Slashdot Mirror

• The first 90,000 miles are toll-free, Cisco Systems company profile (detailed), 8 September 2002.
• The first 90,000 miles are toll-free, Cisco Systems Newsroom news story (brief), as seen on Newsroom, 21 February 2001.

Articles discussing this include:

• Now that's a long distance call!, Humans in Space, NASA, 3 June 2003.
• Johnson Space Center, NASA Spinoff magazine, 2001.http://www.techbriefs.com/spinoff/spinoff2001 /johnson.html -->
• This isn't Houston, Lafe Low, CIO Magazine, 1 October 2001.
• Voice over IP takes a giant step forward, Jon William Toigo, Washington Technology vol. 16 no. 1, 2 April 2001.
• Astronauts call home via shuttle VoIP link, William Jackson, Government Computing News, vol. 20 no. 5, 5 March 2001.

Spinning liquids to form mirrors works on Earth because Earth's gravity acts perpendicular to the plane of spin. We would need some way of replicating those two forces in space. All the methods I know about would cost more than simply launching a solid mirror.

A method of putting cheap mirrors into space that I proposed to my physics mentor a few decades ago is to use inflatable mirrors. He brushed off the idea at the time. Now, though, NASA has research on the general concept:

NASA Tech: Parabolic Membrane-Thickness Variation for Inflatable Mirror

A Google search for inflatable mirrors turns up many more results.

Your tax dollars paid for it. Download it here.

http://www.nasatech.com/software/

There's some seriously interesting software in there.

The tool (see Figure 1) includes an aluminum housing, within which are mounted four laser diodes that operate at a wavelength of 670 nm. The laser diodes are spaced 1 in. (2.54 cm) apart along a baseline. The laser diodes are mounted with setscrews, which are used to adjust their beams to make them all parallel to each other and perpendicular to the baseline. During the adjustment process, the effect of the adjustments is observed by measuring the positions of the laser-beam spots on a target 80 ft (Å24 m) away. Once the adjustments have been completed, the laser beams define three 1-in. (2.54-cm) intervals and the location of each beam is defined to within 1/16 in. (Å1.6 mm) at any target distance out to about 80 ft (Å24 m).

The tool (see Figure 1) includes an aluminum housing, within which are mounted four laser diodes that operate at a wavelength of 670 nm. The laser diodes are spaced 1 in. (2.54 cm) apart along a baseline. The laser diodes are mounted with setscrews, which are used to adjust their beams to make them all parallel to each other and perpendicular to the baseline. During the adjustment process, the effect of the adjustments is observed by measuring the positions of the laser-beam spots on a target 80 ft (Å24 m) away. Once the adjustments have been completed, the laser beams define three 1-in. (2.54-cm) intervals and the location of each beam is defined to within 1/16 in. (Å1.6 mm) at any target distance out to about 80 ft (Å24 m).

The tool (see Figure 1) includes an aluminum housing, within which are mounted four laser diodes that operate at a wavelength of 670 nm. The laser diodes are spaced 1 in. (2.54 cm) apart along a baseline. The laser diodes are mounted with setscrews, which are used to adjust their beams to make them all parallel to each other and perpendicular to the baseline. During the adjustment process, the effect of the adjustments is observed by measuring the positions of the laser-beam spots on a target 80 ft (Å24 m) away. Once the adjustments have been completed, the laser beams define three 1-in. (2.54-cm) intervals and the location of each beam is defined to within 1/16 in. (Å1.6 mm) at any target distance out to about 80 ft (Å24 m).

Battery absorption rate... maybe, that is why from what I understand everyone is moving to putting large capacitors in for this function. http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Apr00/LEW16876.html . On the other hand i'm not sure what he is talking about when it comes to added weight, since the regenerative braking systems don't really add anything when it comes to a direct drive hybrid, you have an electric motor that acts as a generator for braking and is used for driving when in battery mode. Compared to a pure electric vehicle there is weight gain, but that is not what we have here.

Unfortunately they cut funding to that.

While I get a kick out of most of these missions, I'm *really* waiting for the next Titan mission. I want to see a nuclear powered helicopter or cryogenic-temperature blimp (two proposals thusfar) patrolling around Titan; it'd be able to visit pretty much the entire moon. Huygens definitely was a "pose 5 new questions for every one it answered" mission. And if anything, Titan now looks even more like Primordial-Earth-In-Deep-Freeze than ever before. ::digs up one of his old posts to sci.space.tech::

There were some concept studies done of an "Aerover" blimp for Titan exploration a few years back. I suspect we'll soon seen those ideas thrown around again.

