
Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS - urahara
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40640039
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gcb0
and no word on how it moves. even bbc is going downhill :(

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eeZah7Ux
Forgive the stupid question: what makes the use of reaction wheels and fans
preferred over fans installed at different angles?

Energy efficiency or fan reliability perhaps?

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Retric
Precision and speed, reaction wheels can go from start, rotate you one degree
and then stop all motion. With fans your going to end up constantly correcting
because you never hit zero rotation.

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eeZah7Ux
The robot is exposed to the station airflow so it has to adjust constantly
anyways.

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Retric
While non zero, the spherical shape and minimal ISS airflow generally makes
this a non issue. You can use those reaction wheels to calibrate very precise
adjustments over time, you can also just bump into something to get rid of
excess rotation.

Note, space telescopes effectively use both approaches.

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analyst74
Super excited! Another inch closer to more viable space missions!

Instead of arguing about robot vs astronaut effectiveness, let's just use
robot to augment astronaut where it can, and go from there!

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meerita
Why the quality is so poor? Looks like taken from a digital camera from 2000.

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lawless123
Doesn't look that bad.

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fredley
First thought: GLaDOS personality core.

> Fish shaped volatile organic compounds and sediment shaped sediment.

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em3rgent0rdr
It's great to see automation save on expensive human labor for taking picture.
Now the trick is to automate a lot of the human labor up there. No need waste
tons of money for what amounts to glorified lab assistants.

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lukasm
First association
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afHt_1sVQ14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afHt_1sVQ14)

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etiam
Love the robot, but I'm uncomfortable at what I see as an implication in the
article that now the astronauts should stop taking pictures and do more
productive things instead.

I'm pretty sure there's values to that activity beyond having photographic
registrations to show afterwards. (I'm also not convinced the little ball of
cuteness is anywhere close to matching their choice of scenes yet)

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jamesvandyne
They'll should still have plenty of time for taking photos. Astronauts usually
work a regular 8-ish hour work day up in the ISS and have weekends etc...

2 of those working hours each day are blocked out for exercise, too, so this
should be a real boon.

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bostonpete
They work 8 hours a day _including_ exercise? That seems bizarre to me. I know
we don't want them burning out, etc., but if we're sending astronauts up there
at great expense I'd think we'd want to ask them to put in a little more than
8 hour days.

16 hours a day plus weekends seems like a ridiculous amount of free time given
that there's no commuting, family time (other than calls), yard work, social
engagements, etc.

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Tade0
Bear in mind that in space exercise is mandatory, because the lack of it
considerably reduces the time a given person can spend there, which in turn
would require more frequent launches, which are expensive.

Also - they're the best of the best. They sort of earned the privilege of not
doing overtime.

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CodeCube
Also, let's not forget that overworking them has literally led to a "mutiny"
in space before ;)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab_mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab_mutiny)

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zitterbewegung
Wait they finally came out with the drone? I remember this was being teased
when the ISS first launched. This is awesome! NASA / JAXA should make a plush
toy or regular drone that could be used on the ground for fundraising.

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pillar_of_autum
NASA is working on a similar (but more capable and larger) robot right now,
with plans to open-source all the code. I'm curious what the internals of
JAXA's robot look like. That thing is pretty small.

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alex_duf
I can understand how it rotates, but how does it moves? as in going from one
module to the next one?

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Andreas7798
it needs an atmosphere (not mentioned what minimum pressure) to move using its
propellers between the modules.

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spthorn60
Why is the astronaut wearing a belt?

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noonespecial
If you put a fabric covering on any flexible structure and then flex it, the
fabric has a tendency to gather at the joints. I'm surprised he has not
elastic straps on his ankles as well as I'b bet without the usual forces in
play I would think his pants would ride up his calves towards his knees as
well.

There is an entire community of people however who collect "evidence" that the
ISS is a hoax! This would be exactly the kind of "proof" they'd love!

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konart
Haro v0.1

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diegoperini
First thing I did when I clicked the comment section is cmd+f to search for
it. Thank you random person on the internet. :)

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lasermike026
Squeal! I don't care what it does!

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LostCharacter
So, they (almost) made a Kino? Now, if they can just get it to float on Earth,
too...

