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back to article Two astronauts conduct a successful spacewalk, world+dog lose minds

Last week the International Space Station celebrated its first all-woman spacewalk, ESA politely asked NASA for some help with parachutes and boffins said "goodnight, sweet prince" to the last Van Allen Probe. From me to BCDU After a postponement due to suit sizes, which said more about the parlous state of NASA's spacewalking …

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  1. Rafael #872397
    Flame

    world+dog lose minds

    Great news, interesting read, all this, but can we please avoid the "[world||world+dog|world+cat|everyone|ahypotheticalbutimpossibletoquantifylargesegmentofanyrealorimaginarypopulation] lose minds" and "break the internet" cliches?

    You are not a tabloid.

    3 24 Reply
    1. Alister
      Reply Icon

      Re: world+dog lose minds

      You are not a tabloid.

      WRONG!

      El Reg is indeed, and proudly, a tabloid. See the red top.

      44 0 Reply
      1. jake Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: world+dog lose minds

        Thus the existence of Bootnotes ...

        5 0 Reply
    2. joeW
      Reply Icon

      Re: world+dog lose minds

      The Register is a tabloid. The red heading isn't a coincidence.

      EDIT - curses, beaten to it by seconds.

      23 0 Reply
    3. imanidiot Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: world+dog lose minds

      A tabloid with better standards than most perhaps, but a tabloid nonetheless. And proud of it.

      24 0 Reply
    4. MyffyW Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      GOTCHA!

      Sympathise @Rafael #872397 'cos nobody deserves just downvotes, but our sorraway El Reg ploughs a delicate line between Computer Weekly, New Scientist, The Today Programme and The Daily Star

      14 0 Reply
      1. Graham Cunningham
        Reply Icon

        Re: GOTCHA!

        MyffyW, have an upvote for the phrase "ploughs a delicate line" - rofl!

        7 0 Reply
        1. MyffyW Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: GOTCHA!

          @Graham - thx hun, hope you enjoyed your roll on the floor

          1 0 Reply
    5. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: world+dog lose minds

      I get what you're saying but tread lightly, there's a metric ton of snowflakes in here...Ferminists too!

      2 3 Reply
      1. MyffyW Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: world+dog lose minds

        @AC not absolutely what certain what a "Ferminist" is - something to do with Enrico Fermi maybe?

        In unrelated news I am a proud feminist and a singularly unique snowflake.

        0 0 Reply
  2. Allan George Dyer

    ISS Passes Bechdel test?

    Or perhaps this is a space-station version of the Bechdel test?

    4 0 Reply
  3. imanidiot Silver badge
    Facepalm

    "Maybe they didn't like my message?"

    No Trumpalumpa, they probably didn't like your message that clearly shows you couldn't be bothered to have someone inform you of the basic facts before opening your mouth. This is why the world does not like you.

    27 3 Reply
    1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: "Maybe they didn't like my message?"

      Getting hard to tell if he's generally just accidentally ignorant, or willfully so. Either way he's proved himself a moron yet again.

      19 1 Reply
      1. phuzz Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: "Maybe they didn't like my message?"

        If you go back and look at videos from fifteen, twenty years ago, he used to be able to speak in coherent sentences. Some kind of dementia?

        Plus of course he's a massive narcissist, so he just doesn't pay attention to facts unless they directly affect him, and then he'll 'remember' whatever sounds best to him, not the actual truth.

        19 0 Reply
        1. Mark 85
          Reply Icon

          Re: "Maybe they didn't like my message?"

          Hmm... the narcissist part has been suggested by more than one columnist and politician on each side of the political spectrum.

          Here's one sample: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/george-conway-trump-unfit-office/599128/ There's more out there that a bit of Googling will uncover.

          Downvote away Trump supporters.

          5 1 Reply
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: "Maybe they didn't like my message?"

            Good Luck with that...You're outnumbered but ignorant of the fact...

            0 4 Reply
            1. phuzz Silver badge
              Reply Icon

              Re: "Maybe they didn't like my message?"

              Erm, didn't he get less votes than Clinton?

              Ah yes, I think the URL of the wiki page tells most of the story:

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote#2016:_Donald_Trump

              4 0 Reply
        2. jake Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: "Maybe they didn't like my message?"

          "Some kind of dementia?"

          He has been showing many of the clinical signs of senility for several years now.

          3 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      Re: "Maybe they didn't like my message?"

      Note at 2:31 in the video. Just after they corrected his statement on women in space, he uses his middle finger to brush his eyebrow, something he has done repeatedly when he doesn't like a situation.

      https://gizmodo.com/did-president-trump-give-the-middle-finger-to-women-ast-1839217817

      7 0 Reply

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

    De-orbit

    Have to wonder why they didn't do a (relatively) controlled de-orbit while there was still enough fuel, instead of leaving them up there to get in the way and come done in an uncontrolled unpredictable way some time in the next 15 years.

