Astronauts Want iPads. Cosmonauts Already Have Them.

1. ipads are made in China. The Ipads are more advanced than any current ISS technology. American billionairs are racing head over heels to transfer their most advanced manufacturing and even R&D to China. And Congress is worried about the Chinese stealing the “secrets” of the ISS?

   1. The iPad can be made anywhere. The Chinese have zero to do with developing the technology that goes into them. Indeed they use third party parts. China just offers cheap labor.

      1. It’s more than cheap labor.

         The Week: Why Apple builds iPhones (and everything else) in China
         http://theweek.com/article/…

         Of course some of the other reasons (“When Jobs decided just a month before the iPhone hit markets to replace a scratch-prone plastic screen with a glass one, a Foxconn factory in China woke up about 8,000 workers when the glass screens arrived at midnight”) are ALSO not what you’d want to duplicate in America.

         edit: What Steve Jobs had to say about American vs Chinese supply chains, dovetails nicely with Elon Musk’s comments about doing as much as possible in-house to avoid supply chain problems.

      2. I cannot agree. Labor costs are lower in Vietnam or Bangladesh. But China manufactures more aluminum, steel, and electronic products than any other country and is rapidly expanding its R&D capabilities with the enthusiastic help of major US manufacturers like HP and GE. A friend started a high-tech company and tried to manufacture here in the US. He finally gave up and outsourced to China. It wasn’t just price. American suppliers were not quick enough to keep up with the design changes and new technology needed in a competitive industry. 

         I work with several people from China. They are well educated and hard-working, in fact 90% of graduating high school students in Shanghai go on to college. The Shenzou spacecraft is patterned after Soyuz but every component has been redesigned, and the Long March booster is indigenous. It doesn’t mean we cannot compete. But it does mean we have to stay focused, work smarter, and stop claiming everyone else is cheating. Inviting China to join the ISS would be a good start; we both have something to learn.

2. Now, I might be wrong but isn’t an iPad basically a cloud computing tool? It needs a 4G network to work properly, so it wouldn’t work properly in orbit anyway. 

   The pictured unit (in 2001 – A Space Odyssey) would work fine as HAL could act as the net server for it.  However, I doubt that the ISS has the processors or wifi hardware to support them.

   1. Um, the iPad works well as a standalone device with no connectivity, one connected via WiFi for email and websurfing (they have that on ISS). The cloud stuff tends to be for photos, music, movies etc. You can also store all of this on the device.  As for 4G connectivity – I have an original iPad – no cell connectivity at all – just WiFi and it still works marvelously. From your comments, I take it that you don’t own an iPad ….

3. I have enough trouble typing, and particularly editing, text in my iPad in 1g.
   0g would probably require more fine control than I’m capable of.
   If only there were cursor keys…
    

   1. Velcro it to your leg like astronauts do with everything else.

4. I am so disappointed in our Fearless leader.

   Why is it taking NASA so long to clear the iPad for use when the Russians have already sent up a couple? 

5. First, for honesty’s sake, I’ll admit that when the iPad was released, I wasn’t interested at all in it.  It fills a need that I just don’t have – too big to be a smartphone (which fits in my pocket), but not nearly as useful as a laptop.  Still haven’t bought one, and have no intention to anytime soon.

   But that being said, when it came out, I immediately thought that it’d be interesting to see these aboard a spacecraft or the ISS.  Think of it as a portable library: you could stash tons of documents and procedures in there, and even make the procedures interactive – checking off items as you go, and making procedures that branch depending on certain conditions.  It sounds like the laptops on board the ISS are already providing this sort of functionality, but these kinds of applications don’t need a complex interface.  It also sounds like the laptop interface is clunky enough to actually be getting in the way, and could be greatly improved by a simple touch-screen.

   Note that there’s actually some precedent to this sort of thing, particularly in the general aviation community.  The iPad recently received FAA certification for use as an “electronic flight bag”; in other words, it can act in place of a traditional bag full of paper navigation charts, aircraft manuals, and procedures.  With certain peripheral devices, the iPad can act as a secondary GPS or synthetic vision display, or can even be integrated directly into the aircraft’s avionics systems – for example, take a look at Aspen Avionics’ Connected Panel system: http://www.connectedpanel.com/

   1. ASF

      Thank you for an excellent post and a great link! I remember when we wanted to fly a MacIntosh for a system controller for our microgravity payload on the Shuttle. We went through heck to get them qualified for flight. We eventually flew Mac’s on STS-46,57,63, and 68

6. So, according to the “iPad news”, the Russians sent two iPads to ISS on an “unmanned resupply”.  It’s a little unclear which Progress flight they meant– they said it would launch “next month” on 28 October, but there weren’t any November (nor December) Progress launches.  Was it the 25 January 2012 launch (14M)?
   So- what’s the outcome?  Any news?  Are the iPads working?  Any troubles?  SEUs?  How are they handling the SAA?  
   Apple fans want to know!

7. I agree that we need to let China participate, but proceed very cautiously.
   I worked with some people who worked on a U.S. payload ( I believe Intelsat 708 )that launched on a long march & the rocket was destroyed right after liftoff.
   When the U.S. personnel were finally allowed to see what was left of their payload, at least one box (a command encryption unit) had been clearly REMOVED from the satellite intact presumably after the crash.
   I actually got to see one of the mangled avionics boxes that the engineer kept on her desk as a souvenir.
   So they not only try to get our technology clandestinely through hacking & spies, but they are willing to blatantly steal it right under our noses.
   U.S. payloads were not allowed on Chinese rockets since that incident.

8. I agree they should have a tablet. The ipad sounds great as long as everything used on it is standard open web formats like email, web pages, etc. They will have problems when it comes to specialty software or maybe MS Office. You might say, ok, well they can make an iOS app for everything they need that doesn’t have it yet. Well I’m sure Apple would love that but why should they have to?

   I would be more in favor with them using something with Android because it’s open source, or, I hate to say it, something coming out with Windows 8 since it will have a much bigger ecosystem of software. Also Ubuntu Linux is rapidly getting their OS ready for mobile devices and with Linux they might be able to run all of the software that I know scientific bodies like NASA use a lot. Plus it could switch between mobile mode and docked mode, not only for the input devices like mouse/keyboard, but also switching to a more full featured OS!
   http://mobile.slashdot.org/…
   That way all your data is there still on the same device but it switches to give you more capability when you’re fixed, and more mobile ease when you’re floating around. That sound perfect.

   Android or Linux would be nice because NASA could develop their own stuff at will without being subject to Apple’s will. That’s kind of like the military now starting to develop their own Android platform for secure cellphones. There is easier access, less risk, and they can do what they want instead of asking Apple pretty please do this and that for us. They can fork Android down the road if they really have to or want to.

   So tablets are great for simple things like viewing stuff, light email, web browsing, and light (fill in the blank). They are certainly good at what they do. But they are terrible compared to laptops and desktops for most general purpose computing work. So perhaps, the division of labor can be that the astronauts say “send it to my tablet” and can roam around and view things at will, but the device that switches between docked and mobile mode sounds much better.

   Do you guys know what types of things astronauts use the computers in space for? Do they use specialty software? Do the laptops control some of the station?

   1. Yes, the laptops can interface directly with the station.

      1. Yeah but what software is used on the laptop? Is the software built just for that? Is it some terminal program that they send commands with in some commonly used interface? What communication interface is used for the laptop to talk to the station? Is this something that could be done from any OS?

9. I heard that it is in fact a myth that two Russian iPads were launched on Progress M-13M last year.

   1. You are correct. This was a myth! One iPad was launched on Progress 46P in January.

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