alexpgp | Sixteen tons...

...describes how heavy my eyelids feel.

It's been a relatively slow shift, the major action being a 30-minute discussion between the Moscow MCC and the crew on inventory issues.

Inventory, in the context of the ISS, means keeping track of everything, down to its stowage location. This is important, from the point of view of not only keeping track of where the food, underwear, hygiene items, etc. are stowed, but also where various science equipment is located. Also, when you consider that crews stay on board for only a relatively limited time (several months), it's clear that a new crew will be able to find things only if the old crew keeps very careful records.

Keeping track of everything is a very challenging problem, and this has been known for a long time, as it was a very challenging problem on the Mir space station. In fact, somewhere I still have a video I picked up at an Atlanta Comdex show (in 1993 or so) featuring footage of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev using a handheld bar-code scanner on the Mir.

I'm not sure how useful that scanner was, as Krikalev's use of it predated the Shuttle-Mir program by several years, and during that program, inventory management continued to be an ongoing issue. I seem to recall reports, during the last or next to last U.S. long-duration stay, of the crew finding various items that had been stowed years before on the station.

Anyway, difficulties start cropping up when items get missed, or a bag doesn't get a bar-code applied to it, or something along those lines. Too, when Shuttles come by to resupply the ISS, there's typically not enough time to enter things into the inventory management system (IMS); all of the cargo items get put into a pile and tied down with bungees. The idea is that after the Shuttle leaves, the crew will go about checking the items into the IMS and stow them in the correct, preplanned location.

This phase of the flight is so important, that a daily "delta file" of changes to the IMS database is a high-importance item for downlink to the ground, so that specialists can keep track of what's going on in space.

(Is it obvious I'm making a valiant effort to stay awake? :^)

There's about an hour and a half left in the shift. Tomorrow night/morning's shift will be the last night work for this trip, and I can't say I'm sorry to see it end.

Y-A-W-N.

Cheers...