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Interesting. It never occurred to me that typing with your hands floating around may not be as easy as on earth. I was just watching as one crew member was cal
by phoboslab 14y ago
Interesting. It never occurred to me that typing with your hands floating around may not be as easy as on earth.
I was just watching as one crew member was calibrating a camera, probably by using a laptop(?), and he had to repeat a number 3 times till ground copied correctly. I just thought "damn, he could just copy and paste these numbers into a chat session". But then again, why aren't these numbers transmitted automatically in the first place?
- polyfractal 14y agoEither because verbal communication is a "holdover" from the Apollo era, or because it is the safest way to confirm everything is correct. We place a lot of trust in our computers...but when a single typo can mean life or death I think I'd prefer to verbally confirm the number too.
- ColinWright 14y agoIt's really, really hard to figure out how to get absolutely every possible thing you might ever want to be accessible all the time. It's really, really easy in a given instance, with hindsight, to say - "Why not just transmit that all anyway?" Yes, it's a good question, but it's a better question when you think to ask it 10 years before you need the data. I work remotely with safety-critical systems, and sometimes I curse the lack of foresight on the part of the engineers and designers who came before me. Then I wonder what equipment people will be using 5 years from now to interface with the systems I'm trying to get out the door on time and on budget.