This snap of the International Space Station Alpha is worth a closer look. Among the space gear and the bloke reading the instructions for the flat-pack pine shelving unit, is an IBM Thinkpad (arrowed).

If you look closely at the screen (you'll have to take our word for this, or check out the original pic here), you can see the following:

Restart the System for changes to take effect

C:\

This is repeated about 5 times following several other commands typed in (obviously the restart prompt was ignored). Finally, the last line of the screen is displaying:

Performing Restart to check new configuration

Well, the thing clearly didn't restart, or you wouldn't be seeing this screen. It looks like it's fallen over on the reboot command. And hold on - isn't that MS-DOS they're running?

We hope that they're only using the notebooks for playing Space Invaders and not controlling the life-support systems. ®

Bootnote

Thanks to loyal Reg space cadet Tim Epstein for this interstellar ditty.