. . . just links from HayYoo.com and DanKostecki.com
According to Popular Science –
Unfortunately, installing a new toilet is space is as messy as it is here on Earth. According to NASA, the leak sprung while astronauts on the American side of the station were unhooking a connection point from the potable water system. About 2.5 gallons of water spilled out, and the astronauts had to soak it all up using—what else—towels!
Astronauts could soon be waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread. A new dough mixture and oven specially designed for use on the International Space Station will be tested during a mission next year.
It’s an ambitious goal. Bread is a staple food on Earth but can be life-threatening in space. The first and last people to enjoy bread in space were the two astronauts on NASA’s 1965 Gemini 3 mission, who shared a corned beef sandwich one of them had smuggled on board. The crumbs flew everywhere in the microgravity and could have got into their eyes or into the electrical panels, where they could have started a fire. Bread has been banned ever since – tortilla wraps are the accepted alternative.
Up until now, we’ve really only seen SpaceX’s rocket landing in the middle of the ocean from afar. Chase planes near the drone ship provided a spectacular view of the milestone event, but now, SpaceX has released up-close pictures of the landing taken from the ship itself. The images capture the Falcon 9’s slow descent on top of the barge, and even show how much the ship tilted once the vehicle was on board. If you want to feel like a rocket is about to land on your head, these pictures will do the trick.
It’s a recurring horror in sci-fi: the hull is pierced, a human is trapped without equipment in an airlock about to open, a door needs to be opened in order to expel something undesirable. With no air and almost zero pressure, the human body isn’t going to last long without some form of protection. But what does happen, exactly? Do your eyes explode outward while your blood evaporates? Well, no. The truth is both less dramatic and far more fascinating — as we have discovered through accidents in space and in test chambers, and animal experimentation in the 1960s. The first thing you would notice is the lack of air. You wouldn’t lose consciousness straight away; it might take up to 15 seconds as your body uses up the remaining oxygen reserves from your bloodstream, and — if you don’t hold your breath — you could perhaps survive for as long as two minutes without permanent injury.
Gizmodo reported that frying food in the microgravity of space is a ‘bad idea‘. However, the real news in the article is that frying actually improves at around 3 g.
This page has a few pictures of the set of hand tools for the International Space Station. Surprisingly, they seem to be the same tools that most handymen have at home. One exception is the velcro straps on the combination wrenches.
Pro tip – watch fullscreen
For the first time, a private, commercial spacecraft will launch into Earth orbit and autonomously dock with the International Space Station. Lumbering governments beware: private industry is taking over your space turf. SpaceX has been working on its Dragon space capsule for six or seven years now, and after a successful launch, orbital insertion, deorbit, and landing back in December, NASA has decided that Dragon is fit to meet up with the ISS. The mission will launch on November 30, and if all goes well, the ISS docking will take place nine days later. While the Dragon capsule is human rated (and was intended from the beginning to carry up to seven humans), this first ISS rendezvous is going to be unmanned, and Dragon will carry a cargo of, uh, cargo. Mostly Tang, I bet.
Continue reading HERE or HERE (SpaceX site).
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