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Satellite Imagery Used to Trace Lewis & Clark Route
Woogiemonger writes "To commemorate the 200 year anniversary of the Lewis & Clark expedition, NASA and other researchers are using satellite and aircraft remote-sensing technology to accurately reconstruct the path of the Lewis & Clark expedition, down to the precise location of each encampment. Considering many parts of the landscape along the path may have changed dramatically, this is no easy task. The final result will be a 3D interactive map publicly available on the WWW."
...is going on at the Boston Museum of Science. If you don't live in Boston (gosh, why not? It's the hub of the universe), the same movie will probably be traveling to similar humongous-screen theaters elsewhere.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
I hate when people can't just say "the web" instead of "THE WORLD WIDE WEB" or "THE WWW".
With the ISS possibly going unmanned in the near future should NASA try to conserver resources? Just An Idea.
Any way it seems like a good way to use technology for the recording of what man has done...just maybe not the best time to do this.
This is great! I've been searching for coordinates for my GPS so I can visit the trail if I am ever near it. Maybe they will publish the data. Too bad they didn't leave any geocaches!
I never cared for this while in school, what makes them think I would want to look at this now...
I hate it when people call it "the web."
Who discovered this vast cache of satellite imagery along the Lewis and Clark trail, and how did Lewis and Clark come by it 200 years ago? No wonder they only needed $2,500-they already knew they way, they just wanted to milk the job.
I really think that NASA should have better things to do than tracing the wanderings of superheros and their girlfriends.
traceroute lewisandclark.com
To actually be able to see the route that Lewis and Clark et al took on their expeditions from above will be quite a boon to history buffs and genealogists alike.
Took me about three takes to realise that that didn't say Lois and Clarke. I had images of a mini-superman game, played on a "3D interactive map publicly available on the WWW."
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
Philp admits that taking a visual voyage along the trail can be unnerving in some locales.
"There are parts of the trail that are very depressing. The urban transformations have been dramatic in some areas. At the same time, there are areas, certainly not pristine, yet the degree of change is less," he said.
"So I think you get the full gamut of depression, concern, and outright outrage at the change. And then there are other places along the trail where you have hope," Philp told SPACE.com.
I wonder what he means by this? Depressing how, exactly? Are there a bunch of K-Marts on the trail?
Synergy is your friend
Lewis carried an air rifle on the 1803-1806 expedition. .31 cal, 700-900 lbs. per sq. inch.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I used an Apple IIe to trace the route and that was nearly 20 years ago. There was this really cool game for that computer. Anyone play it?
It's a real symbol of how far NASA and in general, the spirit of exploration, has declined that we use our fabulous science and technology to celebrate past endeavors instead of sending humans to Mars or even simply returning to the moon.
I've never read the journals, so I have no idea, but... Either they are thoroughly descriptive (bordering on manic), or the boys at space.com are just doing a lot of guessing.
I have a hard enough time following telephone directions to a new dentist. Imagine how hard it is to retrace someone's steps through a journal that's hundreds of years old.
The Lewis & Clark IMAX movie is even showing at the local Omnimax/IMAXdome in Lubbock Texas.
NASA is doing something that will actually further our knowledge about a hugely popular subject, Lewis and Clark. Witness the enourmous popularity of the Ambrose book Undaunted Courage. I think this is a much better use of its budget than sending astronauts up to that great trailer home in space just because.
Unbelievable! The government using their massive spying power to monitor innocent civilians. And scientists at that! It's bad enough the spooks are watching your every move, but if you have an IQ over 20, watch out! They're going to---
What's that?
They are? How many years ago?
Oh.
Cripes.
Well, never mind, carry on then.
I used an Apple IIe to trace the route and that was nearly 20 years ago. There was this really cool game for that computer. Anyone play it?
There is a huge difference between the two... Lewis and Clark (and their many assistants) were explorers. The Oregon trail was an established wagon train route from St Louis to Oregon.
