself. I am glad to see that the people up there are resourceful these are people who are paving the way of the future.
  • Why are they referring to ISS as Space Station Alpha?

    Because that's the name of the ISS. "International Space Station" is really just a description.

    Seeing as how MIR was the first space station, wouldn't this be Space Station Beta?

    Bullshit. Mir wasn't anywhere near the first space station. Besides, Alpha is a name, not a counting scheme. Mir is only one in a line of Russian space stations (Salyut 1, launched in 1971, to Salyut 7, launched 1982, abandoned 1986) and NASA had Skylab (launched 1973, abandoned 1974). That makes Alpha space station 10.

    None of the earlier stations lasted as long as Mir however. We'll see how long Alpha will keep running.

  • $10k/lb trash? (Score:3)

    by coreman ( 8656 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:54AM (#222264) Homepage
    Don't you wonder why they don't make the packaging and holddown clamps out of something that can be stored and made into something useful after the contents are deployed. Does all this extra mass at $10k/pound to orbit really have to go into a Progress and jettisoned?
  • Smoking anything would be problematic in space, first of all, there is no convection, so smoke doesnt rise, it would just kind of cluster in a ball around the lit tip of your cigarette until it goes out
    I have heard of one guy who, in addition of being a SCUBA-diving addict, is also an heavy smoker. So, to ease out the pain on waiting on the last decompression stop for hours, sometimes, he had fashioned a smoking box out of an old waterproof battery container. In it, is a cigarette connected to a tube, and on the other end, is a normal SCUBA regulator second stage to supply air to the burning cigarette...

    --

  • This is an obvious hoax, maybe just the astronauts winding up the journalists. What the heck use would a table be in zero/micro gravity?
    Psycho-social comfort. Skylab astro-nuts had a table, too, installed after great insistence by astro-nuts and shrinks.

    Ditto for the big 50 cm diameter porthole next to the table. Remember that, originally, Von Braun didn't want portholes in the Mercury space capsule, and the astro-nuts had to go on strike to have the window put on the spam-can...

    --

  • Good point.

    Bill Shepherd is a US Navy SEAL, which are our most highly trained special operations forces. Military people are very mission oriented, and do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission.

    There was a good article [cnn.com] on CNN why military veterans make good IT workers that explains this.

    I'm biased though, as I was in the US Air Force. My personal motto is "adapt, improvise, & overcome."
  • Space a "preservative"? Have you ever seen any hardware after it's been in space a while? Thermal metal fatigue will eventually cause superstructure failure. Space debris (99% of which is naturally occuring) will contantly pepper it with tiny holes and slowly destroy its equipment. Solar radiation will eventually destroy its computers. Space, unfortunatly, is no preservative. Without maintenance and repair teams constantly refurbishing the craft, Mir would be destroyed in less than a decade.

  • I kind of have the opposite impression - NASA seems to prefer pre-planning everything and running under strict ground control where possible, whereas the Russians (thanks to their experiences on Mir) seem to have more of a can-do, fix-it attitude. Remember how NASA went on and on about how dangerous Mir was, but the Russians just shrugged and kept it together with chewing gum and determination?

    Now, if NASA would really let its astronauts be hackers, that would be great. And it sounds from the article that they will be training more of the station crew for similar tasks, so maybe that will become the norm rather than the exception on the ISS.

    Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

  • B.A. Baracus

    MacGuyver

    The entire cast of Blue Peter (UK joke!)
  • I do work in the satellite communications industry - so my original post was not really meant to be taken too seriously.

