back to article NASA 'nauts complete another EPIC SPACEWALK to route cables around ISS

Astronauts working on NASA's International Space Station have snaked yet more cabling around the orbiting science lab. Live images of Terry Virts' and Barry Wilmore's latest spacewalk were beamed down to Earth and aired via the U.S. agency's live TV feed. The 'nauts carried out the installations to reconfigure the ISS for new …

  1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Any minimally acceptable spacestation has riveted joints, fat, snaking cabling on floor, ceiling and inside barely accessible ducts, flickering and/or inexistent interior lighting and people with slavic accents (possibly with US-style baseball caps and gaily colored mission patches).

    We are getting to it. Slowly.

    1. fearnothing

      Along with deadly alien life forms in the ventilation ducts. Just sayin'.

      1. Little Mouse

        ...and pipes full of pressurised steam...

        1. Chris G

          "...and pipes full of pressurised steam..."

          Yeah! what is that all about? Central heating.

          Hollywood spaceships are not that different from Hollywood warships WWII vintage.

          I wouldn't be too surprised to hear an Asdic pinging away to detect meteorites.

          1. TheProf

            No steam but....

            Didn't the moon shuttle in 2001: A Space Odyssey have pinging noises to help guide the pilots to the landing pad?

  2. Crazy Operations Guy

    Good work boys!

    Now to see about getting the cable-layer here on earth to work more than 5 Hours 10 minutes and produce something that doesn't look like a giant cat's hairball...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why don't they point some of the cameras towards space?

    Y'know, just for a change.

    1. Crazy Operations Guy

      Re: Why don't they point some of the cameras towards space?

      Because there is no reason to. Any image they get wouldn't be any better (and for the most part, be far worse) than scientists could get with imaging satellites or telescopes. The cameras that are on the ISS are there for very specific tasks and those tasks are far more important than taking mediocre pictures of space (Such as making sure nothing has made a hole in the hull, or that they aren't leaking something important).

      In short, the ISS is an outstanding laboratory, but a really crappy observatory.

    2. phuzz Silver badge
      Angel

      Re: Why don't they point some of the cameras towards space?

      There's a live stream of the Earth facing cameras that you can watch any time they're in daylight (approx every 40 mins), you can find it here.

      I find it quite relaxing to just leave running on a spare screen.

    3. cray74

      Re: Why don't they point some of the cameras towards space?

      Trick question, since the ISS regularly photographs space. ISS photographs and videos of comets, the sun, and stars have all received press time. Why don't you try Google, y'know, just for a change?

  4. Little Mouse

    Routing cables?

    That's NASA-speak for nudging the TV aerial around a bit.

    It must be murder keeping it pointing in the right direction all the time.

    1. Wanting more

      Re: Routing cables?

      Wasn't that what went wrong with Odyssey / H.A.L. ?

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: Routing cables?

        No

    2. Mark 85

      Re: Routing cables?

      A real antenna and not a coat hanger with some bits of tin foil hanging off the ends?

      1. WraithCadmus

        Re: Routing cables?

        At least in space the foil won't get whipped off by the wind...

  5. Leeroy

    Would it not be easier to run some cat 6 stp through the door once it has docked ? Or maybe have the connector designed into the docking mechanism. Not sure if wi fi would work up there but if anyone could explain why not I would be very interested ! ( shielding from interference I expect).

    Not my field. .... I spent a few hours today contemplating how soft close copier doors work with springs and pistons, awesome !

    1. Crazy Operations Guy

      The sheer amount of cosmic radiation would drown out any WiFi signal, it would even drown out a wired network connection at normal voltages, spacecraft usually use 50 V or higher on inter-machine communications. Shielding has to be ridiculously thick in order to get packet loss down below 50% as it is. Ethernet is just not suited for space applications. And even without those issues, the signal would be fighting with the array of communications antennas the station needs.

      Then there is the cost of running the cable: bulkhead couplers that can withstand the pressure differential between the interior and exterior of the station as well as standing up to the extreme temperature on the exterior would be very cost-prohibitive (Especially on something that only has about 5 years of life left). Not to mention the risk of cutting holes into the doors, even if they had available space to make the holes.

      But the most important reason to put stuff like this on the outside is that there isn't much space on the inside to add anything. Imagine lining the walls, deck, and ceiling of a 737 with server racks, and that give you a good idea of what its like on the station.

      But all that aside, there is no point to such a high-speed network. Other than the Command and Control data, voice/video communications, and personal internet traffic; the bulk of the data produced on the ISS is with experiments, and their data is stored internally and sneaker-netted back to earth with the experiment's modules (not too dissimilar to a rack-mount server). Either that or the data is gathered on the experimental subjects after they've been returned to earth.

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Holmes

        The sheer amount of cosmic radiation would drown out any WiFi signal, it would even drown out a wired network connection at normal voltages

        WTF? You seem to mistake space for the interior of a nuclear reactor mysteriously working in the radio-wave spectrum.

        Looks like all these communication satellites are big conspiracy.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Also: SpaceWire uses LVDS at ~1V. The idea seems to be to suppress emission of radio energy.

      2. Annihilator
        Boffin

        "The sheer amount of cosmic radiation would drown out any WiFi signal"

        They already use wifi for their laptops on the ISS.

        Cosmic radiation is more of a problem for those outside the earth's magnetic field. The ISS crew only experience about 5x the radiation an aircraft crew experience.

  6. Wombling_Free

    Cables? Piping?

    Or very secure straps to the Russian modules....

  7. Allan George Dyer

    Good job

    I grumble when I have to crawl under a desk to replace a cable...

  8. ChaosFreak

    Open the Pod Bay Doors

    What if HAL doesn't let them back into the airlock.

  9. Barticus

    NASA's International Space Station?

    Is that like America's World Super Bowl?

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