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US Lab Developing Technology For Space Traffic Control
coondoggie writes "Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say they have tested technology that could eventually help them monitor and control space traffic. The driving idea behind the project is to help keep satellites and other spacecraft from colliding with each other or with debris in Low Earth Orbit."
NRL has had this technology since 1957.
Seriously, what is it?
I thought calling something a satellite meant it was orbiting.
TFA says:
a series of six images over a 60-hour period taken from a ground-based satellite
I wonder what a "ground-based satellite" satellite is. Do they meant a telescope?
They are developing software to get better orbital trajectories. We already HAVE software that manages traffic and orbital collision warnings, but the problem is that our orbital trajectory data is too inaccurate for it to be as helpful as it should be.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Kind of like airports do with air traffic controllers...
Man, I wonder how aggressive the Space TSA will be?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Who's gonna do it? You?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
he died because he didn't want to spend any more time with Sandra Bullock...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Hey dickhead, spoiler alert next time.
It's a shit movie anyways.
I can't bloody believe this wasn't the headline. Sheesh! You guys are slipping.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
There are about 5600 active satellites orbiting out there, and far more debris.
... One example: http://www.universetoday.com/2...
And satellites do collide
There always has been the issue of how much orbiting space junk will finally start causing serious problems for space flight and the flight paths of other satellites, I think this issue has been a concern for so long that Carl Sagan was worrying about it (and it'll be 20 years since his death this year).
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
With all the New tech concerning self guided this and that, is this really even a market? This really seems like spacex and google had a kid, and you wanted to pick a fight with him. Or her. But probably him.
So society needs people with guns to continue, hmm you must be an american.
What country doesn't have a standing army, or is not a protectorate of one that does? Any you'd care to live in? Hmm, you must be a naive idealist. I wish this were not the case, but we can't put that genie back in the bottle. How well did not having an army work out for Tibet?
Son, We live in a world where a group of people think they are the world police and have decided you have no rights, no privacy and point guns at you saying it for your own safety, Avoid them.
Son, we live in a world where no country give a rats ass about privacy. Do I think it's right? Fuck no. Any country of sufficient size and economic standing spies on everyone they can. The US happened to put a lot more effort into it and got arrogant beyond belief.
What kind of utopian world do you think we had before America became what it is today? Germany sure did a great job seizing power, didn't it? Or Italy and Japan? The French and British did a fantastic job of carving up the Middle East. I'm sure the Armenians missed the Ottoman empire though. The Ottomans were so kind to them. What about the way the Dutch left Africa? That was nice. And the Spanish, they played well with other cultures. How are the Aztecs doing in Latin America these days?
Not to worry. China should surpass America as the dominant world power soon enough. It'll be unicorns and rainbows for everyone then.
I'm from NZ :), we have no standing army to speak of and we are working on digital privacy, our personal privacy isn't to bad either at least to be detained their has to be at least reasonable cause. (and once we stop spying for the US on US citizens (because its illegal for them to do it) we should be good for anti spy)
oh and our police don't carry guns and the majority of people don't own a gun, not because of tight gun controls its because we don't need one.
Maybe we should change our motto to land of the free.....
New Zealand Defense Force: Wikipedia, Home Page
New Zealand Army: Wikipedia, Home Page
Search "new zealand armed forces": Results
Excuse me, wtf r u doin?
This is like putting up traffic lights before you have more than two cars.
This is all about satellites and debris -- so what about the equivalent of "street sweepers" for the sky? I could imagine that it's easier to target all the working satellites and occasionally just blast the equivalent of a shotgun around them of pellets made from water ice. Destabilize the orbit of all the debris and it will clean up quicker.
Other than a few satellites that might collide -- most of the debris or low sophistication satellites can't move, right? So you are doing traffic control and the best you can do is; "Collision immanent in 3 more orbits". Kind of like our Asteroid protection, or anything to do with serious existential threats like Global Warming.
We'll spend a few trillion more on Ter'rism and Drug War that does nothing but buy flack jackets for people who are inevitably corrupted. We've got the DEA running protection rackets for major drug lords while they bust the competition. We've got contractors selling off all that "just the meta data" which somehow requires a building larger than the Pentagon and they have to invent words larger than Petabyte for storage.
There are no adults looking out for us -- just using that as an excuse. And is crazy that we are going to build a system that will ONLY protect the satellites that can move and has no other purpose than to shift company profits to taxpayer expenses. You think I'll get a discount from AT&T because Uncle Sam saved their cell phone bounce point?
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Are you serious?
Just limit space travel to Google Self-Driving Spaceships.
WCPGW, YMMV, etc.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Sure, all it takes is a bunch of warp drive fields that can locally modify the universal gravitational constant, cancel inertia, and redirect those missiles back to their point of origin. Geordi LaForge does it all of the time to help prevent violations of various interstellar treaties or major plot points that are otherwise unsolvable.
You also realize that NZ is protected under the ANZUS treaty. Basically if New Zealand was to be seriously threatened by an invasion from another country, the whole bloody U.S. Marine Corps would be dropping onto whatever offensive was actually taking place (along with the rest of the U.S. Armed Forces).
Yes, I accept your thanks on behalf of my countrymen.
I don't mind the arrangement either, but don't go pretending that 7k people are sufficient for a proper defense by a determined enemy who wants to kick you off of those islands. There are countries who would not hesitate to invade and occupy NZ either if they thought they could get away with it, but realizing that the USA is ready to whoop ass if they try keeps them from getting stupid.
A country which does one better is Costa Rica, who decided to disband their entire military. They have a national police force, but you don't go invading other countries with just cops. Then again that country sort of enjoys the same general protection of America as well, even though it does help their economy substantially to not worry about such things like defense appropriations.
I didn't spoil anything, dickwad. I did not say which character dies in the end and in American movies you can pretty much guarantee that multiple people are going to die since the people who control the movie industry in America are obsessed with violence, death and destruction.
It's a great movie. Definitely in my top 1 Billion American movies which were released last year.