NASA
 

Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 17:23:13 -0600 (CST)

   On Friday the 24th I was watching the NASA channel on cable TV to see how
   the experiments and Shuttle crew were doing. The men onboard needed to
   send instructions to the experiments in the cargo bay and were using a laptop
   to do it. As some of you may have heard, there was a "computer problem"
   onboard as reported by CNN. The exchange of information between the crew
   and the Johnson Space Center (JSC) went something like this:

   Crew: Urgent Johnson, we can't get a DOS prompt.
   JSC: Press C: enter.
   Crew: Heck, we're not familiar with all this
   JSC: What screen are you looking at?
   Crew: It says 'My Computer', and, er, various other icons.
   JSC: Click on 'Start' and then shut down.
   Crew: You click the 'Start' button to shut down?
   JSC: Yeah. Isn't it obvious?
   Crew: Somebody get me an aspirin.
   JSC: Just hit the damn 'Start' button.
   Crew: We can't do that. It didn't load a mouse.
   JSC: Didn't load any mouse at all?
   Crew: Well, yeah, a PS/2 or something. But we don't have one of those
   JSC: Okay. Press Alt + Esc.
   Crew: And what does that do?
   JSC: It should help.
   Crew: Negative.
   JSC: Stand by, will replicate the problem down here.
   Crew: Roger.

   [Long pause]

   JSC: Okay then. Double click the MS-DOS icon.
   Crew: I don't have a mouse.
   JSC: Go to backup.
   Crew: Which is what?
   JSC: Dock with the Russians. They have a Unix Workstation you can borrow.

   Original-Mail von einem Mitarbeiter von Sun Microsystems in Mexico
   (Wahrheitsgehalt ungeklärt...)