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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 22h

Okay, but how is that different from anything else right now?

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

I've never met anybody so completely certain of his own genius before, but I don't have a lot of SV contacts

Reposted by Justin Walsh

Provenance Lab @provenancelab.bsky.social · 1d

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

The ISS Archaeological Project studied the phenomenon of crew-created visual displays in two articles (both open access): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... and www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11...

Three inhabitants of the ISS in front of a wall covered with various items.

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Reposted by Justin Walsh

Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 3d

I wrote something about the 25th anniversary of ISS habitation and the 10th anniversary of the International Space Station Archaeological Project
theconversation.com/25-years-of-...

25 Years of the International Space Station: What archaeology tells us about living and working in space

Archaeologists have studied how astronauts use the International Space Station to improve its potential future successors.

theconversation.com

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Reposted by Justin Walsh

Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

THREAD: 25 years ago today, the first crew of the International Space Station for a four-and-a-half month stay. Two cosmonauts - Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev - were joined by NASA astronaut William Shepherd. Since that moment, the ISS had had at least two people onboard.

An agency photo of the Expedition 1 crew

The Expedition 1 crew in the Russian Zvezda module with fresh oranges. The table is at lower left

A graph showing the ISS population over the last 25 years

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

There are approximately 50 posts in this thread and of course I left out the verb in the first sentence

Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

THREAD: 25 years ago today, the first crew of the International Space Station for a four-and-a-half month stay. Two cosmonauts - Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev - were joined by NASA astronaut William Shepherd. Since that moment, the ISS had had at least two people onboard.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

Congratulations to everyone who has worked on the ISS project. It is an absolutely amazing thing, and it deserves all the recognition we can give it. (And maybe a new table.)

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

Our work reinforces the comments of the crew: astronauts want and need a table. It's hard to think of a simpler or more useful technology. ISS has functioned to teach us how to live better in space.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

Here's a photo from our experiment on the ISS showing the table on the US side on a Saturday, with a leftover Russian pastry in a Ziploc bag at lower left.

The wall of Node 1 above the table. There is a Russian pastry at lower left in a plastic bag

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

Eating around a table is so important that the crew has consistently maintained a group dinner of the entire crew every Friday night. Sometimes this happens on the Russian side, sometimes on the US side.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

At the same time, it's highly notable that there has never been a professionally-designed table on the NASA side of the ISS. For as important and useful as the crew's social bonding around a table is, the NASA engineers who planned the station never prioritized something so simple.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

This table has continued to be used ever since. It is a social hub of the ISS. It has certainly served its function, perhaps far beyond the dreams of its student creators.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

Note that the table is perpendicular to the wall again. Paolo Nespoli noticed this, too, when he came back to the ISS in 2017. He said, "When I went back up to the station, I thought Dammit, not again!”

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

NASA astronaut Tim Kopra introduced the new US table here youtu.be/NV-i_1OHrZA

GMT116 10 02 Tim Kopra HUNCH Galley Table evaluation and review 372988

YouTube video by NASA HUNCH

youtu.be

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

In consultation with NASA engineers and astronauts, students from Clear Lake HS, right near Johnson Space Center, designed and built a table that was launched and installed in Node 1 in 2016 www.hunchdesign.com/uploads/2/2/...

www.hunchdesign.com

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

Nothing will spill in space, so this was a good solution. With Paolo's modification, the table stayed there until 2016, when the US Orbital Segment of the ISS finally got its own table. This one was a product of NASA's HUNCH program to engage with high school students.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

This situation was seen as suboptimal by some crew, though. It stuck out into a space that it wasn't designed for, and people hurt themselves bumping into it. ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli solved the problem by tilting it at 45°. www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-ma...

ISS crew with the reused table in Node 1. Now it's at an angle to the wall.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

But that original table also did not go in the waste stream. Instead, it was installed in the US Node 1 module, because it seemed like a second table was needed for the larger crew.

Nine astronauts and cosmonauts around the reused table in Node 1. The table is held in place by bungee cords

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

So then everyone ate at the Russian table in the Zvezda module. And the ISS grew, over 10 years until it more-or-less reached its present dimensions. And the crew grew from 3 to 6. By 2009, the Russians replaced the original "real" table with a new one.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

That table stayed for several more missions, until the proper one finally arrived. The bricolage one was not destroyed, though. It made its way back to Earth and into the collection of the National Air and Space Museum. airandspace.si.edu/collection-o...

Table, International Space Station (ISS) | National Air and Space Museum

airandspace.si.edu

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

The various ISS mission controls did not like this, because the drilling and screwing needed to make the table generated metal bits that could be inhaled in a microgravity environment. The crew didn't care. They had a table.

The bricolage table cobbled together by the Expedition 1 crew

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

Tables are important; they're how you build a society. Anthropologists and astronauts agree: we build and maintain relationships around tables. The crew decided to build their own table. They used leftover materials that were packed around other items.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

It was a mass problem. But the crew was pissed. They were told there would be a table, and there was no table. Shepherd talked about the frustration (and their solution) here www.nasa.gov/podcasts/hou...

Expedition 1 - NASA

Bill Shepherd, former NASA astronaut and commander of Expedition 1, recounts the historic mission that started the International Space Station’s unbroken streak of continuous human presence in space. ...

www.nasa.gov

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 1d

When the first crew arrived, ISS was just a trio of modules, with most work happening on the Russian side. The crew expected to find a table to eat at, but the Russian space agency had to cancel this so they could send other equipment.

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