International Space Station Sucks

from the that's-not-good dept

Astronauts aboard the international space station say that life sucks there. It sounds as though very little thought was put into a lot of things. American appliances couldn't plug in to Russian outlets. They didn't have enough supplies (ran out of shampoo, had to use chili sauce to as a cleaning gel), velcro pads worked too well (everything stuck to them), a DVD player screen was too small (too small for what?), and best of all - that computer they were supposed to use to record when things broke? It broke.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Joe Splace, 13 Jul 2001 @ 8:54pm

    Designed to Suck

    I am one of those people who suspect that the International Space Station is merely a cover for a money laundering operation designed to thinly veil the lining of the kleptocrats pockets in Moscow. Clinton, Gore and Bush all have some things in common -- not one of them ever opposed the Space Station, or asked that the U.S. be reimbursed for even a fraction of the aid money stolen by the Russian thugs in the last few years. Tourists in space -- sure, we'll pay for that, too!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Pat Stakem, 16 Jul 2001 @ 8:47am

    space station

    Well, I have read the complete (yet edited) report. It is interesting to read how much on-orbit time is spent in troubleshooting, fixing, and working around problems. There seems to be a lot of problems with software, system configuration, routing, and email. They use commercial laptops, running Windows. Have we exported our problems to space? Manned on-orbit time is a VERY expensive resource - it should be used for new discoveries, not fixing old problems.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Enrique Ruiz, 31 Mar 2003 @ 6:54pm

      Re: space station

      I worked on that hunk of crap in Kennedy Space Center. It is the most pathetic peice of just I have ever seen. The laptops the astronauts would use were some cheap ass slow processors and the bus protocol the system uses is slow. What they are sending up there is a huge storage container which will be plagued with problems and will be of little use. The reason why the program is having budget overuns is that an engineer cant do anything without having to get 50 signatures and 5 techs. And thats even to turn on a computer monitor.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.