CBS News Interactive: About The Space Shuttles
HOUSTON (AP) ― Astronauts tinkered Sunday on a troublesome piece of equipment which can convert urine and sweat into drinkable water once it's functioning and allow the international space station to grow to six crew members.
Station commander Michael Fincke and Endeavour astronaut Donald Pettit changed how a centrifuge is mounted in the $154 million water recycling system. The centrifuge is on mounts and Mission Control asked Fincke to remove them and bolt it down without them.
The astronauts have been working for the past three days to get the system running so it can generate samples for testing back on Earth, but the urine processor only operates for two hours at a time before shutting down.
The water recycling system, delivered a week ago by the space shuttle Endeavour, is essential for allowing more astronauts to live on the space station next year.
Today in History:
November 24, 1740 -
William Duell was hanged for rape and murder. A few hours later, whilst being prepared for dissection by medical students, he awakens . The authorities took pity on him and commuted his sentence to one of transportation to Australia. Wow that's had to freak him out.
November 24, 1859 -
Charles Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species". And depending on your point of view, either this is a seminal work in scientific literature and arguably the pivotal work in evolutionary biology or you're a monkey's uncle.
November 24, 1871 -
National Rifle Association is established (in New York City.)
Who knew?
November 24, 1963 -
Extra-terrestrials used mass-hypnosis to persuade the world that someone resembling Jack Ruby had fatally shot someone resembling the person alleged to have been Lee Harvey Oswald. This also becomes the first actual murder captured on live TV.
The next day, November 25, a coffin containing the purported remains of the man many Americans believed to have been John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. And on November 29, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren the head of a commission to investigate the alleged assassination of the person believed to have been John F. Kennedy.
Be grateful the CIA, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, extraterrestrials, and the Children’s Television Workshop don’t give a damn about you.
November 24, 1971 -
D.B. Cooper hijacks a Northwest Orient 727 and parachutes into the freezing rain over Washington state from the rear stairway of the plane with $200,000 in cash. Currency from the ransom is eventually located, but his body isn't.
31 more shopping days until Christmas, 28 more shopping days until Hanukkah.
And so it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment