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NASA and ESA To Demonstrate Earth-Moon Laser Communication
cylonlover writes with this news bite about a cool new ground to space laser communication system from NASA and ESA: "Space communications have relied on radio since the first Sputnik in 1957. It's a mature, reliable technology, but it's reaching its limits. The amount of data sent has increased exponentially for decades and NASA expects the trend to continue. The current communications systems are reaching their limits, so NASA and ESA are going beyond radio as a solution. As part of this effort, ESA has finished tests of part of a new communications system, in preparations for a demonstration in October in which it will receive a laser data download from a NASA lunar orbiter."
Maybe this is part of the reason why SETI hasn't picked up anything yet...
Well, considering the number of and resolution of images sent back Mars and the moon and various spacecraft is limited by the amount of time it takes to transmit all that data, and the amount of power it takes to transmit it...this is a no brainer. It's advantages are so blatantly obvious that it's kind of sad you can't see that. Are you sure you belong here?
Of all the programs our government spends money on, you pick up NASA? I can see your argument with regard to having a manned space program which costs a great deal more. But this? Especially when it has clear commercial potential. WTF?
Destructively "bouncing" a laser is easy. Just point it in the general direction, and apply power until there's too much extra energy for the target to handle.
Communication is more difficult, because not only do you have to point in exactly the right direction, from far further away (or have ridiculously more power), but you then have to modulate the laser appropriately to transmit data, and do so in such a way that atmospheric or other line-of-sight disturbances won't be too much of a problem, and you have to keep doing it long enough to send all you data through, and ideally even have a matching receiver to pick up the return direction.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
TCP/IP with freakin' lasers!
I was too lasey to read the article, so it would have been nice if the video was more illuminating, but at least its coherent.
Ill be ok with spending tons of money on space when our sick are taken care of instead of left dying for lack of coverage. .. really .. till then it's just shaming us all .
Ill be ok with spending tons of money when the elderly are taken care of properly , same with our war veterans we abandoned.
Ill be ok with it then
Do you have any idea how much we spend on healthcare and on NASA??
I first saw the headline as saying "NASA and ESA To Demonstrate Earth-Moon Laser Cannon", before I got my glasses on.
I was thinking this was covered in a Warner Bros. cartoon....
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Ill be ok with spending tons of money on space when our sick are taken care of instead of left dying for lack of coverage. Ill be ok with spending tons of money when the elderly are taken care of properly , same with our war veterans we abandoned. Ill be ok with it then .. really .. till then it's just shaming us all .
Stop spending trillions on "defense" and you can take care of the sick and elderly, educate the young, feed the hungry, pave the roads and repair the bridges., and still have enough left over to explore space.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Coincidentally, a "space engineer" whose blog I read recently mentioned something similar as a way to generate revenue from the early phase of a lunar mining operation. I'm not sure I buy the numbers, but it's an interesting concept:
I can immediately generate revenue from the use of the laser communications system. Utterly secure, 25 gigabits/sec communications with an unhackable data server would easily be worth $150-250m/year in revenue to the U.S. government, based on the cost of the Advanced EHF and other wideband military satellites. The yearly cost to support this is $1-2m dollars, thus my first infrastructure payload for mining is already generating strongly positive cash flow.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
...don't look at the moon with your remaining eye.
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
We have massive debt because we keep cutting taxes while increasing spending. The majority of the debt Obama put on the books is the iraq war, and a couple of tax cuts used to stimulate the ecomomy.
The problem is we cut taxes, and the economy still wasn't stimulated to grow, so we did it again and again.
Also GDP has no bearing on government spending. the GDP is to government spending as the dow jones index is to your personal wealth. The two only line up very very rarely.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
This may seem out of left field, but I was recently pondering the efficacy of lasers for submarine communications.
Only the very lowest radio frequencies penetrate a short distance below the surface of the ocean. The broadcasting equipment for those are enormous multi-megawatt monsters which can only transmit a minuscule amount of data, amounting to maybe a sentence per hour.
But with certain wavelengths of lasers, you can get penetration up to ~115 meters.
http://www.laseroptronix.se/techinfo/Waterabsorption.pdf
Even if the range is less, I'm sure submarine fleets would appreciate the option of laser-based two-way communications with satellites, without needing to surface.
Other than strategically placed buoys, is there even any other option for modernizing submarine communications past our current circa 1960s methods?
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