Okay, the title is just a joke. As of writing this post, I’m uncertain whether the computers in the International Space Station (ISS) are powered by Windows or some other OS but it appears to be so as another computer crash has once more set back the progress on the ISS.
Russian space officials said Friday they were considering moving up the launch of a Russian cargo ship as cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station struggled for a second day to reboot failed computers controlling the orbiting outpost’s orientation.
The problem started with a spike in static electricity while cables were being hooked up to the station’s solar panels, said Nikolai Sevastyanov, head of the Russian state-controlled rocket builder RKK Energiya.
He said Russian officials were considering moving up the launch of a Progress cargo ship by two weeks to July 23 to bring up some new parts.
So it’s a power-related problem hence it’s also a hardware-related problem. Perhaps the cosmonauts and astronauts at the ISS forgot to bring up with them UPS and surge protector units? We might never really know.
Of course the station has had computer failures before but never on this massive scale. According to them, this could put all work in the station to a complete halt as the computers that failed were responsible for keeping the station in the right orientation. Tsk tsk tsk.
Maybe it’s a compatibility issue? The story says the problem could have come from the connections between the US-built modules and parts and the Russian-made counterparts. Traces or continuation of the Cold War? Isn’t that so Web 1.0, space geeks and engineers from US and Russia, wake up! Web 2.0 is already here; collaboration and networking is the thing to do nowadays. Tsk tsk tsk
Or perhaps, this latest episode of equipment failure in the ISS is all but a clue that proves that man still lack the technologies to go out in space and do some work there. Like the moon landing was faked! Think about it, they said we’ve been to the moon several times and yet it’s been decades since the ISS project began, and it’s still not finished.
Then it’s true that we the moon landings were…okay, I’ll shut up now.