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

Telecoms reap millions

[CRCulver]

A couple of hundred thousand miles away is a lot of roaming.

Figures...

[framauro13]

Great. The Moon will have better coverage than my current Sprint plan. I bet their data plan will be cheaper too.

Re:Figures...

[brian0918]

Sprint isn't that bad.. I mean, I use it for everything I do online and I've ne#^%^#$&$^#&^$ NO CARRIER

In space

[antifoidulus]

noone can hear you now!

4 bars?

[KublaiKhan]

There's only going to be four bars to provide coverage on the moon?

It had better be a small colony, then. Or they'd better be really big bars, hopefully without annoyingly trendy kitsch, and hopefully with some really good whiskey.

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.

Unless Obama wins

[MagPulse]

He'll delay Constellation for five years (pdf link, go to the last page), which will result in layoffs for all the people we'd need to get to the moon, and then we'll have to go try to re-hire them. Meanwhile the designs are being done now, so the plans will just sit for 5 years going out of date. Brilliant. And what will the money be used for? Saving no child left behind. Yes, let's dump more money in to education, that will fix it.

Re:Unless Obama wins

[llZENll]

Project Constellation overall is a great idea, but building a moonbase is probably a bad idea.

He also argues that a Moon base is a poor use of resources, since "science can be done for far less money by robotic missions--which also don't put human lives at risk."[5] The Los Angeles Times seconded that in an editorial, saying "Manned moon flight may appeal to baby boomers, but it makes little scientific sense for most space missions these days. Robots can now perform, or be developed to perform, most of the tasks people would do at a moon station." [6]

Columnist Gregg Easterbrook has criticized the plans as a poor use of resources. He writes that

Although, of course, the base could yield a great discovery, its scientific value is likely to be small while its price is extremely high. Worse, moon-base nonsense may for decades divert NASA resources from the agency's legitimate missions, draining funding from real needs in order to construct human history's silliest white elephant. [7]

According to Easterbrook, the billions of dollars that a lunar colony might cost should instead be devoted to exploring the solar system with space probes; space observatories; and protecting the Earth from Near-Earth asteroids.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_outpost_(NASA)

Re:Unless Obama wins

[imipak]

yeah, right, 'cos the current regime have been just showering money on NASA, right? Why, it's almost as if Dubya announced a pie in the sky plan at some far-off-date just far enough ahead that it'll have to be Democrat decision that, sorry, actually you've already spent the NASA Mars budget a few thousand times over in Iraq. (Note that that Planetary Society "success!" press release is about their (ok, our - I'm a member) getting existing funding for space science restored, after it was slashed to try to make up the increasing void between the directive "go back to the moon" and the reality that it costs money to make and fly spaceships and train astronauts. Lots and lots and lots of it, actually.)

Many of us don't think the gee-whizz eye-candy coolness factor of watching someone bounce round the moon on TV is actually worth the enormous opportunity cost of what could have been done with that money if it wasn't wasted on manned missions. The Shuttle's landing tomorrow morning after a ten day mission that cost $1.3 billion. Consider that the incredibly successful Mars Exploration Rovers cost less than half that over the entire four years and counting mission, and have made fantastic breakthrough scientific discoveries as well as producing some amazing eye-candy.

(And incidentally those are all "amateur" images produced from the raw data stream, thanks to JPL/Cornell/Steve Squyres' wonderful policy to release it as it arrives.)

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.

Re:lag time

[brian0918]

"would there be an audible lag time for calls like this?"

Nope, the article says any lag time would fall either below 20 or above 20,000 Hz. If you were trying to talk to fido, he might notice a delay, however.

Can you hear me now?

[Cheza]

This is great, I'll be able to place a call on the moon but I still can't place one in my house.

Re:but will you have to go outside to use it?

[drinkypoo]

Let's see who trumps this one by offering a 5 bar service for Mars.

Exactly what I was thinking. This is precisely why NASA is going down the drain. They can't even get full cellphone signal, let alone get their units right.

Re:What are the data rates

[Ernesto Alvarez]

yeah, but I think that will come out to .02 a meg, .005 a text, and .1 for 60 minutes of talk in the petro-euros we will be using in 2020.

You seem to be having a problem with your keyboard.
Anyway, I corrected the text for you.

Oh, the heck with it.

[arizwebfoot]

Now the Moon will another place I can't hide from the ex.

This is actually a very clever plan

[petes_PoV]

Hopefully it will answer once and for all, the question about whether there's intelligent life out there.

As soon as there's any hint of a mobile phone mast getting installed all the NIMBY's start moaning, writing to their MP's, holding protests and petitioning the phone company.

If there is life on other planets, all we have to do to find it is to announce that someone will errect a mobile mast - then just wait for the protests from the aliens. No protests means we are truly alone, afterall.

That's no moon.

[Rob T Firefly]

It's a base station!

Re:What are the data rates

[Amouth]

yeah, but I think that will come out to .02 a meg, .005 a text, and .1 for 60 minutes of talk in the Renminbi we will be using in 2020.

You seem to be having a problem with your keyboard.
Anyway, I corrected the text for you. Fixed again

HELLO! I'M ON THE MOON!

[damburger]

NO, ITS SHIT!

Sorry, had to be done.

brilliant

[nguy]

First, NASA tricks AT&T in setting up a cell phone network on the moon, then, in order to recoup their investment, AT&T must somehow get the moon colonized.

Re:What are the data rates

[SleptThroughClass]

My personal preference is to avoid using a speakerphone in my space suit.

Wow

[Quiet_Desperation]

"Guess where *I'm* calling from!"

Bummer

[Tarlus]

...you won't be able to say, "In space no one can hear your ringtone." Well that's a damn shame, considering how everyone uses that phrase all the time.

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.