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Before construction on the International Space Station began, a flood of conceptual designs passed across the drawing board, an Wired has gathered a gallery of designs that didn’t make the cut.
From far out, scifi influenced designs to more mundane designs that missed the mark by a hair, these concept drawings are fun to peruse and take us back to a simpler time in space design, a time when landing a space shuttle on a runway atop the space station actually made a lot of sense. Check them all out at the link below, and see what space looked like back in the day.
Video game entrepreneur Richard Garriott took a camera with him during his recent stay on the International Space Station. He and the astronauts put it to good use by filming a short movie called Apogee of Fear. In this gripping story, the inhabitants of the ISS discover that too much oxygen is being consumed to account for their number. There must be someone else — or something else — on board!
Watch a recording of a performance of Apogee of Fear at the link. Crow and Tom Servo aren’t in it, but Garriott can probably sign them for the sequel.
Link -via The Mary Sue | Photo: First Run Features
That, Neatoramanauts, is the 2,065 miles-long border fence between India and Pakistan:
A striking feature is the line of lights, with a distinctly orange hue, snaking across the center of the image. It appears to be more continuous and brighter than most highways in the view. This is the fenced and floodlit border zone between India and Pakistan. The fence is designed to discourage smuggling and arms trafficking. A similar fenced zone separates India’s eastern border from Bangladesh (not visible).
The photo was taken by the crew at the International Space Station: Link - via TYWKIWDBI
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On December 21, 2011, International Space Station Commander Dan Burbank captured the spectacular sight of Comet Lovejoy as seen from 240 miles above the Earth. Take a look: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
Astronauts
aboard the International Space Station will soon get a respite from having
to wear stinky clothes: NASA is commissioning a
washer-dryer combo:
Imagine putting dirty clothes into a washing machine, leaving, and only coming back once the freshly cleaned clothes have been dried out by microwaves. That out-of-this-world-laundry concept could someday become a reality for astronauts and space explorers headed for the moon, asteroids or Mars.
Such a washing machine is designed to clean dirty astronaut clothing inside a sealed plastic bag that can also receive a drying blast of microwaves. The simple one-step process represents an energy- and water-efficient solution that spares space travelers from hauling a water-intensive washing machine up into space or bringing along disposable clothing.
Which brings the obvious question to mind: what have they been doing with their clothes?
The Daily Mail has the answer:
Brave - and strong-stomached - astronauts usually wear underwear for three or four days before putting them in a capsule that is ejected and burns up in the atmosphere. Other clothes are worn 'for months'.
So if you saw a streak of light in the sky, and you thought you've been wishing upon a falling star, think again. That may just be some astronaut's underwear. Thanks Tiffany!
A national education program being carried out right now on the International Space Station involves watching the behavior or animals and insects in microgravity. This video is of Esmerelda, a golden silk orb-weaver spider (Nephila clavipes), weaving a web in her new low-gravity home. Typically, an orb-weaver will spin an asymmetrical web, but researchers have noticed that those spun by the two spiders on the ISS are becoming more circular. In addition, the spiders no longer sit at the tops of their webs facing downwards, and are instead hanging out in all sorts of positions to look out for their captured prey–something that doesn’t happen here on Earth.
Read more about the experiment and the oddities in Esmeralda’s behavior on New Scientist. Link
This past Saturday Pope Benedict became the first pope to call astronauts in space. He talked to the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour along with those at the International Space Station.
From space, “I think it must be obvious to you that we all live together on this earth and how absurd it is that we fight and kill,” said Benedict, speaking from the Vatican to the International Space Station, where the space shuttle Endeavour docked Wednesday during its final mission.
Sure, we’ve all seen pictures of a space shuttle docking. But this one was taken from Earth using a fairly ordinary telescope guided by hand:
This remarkable picture was taken by Rob Bullen on Saturday February 26 from the UK, using an 8.5? telescope. I’ll note that’s relatively small as telescopes go! But the ISS is now over 100 meters long, and if it’s directly overhead (that is, the closest it can be to an observer on the ground) it appears large enough to easily look elongated in binoculars — in fact, it would be big enough to look elongated to someone with good eyesight and no aid at all*! Still, images like this are difficult to obtain even with a carefully guided telescope equipped with a video camera.
Oh — did I mention that Rob hand-guided his telescope for this shot?
Link via Popular Science
When astronauts work outside the International Space Station, they remain tethered to it with a very strong cable. Nonetheless, NASA has made preparations for the unlikely event that the tether breaks. Astronauts have an emergency jetpack that they can use to move back to the station. But what if the astronaut is unconscious or the jetpack fails?
Jim Oberg, a space journalist who worked at the space shuttle’s mission-control center for 22 years and specialized in rendezvous procedures, weighs in on the options for rescue. The station’s robotic arm, he explains, is usually not within range of where the astronauts work and moves too slowly to grab someone. The Soyuz vehicles need a full day to power up and undock. By then, the carbon dioxide filters in the astronaut’s spacesuit would run out, asphyxiating him. And the ISS cannot redirect its positioning rocket quickly enough to catch up to a runaway astronaut.
