International Space Station Tour

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8rHarp1GEE

by rs • 16 years ago

53 22 16 years ago

sbierwagen• 16 years ago

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

wazoox2• 16 years ago

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?

patio11• 16 years ago

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!)

ugh• 16 years ago

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 …

snprbob86• 16 years ago

Is anyone else incredibly jealous?

ars3• 16 years ago

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.

wlievens• 16 years ago

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

lisper• 16 years ago

Free fall for short periods (a couple of seconds) is easily attainable in a small airplane. Go to your nearest general aviation airport and find yourself an aerobatics instructor and you can get a taste of zero G for a couple of hundred bucks.

dareiff• 16 years ago

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.

jonursenbach• 16 years ago

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.

gregn3• 16 years ago

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.

kaib• 16 years ago

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...

ars3• 16 years ago

Mute the horrible audio till 2:30.

gregn3• 16 years ago

thanks

est• 16 years ago

in space people walk by hand.

paraschopra• 16 years ago

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.

jschuur• 16 years ago

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

jluxenberg• 16 years ago

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

International Space Station Tour

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