    If it came to practicalities, I suppose it would be possible to use Shuttle/ Soyuz to have boosted Mir somewhere close to the orbit of ISS as I understand has been done to ISS.
  • If they'd left Mir up there then they could have cannibalised it for useful things e.g. tables, scrap metal etc. Then when any member of the ISS crew felt an attack of the A-team/MacGuyver 'must build something!' episodes coming on, he/she could've just uses the shuttle as a space bus to go from one to the other.
  • I agree. While it was nice to see how everyone worked together up there and built something they could feel "ownership" in, I got the impression that the whole article was a chance to dig at Russian space control. NASA praised the table, while Russain Space Control said it couldn't be done? Aren't these guys supposed to be working together? Granted, CNN is reporting to an American audience, so I can understand playing up the American angle a little bit, but this seems like it's poking fun at Russian Space Control a little too much.
  • Damn straight! Red Green can do wonders with duct tape. I once saw him make a Lazy Boy out of duct tape.

    --

  • I'm Impressed (Score:5)

    by rde ( 17364 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:53AM (#222275)
    Not only did the build a table, they built - and I quote - a "fully functional table". D'you think they meant that in the same sense as Data is fully functional? How would that work?

  • LEGO in space (Score:3)

    by The Dev ( 19322 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @06:13AM (#222276)
    They should send up a bunch of LEGO. It would have great theraputic and social benefits. They could also use it for "customizing" the station if necessary.

  • And I thought fixing my sink was challenging.
  • They just need a blonde, British pixie as the commentator and they have got a show. I bet Bill Sheppard could beat the "Brothers Long" any day
    of the week. Although that hovercraft episode was pretty awesome, you have to admit.

    Sheppard could have justified the time and labor required to build the table as a way to save the expense of carting the junk back to earth. They should build a whole extra addition on-to the space station with scrap metal and empty gas tanks.
  • What would make it not stay on the table?

    Think about it.
  • Ah... So that's what he meant by 'I spend most of my day with a tool in my hand....' Not 'Some tools' or 'my tools' or 'a wrench' but even 'my tool'. Just 'a' tool. So I guess it IS fully functional.

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau
  • The two elementary particles of the universe are duct tape and baling wire. You can make anything out of the two of them.
    -russ
  • During the Apollo program, NASA spent millions developing a pen that would work in zero gravity. The Soviet solution was to use pencils.
  • Actually, I now find that it is just that - a story

    See http://www.snopes2.com/business/genius/spacepen.ht m [snopes2.com]

  • Obviously not an Engineer (Score:3)

    by Shelrem ( 34273 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @06:54AM (#222284)
    Umm, now, i've never tried to hit off a bong in 0g, but it seems to me that with no gravity, instead of getting the smoke to bubble up through the water and into your lungs, you'd just get a mouthfull of bong water.

    And nobody likes bong water.

    -ben.c

  • Hands on guys (Score:5)

    by CharlieG ( 34950 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @04:56AM (#222285) Homepage
    Not even talking about the table (why would they need a table?)

    NASA and the astronauts both said that they need more "Hands On" folks.

    This, in the era where we are removing things like shop classes in our schools, because we don't need them to get into college. The "I'm not going to work with my hands" mentality

    Most school systems in the US no long teach any shop. It's a shame.

    Joke is, some of the BEST academic schools out there still require you to take drafting or CAD classes. Maybe you can figure out HOW to build something
  • If they'd left Mir up there then they could have cannibalised it for useful things e.g. tables, scrap metal etc

    Except that Mir was in a totally different orbit.

    he/she could've just uses the shuttle as a space bus to go from one to the other.

    With the fuel comming from where? You'd need to refill the external tank and use the main engines.
  • > "They've got a fully functional table now
    > because he built the thing," Curry said.

    I know americans really like to overplay things, but this is just awkward. First, it's not "he built the thing" but rather "THEY built the thing" and second, what's that crap of a "fully functional" table?

    This reminds me of those great products sold on TV: "I can't believe it, it's a fully functional table! I can put things on it! Wooooohoooooo!"

    But at least our hero - the table - won't collapse under heavy weight.

    CMBurns
  • I can relate. At my "college prep" school (which I just finished my final exam for about 40 minutes ago!) refuses to offer an classes such as shop since "It does not contribute to a college career." They even went as far as denying me the chance to do work-study, even though the institution would have awarded me a college scholarship at the end of the program. The guidance counsellor said it "was against policy and there was nothing she could do."

