

International Space Station Tour - rs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8rHarp1GEE

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snprbob86
Is anyone else incredibly jealous?

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ars
I'm almost 100% certain I'll be able to experience free fall sometime during
my life.

I'll be pretty disappointed if that doesn't happen though.

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wlievens
A lot of people said that in 1969. Don't get your hopes up too high.

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ars
Too late... :)

I'm hoping recent developments with scramjets (the X-51) will lead to single
stage to orbit, and more specifically Air launch to orbit.

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ugh
Damn, it’s really busy up there with the shuttle docked.

I wonder how long the _most-people-concurrently-in-space_ -record (13) will
stand after the shuttles retire. It could be a long time …

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sbierwagen
Perhaps relevant is Maciej Cegłowski's 2005 piece on the uselessness of the
Shuttle and the ISS.

    
    
      Taken on its own merits, the Shuttle gives the impression 
      of a vehicle designed to be launched repeatedly to 
      near-Earth orbit, tended by five to seven passengers with 
      little concern for their personal safety, and requiring 
      extravagant care and preparation before each flight, with 
      an almost fetishistic emphasis on reuse. Clearly this 
      primitive space plane must have been a sacred artifact, 
      used in religious rituals to deliver sacrifice to a sky 
      god. 
    

<http://idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm>

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wazoox
Obviously, he's got a point. The shuttle was meaningless without a space
station to dock too, and obviously many weird concessions were made for the
sake of military applications.

But by his metric, manned flights as a whole are meaningless. That everything
we do must be useful and come with a predictable ROI is questionable. Do we
need the pyramids, the cathedrals? What about the LHC?

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patio11
_But by his metric, manned flights as a whole are meaningless._

Manned flights as a whole _are_ meaningless. They accomplish no purpose but to
generate PR for billion dollar handouts to defense contractors.

There is nothing -- _nothing_ \-- humans can do in space that systems cannot
do better, with the exceptions of "mug for the camera" and "perish". What
passes for "science experiments" in space bears more resemblance to a high
school fair in microgravity than to actual science.

(Here's a spider spinning its web... in microgravity! With four highly trained
military officers and a few hundred million in hardware along for the ride!)

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wazoox
> Manned flights as a whole are meaningless. They accomplish no purpose but to
> generate PR for billion dollar handouts to defense contractors.

Sure, but people /do want/ to fly, and visit the moons of saturn. Well I don't
know for you, but I sure want to :) It's probably the main motivation for
space exploration at the individual level.

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decadentcactus
Agreed. I want to go up there too, mostly because it's _there_ , and something
to accomplish. I think robots also have their place however.

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jluxenberg
Got a kick out of the "speed limit" sign at 4:25

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jonursenbach
Seeing the inside of the shuttle flight deck gives me very very vivid
reminders of crashing my shuttle/team during a sim at the old Space Camp in
Mountain View; I was part of the first class to go through in '96.

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gregn
that would have been really good if they would have cut the music and
eliminated the silly editing, just leaving it in one fluid shot, no overlays,
none of that crap. as it was, it was so distracting I had to turn it off.
blech.

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kaib
A few minutes after the horrible video editing it turns into a great full
screen narrated tour. Just grit your teeth in agony until then...

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ars
Mute the horrible audio till 2:30.

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gregn
thanks, I will.

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paraschopra
You mean there is no floor to walk in ISS? Seriously, the tour was amazing but
I kept wanting to look for the window-view of Earth.

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jschuur
They attached the 'cupola' window to Node 3 a few months ago, that points down
towards Earth:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwEyWrEqXmg>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNQ8s2jnMTc>

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dareiff
Look to be quite a few hacks in there — tubes and tubes and tubes. Though I
suppose with all the modules, it's one big hack.

------
est
in space people walk by hand.

