Industrial Design for Space
Ha ha! The crew were having trouble with the hand-held cabin mics. They were coming in super quiet (at one point, Christina was shouting to be heard).
Turns out that the mics are strongly directional. They're set up so that they have a super- or hyper-cardioid lobe for gain (the technical term) for sound cancelling: talk into the correct side, you have excellent gain and everything else is suppressed (sound-cancelled), which makes total sense if you're using a mic in an extremely small enclosed space with mechanical noises, air blowers, other people, etc. But the indication of which side of the mic is the side you need to talk into is incredibly subtle: a small black nub. +1 for a tactile indicator but -1 for a non-intuitive visual indicator. If possible, it would probably be a good idea to have both a tactile indicator plus color (if you can print the cover in different colors in a proper way with a material that won't outgas, etc).
Also, it turns out that GoPros and iPhones aren't great for taking pictures of the Earth and Moon from space (there's not enough gain control; space is BRIGHT).
Space engineers and future space engineers, please take note.
Crew's heading offline for a nap. Apparently it's cold in the capsule, so Houston turned down the fans, and hopefully it'll warm up a bit, and the crew's been getting into their luggage for long-sleeved tops. It's interesting to listen to them talk with the team on the ground to confirm which storage box holds which items.
Next up will be the Translunar Injection Burn (but it's not really an Injection in the sense of "setting up to orbit the moon", since they're going to slingshot around it). But it is going to also be the setup for the "free return home", since the burn is meant to both get them around the moon and then on the correct path to come back to Earth.
