5 ms·

>The 60-year-old said that to reach the center in Houston, orbiting astronauts have to dial 9 for an outside line, followed by 011 for an international line. I

>The 60-year-old said that to reach the center in Houston, orbiting astronauts have to dial 9 for an outside line, followed by 011 for an international line. I suppose it makes sense, but there is something jarring about someone in space having to dial 9 to get an outside line. I forget that, in some sense, the ISS is a workplace, and while the view is fantastic it still isn't immune from some of the banality plaguing the rest of humanity.

nolok 8y ago
Sorry for the useless nitpick but it's not so much about working place per se but rather about internal switchboard; although it usually is linked. I once rented a place here in France that was a former student building, while it was a normal apartment renting on paper/legally/technically, I still had to dial a number to reach the outside world. Fun times when your old neighbor transfer calls to you without wanting to.
- topbanana 8y ago
  That reminds me. In our student building there was an intercom on each building, and 7 or 8 students would share each apartment. I noticed that it would quietly dial the internal number for that apartment. Sure enough, dialing 9 with a DTMF tone generator would get an outside line :)
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Use that to dial your own cell phone, then press any key on your cell phone to unlock the door.
- derefr 8y ago
  It's kind of silly; you can very easily set a PBX into a mode where any registered user handset will dial out by default, and can't use the PBX features like forwarding (but circuits created by the PBX's internal logic still can, so you don't lose features like ring pools for font-gate access.)
  - netsharc 8y ago
    Now you make me curious, what do you think, is NASA's internal phone system an antiquated hack from the 1970's (which one site tells me when PABX was introduced), with old admins swearing every day that management never cared about upgrading it? NASA was formed in the 60's, it makes me wonder what other ancient still-running tech they have there...
    - derefr 8y ago
      Nah, I'd bet that the ISS is using the very most modern tech (i.e. they're probably just forwarding a regular DTLS SIP connection to a Houston Asterisk server over a shared https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn carrier downlink.) The ISS is designed in an extremely modular fashion; upgrading the routers in space (or any other non-essential module) is a matter of a few minutes' latching and hot-plugging. Mind you, NASA probably can't get rid of their older tech on the ground, since there's older missions (whether in space, or just still within the mission lifetime for logistical support if re-deployment was desired) that still rely on it. But NASA is the #1 organization in the world for big-S Systems Engineering: they know how to do hybrid deployments, live migrations, etc. The existence of a legacy peer, to NASA, isn't a constraint on new builds of local components; it's rather a stable wire protocol to build compatible emulations of, and then extend with new features to produce a new wire protocol that new ground and remote hardware can speak. --- Regarding the dial-9 thing, though: the ISS probably has many good uses for the internal-by-default dialing scheme. I could imagine that they make all sorts of conference calls, for one thing.
aey 8y ago
The women’s room on the station is marked W and the men’s room is marked M, and the doors are round.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Would be better if the floor and ceiling were mirror images of one another.
- kleiba 8y ago
  I hope you're joking: there's hardly any other place where saving space is such a big priority. Surely there won't be separate bathrooms for men and women?? (And if there were, why would they be marked with the first letter of the English words instead of using language-independent icons?)
  - Amorymeltzer 8y ago
    I don't believe GP is correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_toilet#International_Space_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_toilet#International_Spa...
  - droussel 8y ago
    It's obviously a joke. M and W on round doors in a location with not obvious up or down direction...
  - aey 8y ago
    I hope that is as unbelievable as designing the phone system on the station to use “9011” to call ground control while allowing “9911” to route to some local terrestrial emergency dispatcher. Did they place 9 and 0 next to each other as well?
- chopin 8y ago
  Where's the handle?
  - aey 8y ago
userbinator 8y ago
Indeed, it would make much more sense if dialing 911 from the ISS would contact emergency services that can deal with emergencies in space, than to route it out into Houston's emergency services. This then begs the question, if an emergency happens in the ISS, do they call a number to Earth, and what is it?
- gpm 8y ago
  I doubt that communication with mission control requires dialing a number at all...
- riffic 8y ago
  > This then begs the question http://begthequestion.info/ http://begthequestion.info/
  - scoot 8y ago
    Having attempted over the years to gently (or less so) reeducate HN as to the difference between a disclaimer and a disclosure (which somehow seem to be mostly reversed in the collective's mind), I fear you are fight a lost cause here.