That said, the (early) Oregon Trail games were quite cool. The original Apple II version had pretty crappy graphics, but the (two disk!!) second edition was much better (though required 128 KB of memory!). The early Mac version was cool as well, it supported LocalTalk LAN play for interactive wagon trains (voting, hunting, etc). The more recent versions for Mac/Win are nothing but eyecandy.
I wasn't talking about Oregon Trail. There actually was another game for Lewis and Clark.
I guess that means you didn't play it.
A project like this can be done for the cost of the toilets on ISS; what an interesting use of limited funds!
:)
Sharp-eyed readers will sense my implicit criticism of ISS.
Science: Maps Used to Trace Lewis & Clark Route
You can't take the sky from me...
Some claim those mazes of one-way streets were put there on purpose. Keeping a steady flow of 10,000 autos daily going round-and-around-and-around, totally lost, generates enough waste heat to save homeowners millions on fuel oil.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
Perhaps in the future, those who are spearheading this project can do a map tracing of El Camino Real de California, or whatever it's formally known as (more coloquially known as El Camino Bignum). I'd love to see where that runs in conjunction with current roads, but that's just me.
This sig no verb.
Did they ever make it to the end of THEIR retracing of the Lewis And Clark expedition, and would this have helped them?
What a nice project, to correlate (which does not prove causation*) ground and orbital studies. It must have been difficult -- which suggests skills acquired for future challenges.
On the more aesthetic side, "Earth as Art" is just starting out, but very encouraging.
USGS has done a Landsat study of environmental change and NASA's general collection.
Wasn't it Al Gore who proposed a live video feed from a satellite watching Earth. Please don't share your opinion on Gore or the cost -- but wouldn't that be a nice little channel to have? I could name about 20 cable channels I'd surrender to get it (small loss). You could be one of the first to detect the first nuclear conflict. See, I'm not all that optimistic.
And linked from my home page is the Earth Science Image of the Day with explanations.
There are a lot of amazing photos out there, I am always interested in hearing of more, especially if explicated. I'm glad to see them coming to increasingly creative use, beyond assessing crops and measuring ocean temperatures -- useful as these things are!
*semi-inside joke
We don't have IMAX; we watch potatoes grow. Real life much more interesting.
And I thought TN(where I really live) was as bad as it could get.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I can't think of a better way to relate to their experience than to have a satellite image to trace my finger over.
*sigh
My
Limekiller
Hopefully NASA doesn't repeat the Mars mission by making a unit conversion area. I think they'll be suspect if Lewis & Clark are shown to have discovered the Congo.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Anyone who's struggled over making sense of their unique interpretation of the English language should recognize they'd fit right in here.
Everything will be taken away from you.
DUH! Nice informative post. Informed us all that you don't know what you are talking about.
Next tell us that Superman is not Clark Kent.
Forget the maze part. Some friends and I went to Boston for Spring Break last year, and driving in that city is nonsensical. Examples:
There are roads which have no lines in them, and it's left up to the current drivers as to how many lanes they are. The first time I was on a street, it was 2 lanes. When I ended up there again (because of the mazes mentioned in parent) it was 3 lanes - two on the pavement, and one on the streetcar tracks.
We also encountered a dumpster sitting in the middle of the road with no construction in sight. And it wasn't even a big construction dumpster - it was the kind you'd see behind a 7-11. Just sitting there in the street...
It blew my mind. We ended up parking outside the city and using mass transit.
Your brain is not a computer.
Get a sattelite with a HUGE fricken laser beam attatched to it's forhead?
Online text of Jefferson's letter to Lewis. President Thomas Jefferson's Instructions to Captain Meriwether Lewis (June 20, 1803) http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/laven der/jefflett.html
That's M$ as in Mega Dollars, not Micro $oft.
Fuck Gates!
