Expedition 15 Arrives at ISS

Expedition 15, including Charles Simonyi, arrived safely at the International Space Station (ISS) at 2:10 pm CDT on 09 Apr 2007.

After docking, the three crew members of Expedition 15 moved through the hatches between the Soyuz and the ISS, entering the ISS at 3:30 pm. Charles' brain must have been on overload about then.

What he might have appreciated at that point is Gordon Bell's MyLifeBits' technology, including the automatic digital camera around the neck, to keep track of things happening around him that sensory overload prevented him from fully realizing and appreciating. I'll have to connect with the next space adventurer who heads up to the ISS and suggest they consider using Bell's technology to fully capture their experience in space. It seems reasonable to expect Space Adventures to include that technology as part of the $25 million package for an ISS visit.

The next ISS citizen visitor should also consider ways to make video footage of their trip more easily available to their earthbound observers and space enthusiasts. Possibly have a member of their website team on Earth put video clips from NASA on YouTube or another video site, or at least put links on the traveler's website to videos that others have uploaded to YouTube. I managed to be online watching NASA tv during the Expedition 15 blast-off, but was not able to be online during the docking and crew entry into the ISS. Neither the NASA website nor the CharlesInSpace site have provided an easily found link to archived videos of those two events. I was able to find a couple launch videos on YouTube, but the site didn't appear to have the docking/ISS entry video uploaded yet.

Thinking about the Soyuz and ISS videos make me wonder what provisions for video will be available on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo flights. If Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic team have not yet developed a plan for the video record they'll give to their high paying customers, they might want to consider that aspect of customer delightment. It might even be worth offering each customer a Gordon Bell technology outfit as a way to capture their own person viewpoint of the trip, in addition to a professionally produced DVD showing flight preparation, the mother ship taking off, the release and climb of the SpaceShipTwo, the weightless period in the cabin, and the return to earth. Because the actual weightless experience in space will be relatively short, capturing every moment of that will be important to many customers.

These thoughts beg the question, "When will the first wedding in space happen?" Or first proposal, first date, first...

*****