I haven't written on here for a while, a sign, perhaps, of the fact that I've been in the Lakes for a week and also been somewhat distracted with life.
However, I feel an entry is needed and what better than to talk about the rather bizarre world of the space programme (the global space programme) and its sheer oddness. You may have seen in the news recently that the International Space Station has been experiencing lavatory troubles. It seems that the $100 billion space station is equipped with only one toilet, a somewhat surprising oversight (especially given its remoteness if anything goes wrong), and one that prompted an unprecedented plumbing emergency this week, as said waste extractor broke.
Back on earth Russian engineers hurridly prepared the urgently needed replacement parts (the ISS is of course a mixture of global technologies), which were then loaded onto a plane, flown over to Florida, rushed through US customs in a diplomatic bag (thus avoiding the pitfalls of long customs delays), taken to NASA, who then set about stripping the space shuttle (which was due to launch on a seporate mission) of non-essential items so as to accomodate the toilet bits'n'bobs. At which point the shuttle lifted off, docked with the ISS, and an engineer successfully repaird the loo. Joy of joys!!!
A successful and staggeringly complex operation to fix a toilet. An expensive one too, coming in at some $450 million. For a toilet! Amazing.
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