Post-Cassini Exploration of Titan: Science Rationale and Mission Concepts (compares helicopters, blimps, etc.)
Titan orbiter Aerover mission
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature= 499
http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Mar03/NPO20609.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/ titan_blimp_020212.html

Funny that HP would be flaunting this. I read about Quantum based, nano gates in Nasa Tech Briefs nearly two years ago. Can't submit such things to here from there, as they don't keep their articles on-line.

Specific impulse has always been a bit fuzzy to me too, and I do have some physics background. But I always think of VASIMR whenever someone mentions specific impulse. That's gotta be just about the coolest engine ever.

You could get around that by using subvocal microphones.
It'd be odd to see everyone sit around silently moving their lips, though...

Although it's called an "ion engine", it's really just the first step in the progression of plasma propulsion. Next up we have the VASIMR which they've been talking about testing on the space station. It can produce slow thrust like an ion engine, or it can produce hard thrust like a chemical rocket. You can power it with solar panels, or you can power it with a nuclear reactor. Eventually, almost the exact same design will be used in fusion rockets, and possibly even antimatter rockets. Then we're in Startrek country with plasma power distribution and ships which you can actually live and work on.

Accordingly, the F-15 was designed with broad-chord wings supplemented with additional lift from the upper surface of the wide fuselage. This feature showed its value several years later in the Middle East, when an Israeli F-15 lost its right wing in combat and was still able to return to its base for a normal landing.

10 years eh? I'm ready!

For those whom feel that everything Nasa does is automatically non-copyright, the problem is that very few things that NASA has ever done are NASA exclusive. Almost all research is done by a University under a technology sharing arrangement. The copyright is held by the University in these cases.

NASA's budget last year was $20 billion or so, or about $70 per living American per year. Not a lot, really, but did we all get something beneficial out of it? $70 in a year could have bought me something I wanted or my family needed.

Hell, I got 70 bucks worth of entertainment checking out the website looking at mars pictures, just last night.

You are possibly (probably, based on your comments) unaware of the specific benefits that Nasa's research provides to you and your family, in what has become everyday objects as a direct result of the research they do. You can read the abstracts of these articles (and perhaps access the articles themselves; I didn't spend the time looking because you probably won't bother to go there at all) at this URL.

There are places where the government wastes your and my money, but research done in these government programs is not one of those places; the benefits are real, freely provided, and improve your quality of life every day, regardless of if you're aware of or appreciate it.

This was true originally but in the past 3-5 years the dual-channel GPS feeds were combined into one accurate feed. Now your handheld GPS uses the same signal as the guys hunting Osama.

A method of processing signals in a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver has been invented to enable the receiver to recover some of the information that is otherwise lost when GPS signals are encrypted at the transmitters. The need for this method arises because, at the option of the military, precision GPS code (P-code) is sometimes encrypted by a secret binary code, denoted the A code. Authorized users can recover the full signal with knowledge of the A-code. However, even in the absence of knowledge of the A-code, one can track the encrypted signal by use of an estimate of the A-code.

Now, I suppose that some of these sites are either flying under the corporate radar or are operating under some sort of trademark/copyright exception but I really don't know.

In this particular case, I have to question UC's wisdom in going after this site. I don't see any indication in the "nastygram" (classy nomenclature) that there was offensive material of some sort and I don't expect the students running the site were making a ton of cash on it. It seems like much ado about nothing...unless UC thinks that any student using those initials dilutes their "brand." Does that mean, too, that if University of Chicago puts a U in front of the C on their football team's helmets, they're going to get sued?

I've done a little research into solar energy production and know a bit about physics, also. Here are some of my thoughts.

What mechanism actually prevents solar cells from reaching 100% efficiency? I mean, is it a natural physical limit, or is it merely that they haven't been engineered sufficiently to take advantage of all of the light that falls on them? I'd guess that it has something to do with making cells dense enough to capture *every* photon that lands on them.

If that's the case, then there are two ways to increase efficiency, based upon how it is defined:

In normal scientific terms, efficiency would be defined by the amount of energy that is converted compared with the amount of energy that is incident. That's science.

In economic terms, though, efficiency has a completely other meaning. A cell's efficiency is determined by the (manufacturing/maintenance) cost versus the energy converted.

In pseudo-marketing hogwash, the two definitions could be combined. The 'efficiency' of a cell (just the small, *expensive* part that does the conversion) could be defined as the relationship of the size of the cell (and thus the majority of the cost) versus the amount of energy that it converts, regardless of the amount of energy that is incident on the entire system or it's size.

In hogwash terms, a *concentrating* cell arrangement such as this could have 4x the efficiency of a 'normal' solar cell merely by increasing the incident light that falls on the actual collector, the small cell in the middle.

