Tech support from 230,000 miles away

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HistoryHot705@reddit

Have you tried turning it off and on again; never mind; they missed the moon

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It’s kind of funny how the problems don’t change, just the distance. You can be in space and still run into the same basic fixes as everyone else. Makes tech feel both incredibly advanced and weirdly familiar at the same time.

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Sorry-Climate-7982@reddit

Toilet still ain't fully working is it?

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zzzzaap@reddit

It's connected to Teams.

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noc-engineer@reddit

Microsoft killed Publisher while the launch was happening and didn't even inform NASA who needed it for the toilet

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Tulpen20@reddit

SMTP .... Send Me Toilet Paper

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TomasTheTankEngineer@reddit

I think it’s appropriate to post this picture I took while visiting Kennedy Space Center, from the original laptop on board the space shuttle.

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togetherwem0m0@reddit

Good god astronauts are as bad as the old lady in accounting to support

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ntw2@reddit

Her spelling was better

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JwCS8pjrh3QBWfL@reddit

"SPOC" 🖖

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LokeCanada@reddit

I was imagining the craft starting to go around the dark side of the moon. The call going out that we are able to lose communication (probably not accurate nowadays). And your computer shows that it will have to reboot in 10 minutes to apply the latest updates….

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Doctor-TobiasFunke-@reddit

Processing img 7hwdwib0vntg1...

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keijodputt@reddit

JIAN YAAAAAAANGGG!!!!

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boofnitizer@reddit

“There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun."

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eufemiapiccio77@reddit

Don’t they mean dark as in communications dark.

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IdiosyncraticBond@reddit

And I am not frightened of dying, any time will do, I don't mind
Why should I be frightened of dying?
There's no reason for it, you've gotta go sometime

I never said I was frightened to die

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Rhythm_Killer@reddit

“Citrix is slow”

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Bearchlld@reddit

Astronauts... They are just like us. :D

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sprucecone@reddit

Their password expires in space. I’m imagining that is next. Resetting their password over VPN.

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Wise_Guitar2059@reddit

Didn’t they have issues with outlook as well ?

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slugshead@reddit

New outlook strikes again! In the recording he goes "there's two versions of outlook!"

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togetherwem0m0@reddit

Not 2 versions, he was not literate enough to know that. He just said 2 outlooks.

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Direct_Somewhere_318@reddit

"there's two versions of outlook, and neither of them seem to be working!"

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noc-engineer@reddit

I'm just going to wait for New New Outlook

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GinnyJr@reddit

They were confused with the difference between classic and new outlook “there’s 2 icons”

Too funny

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sgt_Berbatov@reddit

I don't know what you're laughing at.

For a year or two now the muppets I have to support keep getting the two confused, and I thought they were stupid. Now I realise we have sent scientists, guys who are actual astronauts with a load of training and "the right stuff" - who make the same mistake.

I'm left with the unnerving feeling that these idiots could well pass the exam to get on the space rockets.

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ImScaredofCats@reddit

It gets crazier, it's extremely common for astronauts to be super-polygots.

Take David Saint-Jacques he is a medical physician, an astrophysicist, engineer and finally astronaut.

Story Musgrave is a medical doctor, a mathmetican, navy pilot and then astronaut. He also casually holds Masters degrees in computer science and biophysics.

Jonny Kim a current astronaut has also been a decorated Navy Seal veteran (sniper and medic) and navy pilot before taking up a medical career as a doctor. He then decided to become an astronaut.

The qualifications and skillsets these people have are amazing, but of course doesn't necessarily equal great technical skills as we know.

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Ciconiae@reddit

They sent test pilots up. Remember, they had to send monkeys into space first to confirm the first space craft was simple enough for a pilot to use. Joke from a retired USAF coworkers.

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Economy-Apartment815@reddit

They did, they needed to reinstall it.

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norift@reddit

That takes me right to The IT Crowd scene with the bomb in the street, and the defusal guy having issues with the machine controlling the robot.

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mangonacre@reddit

"I just won a hundred quid!!"

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That1Guy5@reddit

Vista! We're going to die!

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ultranoobian@reddit

I'm sorry, Looks like this app is currently not available in your country or region.

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SolidKnight@reddit

Imagine getting shot into space to dock with them just to clock one button and then coming back down.

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Ultimabuster@reddit

I swear we pressed the power button like 5 times already!

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Xtort_@reddit

I read this and it made my eye twitch....

The amount of my time that has been wasted to drive over and do exactly what i told them to do is staggering.

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jakeod27@reddit

“Whys the IT guy such a dick”

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winky9827@reddit

"Get his supervisor on the phone..."

- Some dick judge, probably.

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Inode1@reddit

I'd sign up for that job, great hazard pay and a free ride to space, what could go wrong?

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pdp10@reddit

Free ride to Gary, Indiana, and what's "hazard pay"?

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Raskuja46@reddit

Don't you dare speak that evil into existence.

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GeoSystemsDeveloper@reddit

Have you tried turning it on and off again ...

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mortsdeer@reddit

Part of Asimov's Robots universe included a series of short stories of two robot repair men, who keep getting sent to solve the most difficult problems, because they're good at it. Including to an on orbit communications relay station.

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Jezbod@reddit

Not to mention the simple switch they did not know about...

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soulless_ape@reddit

The ISS switch to Lenovo laptops running Debian and Scientific Linux for reliability and security.

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Agent564@reddit

Where's Ollie when you need him?

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MonkeyHandCoconut@reddit

Artimis, do not restart your computer.

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Loading_M_@reddit

It's kinda crazy we haven't solved this, but my understanding is that the issues aren't critical - if Outlook stops working, the mission should continue as normal.

