Cool stuff to do with your Thinkpad while in space . . .

[smugiri]

. . . feed video to the world . . .

[Temetka]

Now that is cool!

[christopher_wolf]

Rather elegant solution to that problem, as well.

Involving Thinkpads nets them a bonus.

[joester]

Would that be American ingenuity, or Russian scramble?

Regardless, that's a pretty cool way of making two the systems work together.

How much you want to bet that the engineer who designed the A31's capabilities never would have dreamed the features would be used in such a way?

[AlphaKilo470]

I was hoping we'd see a camera pointed at a monitor.

[pianowizard]

Wow, they are still using the same A31p's on the ISS! I thought they'd have upgraded to more recent models by now.

[rkawakami]

I thought they'd have upgraded to more recent models by now.

This is NASA you are talking about. Care to guess what kind of computers that shuttle is still using? I believe I heard something about the last mission up to the ISS and that NASA wanted the shuttle back on the ground before New Years. Something about the computer systems on the "old girl" not being able to handle a YEAR rollover .

Ah yes, hear's some citations:

Y2K-like fears...
Computers in Spaceflight

I used to work at NASA (Ames Research Center) back in the '70s and I'm sure not much has changed in the way of equipment acceptance procedures.

[christopher_wolf]

Hey, the A31p is an *excellent* system to use for media work. That includes converting the feeds to NTSC quickly. If I recall correctly, NASA has used the 700 Series, notable the 770/EDs, on board the space shuttle quite a bit. They are stock, except for some radiation shielding modifications on the outside and attachment point refits.