Yes thinkpads and Ethernet cable and routers and web servers (IIS and Apache Tomcat) are part of the Operational local network (OpsLan) onboard the ISS - they are used primarily for astronaut (crew) mission planning, procedures and electronic communition - systems that are deemed not to be flight critical and are not directly used in command and control of the spacecraft (think email, documents and other messaging and notification systems)
Source: I was a ISS Flight Controller for 6 years and helped write the software for local intranet websites hosted onboard the ISS for the crew
I had an engineer from Boeing reach out to me once for help with the store and forwarding of Ethernet frames from the science experiment outputs. At the time he had a laptop running Qnx that would capture the frames, then when the ISS was over Houston it would replay them for the down link. I wonder if they have a better system in place now.
I was expecting the earth to be moving out of the windows, displaying what the ISS is passing over, albeit not real time.
I think that's possible - you can get current location of ISS and use that to grab images from Google, distort in the right way and display. Maybe a nice evenings project with my space-crazy 7 year old daughter..
Also, I thought the "Cupola" label you see when the page opens was highlighting a place called that on the ground below :)
A public HD livestream would be world changing. Right now access to real time, high resolution satellite imagery is still restricted to large organizations. Only some rocket launches have some views from above.
Thanks for the links, this picture [1] stunned me a little. Have to say I am a little jealous of all the people who have managed to get that level of direct experience.
That simulation made me sick to my stomach in two minutes flat. Of course, everyone has their own tolerance for this kind of stuff, so don’t try this if you’re new to VR.
Really surprised by all the loose cables. That seems like a safety issue. When I was in the military, cable management was a huge thing. We would get in trouble unless every cable was secure. Having someone trip over a cable and heaven forbid break it or yank it free, could lose lives. I would imagine stakes are similarly high in space.
What you don't see on the virtual map is that the station is very much alive.
There's constantly experiments, maintenance and whatnot going on. What may look like loose cabling/equipment here and there is probably someone that was in the middle of their work and had to get out of the shot.
The more critical systems (like life support) are all behind the panels for the same reasons your realized.
It's true that you cannot trip in the narrow sense, where it is gravity that pulls you to the ground after losing your balance. While floating through the station you can however get caught by a loose cable around the ankle, experience a sudden unexpected change of direction/rotation and bump your head into a laptop/wall/ceiling/floor!
Yeah, they explained in one of the tour videos that they spend most of their time in the "upward" position.
The lights for example always come from the "ceiling". Apparently it helps with the visual frame of reference (since you lose your sense of balance) and more convenient to read the thousands of various labels at a quick glance.
I had the same thought! Everywhere I've explored is so junky - every surface is consistently covered in stuff. I'd pay so much money to see Marie Kondo tidy in space.
They are T61p https://www.techrepublic.com/article/from-windows-10-linux-i... Most computer parts are made in China regardless of the vendor not including the CPU. Doubtful that they are using Libreboot, but that would be a good justification for using them.
From the first view that shows The view of Earth, our planet doesn't look flat. It would be interesting/entertaining to hear flat Earth apologists argue this away.
This is cool, but Google goes all the way to build this rather useless gimmick instead of solving actual support problems that come up here once a week.
The people who are working on that are probably not the same ones who would deal with some unrelated issues on other products. It’s not like they decided to not improve the gmail UI because they were working on the ISS project.
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Source: I was a ISS Flight Controller for 6 years and helped write the software for local intranet websites hosted onboard the ISS for the crew