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Shadax@reddit

If mission success was contingent on outlook working it was doomed from the start.

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noc-engineer@reddit

There's a reason civil aviation has only "upgraded" from AFTN to AMHS (which is based off X.400 that later kinda became SMTP).. And even in civil aviation the flightplans are considered operationally required (to keep the airspace open for the max amount of airplanes), but not necessary to get everyone down and safe (SUR (Surveilance, think RADAR, WAM, MLAT, ADS-B etc) and COM (radio and the network to transport the radio from a mountain complex to the mountain top far far away) are the most critical parts, which is why VoIP ground (ATC) to air (pilots) have the network requirement of 99,9999% availability (31,5 seconds downtime per yer) as stated in Eurocae ED-138).

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krilu@reddit

Hey I've heard of SMTP :)

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noc-engineer@reddit

When my country upgraded to AMHS in 2018 were got a visiting instructor from Spain. They upgraded in 2000 and had gone through 3 hardware generations before we finally upgraded (but to be fair, our old system was tcp/ip based when it was created in 1994, so we could hold out 18 years longer than Spain). The great thing about civil aviation is that everything is old and stable (even now that we have remote (ATC) tower video feed needs so we could finally get some gigabit connections everywhere in our core network (and even some 10gig)). If everyone else has done their job (which they do) then I don't have to lift a finger during 12 hour shifts.

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WRX_manning@reddit

“Just flip over to the web version for now. Use that until you get back down here. Yeah…it’s mostly the same.”

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Jezbod@reddit

My friend "claw hammer" and I need to have a few words with you...

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Fusorfodder@reddit

Did they reboot the spaceship as a troubleshooting step?

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elitexero@reddit

Worst oncall shift ever.

3am: 'Ughhh who's calling ... ah fuck it's space.'

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Creshal@reddit

"Just click the button… nono, the other one. Come on, this isn't rocket science."

"I know, I wouldn't need to call you if it was."

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sgt_Berbatov@reddit

"Are you in the office?"
"Er, no, I'm working from home"
"Could you not come in? We can swap the computer out then."
"Well I could but it'd take me a while to get over there."
"How long? I can make sure I'm in for you?"
"Er, about 4 or 5 days. Depending on the gravity really."

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Quick_Movie_5758@reddit

He is the answer. Get him up there.

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jmbpiano@reddit

Ok, major props to whomever did that 'shop. That's well done.

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Escanut@reddit

Not really comparable but when I was still in IT Support a staff member called me literally from a different side of our building. Why? her mouse wasn't working.
After confirming the usual turned it off or plugged it in?
Went there and saw the mouse was unplugged.

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Adept-Midnight9185@reddit

My father once had to drive over 100 miles because a system was down. When he got there, he found it was because someone had unplugged it so they could plug in an ice cream maker.

I was a toddler, this was in the 1980s. He was angry enough (and my mother amused enough) that I remember the story to this day.

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noc-engineer@reddit

It beats having to fax a remote site more printer paper..

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flummox1234@reddit

Did... did they write control systems in JavaScript? Please reassure me that NASA hasn't fallen that far.

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Scary_Ad_3494@reddit

Systemctl restart Thomas Pesquet

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HonourableYodaPuppet@reddit

That means were using NASA-Techniques to fix computer now!

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theEvilQuesadilla@reddit

Be sure to add it to your resume!

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datec@reddit

I read the whole "Tech support from 230k miles away" and was immediately sceptical mainly because I've been dealing with users who blatantly lie constantly... I thought to myself what are they in space, on the moon or something... As I thought about on the moon I remembered that I had watched the Artemis launch a few days ago...

Fuck I already need a drink and it's 9am on a Monday morning...

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eyedrops_364@reddit

I’ll be right there!

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bjc1960@reddit

I wonder if they are allowed to be admin of their computers. Maybe we can send another spaceship up with someone from IT authorized to be admin on the computer.

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mixduptransistor@reddit

I know they've been using standard computing on the Shuttle and ISS for decades now, but the latency out to the Moon is something like 30 seconds. Crazy they are stretching TCP to that extent and not coming up with something that can tolerate that latency better in terms of client applications

This is just one mission but if they haven't figured something out by the time they start putting a base on the moon we have lost all imagination

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ByTheBeardOfZues@reddit

They could have attached a reel of fibre to the shuttle and fired it at the moon with a harpoon. Would probably need a solution for orbital cycles - maybe a reverse system of tram rails in the stratosphere.

I'll pitch that idea for the next mission.

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GremlinNZ@reddit

So who is going to explain the harpoon now attached to the shuttle?

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ByTheBeardOfZues@reddit

Just do some hand waving and mumble something about space whales.

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_DoogieLion@reddit

Latency is like 3 seconds, no-where close to 30

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Creshal@reddit

We've dealt with worse latencies in BBS days, none of this is hard to figure out.

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asphere8@reddit

The latency is only about 2 seconds round trip from light lag, annoying for any real-time applications but not awful for anything else.

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Raichu4u@reddit

Shit, I think I've had clients with worse than that.

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IdiosyncraticBond@reddit

Were they interstellar?

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exercisetofitality@reddit

Reminds me of playing quake 3 on dial up.

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PiotrekDG@reddit

Where did your 30 second figure come from? Not really close

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raip@reddit

I used to serve on Submarines in 2004 - 2009 and you'll be very surprised on how crazy you can push TCP. We had a custom size Ethernet frame (think Jumbo frames) and would routinely see latency of 90s+ when downloading Email on low frequency radio waves.

I'm sure their TCP and Ethernet framing is tuned for the high latency - no need for them to reinvent a protocol (and then have to retest all of their applications) when you can just tune the stack to your needs.

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