ISS astronauts begin spacewalk to install new docking adapter Two astronauts from the International Space Station have started their spacewalk to install the new International Docking Adapter. Jeff Williams, an experienced spacewalker, is joined by Kate Rubins, who is the twelfth female astronaut to perform a spacewalk. The Docking Adapter is the connecting point for spacecraft joining …
This is technically incorrect. In LEO, there is %92 as much gravity as on Earth's surface. However, even though there is nearly as much gravity, you can't drop a wrench because it has been pre-dropped. Everything in free-fall is already dropping as much as it can possibly drop, and cannot be dropped any further.
Can you spill a glass of water, while underwater?
"Can you spill a glass of water, while underwater?"
Well, in this case, yeah, you kinda can. The problem is that unlike cows known to be quite practically spherical, the ISS isn't exactly a point-sized object, yet the "no falling" perfect equilibrium orbit applies only to its centre of mass. Everything that isn't in that single point keeps not falling out of orbit out of sheer determination and, well, due to being attached to the rest of the ISS. Putting it differently, there _is_ gravity inside the ISS too, stuff does fall instead of just hovering motionlessly - albeit really slowly. So dropping an unsecured wrench outside would sooner or later see it drift away too - but you'd likely have lots of time to reach out and retrieve it if you just left it there floating...
At an ISS briefing two years ago it was said that they had dropped two wrenches, into earth orbit, due to a design faults in the tethers.
Each wrench cost more than $million. In fact when astronauts practice in the "tank" they use plastic wrenches as the real ones don't like water.
Wrench? They "dropped" a whole tool bag.
It floated away and later re-entered Earth's atmosphere.
On the plus side, it wasn't a classic Nokia. :)
It's not narrower.
The previous international docking adaptors were based on the one designed as part of the Apollo Soyuz Test Program, and have a 80cm wide opening.
The new International Docking Adaptor is a modification of that design, and still has an 80cm aperture.
Also, this is a docking adaptor for pressurised spacecraft, not an airlock where people will be exiting to do spacewalks, therefore it will only ever contain people in shirtsleeves, not spacesuits.
Of course, according to that veritable font of knowledge Wikipedia, IDA is in fact mostly made by Russians anyway, with the all-American gold plating'n'pork supplied by Boeing:
So it is no real surprise it is kind of similar, is it?
Does anyone else find it creepy and weird how every often a huge US flag appears whenever there's a pic of some happening in the US?
It's almost like the sort of clumsy and weird propaganda we used to see from the old Soviet Bloc countries, except no-one seems to find it odd. (Except me, maybe).
Does anyone else find it creepy and weird how every often a huge US flag appears whenever there's a pic of some happening in the US?
Depends on the news topic. If you're reading a lot of science news and thus seeing a lot of articles about the US space program, then you'll be looking at a lot of US government buildings. Those tend to have flags in front of them or in them. In this article, you're looking inside NASA's Space Station Processing Center so, no surprise, you see a flag.
The same isn't true in the commercial world. The aerospace facility I work at has flag poles (US, state, and corporate) at the very front of a sprawling, multi-building complex, and hangs a flag on the wall in one of the factory buildings, but other US flags are only hung at the preference of employees. I have a neighbor who put a small handheld US flag at the entrance to his cube, for example, and two others with symbols of their favorite sports teams. College flags are also popular around the office.
You largely don't see cult-of-personality photographs or paintings of leaders. I've seen higher ranked government officials hang portraits of Presidents in their offices, but they're pretty much absent in private industry unless someone got an autographed photo or photographed handshake with the VIP.
In short, the impression I get out of US flags in these photos is more like a corporate logo or the usual US ra-ra-ra nationalism than indoctrination, but I might be so indoctrinated that I don't think twice about it. :)
Thanks cray74, that's a nice measured response. I might have been conflating the flag in the pic with the weird ra-ra militarism I saw last season watching an NFL football game during the "military round" or whatever they called it, when the field was covered in soldiers before the game.
That really did look soviet.
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