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: Did 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.