NASA Looking for Bandwidth Sponsorship

Neil Halelamien writes "A news release and MSNBC's Cosmic Log report that NASA has a web sponsorship opportunity for companies in return for providing bandwidth support for the two upcoming Space Shuttle missions of Discovery and Atlantis. The missions, scheduled for this summer, are expected to cause 20 to 30 million web site visits each and up to a half million streaming video feeds. The alternative is for NASA to cap the number of visitors. Sponsorship proposals are being accepted through April 13."

Comments

Why so many?

[Anonymous Coward]

The missions, scheduled for this summer, are expected to cause 20 to 30 million web site visits each and up to a half million streaming video feeds

Why? Are they supposed to blow up too?

Re:Why so many?

[Rei]

Won't people stop with this? A 2% failure rate on a rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt is a very impressive rate for orbital rockets - not just for the US, but worldwide. We may not like this fact, but that's the reality of space travel: it's *dangerous*. You get into a craft for which most of its mass is some of the most eager-to-react chemicals we can produce, made of thin, flimsy materials (because it has to stay incredibly light), has millions of components (the complexity of a real, high performance rocket engine that can take you to orbit makes million dollar jet engines look like child's toys), these materials undergo high vibrational loads and G forces, the engine materials are often exposed to temperatures hotter than the boiling point of iron in extremely corrosive environments, the turbopumps have to spin at tens of thousands of rpms. You're often handing cryogenic materials that can make things that are normally sturdy snap like twigs; cryogenic hydrogen is especially bad, as it also embrittles metals. When you get to orbit, you're constantly bombarded with particles moving at tens of thousands of miles an hour, along with radiation and severe temperature extremes that are eager to freeze up your hydraulics, cause expansion problems, and basically mess up anything that they can. On reentry, you're exposed to ridiculous amounts of heat as you try and burn off all of that energy that you spent accelerating using your proportionally tiny orbital craft.

Honestly, it's amazing that these craft ever survive.

Re:Why so many?

[rovingeyes]

We may not like this fact, but that's the reality of space travel: it's *dangerous*

Agreed, but shouldn't NASA also acknowledge that fact and let the people know about it? Case in point, recent "crack" which was discussed on slashdot. Yesterday, I read an article, which states that NASA is downplaying it. May be it is nothing but shouldn't their attitude be more realistic?

Re:Why so many?

[ifwm]

I think most people know it's dangerous. In fact I've seen no evidence to suggest otherwise.

Two shuttle disasters, numerous rocket failures and a HUGE hit movie whose only focus was a botched space mission have helped drive the point home.

But I could be wrong. I doubt it though, and I plan to ask a few people in passing conversation about the subject. Maybe I give people more credit than they deserve.

Re:Why so many?

[Chairboy]

> and a HUGE hit movie whose only focus was a botched space mission have
> helped drive the point home.

Now, I enjoyed Space Camp as much as the next guy, but was it really a HUGE hit?

Gotta check those links...

[TripMaster Monkey]

The link entitled "MSNBC's Cosmic Log" actually points to a story about the coverage of the upcoming solar eclipse from Panama...certainly newsworthy in its own right, but somewhat offtopic here..

In the interest of promoting more discussion, a lot of good info regarding the NASA bandwidth sponsorship can be found here.

How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandwidt

[Hulkster]

Be real interesting to see a chart showing bandwidth needs for various high profile sites such as Google, CNN, Slashdot, and (most recently) the Vatican.

Probably the best qualified to help 'em out would be the p0rn sites ... somehow, I doubt NASA will accept those offers in exchange for a banner ad on Nasa.Gov ... ;-)

P.S. I noticed Slashdot is offered a Free One Day Pass (sponsored by ThinkGeek) - new revenue generator for 'em? Ironically, if you click thru on the article after getting your free one day pass, it says "Posting will only be possible in The Mysterious Future!" - a minor, but funny, typo.

To paraphrase...

[mogrify]

It will be a sad day when our corporations get all the money they want and NASA has to publish a sponshorship opportunity to run a website.

Re:To paraphrase...

[ScentCone]

It will be a sad day when our corporations get all the money they want and NASA has to publish a sponshorship opportunity to run a website.

Corporations don't 'get' money (in the way that NASA does), they have to do something in exchange for it (like, sell something) or talk investors into delivering it. NASA, on the other hand, works on tax dollars, which means that everybody in the country (at least, the part of the country that pays taxes, anyway) funds their programs. I think they should have a much bigger budget, but a lot of people don't.

Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense to avoid a potentially more bruising budget fight in front of the administration and congress when some donors (who will very carefully think about who the audience is for these events, and will only provide resources if it makes sense for their business model) are willing to take up some of the slack. Episodic events (like shuttle launches) are ideal for this sort of sponsorship because the need for that overhead is fleeting, and can be tied to a date on a calendar. That works well for people in the PR/marketing side of things, and allows NASA to focus more on actually safely hurling people and equipment into space and have to worry less about which project to extend or kill.

One word:

[FiveNines]

bittorrent....

Re:One word:

[kjamez]

two words: coral cache.

Are we helping their problems?

[Inkieminstrel]

Nasa is having bandwidth problems... let's post links to them on Slashdot!

BitTorrent

[svanstrom]

Why stream it all to a few, instead of using BitTorrent to send the complete files to everyone that wants them?

Re:BitTorrent

[Have Blue]

You can't do live video over BitTorrent, since it does not provide in-order delivery.

Nice shuttle roll-out pics

[MagPulse]

NASA has some nics pics of the roll-out from Wednesday. This one is my favorite, and thanks to the high resolution it makes great wallpaper.

Half a million viewers? I think not...

[Eyeball97]

Half a million streaming video clients? More than a little ambitious, I'd say.

