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ISS Can Now Watch Sea Traffic From Space
gyrogeerloose writes "During its last mission, astronauts from the Space Shuttle Atlantis installed an Automatic Identification System antenna on the outside of the International Space Station that will allow astronauts aboard the ISS to monitor signals from the AIS transmitters mandated to be installed on most large ocean-going craft. Although these VHF signals can be monitored from the Earth's surface, their horizontal range is generally limited to about 75 km (46 mi), leaving large areas of the ocean unwatched. However, the signals easily reach the 400 km (250 mi) orbit of the ISS. The European Space Agency sees this experiment as a test platform for a future AIS-monitoring fleet of satellites that will eventually provide worldwide coverage of sea traffic."
How long before I get pulled over for speeding in the trade lanes?
Where else would they be watching sea traffic from?
What about tracking somali pirates? Or take photos of the big bad cthuluish beast that eat ships at Bermuda Triangle. All will depend on what they are that day
Yes, because pirates always follow regulation and install a AIS transmitters in their "large ocean-going craft"
There are several websites that show at least coastal traffic of all AIS equipped vessels. I like http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/
He is gonna be HUGE.
Here's the map of existing coverage. The continental US, Europe, and Japan, have full coastal coverage. The port coasts of China and Australia are covered. Beyond that, not so much.
This isn't a safety system. It's for traffic and port management. Vessels show up in the system around the time when ports need to start thinking about where to put them.
This is a pretty common and extremely cheap sensor to put in space. Multiple tiny satellites have demonstrated the utility of an AIS sensor in space.
In space these are mainly used to track ships who might be up to no good on open water. Also you can fuse the data with radar satellite wake detection, any detected ship with their signal turned off also might be up to no good. Canada is doing just this with M3MSat and Radarsat-2
Insert obligatory foil hat quip here.
This completely screws up my plans to grow cannabis on my yacht...
Anyone knows what are the advantages of using ISS for this kind of test? I would be interested to see what it costs to send such an antenna up with the shuttle, test that it does not interfere with the rest of the station and train an astronaut to fix it to the exterior, versus just slapping it as secondary payload on some other satellite or even some dedicated micro-satellite that is piggybacking on the launch of a bigger one.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
So is this going to be used to find the best spot to crash ISS 2 years after it is completed, just in the unlikely chance that large parts reach the ground?
When your kids, in their rubber big sea going rubber toy rafts, see pirates / pedophiles, they can press the dolphin button, and get directly connected to an officer with the coast guard.
Really? Sure it's not the lack of any cohesive, effective government that can enforce its own territorial waters in order to keep vessels flagged under neighboring states from fishing in their waters? It is estimated that $300 million worth of fish are illegally caught in Somali territorial waters each year.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Yes, because pirates always follow regulation and install a AIS transmitters in their "large ocean-going craft"
For all of the same reasons that criminals who are willing to commit murder will always follow gun-control laws. Oh, wait...
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If you were going to go do smuggling into Cuba or whatever, you would just turn off your damn AIS transponder. Won't do shit for the radar sweeps they do. But then again, only you Americans keep this embargo up. Ship full of Canadians go near Cuba? Big deal.
You're absolutely correct that the mujahedeen (or however you spell that) in Afghanistan were bankrolled and given weapons by the CIA, and bin Laden's contacts within that organization became al Qaeda, and so the West definitely deserves some blame for that. However, there's no particular reason to believe that the CIA had any ongoing interest in any of them once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan. There's certainly no evidence and no reason to believe that they actually helped plan or carry out 9/11.
The major problem with the idea that the US government had anything to do with 9/11 is that there's no credible evidence of it and there's no reason to believe their assistance would have been required to carry it out. At the heart of it, the 9/11 attack was supremely unsophisticated. All the hijackers needed was some box cutters and plane tickets, and training to fly a plane. All of these things are widely available, and anybody could have done it. The fact is, it's quite easy to believe some dude in a cave could have planned and carried it out, especially when that dude in a cave happens to be as wealthy as Osama bin Laden, heir to the bin Laden construction fortune.
I know none of that is convincing to conspiracy buffs, but the fact is a perfectly simple and plausible explanation for the event exists that requires no massive conspiracies: a highly motivated group of people did something that anyone could have done with a little time and a few thousand dollars.
Damn straight as an american where do you think i get my cuban cigars from? 20 miles from my home is a nice smoke shop in canada.
the big trick is to not be suspicious enough to draw attention of the border guard. Of course you can always travel by boat, and use a "video terminal" to check in with the border guard. It isn't like they can detain you that way. As long as you don't move large object of materials, or more than a couple of people it is a very porous border.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The ISS operates at a relatively low orbit, even for LEO... for example the Iridium constellation is about twice the ISS' altitude (760km vs 350km). They'd have to find a mission that's within the 400km range of the system, and that has room and power to spare.
It's a lot of things, including foreign intervention in local politics by, dare I say it, the CIA and other western intelligence agencies.
Source?