    2 0 Reply
    1. Muscleguy
      Reply Icon

      Re: De-orbit

      Sometimes you have to be pragmatic. For what you want they would need more fuel which would have meant curtailing the science part.

      There is an aphorism that you have to careful the perfect doesn’t become the enemy of the good. I would add good enough. The craft will not stay up, they will descend. They will have to be hit obliquely by something fairly massive to derail their momentum. If they fell apart the pieces would still be in that orbit and just become a group of small fireballs instead of one big one.

      Also all the known orbits are submitted and plotted. Everyone knows where everything is in order for collisions to be avoided.

      0 0 Reply
  6. RyokuMas
    Trollface

    "Last week the International Space Station celebrated its first all-woman spacewalk..."

    Surely in these enlightened days of gender fluidity, it doesn't matter whether the astronauts were male or female, and therefore this was just another spacewalk?

    7 2 Reply
    1. ITS Retired
      Reply Icon

      Because women still have a ways to go for full equality in the asinine gender wars.

      At least women are not considered property anymore, in most places in the world today, so there is that.

      5 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        "At least women are not considered property anymore, in most places"

        Well, just wait Trump gives Afghanistan back to Talibans...

        5 0 Reply
  7. Tikimon
    FAIL

    Sorry Richard, you blew it

    "After a postponement due to suit sizes, which said more about the parlous state of NASA's spacewalking gear than the astronauts themselves."

    Sorry, it was EVERYTHING about the astronauts themselves. One of them decided WHEN IN SPACE ALREADY that she preferred the fit of a different size suit than the one she had chosen on the ground. They only had one suit of that size, so they let her use that one instead of her own. That's NASA changing a mission to accommodate a woman's needs by the way, hardly gender insensitive. However, they only had one suit that size so no two-woman spacewalks on that mission.

    Get your facts straight before implying a "parlous state".

    5 12 Reply
    1. tekHedd
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      Re: Sorry Richard, you blew it

      "They only had one suit of that size" sounds pretty parlous to me.

      10 1 Reply
      1. Vulch
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        Re: Sorry Richard, you blew it

        Strictly speaking they don't have any complete suits in a particular size on the station. What they have is a number of space suit parts in different sizes that can be combined to produce the best fit for any given astronaut. It takes time to swap bits round, in particular to move the life support bits from one torso unit to another. In the previous spacewalk it was decided to change who would be going outside rather than spend the several crew days required to build the different sized suit.

        11 0 Reply
    2. cray74
      Reply Icon

      Re: Sorry Richard, you blew it

      One of them decided WHEN IN SPACE ALREADY that she preferred the fit of a different size suit than the one she had chosen on the ground.

      It is normal for astronauts to gain about 3% in height after some days in zero-G. An astronaut on the borderline between suit sizes might well gain a size when they're in orbit. That's not "a decision," it's a physiological change involving a stretching spine.

      The small number of suit pieces on the ISS does represent a "parlous state" if NASA isn't accommodating that known effect on humans.

      9 0 Reply
      1. Muscleguy
        Reply Icon

        Re: Sorry Richard, you blew it

        indeed, it’s the opposite to the effect that we get slightly shorter through the day as our intervertebral discs compress under gravity. They stretch out again after a night spent lying down asleep. Which information caused some people to try and sleep hanging upside down. People with ideas they might not be tall enough.

        5 0 Reply
        1. jake Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          Re: Sorry Richard, you blew it

          "People with ideas they might not be tall enough."

          As my Grandfather told me when I was about four years old "If your feet reach the ground when you are standing, you are EXACTLY the right height" ...

          7 0 Reply
        2. Morten_T
          Reply Icon
          Joke

          Re: Sorry Richard, you blew it

          Just sleep 16 hours a day, job done :D

          1 0 Reply
      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Sorry Richard, you blew it

        "It is normal for astronauts to gain about 3% in height after some days in zero-G. An astronaut on the borderline between suit sizes might well gain a size when they're in orbit. That's not "a decision," it's a physiological change involving a stretching spine."

        I wonder who it was who forget to inform her of that fact when she made the suit size decision on the ground? It's a known fact so should have been taken into account, especially if she was "borderline" between the sizes.

        0 1 Reply
  8. sbt
    Pint

    Just raising a glass...

    ... to some top-notch boffinry on those Van Allan probes.

    It's hard to play the under-promise/over-deliver game when the costs are literally sky-high and funding is hard to get, but these folks played it well in an ultra-harsh environment.

    1 0 Reply

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