Live data from Hacker News

Explore ISS on Google Maps

google.com

21–30 of 59 posts

Re: Explore ISS on Google Maps

#21

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.

Re: Explore ISS on Google Maps

#26
post #11

The blue wires on the ThinkPads look like standard CAT Ethernet. Is this the case?

Probably, they didn't like to use wifi

It just blows my mind that the cables that power the space station are some standard CAT 5/6 cabling that I can go buy at the local hardware store.

In the words of the great Squidward Tentacles, FUUUTTTUUURRRE.

Re: Explore ISS on Google Maps

#29
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

Post reply on HN