NASA Plans Lunar Mobile Phone Network

If NASA and the British National Space Centre succeed in their 'MoonLite mission' you won't be able to say, "In space no one can hear your ringtone." They plan on building a satellite system/phone network that would provide full four-bar signal coverage for colonists living in the base NASA wants to build at the south pole of the moon after 2020.

Comments

Lagggg

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

I wonder how long it takes your brain to adapt to talking to somebody when there's a 1-second+ delay each way? I've had conversations via satellite that seemed to have about a 1/2 second round-trip delay, and it was annoying as hell for the first few minutes.

Re:lag time

[PieSquared]

Yes. Optimally using light to go between earth and moon satellites it would be about 2 seconds. In reality it will vary significantly with the orbit of the moon, and of course nothing is optimal.

Obsolencense is f(time, money)

[EgoWumpus]

I find it amusing that just this morning I read that the Air Force is in an uproar about needing $100B dollars over the next five years, just to prevent it's fleet from becoming anything less than cutting-edge.

Yet, NASA receives a mere $16.2B per year - and even with planned increases will not exceed the amount the Air Force is asking for in addition to what it already gets.

In short; I find it ridiculous that you can call anything "obsolete" that is barely funded, but has a much more sophisticated task to do. When NASA is as well funded as the Air Force, and can still not perform to par, then you can complain about it being obsolete.

Re:Obsolencense is f(time, money)

[afxgrin]

Obviously maintaining a military that can obliterate the planet is much more important than a cellular phone network on the moon, feeding the hungry, adding more jobs to the economy that earn above minimum wage, or providing universal health care.

I wonder if it would be this hard to have a battle with the core of Al-Qaeda if it wasn't so obvious that fighting the US military head-on is a futile effort in the long-term. This whole, war on terrorism shit probably would have been dealt with by now... instead we're fighting a war with people who won't even bother shooting and trying to survive, they just blow themselves up trying to kill as many as possible. Does anyone seriously think the Chinese or Russians are just going to wake up one morning and think "hey, the US military is still using computers with Windows XP!!! We upgraded to Vista 2 years ago.... we obviously have an upper hand, let's go take over Hawaii and then California..., then we won't be pirating movies if we control Hollywood."

Re:Obsolencense is f(time, money)

[EgoWumpus]

I used the airforce in part because I saw an article regarding it, but in part because it's job - a government aeronautic agency - is probably as similar to NASA as any other government program. You are correct; they are not identical. But note that my goal was to examine the scope of what we're dealing with; you can't say that NASA isn't doing it's job when it gets, in the grand scheme of things, a pittance to do what it needs to do. There are other government agencies, though, whom we barely question when they ask for more money - such as the Air Force.

And, in regards to sophistication of task, I think NASA wins hands down. Yes, the Air Force has to deal with some pretty complex terrestrial obstacles, but NASA more or less has the entire universe worth of obstacles to overcome - and note that with their budget they are not only flying missions into orbit (and one hopes, eventually, beyond), but building up there, and doing research both terrestrial and beyond. Their scope is quite broad, along with being in the harshest environment we've yet come across.

IP Addresses in Space

[arjay-tea]

I wonder if there is a block of IP addresses reserved for extraterrestrial use.