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Comment by nix23 | Hacker News Reader

Yes it's impressive how many problems occur in a space-station.

Fun-fact: The training bicycle needs to be suspended otherwise the whole station would start to wiggle/vibrate which can damage the solar-panels...because of one little human on a bike ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG3hG3iB5S4

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Not just that, but the mere fan vibration is enough to make ISS unsuitable for some particularily sensitive 0g experiments. There was an entire co-orbital module for ISS in the plans (that never came to fruition, sadly) to provide the station with a separate volume with high-quality microgravity, that would be in the same orbit, docking with the station from time to time.

Little humans in good shape can sustain for several seconds bursts of 1000W+ on a bike. Not so little after all.

The cost-optimized mundane everyday machines that we expect to move are endowed with 150x that energy output -- and with the ability to sustain it rather than burst it. 1kW is large for a human but small for moving a big chunk of metal. Since the sort of resonant motion would be thoroughly damped if, say, you built a full scale ISS in your backyard, I tend to agree with them that it's notable.

> The cost-optimized mundane everyday machines that we expect to move are endowed with 150x that energy output -- and with the ability to sustain it rather than burst it.

A perfect example is a large water pump, a 250hp electric pump draws approximately 150kW (480v 3ph, around 300-310 amps).

I make Sustainable Sound (1),a bicycle powered sound+light+robot interactive experience… can confirm the impressive power a human can create.

(1) http://sustainablesound.org/ (Deep apologies for how behind my sites are - recovering and working on it)

Little Ant's and Bee's are even more impressive...well not on a bike but otherwise.

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