Can't locate my copy right now, to give you the exact month, but there was a National Geographic article on the retracing of the route within the last 8 months.
I remember some interesting commentary on the desire of municipalities to claim ownership of historic sites.
>> Tang, gold clubs and all,
FUCK!
That's "golf clubs"!
Damn red wine at this time of the night...
It's not Microsoft...
In other news, the Total Information Awareness office is stumped at the failure of their satellite tracking experiment. Researchers tentatively conclude that Lewis and Clark may have gone underground.
President Bush announced earlier today that he may "have no choice but to bomb Montana (further) back into the stone age" unless these potential terrorists are turned over to appropriate authorities.
Critics suggest that a search for a live target might prove more fruitful.
~Idarubicin
"Through the most advanced technology in the world today,we can pinpoint the precise location that Lewis and Clark got down with Sacajaweya"
And then there was Donner Party 2000.
...Level 2!
Would you stuff him full of pine nuts before you roast him?
Check the caloric gain in the manual...
Yes. <click>
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Then they will then make a 3d map of Uranus and post it on the World Wide Web so that everyone can see where Uranus has been.
(This is a joke, its ok to laugh)
At least in russia they dont love their farm animals.
(please leave out the stupid Russia jokes. They were funny the first one times, but then got really old)
By the way, I live in TN, so therefore I can comment on it without being flamebait!
Isn't this is taking Homeland security too far? I mean, these guys have been dead for a long time. They can't be much of a threat by now.
I think that Oregon Trail and Lewis and Clark were games by MECCA. Maybe it was some strange Islamic extremeist's plot to train our children to blow themselves up?
What do you want to bet that the route suddenly now runs thru Las Vegas with special mention of the Bunny's Bordello and the Mustang Ranch and a secure site at NASA that lets you buy a 'Listing' for your town on the route. I already found Crawford TX as magically appeared on the route. Could they finally now have a clue on how to raise money for space exploration?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I commend NASA's continued efforts to find a reason to exist. Someday, somehow, they'll find one.
I agree that a live video feed from space would be a cool channel, but we almost have that now with the NASA channel whenever there's a mission. Half the time it seems to be just a camera pointed at the earth.
What I'd like to see, and I'll bet this would even have a profit available, would be a 'reality' channel which showed only the security cameras from really bad neighborhoods (convenience stores, etc). Ideally the places with the highest crime rates or other activity indicators would determine the camera choices.
I lived in an apartment building that had a camera pointed at the front door you could get on an unused cable channel. When we had parties we used to put the TV to that channel with the sound off; there was almost always some amusing people/events happening, especially on weekends.
Even now the Minneapolis cable system shows the "freeway channel" -- a feed from the state highway department that shows a rotation of all the metro area freeway cameras. The rotation is nice if you actually care about the general traffic patterns or want a weather sampler, but it'd be nice if there was a way to pick a specific camera or 'hold' on one that came up.
...who were Lewis and Clark?
umm. You're apparently forgetting KY.
YAWN!!! Who really cares about history that is so boring. Trek towards the ocean and try to make maps. Mess up the itinerary and get lost a dozen times or more. Woohooo. Lewis and Clark. Footnotes in history, not news. Never will be news, it is history. Innaccurate at best.
The space.com referenced story says:
> two centuries ago, American President Thomas Jefferson sought a paltry $2,500 in funds.
We can expect a certain lack of financial acumen from a "Senior Space Writer" but what mathemetically-educated person thinks $2500 two hundred years ago is "paltry"? At 6% interest, it would be worth about $287 million today. And at 10% it would be worth $474 billion.
Disclaimer: my calculations were hastily done with Lotus-1-2-3. Nevertheless, my point is that $2500 two hundred years ago is worth more than $2500 in year 2003 dollars.
