pdbrooker

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

SO, the background is that I've been doing some research (and working on a book, coming soon!) on NASA's Skylab program and what we can learn about their goal of understanding "Living and Working in Space" from their legacy materials (conversation transcripts, audio, video, design specs resulting from studies, etc). See my pinned post for a podcast on this project.

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

One key thing that that Skylab work speaks to is the idea that understanding Living and Working in Space through scientistic/purely quantitative/empiricist means is...not the whole picture. There's a wealth of lived experience about space station habitation that is scrubbed from the record and/or never captured. So, engaging more ethnographically/ethnomethodologically with this environment and this work seems appropriate.

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

#TerraPi hopes to do this by replicating a piece of equipment that is currently in use aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but applying it in more familiar (to me) contexts - my life at home, and my work in the University of Liverpool - to see what such a device can help me understand about my own Living and Working practices. But let's take a step back - what's the ISS version of the device, and what does it do for astronauts up there?

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

So, astronauts aboard the ISS have a number of devices called "AstroPi's" - Raspberry Pi microcomputers kitted out with an array of environmental sensors (temperature, pressure, humidity, light/colour, motion/acceleration, a camera, etc) which can be operated by feeding them some delicious nutritious Python code. These AstroPi's have been put aboard the ISS as a hub for student projects and public engagement primarily, with students writing code for them that does stuff like...

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

...using the camera to monitor environmental change like water level reduction on Earth by comparing with other image datasets, measuring magnetic density of Earth and turning it into a music video, observing volcanic emissions, and so on. The student projects are REALLY impressive, more detail here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/astro-pi-mission-space-lab-2021-22-the-results/

But these devices can also do more mundane stuff - e.g. when a busy astronaut floats past (and triggers the motion sensor), flash up a smiley face to cheer them up.

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

So, Astro Pi's can be used to do all sorts of stuff that brings astronauts together with their environment in lots of different ways - they can help them with their scientific work, they can act as a home environment monitor, they can be used to play games (think Snake!), etc.

My idea; what if I built one on Earth, a #TerraPi, for thinking through useful things that I could do with it in relation to MY living and working practices. What would I usefully be able to do with such a device?

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

For me, this is kind of an ethnomethodological "breach" - disrupting/subverting something to get a better angle on how it works. So, in taking the AstroPi out of space and finding what it can and can't usefully do on Earth, I'll get a better understanding of just what Living and Working in Space might be about for those that do it.

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

So, I made what I think might be the weirdest purchase order from a sociology department - one big box of electronics please; genuine components used in AstroPi's so that I can build one myself. But, there's something missing from this. The metallic casing of the AstroPi you can see in the image a few posts back? Yeah, that's custom manufactured and costs thousands of dollars (which is a step too far and too weird for a sociology research funding request). So...3D printing!

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

ISS astronauts have been using 3D printing for about 7 or 8 years already; mostly to explore its potential as a tool to assist long-term habitation in the future (in space stations, on the moon, etc) rather than for actual practical use at present.

pdbrooker, 9 months ago

One of the more famous applications to date has been the first time astronauts have manufactured a wrench in space - why spend millions manufacturing bits and bobs on Earth to replace broken or missing parts in space when you can email them across almost instantaneously? See this NASA article: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/3Dratchet_wrench/

Designs for a wrench with movable ratchet parts were emailed to the ISS, and it was successfully printed by Commander Barry Wilmore in 2014. And also, by me in 2023, see pic below.