The radio interference issue has been mitigated since the first large scale deployment in Manchester, England encountered it. The FCC has been keeping an eye on US BPL providers and is ready to address any interference violations. It looks like the North American providers have resolved that problem before the recent deployments in Ontario, Ohio and Virginia.
"Google is a for-profit company that creates software solutions for the public using public data... If the governments continue to close up our free access to information I will continue to get annoyed."
The satellite imagery layer in Google Maps is not public data. It uses a propietary product called EarthSat NaturalVue from Earth Satellite Corporation and high-resolution satellite imagery from Digital Globe's Quickbird satellite.
Earth Satellite (the same folks who deliver the global imagery in Google Maps) recently deployed a weather blog with posts from the weather forecast editor. Subscribers to the company's line of weather forecast products can use the forum to discuss the products and asks questions of the weather scientists.
The CEV is intended to only partially replace the space shuttle. It will provide crew transport from Earth to LEO as the shuttle does. However, it will not be a cargo transport and assembly platform as the space shuttle is.
NASA is developing the Terrestrial Planet Finder which should discover and image even smaller extrasolar planets when it is launched in a few years. Sooner than that, the Kepler Mission"will survey the extended solar neighborhood to detect and characterize hundreds of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the "habitable zone," defined by scientists as the distance from a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface."
Not all residences and offices are served by
existing broadband: cable or digital subscriber line technology. Furthermore, many of
those who are served by only one of the two technologies pay regional monopoly prices.
For these under served markets, Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) is an emerging
alternative for fast Internet access.
http://stellarlink.org/academic/bpl_kavanagh.pdf
And the government only understands flying it's own to space. NASA will never deliver on affordable spaceflight for the rest of us. If you take a moment to follow Rutan's interview his motivation is clear - and it is not profit - although he understand running a business fine without spending taxpayer money.
His drive is to fulfill a life-long goal of traveling to space. I bet many slashdotters share that desire.
"Can anyone cite a reason for continued shuttle lifetime that isn't political?"
In the immediate future, the shuttle is the only platform that can deliver and assemble to remaining pieces of the International Space Station. These pieces could not be carried up by the Delta IV-Heavy, regardless of the lift capacity.
The station modules simply weren't built to fit and support themselves in the payload shroud of the Delta IV.
Closing a tax loop hole for outsourced call centers barely affects the biggest draw to outsource. A customer support rep in India or the Phillipines is payed 10% or less than his American counterpart. Only the growing wealth of the developing world will shrink that gap. Not changes to the US tax code.
Earth Satellite Corporation offers a 15 meter resolution satellite product that competes with Keyhole. It's called GeoCover NaturalVue 2000.
http://www.earthsat.com/ArcIMS/naturalvue
If one is interested in a global viewer with additional scientific value, the Global Land Cover Facility has the Earth Science Data Interface that allows one to browse Earth's surface from the perspective of many different satellites. It has imagery from the Landsats, Terra, Aqua and the Space
Shuttle. For a true-color global satellite imagery set, check out the GeoCover NaturalVue at Earth Satellite Corproation.
The grounding of the space shuttle has nearly no effect on the demand for space launches. It was forbidden from carring commercial payloads after the Challenger disaster. Additionally, almost any payload that the Shuttle has to carry to the International Space Station for the next few years can *only* be carried by the shuttle.
However, space station material resupply is shuffled over to Soyuz launchers.
I agree. Without a central focus on the human exploration of Mars, the American astronaut corps will be tasked with maintaining and repairing the International Space Station for the next twenty years. Swap out a gyroscope here, repair a carbon-dioxide scrubber here, ad nauseum. Risky but boring.
A month after the Columbia disaster, I sent a letter to my senators in D.C. suggesting a plan to rebuild and revitalize the american space program. Here is the letter.
Sadly, the Russian Space Agency has encouraged private enterprise more in the last decade than has it's cold-war capitalist rival, NASA.
To effectively stimulate the commercial launch industry NASA must stop competing with private start-ups. The most important first step it could take would be to competitively bid resupply for the Internation Space Station. In this transport sector, the space shuttle is hogging potential commercial business that NASA could otherwise outsource.
"The government should seek to cultivate a commercial launch industry in the same way that postal airmail did with civil aviation in the early 20th century."
Letter to Senators from NY on NASA's future http://stellarlink.com/blog/archives/00000 9.html
Apollo 13 made a flyby of the moon like the first robotic probes. The crew did contact photographic observatoins of lunar surface while they were repairing the command module.
It's great that Europe and China are making their first attempts to send robotic probes to the moon. The United States has some experience in this area. Yes, Americans can sit around and watch to see how well the Europeans and Chinese do something that NASA achieved over four decades ago - and repeated dozens of times since.
I took CS for a year and left when I discovered I could teach myself the material quicker on my own and additionally learn tecnology that won't be incorporated into the curriculum for years to come. I currently lead a team of web programmers as director of web development at an marketing agency. At night I enjoy taking classes towards my new academic interest, Geography. I figured I'll get a degree in something the fills my intellectual curiosity. You may wish to do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
The radio interference issue has been mitigated since the first large scale deployment in Manchester, England encountered it. The FCC has been keeping an eye on US BPL providers and is ready to address any interference violations. It looks like the North American providers have resolved that problem before the recent deployments in Ontario, Ohio and Virginia.