And do you really think any kind of local authority beyond that of an Israeli military state could defend their territorial waters against a Chinese ship dumping nuclear waste?
Well, the Somalia Pirates have hijaked a Chinese ship before. source
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
IMO has made carriage of AIS mandatory in the recently revised SOLAS chapter V, for all new ships over 300 GRT, from July 1, 2002, and existing ships to follow in a tight schedule there after (see attached).
If you want to work out exactly how big a 300 GRT yacht would be, check out this Wikipedia page.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
Conspiracy is comforting.
It makes the believer able to not only make sense of the world, but feel religiously exalted by their special insight which elevates them above the herd. Conspiracy is much less frightening to the simple mind than an uncertain world.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Let me translate "Source?" for you, Winkhorst.
It means "I don't believe a word of your crap, back it up with evidence, or shut up".
Get it? Its a challenge.
Kinda like religion......
I submit that upon thoroughly investigating the 9/11 evidence from both the official theory and multiple alternative theories...
It's been done, by numerous independent agencies, organizations, etc. They've all proved the conspiracy theories to be so much wishful thinking. If you can't figure out what a "duck" is after all the testimony, tests, and evidence presented, you will never be convinced, so neither I nor anyone could possibly present sufficient evidence or argument that would convince you differently. Frankly, the issue IS settled, only you want a few more minutes in the limelight and so refuse to accept the truth. THERE WAS, AND IS, NO CONSPIRACY, PERIOD.
Personally, I find your idea that MY government would even contemplate such actions to be reprehensible and a disservice to those who perished on the aircraft and in the towers that day, their families, and the men and women of our armed forces who are fighting the perpetrators in Afghanistan and other places throughout the world.
Impetuous! Homeric!
Well I think we've seen by now that the astronauts aboard the ISS would be cool with it.
Cool ... use it to predict the next financial crash.
.
OT, I know, but doesn't your theory require mods to be performed on all 220 floors and set off in a perfect sequence? And why start the sequence right where the planes hit? Why not start at floor 109 and continue to the bottom?
I ask, because it looks like the top of at least one of the buildings came down in a chunk that starts right where the airplane hit. Did they screw up the timing on the thermite? Why didn't that top part stay intact and reveal the unfired thermite pots to the world?
Their they're doing there hair.
Oh crap! I think I just figured it out!
The week before 9/11 a team of Mideast termite specialists came in to treat every floor, but really they were thermite specialists!
It was a conspiracy!
Their they're doing there hair.
There's lots of evidence. You're just too lazy or too stupid to look it up.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
They don't call you guys anonymous cowards for nothing.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
This is really cool -- Ham radio has been doing almost exactly this for years.
A ground station with nothing more than a 5 Watt handheld VHF transmitter and a regular 19" long antenna can send a position report and message via a number of satellites, including the International Space Station, using a protocol called APRS. As these are low-earth orbit satellites, you generally only have a few minutes window with each pass, but it's not terribly hard to do and there are a few satellites to potentially catch position data even if you don't get every pass.
Yeah, I've played with a GPS unit hooked up to my 2 meter mobile rig doing just that. It's cool, although in the end I decided it didn't really do enough for me to justify the hassle since it's sort of a kludge on the IC-2200H.
KJ6BSO
This ain't rocket surgery.
Looking over your posts, I can only summarize with this... yeah, hiding behind a username is still "anonymous" enough (I don't know who you are, where you live, or what your facebook is...)
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How do you explain the thermite residue that was found after scientific analysis of the steel beams was performed? That's not something that a fuel-air bomb based on jet fuel could produce.
I make thermite all the time, though not for burning; it's a side effect of a metal restoration process I use, with common household items (aluminum foil). A little aluminum and some iron oxide. The beams would have had some oxidization, and the airplane would have had aluminum. Thermite remains tend to be unburned (yeah, right) Al + Fe-oxides or burned Al2O3 + Fe, or Al2O3 + Fe-oxides (it does re-oxidize later). Thermite is an incredibly simple compound and the stuff it leaves behind is incredibly common and prone to group together when present.
Or the fact that other skyscrapers of similar steel-and-concrete construction have caught fire for days straight without collapsing, yet the Trade Center burned for a matter of hours and neatly imploded (including a building that was never struck by any aircraft).
The fire here was a very, very hot kerosene fueled fire. In case you've never experienced it, kerosene fuel burns hotter than gasoline or burning rugs or alcohol. Gasoline burns 30% hotter than alcohol, while diesel fuel oil burns 17% hotter than gasoline, and kerosene somewhat hotter than that. To complicate the matter, earlier construction used a higher grade thermal proofing wall; the higher floors used a low grade fire barrier that couldn't take the heat very well, although I suspect even Asbestos would have only lasted a few hours longer, if that.
Eventually the center support beam softened under thermal stress and buckled under the stress of holding up that ass-heavy steel-and-concrete roof. The shockwave was impressive; a good 7 buildings fell from 2 impacts IIRC.
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