Even at a modest 64kbps stream this would consume 32Gbps of bandwidth - that's THREE OC192's or, although the figures vary quite widely (Here's one), approximately the entire capacity of the "Internet" as it currently stands.

There are technologies that can handle this using a mere 64kbps in total (e.g. multicast) but they're not widely adopted/available (side note - why??)

You'd think an agency that can put someone on the Moon and vehicles on Mars would have the tech savvy to know off the top of their heads that they're dreaming!

Multicast feeds of NASA TV

[Danathar]

Unknown to many, If you are an internet2 (most universities) connected college or university then you probabaly have access to the multicast feed of NASA TV being broadcast by the University of Oregon. WHY NASA does not provide this themselves since NASA is connected to Internet2 is beyond me. (I even wrote to the web site asking about it...nobody responded).

They could save a TON of bandwidth from multicast enabled users clicking on unicast streaming servers...if only they would POST that it's available!

Dear NASA,

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

I have a DSL connection. It should handle fine unless we're playing xbox online but I'll keep that to the off hours. Gimme a call.

Re:Contact info.

[Rei]

Wake me up when they produce anything that addresses the real technical challenges of real spaceflight, instead of building unscalable joyrides.

Re:NASA needs this

[Erwos]

Do you understand that NASA subdomain servers are often just single boxes with Apache running on them? It's not like everyone's running a server farm, and if one day their pictures suddenly become popular, well... they don't have the funding to do much more than watch the boxes start smoking. It's also not as if they're each connected to the web on their own gigabit pipe.

If www.nasa.gov went down, I'd be concerned, but let's be reasonable...

-Erwos

ESM

[DesiVideoGamer]

Why can't they use ESM ? That should save them bandwidth.

Suggestion...

[raam]

Sell the super-secret Air Force shuttle on ebay.

That'll buy some bandwidth.

Re:To paraphrase.

[ediron2]

NASA doesn't get the funding that it needs, yes. They get half of what they got, proportionally, back in the days of Apollo, and their budget is completely dwarfed by things like the military, medicare, medicaid, social security, national debt interest, etc.

The hard numbers are interesting:

Nasa : $16 Billion
Military : $420 Billion
Medicare : $300 Billion
Medicaid : $175 Billion
SocialSec: $518 Billion
Interest : $322 Billion
Etc. : ... well, there's $2500 Billion total spending

Even more interesting is the serious PITA it is to find this data. I've got projected 2005, budgeted 2005, some 2004, and some 2006 stuff overlapping up there. Politicians and agencies hide the info a zillion ways, talking in percentages and percent-changes whenever it'll improve their argument.

space porn

[timothy]

If NASA needs private sponsorships and advertising to get along, why not let true private enterprise (instead of quasi-private) take over the aspects of spaceflight which it's not prepared to support? I'd much rather see Pizza Hut paying -- voluntarily, and with clearcut goals of their own! -- for spaceflight than me, my landlord, and my neighbors, who are not given any specific choice about it.

(Please don't tell me that "we as a society decided to give money to NASA to do it" unless you believe that every government decision represents societal concensus. Consider this: if U.S. tax return forms had a checkbox for NASA, reading something like "Yes, I'd like to direct a dollar of this tax money or contribute an additional [dollar amount, please fill in] ______, enclosed, to NASA," then *that* would be voluntary -- and a good idea, to boot, sez me. It would sure knock down the whole argument I made in the first graf here ;))

Militarily, there's reason for NASA: among other things, they help launch satellites. Defense is a natural imperative, so I'll assert, not just concede, that part. To a lesser extent, though I think it's mostly a budget- and political carrot rather than near-term reality (Hey, what happened to the Bush plan to put folks again on the moon?), NASA research on practical matters of human life in space is somewhat justifiable.

What about abstract knowledge part of NASA? While I realize this makes me an anti-science troglodyte who hates any advance in human knowledge, I don't think that tax dollars should be paying for edge-of-galaxy explorer probes, or satellite telescopes looking outward at the various nebulae -- fascinating and good as those things are! (Golf carts on Mars is easier to swallow, wrt the Life in Space loophole, and so are satellite views of Earth, which show, among other things, how humans affect the planet.)

Note: I'm not saying no one should be interested in or study abstract, non-practical, just-for-insatiable-curiosity things about space -- far from it. I'm only raising the issue of how they're paid for and justified. The government doesn't spend our money very well, and frequently act with it in ways that decrease the national well-being; my biggest gripe about the way NASA money is spent is that it amounts to a tax subsidy, year after year, for a handful of entrenched companies that are technically private but mostly exist because of their (to mix a metaphor) pole position at the public teat.

Ahem.

timothy

Re:To paraphrase.

[Daniel Boisvert]

I find these summary tables are the best place to start. For further breakdowns, you can hit up the detailed budget info here.

Re:2% is shameful

[networkBoy]

IIRC challenger was not supposed to launch according to its engineers. It was management that overrode the engineering staff about O-ring stability at too low temperatures. So lay off the engineering.

As to destroying stuff, I'd like to see you (even with a bigger budget than NASA) design from scratch a space program as advanced and have fewer failures. Bleeding edge science nearly requires some ammount of failures. The earlier the failure is found the cheaper (in all costs $$ / Time / Human) it is to fix. While it is sad that we've lost people (and equipment), it would be sadder if we lost Kevlar, PyroCeram, and other space program derivitives because we were afraid to do the research. If you were interested PyroCeram plates are awesome! Just don't put them in a microwave oven.

Oh, and on another note: I was one of those kids (6th grade) rooting for the first teacher in space. I (and my class, teachers, and parents) saw it blow up. . . live. My teacher started crying, as did most of us. It was a tough day, but as a result my class did a lot of research and learned a great deal. Something else that would have likely not happened if this desaster did not befall.
-nB