First thought: GLaDOS personality core. > Fish shaped volatile organic compounds and sediment shaped sediment.
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Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
71–80 of 89 posts
Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they actually work just eight hours a day. There's a lot of maintenance work to do and it's not like there are many things to do on your free time. Although now that there's the full six-person crew, the schedules are probably less tight.
It sounds like you're agreeing with me...
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Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they actually work just eight hours a day. There's a lot of maintenance work to do and it's not like there are many things to do on your free time. Although now that there's the full six-person crew, the schedules are probably less tight.
It sounds like you're agreeing with me...
I guess it also depends on what constitutes "work". The station is their home as well as workplace, after all. And when your home is an aluminum can in a vacuum, there's quite a bit of housework to do. Also, these are six-month missions, unlike week-or-two-long Shuttle flights which naturally had a tighter schedule.
Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The use of fans is disappointing; that means it can't go outside. My first thought when seeing it is that it'd be great for doing external inspections, and could even have its own private little airlock to get in and out. Maybe they could make a version with ionic thrusters, that stays outside all of the time. It could have a 'nest' where it parks and refuels when not in use.
I'm sure there are very strict rules about having anything flammable or explosive on board ISS, which pretty much means you can't have a drone that can move under its on propulsion both inside and outside the station.
Just power it with compressed air.
Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#75and no word on how it moves. even bbc is going downhill :(
Any reason why it couldn't use air jet to create linear motion? It is floating in air after all.
Okay, just saw EDIT2 of TeMPOraL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14795857, it appears to move around using micro fans.
Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#76It's great to see automation save on expensive human labor for taking picture. Now the trick is to automate a lot of the human labor up there. No need waste tons of money for what amounts to glorified lab assistants.
Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#77Love the robot, but I'm uncomfortable at what I see as an implication in the article that now the astronauts should stop taking pictures and do more productive things instead. I'm pretty sure there's values to that activity beyond having photographic registrations to show afterwards. (I'm also not convinced the little ball of cuteness is anywhere close to matching their choice of scenes yet)
I suspect part of the use of a picture-taking drone is that NASA people on the ground can have the drone go take a picture of something right now, rather than having to interrupt an astronaut or wait until they're not busy with something more important.
Most of the ISS is probably connected to sensors and remotely accessible, but there are probably still a lot of cases where they actually need someone to look at something.
Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#78Love the robot, but I'm uncomfortable at what I see as an implication in the article that now the astronauts should stop taking pictures and do more productive things instead. I'm pretty sure there's values to that activity beyond having photographic registrations to show afterwards. (I'm also not convinced the little ball of cuteness is anywhere close to matching their choice of scenes yet)
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Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That and bumping into things. Come to think of it - in air you're constantly bumping into things - air molecules. I think it could technically be possible to steer in zero-g within an atmosphere by pure rotation (e.g. consider that a fast-spinning object is kind of a (crappy) fan).
And, in fact, that's what this device does. It uses an array of 12 small rotating fans placed around its surface to push jets of air and move itself from place to place.
Can it face you with one of its fans and run it at the same high speed as the opposite fan, to keep you cool, and take photos of you with your hair blowing in the wind?
Re: Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The use of fans is disappointing; that means it can't go outside. My first thought when seeing it is that it'd be great for doing external inspections, and could even have its own private little airlock to get in and out. Maybe they could make a version with ionic thrusters, that stays outside all of the time. It could have a 'nest' where it parks and refuels when not in use.
You could just set rails or clotheslines outside the station for an external drone camera to travel along.
Or maybe not whole rails, but just fixtures the drone could grab onto. You could supply the drone with power and control signals through the fixtures, and the drone could kinda travel everywhere by just grabbing onto a nearby fixture, then releasing the previous one. Wouldn't that be great? /s