In a worst-case situation, the only rescue option, according to Oberg, would be for a second astronaut to link together several tethers end-to-end, attach them to the station, and then use his Safer pack to jet over to his crewmate and haul him in. Certain conditions could make a rescue easier, he says. If an astronaut floated away more or less at a right angle from the station’s orbit, orbital dynamics (which require too much math to explain here) dictate that he would float back toward the station in about an hour.
Link | Photo: NASA
This excellent image captured by NASA shows astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson gazing out of a window on the International Space Station. It was taken last September. Dyson, a chemist, went into orbit on April 2, 2010 and remained on the station for 174 days.
This week will mark the tenth anniversary of continuous human habitation onboard the International Space Station:
More than 200 orbiting explorers have visited the space complex; 15 nations have contributed to the missions, providing modules and hardware; and more than 600 experiments have been carried out on board.
Link via Gizmodo | Photo: NASA
Comments Off Astronaut and educator Don Pettit recorded this time-lapse video from the International Space Station. It shows day turning into night as the Earth rotates beneath him.
via Radley Balko
Three years ago, Miss Cellania posted a picture of the Aurora Australis — the Southern Lights — as seen from the IMAGE spacecraft. The lovely photo above of the same phenomenon was taken on May 29 from the International Space Station. In Popular Science, Clay Dillow writes:
This particular aurora is unique in the sense that it was spotted fairly far away from the South Pole over the southern Indian Ocean, likely as a result of a large ejection of energy that burst from the sun on May 24. The photographer is looking south toward Antarctica, though you can’t see the southernmost continent in the photograph. The ISS orbits at around 220 miles, while the aurora was located somewhere in the ionosphere between 60 and 190 miles above the planet’s surface.
Link via Popular Science | Photo: NASA
The user-generated website There, I Fixed It often showcases how people use duct tape to fix anything. An engineer at NASA submitted photos of how duct tape is put to work on the International Space Station! See more pictures and the explanation at the site. Link
In the 50s and 60s, scientists were already thinking about what a space station in Earth orbit might need, what it might look like. Surprisingly, many of the concepts were not that far off from reality, including a design concept that was made back in 1869. This was an Earth-based research/fantasy concept called "BRICK MOON" which was designed to be a self-contained habitat that featured many of the same requirements of a space station. Pictured is MOL, just one of nine space station concepts in this article.
This is a concept depiction of a orbiting space station that the USAF (United States Air Force) was considering in the 1960s. The intent was that a two-person crew would spend a month aboard the station before being rotated out and brought back to Earth. The orbiting station was to be called “MOL”, the Manned Orbiting Laboratory.was on the mind of men decades ago, with some surprising similarities to today’s space platforms these visionaries seemed to predict the future. A future that they could not an have possibly understood or fathomed. Ultimately, we will need a new fleet of space shuttles to get there.”
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by thestickman.
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A Japanese firm is producing a limited run of beer made from barley which spent time on the International Space Station. From The Japan Times:
The brewer will receive orders for the Sapporo Space Barley beer via the Internet until Dec. 24, making 250 six-packs, holding 330-ml bottles, available at a price of ¥10,000 each, Sapporo said Thursday, adding the product will be delivered to customers in late January. Proceeds will be used for the promotion of science education.
The original barley seeds were stored for five months in the Russian module of the International Space Station.
Link via Nerdcore | Photo: Sapporo Breweries
These two photos are from the latest Space Shuttle Atlantis mission (STS-129), which seemed to come and go much faster than the one before it. At left, Atlantis prepares to dock at the International Space Station. At right, the sunset through Earth’s thin blue atmosphere (photos by NASA). These and ten more can be blown up to satisfyingly gorgeous proportions at ChamorroBible.
Wired has a list of some of the strangest mission patches that NASA has produced. The patch above was for the creation of the Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules of the International Space Station. NASA selected a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle to represent the project because three of the four modules share names with those characters. The modules were built by the Italian Space Agency, so they are named after the Italian Renaissance artists, rather than the turtles.
When one of the two toilets on the International Space Station broke, io9 blogger Lauren Davis was inspired to write about the toilets (or utter lack thereof) in various science fiction movies, TV shows, and books. She rounds up the commodes from Star Trek, Lexx, Babylon 5, Galaxy Quest, Firefly, and others.
Apparently on the Enterprise-D, there was only one toilet, and the post includes a video of Jonathan Frakes pointing it out on a schematic of the ship.
image by flickr user Richard Freedman used under creative commons license
Aw! Being the Internet slowpoke, I’ve just learned that NASA has bucked the will of the people and named the International Space Station’s next module "Tranquility" instead of the rightful winner of the online voting contest, "Colbert" (after the comedian Stephen Colbert).
But Colbert didn’t go away empty handed: he’s got a treadmill named after him and millions of adoring fans (and lots of money) to console him during these difficult times:
The space agency had asked people for help naming the node by voting on NASA-suggested names and writing in their own suggestions. After the poll ended on 20 March, "Colbert" came out the clear winner with more than 230,000 votes, while "Tranquility" garnered a mere 4493 votes. [...]
But Colbert didn’t walk away empty handed.
Astronaut Sunita Williams, who ran the first marathon in space two years ago, announced on his show on Tuesday that Colbert would get something in the new node named for him – and it’s not the toilet, as had been rumoured. Williams said his name would grace the node’s treadmill, due to launch in August. The exercise equipment will be called the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.