    At least I'm free, now.
  • I got the impression that the whole article was a chance to dig at Russian space control.
    From the article:
    Given Russian Mission Control's combativeness, the table became "a stealth project," according to Shepherd, a 51-year-old Navy captain.
    This is not the first time American astronauts have noted... friction... with Russian Mission Control. Dig around a bit. It might be American-centric media. But then, it might just be Russian Mission Control.

  • Re:And the russians up there? (Score:3)

    by _Sprocket_ ( 42527 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @04:55AM (#222290)
    Perhapse you missed
    One month into their 41/2-month mission, Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev began building the table out of aluminum frames that had held solid-fuel oxygen generators, as well as struts and pieces of angled aluminum. The men drilled holes, bolted the pieces together, covered the top with duct tape and, after weeks of working on it a bit at a time, finally had a table on which to eat, cook and work.
    I think the cosmonauts mentioned are Russian.
  • Actually there is LOTS of gravity there its just the table is falling away from a "cup" at the same speed as the cup is falling towards the table. This is a weightless environmented not 0 G.

    If there were no gravity there it would not be in oribit! it remains in orbit because of its forward momentium, the forward speed counter acts the amount the ISS has fallen towards the earth.

    How the deorbit things is to just slow them up, The gravitational effect of the earth then wins.

    James
  • "That way they can stick their lunch trays to it."

    And do they also duct tape their food to their lunch trays?


  • ...they just didn't say which side of the tape was facing outwards. :-) I assumed it was sticky-side-down, but after seeing this question, I have to wonder.

    If It Was Me, I'd probably put most of the tape sticky-side-down, with the occasional strip reversed. Most of the table would be smooth, with occasional places of stickiness built-in. Definitely sounds like a useful workbench, when a 2mm screw floating loose could wedge in some panel and kill you.

  • No, actually, you should say "There's plenty of gravity but since the station is in freefall, the astronauts don't feel its effects, because the station is accelerating due to gravity just as much as everything on it is." Remember your science indeed.
  • I'm sure other lifeforms would do a better job of preventing galactic pollution, and not overtaxing available resources...

    We're probably, on the whole, no more or less concerned with pollution than other races. You have zero information about them, so why would you say something like this?

    Or did it just sound like a nice PC thing to throw in at the end? :)

  • Re:Umm, "spare parts"? (Score:5)

    by mjh ( 57755 ) <mark.hornclan@com> on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @04:00AM (#222296) Homepage Journal
    I used to be an IT contracter at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. As such, I worked quite closely with people who were getting things certified to fly.

    You would not believe how involved the process is to get something certified to fly. The people who work on projects tend to work on their own piece of the project, and how it will fit into a mission. However, 99% of the flight certification process revolves around safety - AS IT SHOULD.

    If that means that people aren't reusing materials optimally, that may be disappointing, but it's much better than creating an unsafe environment. Space, without our help, is one of the most inhospitable environments for humans. Huge amounts of time and effort go into safety precautions.

    Personally, I can see why the ground crews would have balked at the table making enterprise. Those "spare parts" that they used were there serving a purpose, most of which was safety related. Simply removing them w/out consulting the people who built them and determining their purpose may have the unintended effect of making something unsafe.

    Right now NASA seems to be applauding the ingenuity of the american who created fashioned the table. I wonder how they'll react if the things used end up creating some sort of safety hazard. Remember how critical NASA was of MIR with all of its safety problems.

  • I thought the same thing. An American and two Russians build a table, and the US media makes it sound like the American did all the thinking and planning and had the brilliant crafty initiative.

    Maybe that was the case, but I don't know how CNN would have known. It was built in secret, after all.
  • Smoking anything would be problematic in space ... smoke ... would just kind of cluster in a ball around the lit tip of your cigarette until it goes out. "

    Not if you inhale vigorously :)

  • Or as a very wise person once said:

    If duct-tape can't fix it, throw it away.

    it's a revelation to me, that this even holds on the mighty ISS.

