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Space Station Alpha


pkzip
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I didn't see anyone mention, and thought that it should be. Hats Off to our boys Tanner and Noreiga for pulling off a sweet spacewalk up there today; skilled grunts yanking cables nine stories above a shuttle and station whipping along at several hundred vacuum-packed feet per heartbeat. One step closer to having a new permanent Third Brightest Object in the evening sky.

Think about it, when we were kids (which spans a few decades in here), we said, "Wouldn't it be cool if someday...?" Well, we're living it now. And those blokes are now visible from your backyard, every few weeks, and for only a few minutes at a time. That's one mean orbit on that mother up there, and as of this mission, she's got some big beautiful kilowatts to back it up with.

For some serious Screenshots, and for a Java app that lets you know when she'll be passing over your hometown, you know the drill:

www.space.com www.nasa.gov

Raise a salute in their honor.

[This message has been edited by pkzip (edited 12-07-2000).]

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Interesting how sci-fi has predicted most of the stuff happening today, eh? Stuff happening in Earth orbit, cloning, computers, exploring the other planets in the solar system, the internet, ASOASF...makes you wonder about the rest of the stuff that is still sci-fi and not yet science fact. How long until we live in a cyberpunk wreck or a star trek tech utopia? Or until we have a GALCOM in real life? or AI? Or widespread cybernetics? All these things that writers invented over the decades are starting to show up in real life.

And some of the stuff we have today is far above and beyond what writers where dreaming of even two decades ago. In _Neuromancer_, someone is killed over three megs of RAM. It's a keychain today, but when the book was written 15 years ago, it was a big number. In Alien, the computer 'mother' filled a small room and had a small monochrome screen. Today, my friend and i play high end computer games in the hall at school on spare with a laptop the size of mother's keyboard.

And as i write this post, i am devoting more processor power than existed in the whole world in the fifties to playing some MP3's in the background.

Makes you wonder what's gonna happen next if this much has changed in so little time, and the rate of change keeps increasing so fast.

------------------

Commander Markus Korivak

GCV Norfolk (pending commission), ISSHQ (Saturn)

ISS, Defense Wing

ISS Fleet Defence Wing GCV Norfolk

"Honour is what no man can give you, and no man can take away"

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  • 2 weeks later...

Another thing to think about:

The children`s toy, `Furby`, a little furry toy animal that yaps and moves its eyes and legs has MORE processing power than all the guys that went to the moon (PLUS the NASA ground control) had!!!

Beam me up scotty! (and even transporter tech is begining to sound possible.. holy cripes!)

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