Um, hello?

[jay]

After a 7-hour, successful gravity traverse around Haughton Crater, I just minutes ago sat down at my laptop. LJ showed an entry from hopeforyou. The IP phone rang. I picked it up... it was Mike Fincke, science officer on the International Space Station. Yes, calling from orbit...

I waved over the Hamilton-Sundstrand spacesuit guys and put it on the speakerphone. The tent filled up... the connection wasn't bad, no worse than an analog cell phone with some static. Mike talked about following our activities here for the past couple of years, talked with the H-S guys about an upcoming spacewalk on Tuesday, and told Pascal that he hoped they'd be training here for a Mars mission someday.

Caller ID says "unknown number"...

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

So maybe I should quit screening with my caller ID! :)

[elisem.livejournal.com]

That is so cool! Excellent surprise.

Caller ID says "unknown number"...

Hee! I guess so!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

If anything, it'd be patched through Houston... ;-)

[geekchick]

Neat!

I'd never have gotten that call, since I don't pick up "Unknown number" calls. ;)

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

At home, I don't either, but few bill collection agencies and telemarketers have found me up here :).

[emmett-the-sane.livejournal.com]

Whoa. I mean... just... wow.

[sisterfish125.livejournal.com]

That is so cool that they're following your work from the space station...and of course, even niftier that they're calling from space!

You have a fascinating job.

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Thanks. As do you... :)

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

Cool!!!

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's amzingly cool.

[ef2p.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of parent's story about getting a collect call.... from the south pole.

My parents were throwing a party. It was getting later. My mom was in the kids wing putting my brother and I to bed. (We were like 7 and 4). When a guest walked in and said, 'there's a collect call from the south pole, do I accept the charges.'

A friend of my parents was at the south pole for a year and called to say hi. I turned out he knew most everybody that was at the party. So they passed around the phone for a couple hours. The best part was that while we were talking to the south pole. The call was set up using a Ham Radio patch so the actually phone call originated within 50 miles. (the local ham op had no problem patching the call through, he just did not want to pay the phone bill.) This meant that a long collect call from the south pole cost less than $20.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether the phone companies offers ground-to-space-station calling plans.

[phenyx.livejournal.com]

Heh. Does anyone still use the antiquated telco term "station-to-station" to describe a call from one subscriber to another without using the operator?

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

phone tariffs do, but not in common use. Although appropriate here... ;-)

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Well, we're close to the magnetic north pole, here...actually, this was a similarly-cheap call, because it went from ISS downlink to Houston, then to another NASA number attached to my IP phone...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That is absolutely utterly cool.

[joedecker.livejournal.com]

That's very cool. Almost cool enough for me to stop screening no-caller-ID calls on my cell phone--but then, I'm a little less likely to get a call from orbit. ;)

Congrats!