  • They should package everything they send up in Legos!
  • the tally of the spare parts used plus labor puts the cost of the table at around 1.2 million dollars.
  • Now all they need is a kitchen sink

  • This is a further example of what is meant by the term "hacking", which NASA seems to exemplify. Don't have what you need, hack something together out of what you have.

    The Deep Space 1 mission, and the piloting fix applied mid-mission, is another great hack job.
  • Uh? Nice grade school physics there. What you no doubt meant is inertia, not momentum per se. And you forgot to add is the correlary: a body in motion will continue to travel in the same direction with the same velocity, absent external forces.

    Let's see why the correlary is so important. I challenge you to set a coffee cup down on a table without imparting any "bounce" to it. (In other words, try to set it down without making any sound - the clearest indicator that the thing would bounce in space.) Not easy, is it?

    Now try it again, but this time also make sure that you don't impart any angular momentum to the cup. (Or, as a better illustration of what I'm talking about here, try to set the puck down on a air hockey table so that it doesn't move after you let go.)

    So, Newton was right (down to a scale where relativistic forces take over), but it doesn't help make this table any more useful.
  • Please define "down" in a microgravity environment.
  • What if the table top was made out of metal and the duct tape was just used as a nice cleanable covering? That way they can stick their lunch trays to it. I bet they took those frames and duct taped them together. This way they can roll the table up. If you say this won't work, then look at camping tables now available. Those are made out of slats and they roll ontop of a frame that was originally folded together. In space, since gravity isn't available to hold the tabletop to the frame, they could either use velcro, or a nut and bolt contraption to hold the table top down. Since the slats taht made up the table are metal, the trays that have magnets on them will just hold to the table.
  • The trio ... have disassembled the important aluminum frames that hold the solid oxygen generators in place. Without these generators, people on the space station could certainly die...

    Yeah, and without removing those brackets the O2 generators would be unavailable and people really would die. Though the article did not specifically mention it, I gathered that these bracket were shipping restraints that were removed when the O2 generators were delivered.

    In order to survive the launch to orbit everything that goes into orbit is somehow secured to the spacecraft. People are strapped into their seats, small items are stowed in compartments, large items are bolted to the frame. This is as much for the benefit of the spacecraft as anything else; loose cargo flying about during multi-g acceleration can really ruin an astronaut's day.

    I figure the brackets used for the table were shipping brackets from the launch of the O2 generators, and the foam used for the muffler was packing material from some other shipment.

    (Side note: when the fire broke out on Mir, one of the many problems in fighting it was that the restraining brackets had never been removed from the fire extinguishers. They had to waste crucial seconds finding a wrench and freeing the fire extinguishers.)

  • Smoking anything would be problematic in space, first of all, there is no convection, so smoke doesnt rise, it would just kind of cluster in a ball around the lit tip of your cigarette until it goes out. A real problem that had to be solved was to prevent dead spaces on the station. If you breate too long in one spot, the carbon dioxide will build up and suffocate you and anyone else who happens to try breathing in this spot. As a result the station has an extensive fan system to keep air circulating. On second though you would be able to smoke because of the fans, but youd make it hard on the CO2 scrubbers and dust filters and would probably be thrown out an airlock to smoke by your fellow astronauts, sans space suit.

  • right but you forget that if they built it on the ground and launched it it would have cost 12 million dollars.

  • Good ol' Shep, what with his self-starting initiative and hard work. Why, taking the insinuations of the article as fact, Shep
    • ) Thought up and built a great table - mostly by himself - , despite mean ol' Russian mission control's attempts to stop him,
    • ) Has single-handidly brought about the idea that long-term inhabitants in space should have training in simple handy-work skills, the utility of which will certainly bring a sense of peace into orbit (why, the table alone is the social center of the iss!), and
    • ) Handled, without incident, the nasty Russian's irrational obsession over national property on the station - a concept which NASA must be unfamiliar with...