--
Joe
yup, i saw that, 2...2 bad u can't do a grep on hardcopy;-)
i'd love 2 do a synthetic timelapse...maybe morphing images in bryce...but i'll have 2 wait 4 santa 2 bring me a g4...this 366mHz iBook's 2 slow;-)
l&c were sent by thomas jefferson on an expedition to explore & map the recently purchased louisiana territory, roughly the middle 1/3 of the u.s., & the drainage basin west of the mississippi rivier.
How about being a little more accurate, and saying that this is going to reproduce a map that scientists BELIEVE Lewis and Clark took? Given the immense amount of theory in today's science, where so little is provable with what we really know, and how many old laws/rules/etc. have been proven wrong, how about not stating that anything is/was correct unless there is some serious proof?
The final result will be that no one will care.
The final result will be a 3D interactive map publicly available on the WWW.
But will they have enough resolution to pick up rusting sardine cans?
Here's Owen Wister, writing in 1902, waxing nostalgic for the good old days of the 1870's:
"Sardines were called for, and potted chicken, and devilled ham: a sophisticated nourishment, at first sight, for these sons of the sage-brush. But portable ready-made food plays of necessity a great part in the opening of a new country. These picnic pots and cans were the first of her trophies that Civilization dropped upon Wyoming's virgin soil. The cow-boy is now gone to worlds invisible; the wind has blown away the white ashes of his camp-fires; but the empty sardine box lies rusting over the face of the Western earth."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
sincerely,
yet another waste of our beloved US tax dollars.
who fucking cares if lewis or clark once farted while sitting in some backwoods campsite on their journey into the history books.
Seems to me that a nice low tech solution would have been to consult a map instead of re-tasking a freaking satellite. (repeat of earlier post)
the value of history is causal in retrospect, we are living the effect. Seems to me that a tax dollar might be better spent feeding a child or perhaps funding a medical research program to combat some nasty illness.
So Lewis and Clark went on a long walk, a long time ago. BFD.
So did many native americans before them, but we don't go around re-tasking a satellite to figure out where Chief ChickenButt once ate breakfast.
Some shit is out of whack here and it needs a reboot.
I live about 3 blocks from one of the camps ... do not go there at night, it's worse than a rest-stop if you know what i mean ;)
Many of these types of projects (including this one) are the result of members of congress mandating that NASA spend money on specific projects in their districts. They're called "earmarks" and are a way to avoid the standard review and budgeting process that may weed out frivolous spending.
Here's a good article: Pork-barrel projects threatening NASA's core programs
That said, educational programs like this do serve a useful purpose - they can teach about remote sensing and Earth system science. NASA uses a suite of satellites to monitor the Earth continuously. Applications include mapping, land use/land cover change, global climate studies, atmospheric research, etc. Because the data are complicated, money is needed to process and evaluate it. Data, remote sensing, the electromagnetic spectrum, atmospheric physics, and cartography are all pretty abstract, and something concrete and possibly exciting (or at least interesting enough to attract the press) like the Lewis and Clark Trail is a good way to get people interested.
In any case, the data covering the trail (which the U.S. taxpayer already paid for) will end up being more accesible than otherwise. So it's not a bad investment.
Of course this is the perfect example of applying the things you learned in school. Math coordinates to navigate a SAT., geometry to scout the lands.. etc etc. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember most of the class falling asleep. Is this really something that we _needed_ to do? Or could we have taken that money and plugged it into improving something worthwhile? ack, I hope this doesnt turn into a troll. Just a bit nervous about tax $$ being used in places that simply don't make a difference to the overall population.
"Oh shit. That wasn't supposed to happen." - OpenBSD telnet exploration turned into accidental server crash
Amen to that--thus I recommend Boston BINGO on any car trip. Each outrageous driver or pedestrian gives me a point--when I get to five points I win!!!
I haven't actually won the game yet, but I once got all the way to three on the few blocks of Mass Ave between Harvard and MIT. (If I hadn't been carting my daughter's pet snake, I would have been riding the Red Line, I do know it's better.)
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...