This means that it is actually more *economically* efficient because the most expensive part, the silicon collector, has been substituted with a large area of fresnel lens. It also means that it is, in actuality, no more *scientifically* efficient than other silicon photovoltaics because the *total* incident light on the system is larger.

Here's a good link to a functionally similar inflatable frensel lens design that NASA is using on satellites.

I know, you're being sarcastic. NASA funds a lot more than just space.

that digital camera you use? It was developed with NASA's assitance.

NASA funds research in all areas, It's just the most PR potent ones are at Cape Canaveral, FL, US.

You can subscribe to NASA Tech Briefs here.

It really surprises me how many Doctors, Engineers, Biologists, etc. don't know about this.

I've read both articles, and understand the basic of the switch (which is very much like a plasma window, only works a lot faster).
But I'm having a hard time understanding how this valve would stop a leak. Since that seems to be the primary function of such a valve.

Is it supposed to be placed "on top" of an existing mechanical valve, so that if that valve leaks the plasma one will jump in close it off ?

Murphy(c)

Google points to here

Also the interview mentions the fact that in October 2002, it was still in basic research form and could take as much as a couple of years to production and maybe a bit more for commercial purposes.

But that still bodes well for us since Silicon will tide us through another 10 good years.

Wish I werent 30 right now. The average lifespan looking like 70 (hopefully!) I just have 40 more years left....oopss.. Panic Attack!

While the subset of people that need high accuracy maybe small, that doesn't mean they're not economically significant

One, to ask the honest question of why would Joe/Jane Average need 5cm accuracy from a GPS device. I must confess ignorance on this. (Although I am learning, I have been refered to geochaching twice now.) While Selective Availability might be problematic for that, it is certainly not the end of the world.

And two, to state that people that require accuracy will not be affected by the reinstatement of Selective Availablity. WAAS, the Coast Gaurd, and others provide differential signals to get GPS recievers into the sub-meter accuracy range, and since these systems were created under SA in the first place, they should be unaffected. Indeed, as I saw on this link (I think) that was posted with the comments on the original story, there are methods of using the military's own encrypted differential signals to increase accuracy, and I doubt the military is going to fool with their differential signals anytime soon. I suppose I should turn off the blockquote now...

The method described does some signal conversion to extract useful information from the P code even when the A code (encryption) is not known. It uses an approximation of the A code and summing over time to extract useful information.

The method described does some signal conversion to extract useful information from the P code even when the A code (encryption) is not known. It uses an approximation of the A code and summing over time to extract useful information.

www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Sept00/MFS31477.html

Additionally, the NASA Tech Briefs are published monthly for the purpose of announcing new technology developed by NASA or its contractors that is available for commercialization.

Additionally, the NASA Tech Briefs are published monthly for the purpose of announcing new technology developed by NASA or its contractors that is available for commercialization.

Adaptive Camouflage

Basically attach a flexible display panel with a small camera to the front and back of a vehicle, and then output the rear camera to the front display, and so on for whatever sides you want to camouflage.

Perhaps with flexible display one could minimize ones targetable area.

More here

Sorta old news, but here is a page with pics and such for BioMorphic MicroFlyers for Mars exploration.

Somewhat related to the problem of flying in the thin Martian atmosphere: NASA plans to fly a glider to 30,000m [nasatech.com].

For those of you that are interested in gliding/soaring, they are using a modified (obviously...) DG-500, and the attempt will be made in New Zeeland. The pilot is a testpilot named Einar Enevoldson from the home of the real stuff, Edwards Air Force Base. One of those lucky souls that have flown a rocket aircraft...

Check out a NASA tech brief, Thermacore a company that makes them and MIC another company that makes them for more information.

In fact, there is a package called LabView which is extensible and many data collectors provide modules to LabView with their sensors. LabView is predominantly a Windows product, but don't let some folk's bias get in the way of work. [Note: I'm not a Windows fan, but will use it when required or if it's the right tool for the job, which it is for things like data collection.]

I cannot attest to cost, but merely to the fact that advertising in TechBriefs has even stuck with someone who has no interest in scientific data collection, like myself. Cheers. ----- Want intelligence? Go to Stratfor.com. If it's in the news, it's too late.

http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/ Aug 00/NPO20641.html

Were they are talking about 50Vdc from a simple patch array. I've also heard the Koreans are pretty interested in this stuff. At a conference I was at recently they talked about a 100kW system that they'd had a demonstrator of!!!!

A good reference is

W. C. Brown The history of power transmission by radiowaves, IEEE Trans MTT, Vol MTT-32, No 9, Sept 1984

Cheers

D.

• Spinoffs from the space program
  
• NASA Tech Briefs
  
• Space Awareness Alliance; Space Benefits