      Bah humbug. I'm beginning to see why they changed the station's name from the iss..



    Linus has,in fact,grown,and explosively-JonKatz

  • And next week.... (Score:5)

    by Dr_Cheeks ( 110261 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:44AM (#222313) Homepage Journal
    We'll be building a spice-rack out of Sputnik
  • here's my handy tip for smoking in a no smoking area.

    Use a vaporiser to light the weed
    breath it all in in one go and blow the excess smoke out of the window or in this case - into an airlock.

    shouldn't be too hard

    I wonder if they send the sniffer dogs in before take-off?
    .oO0Oo.
  • ... does buttered bread still land butter side down in zero gravity?
  • A table - great idea.

    Let's just hope they don't progress to the spice rack or bookshelves, as nailing them to the wall may prove a bit of a liability....

    M.

  • Re:What else can these guys hack? (Score:3)

    by Salsaman ( 141471 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:41AM (#222319) Homepage
    I doubt very much that smoking is allowed on the ISS. The place is probably crawling with smoke alarms.

    Mind you, it just reminded me of the Rastafarian space station in Neuromancer (you know, the one where hash smoke is piped through the air conditioning, and dub music is on all the speaker systems.)

  • Exactly. And we should also never have sent all those ships over to the New World when there were starving peasants in Europe.

    I think all you Americans ought to come back home right now !!

  • There was me thinking that chauvanism was being condescending towards women, but fortunately I took a second to check with m-w to find the first definition is:

    excessive or blind patriotism compare JINGOISM.

    That'll learn me.

  • Backdoor / Table (Score:3)

    by suss ( 158993 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:39AM (#222326)
    Great! After the backdoor that microsoft built for them [slashdot.org] now they have a table too! I wonder when they'll start on the patio...

    ISS, IIS... who can see the difference?
  • For your next task you must build a table out of materials you find around the ISS. You will be gambling 25% of your oxygen supply on this task. The person who is voted to have contributed most to the building of the table will be granted immunity from ejection...

    rr

  • Re:And the russians up there? (Score:4)

    by Erasmus Darwin ( 183180 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @04:17AM (#222340)
    Granted, CNN is reporting to an American audience, so I can understand playing up the American angle a little bit, but this seems like it's poking fun at Russian Space Control a little too much.

    That makes me wonder if the Russian news coverage is something like:

    Following the corrupting influence of American astronaut Bill Shepherd, our two cosmonauts aboard the ISS, Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko, have been dupped into helping in a plot to sabotage the station's safety systems.

    The trio, who surely wouldn't have partaken on this foolhardy venture if they were under the command of a Russian commander, have disassembled the important aluminum frames that hold the solid oxygen generators in place. Without these generators, people on the space station could certainly die. Why were these unnecessary risks undertaken? In order to build a kitchen table. This represents the true extremity of American commercialized excess.

    It was only through the quick-thinking of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev that true disaster was averted. When Bill Sherpherd suggested that they use the airlock door as a table, Sergei stepped in and said such an action would be totally unacceptable.

    Furthermore, in order to prevent intervention in this dangerous undertaking, the group chose to hide its actions from Russian ground control. It is the belief of the Russian Space Agency that this secretive nature is a direct result of using an American who was once part of the special commando force, the Navy Seals. It is likely that the Russian cosmonauts also feared for their life and thus had to keep quiet about the mission.

    (Seriously, though, I got the impression that they actually built the stuff from packing material rather than stuff that was still being used. But I couldn't resist attempting to spin things the other way.)

  • Kinda reminds me of something you'd see on TLC...

    "Next on Bob Villa's Home Again, we'll be travelling to the ISS to visit the first off-planet furniture factory... The technicians here spend hours laboriously arranging spare parts to build a variety of tables, chairs, and barca-loungers..."

    Or maybe Junkyard Wars... "Ok teams, you have 10 hours to build... a table."

