Top 15 Space Station Earth Images of 2015

Top 15 Space Station Earth Images of 2015

The first image, full size picture is found
Here

Shows a guy in shorts with a hella lens on a camera like he's taking pictures.
You can see through the windows the Earth below in daylight setting.

Some of the images of Earth in the 15 ISS images are
beautiful, exquisite, amazing, and awesome.

BUT....

Before you go check out the other 14+ images from the ISS on NASA's site,
you might want to check out the emblem or patch/sticker
whatever you want to call it just below the guy's right knee in foreground.
The one with the red border.

Guess what it says....

VR in the center with
Brad, Jeff, Dave, Ken, Erin and then D.S.T.
around the red border of emblem in white.

You know what VR means?

Virtual Reality.
Check out some info on the NASA ISS VR Experiment.

NASA SHOWS THE WORLD ITS 20-YEAR VIRTUAL REALITY EXPERIMENT TO TRAIN ASTRONAUTS: THE INSIDE STORY

Once again, I call hoax on ALL the purported Earth images taken from what is said to be the ISS.

Another NASA hoax.

Next?...

a reply to: imd12c4funn
"For the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky".

a reply to: Klassified

Not a treky.
Had to look that one up.

I have a degree in 3d game engine design etc etc and I can tell you that the man hours it would take to produce that image, and days to render it in 3dsMax would take far more money than their budget of 4-7 people in the lab could ever afford. The equipment they are using alone looks like piece meal. Sometimes you must work with what you have. They were fortunate to have hololens, to bad it was lost. Ironically I used to live in Nassau Bay across the street from this place and you know what... if they were the all knowing gov entity people claim they are I would have been called to work there a long time ago, or at least had my linkedin glanced at, or maybe even been called to run the country for that matter. pffffft.

originally posted by: imd12c4funn
You know what VR means?

On my Nikon camera it stands for "vibration reduction."
In electrical diagrams it can mean a "voltage regulator" or a "variable resistor." (Why universal symbols are used instead)

a reply to: imd12c4funn

So what was it flying over my house the other night, and how do you know it doesn't have a camera.

Does the patch claim to be an ISS mission patch?

Does it claim to be a NASA patch of any kind?

Is the guy in the photograph American, from NASA, or he in fact Italian and works for the ESA?

originally posted by: onebigmonkey
a reply to: imd12c4funn

So what was it flying over my house the other night, and how do you know it doesn't have a camera.

Does the patch claim to be an ISS mission patch?

Does it claim to be a NASA patch of any kind?

Is the guy in the photograph American, from NASA, or he in fact Italian and works for the ESA?

I would have to say,
yes
yes
yes
and yes.

I failed to mention the insignia with the VR in the center.
It is An analemma, perihelion and ellipse.

originally posted by: cmdrkeenkid

originally posted by: imd12c4funn
You know what VR means?

On my Nikon camera it stands for "vibration reduction."
In electrical diagrams it can mean a "voltage regulator" or a "variable resistor." (Why universal symbols are used instead)

"vibration reduction."
Which makes me think of the lack of vibration on cameras attached to rockets, etc...
A rocket being launched with so much thrust, yet the video is perfectly still other than rotation.
Why doesn't the picture shake violently under these launch conditions?

They're some fantastic pictures and make me quite envious of the lives of the folk in the ISS.

Favourites were the one of the Port of Sfax, Tunisia where the city looks just enormous in scale. It's hard to believe there's only a population of ~900 000 in that vast sprawl. The red sprites from NW Mexico are beautiful to see.

I didn't know that the India-Pakistani border was illuminated at night so I've just learned something. Thanks.

Scandinavia at night leaves me with a peculiar sense of looking at home. Too much Xmas Jamesons lol.

The names on the patch can all be found in this list of names and roles associated with 2015 projects. They're unconnected wrt specific projects, but all seem involved in LEO satellites technology businesses. The 'VR' might be an informal group name...just an idea.

Nice pictures. There's a whole site with a huge archive of ISS images of Earth - Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth - including a stream of the latest images: eol.jsc.nasa.gov...

Many shots are too dark, blurry, or out of focus. If the ISS and its photography are fake, why fake bad photos?..

Incidentally, I'd like to know what that patch is for. Tried to Google the names and the acronym, but didn't get anything related to the ISS.

a reply to: wildespace

I found the names in the 2015 roll-call of ISS projects.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
The names on the patch can all be found in this list of names and roles associated with 2015 projects. They're unconnected wrt specific projects, but all seem involved in LEO satellites technology businesses. The 'VR' might be an informal group name...just an idea.

Well, the photo is from 2013, and the patch may have been there for even longer.

NASA picture inside the Cupola aboard the International Space Station shows NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, an Expedition 36 flight engineer, using a 400mm lens on a digital still camera to photograph a target of opportunity on Earth some 250 miles below him in this NASA image released on June 10, 2013. Cassidy has been aboard the orbital outpost since late March and will continue his stay into September. (NASA HO via Reuters)

In the Cupola, there are controls for the robotic arm. So, if the patch is indeed connected to Virtual Reality, it might have something to do with using VR for the robotic arm training. Just a thought.

I'm gonna ask on ISS's Facebook page, maybe someone knows where this patch is from.

a reply to: wildespace

Is it possible the names are connected though? They are each associated with the ISS projects and could have been invested in a project prior to 2015 too.

My initial thought was someone's family with spouse and kids etc.

ETA - checked the projects for 2013 (expedition 36) and the names aren't there

The other possibility is that the sticker has nothing to do with anything in the cupola and someone just thought it would look nice there.

The box it's on is obviously connected to the cupola and has some serious wires attached to it.

None of this proves that any ISS photos are a hoax, which is what is being claimed.

Gotta love the disconnectedness in the OP. Starting with NASA article with ISS pictures of Earth, then focusing on the VR patch and linking to an article about the virtual reality training for astronauts, and ending with the claim that the ISS and images from it are fake.

~~~

Oh, and speaking of bad ISS photos, the latest ones have a few examples:
Blurry, with lots of reflections - eol.jsc.nasa.gov...
Underexposed - eol.jsc.nasa.gov...
Overexposed - eol.jsc.nasa.gov...
A rather messy photo of the Sun - eol.jsc.nasa.gov...
Out of focus - eol.jsc.nasa.gov...

[Edit] Ah yeah, just found who those names belong to: www.techrepublic.com...
Brad Bell.
Jeff Hoblit, the VR Lab's contractor lead, and one of the first engineers in the lab.
Dave Homan, the lab's founder.
No idea who Ken is.
Erin is probably Erin Carson, the author of that article.

a reply to: wildespace

a reply to: imd12c4funn

Vibrations are not a rocket's friend. A lot of the engineering goes into reducing and isolating them. Vibrations and oscillations can completely obliterate a rocket. If you look at old, and still even more recent to some extent, launches that failed you can see what I mean.

The best way I've heard it explained is by comparing it to consumer electronics. Sure, your phone/iPod/etc... can withstand you waking around with it and dropping it occasionally, but getting launched into space is like shaking it in a paint mixer for a few minutes, while it's operating, and expecting full functions to continue both during and after launch. Without specially designed equipment, which the launch cameras and other electronics are, they wouldn't last.