DARPA Fractionated Spacecraft Program Starts

An anonymous reader writes "Start buying Cold War nuclear shelters and piling up the canned food, because Boeing Advanced Systems has started System F6: 'DARPA's Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange space technology program.' In other words: multiple, networked specialized spacecraft swarms that are intelligent enough to perform a single coordinated task together, like analyzing the crops or deciding to destroy humanity, Skynet-style. Actually, it could completely change satellites for the better, according to some experts."

Comments

Obligatory...

[Karrde45]

I for one, welcome our new free-flying fractionated overlords. Especially if they turn out looking like Summer Glau...

Re:Obligatory...

[Erioll]

Considering they're in the sky, and they're networked, are they really just TRYING to make it obvious that it's Skynet? I swear humanity could even be TOLD that it's going to become an AI and we'd STILL fund the damned thing. ;)

Ob Sesame Street

[southpolesammy]

This product is brought to you by the letter 'F'.

Two probable early applications

[Anonymous Coward]

1.) Improved station-keeping to allow greater numbers of satellites to operate safely in space. In particular, multiple satellites could navigate as a group, maintaining their positions relative to each other and therefore occupying only one "slot" in orbit.

2.) Synthetic apertures. NASA is planning a future mission using station-keeping or physically separated mirros to create an ultra-high resolution telescope. The idea is already used in ground scopes (and the basic principles are used in the F-22's radar). This can also be applied to increasing the resolution of topographic maps and of satellite imagery.

Re:oblig cliches

[mea37]

In soviet russia, snarky chiches post you, you insensitive clod!

Worst. Article. Ever.

[Dynedain]

Holy shit, do the editors even read the articles anymore?

The submission is just a blatant ripoff of the gizmodo article it links to, which in turn is incredibly vague and sensationalist without any real content whatsoever.

If /. isn't playing the digg game, then what the hell are the editors actually doing with their time?

Basically a dupe

[Protonk]

this is, for all intents and purposes, the same article as this

Fickle Fingers of Fate

[omnilynx]

Fantastically fabricated, these fierce forebears of flowing fairy finesse fire forth fast fletchettes, forcing the faithful few to focus their fears: friend or foe? But fah, I forstall. In short, you may call them "F".

Oh Noes...

[MozeeToby]

*sigh* I'm waiting for the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag to show up.

I know it's been said before but it seems like lately there has been a lot of fear mongering going on in the world. I understand when I see it on TV; all the soccer moms of the world need to know the latest threat to their little angels.

But Slashdot should be better than this. Every time an article comes up that mentions AI, virusses, bacteria, censorship, anything remotely threatening it gets the fear mongering going.

Here, we have a developement that could save millions of dollars worth of launch costs; yet we fear it because... why exactly? It might spontaneously gain intelligence and attack the human race? Someone might hack it and tell it to attack? Attack using what exactly? I hope that the poster was joking, but honestly, I doubt it.

FFFFFFSUIE -- what an acronym

[Critical Facilities]

DARPA's Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange space technology program.