    I think it is definately a good sign for the space program in general, especially since it's generating good publicity. Also, perhaps they could find some new sponsors? "This wing sponsored by Home Depot..."

  • But which force works up in the ISS?
    Momentum: A body at rest stays at rest.

    They probably also use more tape, velcro, etc. But if something is put in place, it stays in place.
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • Don't tell the astronauts!!!!

    As we all know, The force of ignorance is capable of overriding the laws of physics.

  • NASA is costing each and every US citizen around $742 EACH YEAR, and yet the people on the space station cannot even follow orders ?

    Ok, you are clearly trolling but i still want to set the record straight.

    From http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/facts/HTML/FS-00 3-HQ.html [nasa.gov]:

    NASA has the smallest budget of the major agencies in the Federal Government. Its budget has represented less than 1 percent of the total Federal budget each year since 1977.

    The above link also mentions a total budget of 14,035 million dollars. This amounts to about 56 dollars per US citizen per year. Not quite your quoted number of $742 per year.

  • OK, since they have a table on the ISS, how does the stuff stay on the table?

    Here on the bottom of the gravity-well, 9.81m/s make sure the cup stays on the table if i put it there. But which force works up in the ISS?

  • Secret construction in space (Score:4)

    by billybob2001 ( 234675 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:25AM (#222359)
    Given Russian Mission Control's combativeness, the table became "a stealth project," according to Shepherd, a 51-year-old Navy captain.

    This paves the way for Son of Kitchen Table.

  • American ingenuity vs Russian "combattivness" (Score:5)

    by mike449 ( 238450 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @06:48AM (#222361)
    I am a Russian engineer. I was working for joint high-energy physics experiments in Fermilab, USA in 1991-1995. There was a number of situations, when we had to fix something or to come up with a solution to a problem under tight time and budget constraints. Usually, it was Russians who solved the problem in a non-standard way, without waiting for lengthy approval or purchasing process, going instead to the heap of old scrap for parts and materials.

    This tradition comes from the days of the centrally planned Soviet economy, when aproving and purchasing something might take 1-1.5 years(!), especially in non-military fundamental science area. We had to reuse everything, sometimes in very interesting ways.
  • If It Was Me, I'd probably put most of the tape sticky-side-down, with the occasional strip reversed. Most of the table would be smooth, with occasional places of stickiness built-in. Definitely sounds like a useful workbench, when a 2mm screw floating loose could wedge in some panel and kill you.

    Well it seems that one has a vit of a problem here. If the duct tape is facing down then the top is smooth, while if it is all facing up, then it doesn't sitck to the table (what a mess...). The idea of simply securing it around the sides would probably not hold up to much stress, so I would suggest an alternate strategy-- two layers of duct tape (how I would do it). The lower layer would look like this:

    Interspersed bands facing opposite directions...

    Where the ones on tip are facing down and the ones on the bottom are sticky-side-up. Then a second layer would be applied above, perpendicular to this layer, sticky side up, and held in place by the bands of of sticky duct tape. It would not need to be very sticky, just enough, so it would probably last for quite a while.


    Anyway, just a thought.

  • What else can these guys hack? (Score:5)

    by the real jeezus ( 246969 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:31AM (#222366)

    I bet someone on the I.S.S. will fashion a "tobacco water pipe" out of odds & ends before too long.



    Ewige Blumenkraft!
  • It's nice to see yet another example of my long held conviction that to get anything meaningful done, you have to keep management out of the loop.

  • Blessed, blessed duct tape! (Score:3)

    by tewwetruggur ( 253319 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:23AM (#222368) Homepage
    It only goes to show, with a little bit of duct tape, you can accomplish anything.

    This is pretty funny, and cool. Now they need to get a fourth up there to play euchre.

  • The article mentions the use of duct tape, but the didn't mention which side is up.

  • I believe this is the first major section, hence it is Alpha. Next section to be attached would be Beta, and so on. It doesn't have anything to do with being the first station in space.

