MUDDLING THROUGH ON THE FINAL FRONTIER

摘要

Tools go walkabout, computers crash, and it's too noisy for a good night's sleep. That's what life is really like on the International Space Station, says Jim Oberg. It is supposed to be everything Mir wasn't: clean, reliable and orderly. But leaked documents obtained by New Scientist reveal that life on the International Space Station station doesn't always live up to expectations. It's unpredictable, often improvised and sometimes aggravating. The station's first residents, commander Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, arrived on 2 November 2000 and stayed on board until 18 March this year. Much of what is known about their stay comes from the ship's daily log. Each day Shepherd wrote one or two pages for NASA to post on its public website. But around 20 per cent of the material was removed by NASA censors before publication.