Hard drives go floppy in zero gravity

The technically beleaguered International Space Station (ISS) may be forced to shuttle up recently developed 'solid state' hard drives because normal ones refuse to work in zero gravity.

Nasa said that hard drives which contained no moving parts could be the answer to the station's computer problems, which are thought to be caused by the lack of gravity upsetting the moving parts in the computers' hard drives.

The ISS has been plagued by technical difficulties and continuous problems with printer configurations and internet access, as well as with the installation of operation and relaxation software.

But on some occasions the entire system, including backup facilities, has crashed leaving the crew in a communication black hole. Although life support systems have not been affected by the outages, reports from the captain's log show that life in outer space has been made difficult by hardware and software difficulties.

One of the computers crashed again on Tuesday, knocking the recently installed robotic arm off line and delaying the installation of vital air tanks for the oxygen system.

Nasa said a possible solution would be the installation of cutting edge solid state hard drives, which do not contain spinning disk platters.

The space-based organisation said that vibrations from external sources, such as docking shuttles and the robot arm, could crash the drives which are not designed for zero gravity environments.

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