  • Yes, the table would work in zero-gravity... (Score:4)

    by Gruneun ( 261463 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @05:07AM (#222373)
    The men drilled holes, bolted the pieces together, covered the top with duct tape and, after weeks of working on it a bit at a time, finally had a table on which to eat, cook and work.

    Has it occurred to any of you that are questioning the use of a table in space that you might not be thinking "outside the box" when you read this? What is the (probably incorrect) assumption that you made about the tape?

    The tape is probably stick-side up. This type of thinking is why they're up there and most of us are just reading an article about them.

  • Re:Umm, "spare parts"? (Score:3)

    by Savage-Rabbit ( 308260 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @05:02AM (#222381)
    Now that NASA is considering billing the Russians and that Tito dude for wasting astronauts time and endangering the ISS, I wonder if the Russians will respond in kind??

    One thing is for shure. If the furniture designer had been a Russian we would be in the middle of a regular shitstorm of NASA critiscism.

  • And the russians up there? (Score:3)

    by linca ( 314351 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:29AM (#222384)

    Is it just me or the report more or less forgot to talk about the role of the Russian cosmonauts?

    They probably spent as much time as the American guy, and probably had as much initiative... isn't CNN a bit chauvinistic in this?

  • Well, if the bottom falls out of the space program at least they'll have the experience and knowledge to go into the furniture building trade. It's always good to have a second career option.

    Claric
    --

  • Next thing you know, it's going to be a fridge out front, an old rusty Space Shuttle up on blocks in the yard, then there goes the neighborhood...
  • I hope they don't begin to hang the washed clothes on the solar panels.

  • Assuming down means towards the wall it landed on, then absolutley yes. If the bread managed to land buttered side up, it will not stick to the wall and bounce off. However, if it lands buttered side down, it will surely stick to the wall.

    Please note chances that the bread will end up buttered side down on certain portion of the space station is directly proportional to the cost of the landing site by Murphie's law.

    Actually, in real life, if the buttered bread floats off the table unnoticed, it will almost certainly end up in one of the air filters. (probably with equal probability for buttered side towards the filter) If it is ejected from the table with high enough speed to hit space station walls then the previos theory of bouncing/sticking is more likely.

  • Re:There is use for a table in zero-gravity ? (Score:3)

    by pekkerd ( 324579 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @10:34AM (#222390)
    If I was designing such a table from scratch, I would consider making something like an air hockey table in reverse. However, th improvised version probably uses velcro for simplicity. BTW acceleration is measure in m s^-2, and not m s^-1.

  • Umm, "spare parts"? (Score:5)

    by Delirium 21 ( 336429 ) on Tuesday May 15, 2001 @03:30AM (#222391)
    You'd think that if the astronauts on the space shuttle were able to think of using container frames as table parts, the people down here might have been able to think of a way preparing to do that.

    Considering the enormously high cost per unit mass to send things to space, I would hope that they would be maximizing the materials (plan to have packing materials fold out into other useful items, etc). Enough waste material to do things like building a table that's "too bulky to send up" or a muffler sort of scares me.
  • Which brings up the question that just begs to be asked, "Why did you scuttle Mir?"

    Would it have been more expensive to push the thing a into a slightly higher orbit? We've (as in humanity) have already paid the cost to push the thing out of the gravity well. Why not just leave it up there just in case there is an emergency in which it could be useful? I can't tell you what would constitute such an emergency, but that is the point. If I could list all possible contigencies, then I would be a god. But, I'm not and neither is anyone at NASA or any other space agency.

    I must just be my upbringing. We always kept junk in the back of the garage for the odd project that you didn't want to spend money on (not that there was ever much of that available). We could always make do with the junk pile when necessary. The worst thing that could have happened with Mir is that it would be converted into a storage bin and eventually a museum piece sometime in the next 100 yrs or so. Now, it is just some rusting metal at the bottom of the ocean.

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