Equipment in space

You know how sometimes you drop something and end up searching for it all over the floor, the desk, and every little crack and space it might have fallen or rolled into? Don't you hate that?

Well now imagine that when that happened, the item in question WALKED AWAY. Just up and walked. Grew legs and, instead of staying where it fell, waiting for you to find it, or rolling within a certain range before coming to a complete stop (and then waiting for you to find it) it sprouted legs, and moved. Walked rooms and even buildings away. Every single time. Every single thing. Just "because."

Welcome to life on the space station.

Nothing falls and stays. Every single thing that's dropped, grows legs and walks away! Ok, actually it floats away. But if you think about it, that's the same thing. Nothing just falls and stays within a logical "searchable" range. Anything that is accidentally dropped can and will "wander" rooms and sometimes buildings away, all on its own and can go anywhere.

Ponder that for a moment...

While you're pondering, I'll tell you about another equipment problem that I never knew about until today. It involves headsets. See Mike below? That's Mike Fossum. I'm going to miss him someday when his time on the Space Station is up. I may have to ask him to put a camera in his home.

Notice the headset on Mike's head? Earpiece and microphone? I have a similar one on my phone. In all the years weeks that I've watched the Space Station, I'd never seen someone wear a headset. Normally they talk into little wired microphones that look like a cross between an electric toothbrush, and some kind of meat thermometer or alien probe. (see below.)

Today was the first time I saw someone wearing what looked like a normal phone type headset. And now I know why. - I paraphrased two bits of dialogue I didn't write down fast enough, but this was a real conversation.

Mike

You may have noticed I'm wearing this headset today. We don't usually use these. I'm not sure if you can see this ear piece clearly if I hold it up to the camera...

Houston

Has Ronny been chewing on that?  

(* Ron is another astronaut.)

Mike

Either that or the cat. 

(pause)

That's a joke. We have no cat.

Houston

Good to know.

Mike

We have 3 of these. I'm going to see if I can find a headpiece that hasn't exploded yet.

There you go. As if working in space wasn't dangerous enough, apparently when you least expect it, earpieces on headsets can explode.

- I'll stick with the alien probe.