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The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago

This is cool, they've put up 360 degree views of the inside of the ISS. Considering how gigantic spaceships with tons of empty space in science fiction is a pet peeve, I thought it'd be educational for everyone to realize just how thoroughly those folks use the limited real estate they have in space.

Bonus fun fact: They don't wash clothes in space, it would cost too many resources including space on the station. Astronauts wear a garment as long as they can and when they're done with it, they fire it with the other non-reusable waste towards the atmosphere (where it burns up safely).

It looks like the Russians like their Tabasco sauce - check out the kitchen area in the Zarya module. Also, there's a physical copy of the Atlas of the World in Node 2 for some reason. I love how most of the ISS looks either like a madman's attempt to create art with wires, while the rest looks like a warehouse for things from the last 30 years, with different packing to match.

The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago
Don't have the data to load that right now but I'll bookmark it.

Seems like the vast majority of sci fi is set far enough in the future that the resource limitations we have today don't really matter, however. Or at least once you get travel to other planets and sex with aliens involved, the realism of how many blank stretches of wall it's okay to have becomes a much lower priority.

The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago

Why put scientific instrumentation in your kilometre-long warship when you can put STATUES OF THE EMPEROR and DEAD ROBOT BABIES in them instead? 

The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago
Hmm. Quick thoughts on how to achieve lots of space on spaceships

1) Recyclers + Fabricators - Build whatever's needed when it's needed and then recycle it into omni-gel when it's no longer needed (while maintaining spares). May have a significant impact on space required, BUT most likely the designers would then optimize and make smaller spaceships (more thrust per pound would make them faster). The game Prey has an interesting use of this
2) Space Elevators - a technology that has nothing to do with the station itself; reducing the cost of building a space-station should allow for budgets to allow for larger space stations. The current rocket-guided construction method is overwhelmingly expensive
3) Make smaller humans - an amusing but viable option. Another option (more disturbing) would be to remove the legs of astronauts, as legs have no use in space (this one would badly hamper their on-ground capabilities though, as blood would concentrate in the bowels instead of the legs if they ever go on-planet)
4) Wireless transfer of everything - power, data, whatnot. A large amount of the space on the station looks like it's covered with wires, if you can eliminate the wires by tech such as wireless power (it's been in R&D for decades), maybe that space can be saved, but it increases vulnerability to remote hacking and sabotage
5) VR/AR everything - put the humans in pods that take care of all physical requirements, and let the station be run remotely via VR/AR, where you can mentally resize the area to your liking while a robot manages whatever physical work you'd want it to do
6) Inflatable modules. Seriously, they already have one of these on the ISS (and it has a 360 view), send up inflatable modules which can expand to cover more space than they did while packed. Issue here - vulnerability to debris strikes (and catastrophic decompression) would be higher. In my amateur's eyes, seems like a risk/reward tradeoff
7) Alternately, just have some designated 'open space' areas, but even here there's a catch. You don't WANT open space areas on a space ship, because the moment you're out of reach of any thing you can grab, you're dead (stuck permanently where you are) unless someone/thing rescues you (or you have emergency boosters). A tethered free space would be more useful.
8) Toruses: (Think 2001: A space odyssey, the spaceship on Saving Private Ryan - I mean the Martian- and the exterior modules on the Interstellar exoplanet mission) Where a centrifugal force keeps everyone in near earth gravity, you can probably figure ways to make space that seems 'normal' to earth born humans. Death Stars and Star Destroyers (where the entire ship has the same orientation of gravity, i.e. where at all points up and down are the same) are extremely unlikely design wise (within current known laws of physics).

Well, that's all the thought I can come up with, this was fun.

The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago

3) Make smaller humans - an amusing but viable option. Another option (more disturbing) would be to remove the legs of astronauts, as legs have no use in space (this one would badly hamper their on-ground capabilities though, as blood would concentrate in the bowels instead of the legs if they ever go on-planet)

Well I know what I'm going to write about for my next scifi story: Space ship full of amputees and midget astronauts.

The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago
get hype

The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago
When I was writing that, I had a feeling you'd be amused at the notion. For a practical implementation of the latter, I recommend Seveneves, it's a very enjoyably science almost non-fiction story about getting as many people off Earth in the 2020s as possible (due to the moon exploding in that case). Well, the first half atleast, second half kind of jumps the shark by fast forwarding 5000 years, and that's where my willing suspension of disbelief (which was almost offline in the first part) screamed into overdrive.

The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago
fuckin awesome

The International Space Station 360 degree views

6 years ago
Yeah, and the smallest things are so cool. Astronauts prefer Colgate and Thinkpads, and look at how the bathrooms have changed (compare the Zarya module's to the Tranquility module's). The entire Zarya module (the first ever part of the ISS, so it was built entirely self-sufficient till the others would join it, hence the bathroom) is just a love letter to Soviet design in Space, I mean just look at it, all the protruding metal and angles.