nolok 8y ago

Sorry for the useless nitpick but it's not so much about working place per se but rather about internal switchboard; although it usually is linked. I once rented a place here in France that was a former student building, while it was a normal apartment renting on paper/legally/technically, I still had to dial a number to reach the outside world. Fun times when your old neighbor transfer calls to you without wanting to.

topbanana 8y ago
That reminds me. In our student building there was an intercom on each building, and 7 or 8 students would share each apartment. I noticed that it would quietly dial the internal number for that apartment. Sure enough, dialing 9 with a DTMF tone generator would get an outside line :)
- closeparen 8y ago
  Use that to dial your own cell phone, then press any key on your cell phone to unlock the door.
derefr 8y ago
It's kind of silly; you can very easily set a PBX into a mode where any registered user handset will dial out by default, and can't use the PBX features like forwarding (but circuits created by the PBX's internal logic still can, so you don't lose features like ring pools for font-gate access.)
- netsharc 8y ago
  Now you make me curious, what do you think, is NASA's internal phone system an antiquated hack from the 1970's (which one site tells me when PABX was introduced), with old admins swearing every day that management never cared about upgrading it? NASA was formed in the 60's, it makes me wonder what other ancient still-running tech they have there...
  - derefr 8y ago
    Nah, I'd bet that the ISS is using the very most modern tech (i.e. they're probably just forwarding a regular DTLS SIP connection to a Houston Asterisk server over a shared https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn https://www.nasa.gov/content/dtn carrier downlink.) The ISS is designed in an extremely modular fashion; upgrading the routers in space (or any other non-essential module) is a matter of a few minutes' latching and hot-plugging. Mind you, NASA probably can't get rid of their older tech on the ground, since there's older missions (whether in space, or just still within the mission lifetime for logistical support if re-deployment was desired) that still rely on it. But NASA is the #1 organization in the world for big-S Systems Engineering: they know how to do hybrid deployments, live migrations, etc. The existence of a legacy peer, to NASA, isn't a constraint on new builds of local components; it's rather a stable wire protocol to build compatible emulations of, and then extend with new features to produce a new wire protocol that new ground and remote hardware can speak. --- Regarding the dial-9 thing, though: the ISS probably has many good uses for the internal-by-default dialing scheme. I could imagine that they make all sorts of conference calls, for one thing.

aey 8y ago

The women’s room on the station is marked W and the men’s room is marked M, and the doors are round.

EpicEng 8y ago
Would be better if the floor and ceiling were mirror images of one another.
kleiba 8y ago
I hope you're joking: there's hardly any other place where saving space is such a big priority. Surely there won't be separate bathrooms for men and women?? (And if there were, why would they be marked with the first letter of the English words instead of using language-independent icons?)
- Amorymeltzer 8y ago
  I don't believe GP is correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_toilet#International_Space_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_toilet#International_Spa...
- droussel 8y ago
  It's obviously a joke. M and W on round doors in a location with not obvious up or down direction...
- aey 8y ago
  I hope that is as unbelievable as designing the phone system on the station to use “9011” to call ground control while allowing “9911” to route to some local terrestrial emergency dispatcher. Did they place 9 and 0 next to each other as well?
chopin 8y ago
Where's the handle?
- aey 8y ago

userbinator 8y ago

Indeed, it would make much more sense if dialing 911 from the ISS would contact emergency services that can deal with emergencies in space, than to route it out into Houston's emergency services. This then begs the question, if an emergency happens in the ISS, do they call a number to Earth, and what is it?

gpm 8y ago
I doubt that communication with mission control requires dialing a number at all...
riffic 8y ago
> This then begs the question http://begthequestion.info/ http://begthequestion.info/
- scoot 8y ago
  Having attempted over the years to gently (or less so) reeducate HN as to the difference between a disclaimer and a disclosure (which somehow seem to be mostly reversed in the collective's mind), I fear you are fight a lost cause here.