BPL Technology & Business Analysis
The satellite imagery layer in Google Maps is not public data. It uses a propietary product called EarthSat NaturalVue from Earth Satellite Corporation and high-resolution satellite imagery from Digital Globe's Quickbird satellite.
Earth Satellite (the same folks who deliver the global imagery in Google Maps) recently deployed a weather blog with posts from the weather forecast editor. Subscribers to the company's line of weather forecast products can use the forum to discuss the products and asks questions of the weather scientists.
SpaceX was not a contestant in the Ansari X-prize.
The CEV is intended to only partially replace the space shuttle. It will provide crew transport from Earth to LEO as the shuttle does. However, it will not be a cargo transport and assembly platform as the space shuttle is.
NASA is developing the Terrestrial Planet Finder which should discover and image even smaller extrasolar planets when it is launched in a few years. Sooner than that, the Kepler Mission "will survey the extended solar neighborhood to detect and characterize hundreds of terrestrial and larger planets in or near the "habitable zone," defined by scientists as the distance from a star where liquid water can exist on a planet's surface."
Not all residences and offices are served by existing broadband: cable or digital subscriber line technology. Furthermore, many of those who are served by only one of the two technologies pay regional monopoly prices. For these under served markets, Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) is an emerging alternative for fast Internet access. http://stellarlink.org/academic/bpl_kavanagh.pdf
And the government only understands flying it's own to space. NASA will never deliver on affordable spaceflight for the rest of us. If you take a moment to follow Rutan's interview his motivation is clear - and it is not profit - although he understand running a business fine without spending taxpayer money.
His drive is to fulfill a life-long goal of traveling to space. I bet many slashdotters share that desire.
"Can anyone cite a reason for continued shuttle lifetime that isn't political?"
In the immediate future, the shuttle is the only platform that can deliver and assemble to remaining pieces of the International Space Station. These pieces could not be carried up by the Delta IV-Heavy, regardless of the lift capacity.
The station modules simply weren't built to fit and support themselves in the payload shroud of the Delta IV.
Closing a tax loop hole for outsourced call centers barely affects the biggest draw to outsource. A customer support rep in India or the Phillipines is payed 10% or less than his American counterpart. Only the growing wealth of the developing world will shrink that gap. Not changes to the US tax code.
Earth Satellite Corporation offers a 15 meter resolution satellite product that competes with Keyhole. It's called GeoCover NaturalVue 2000. http://www.earthsat.com/ArcIMS/naturalvue
If one is interested in a global viewer with additional scientific value, the Global Land Cover Facility has the Earth Science Data Interface that allows one to browse Earth's surface from the perspective of many different satellites. It has imagery from the Landsats, Terra, Aqua and the Space Shuttle. For a true-color global satellite imagery set, check out the GeoCover NaturalVue at Earth Satellite Corproation.
"With the Space Shuttle still grounded"
The grounding of the space shuttle has nearly no effect on the demand for space launches. It was forbidden from carring commercial payloads after the Challenger disaster. Additionally, almost any payload that the Shuttle has to carry to the International Space Station for the next few years can *only* be carried by the shuttle.
However, space station material resupply is shuffled over to Soyuz launchers.
I agree. Without a central focus on the human exploration of Mars, the American astronaut corps will be tasked with maintaining and repairing the International Space Station for the next twenty years. Swap out a gyroscope here, repair a carbon-dioxide scrubber here, ad nauseum. Risky but boring.
A month after the Columbia disaster, I sent a letter to my senators in D.C. suggesting a plan to rebuild and revitalize the american space program. Here is the letter.
Sadly, the Russian Space Agency has encouraged private enterprise more in the last decade than has it's cold-war capitalist rival, NASA.
0 9.html
To effectively stimulate the commercial launch industry NASA must stop competing with private start-ups. The most important first step it could take would be to competitively bid resupply for the Internation Space Station. In this transport sector, the space shuttle is hogging potential commercial business that NASA could otherwise outsource.
"The government should seek to cultivate a commercial launch industry in the same way that postal airmail did with civil aviation in the early 20th century."
Letter to Senators from NY on NASA's future
http://stellarlink.com/blog/archives/0000
Apollo 13 made a flyby of the moon like the first robotic probes. The crew did contact photographic observatoins of lunar surface while they were repairing the command module.
Soviet Lunar Missions
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lu
Recent interplanetary missions
http://www.stellarlink.com/css/
It's great that Europe and China are making their first attempts to send robotic probes to the moon. The United States has some experience in this area. Yes, Americans can sit around and watch to see how well the Europeans and Chinese do something that NASA achieved over four decades ago - and repeated dozens of times since.
A bulleted history of US missions to the Moon:
1998 - Lunar Prospector
1994 - Clementine
1972 - Apollo 16,17
1971 - Apollo 14,15
1970 - Apollo 13
1969 - Apollo 10,11,12
1968 - Apollo 8, Surveyor 7
1967 - Lunar Orbiter 3,4,5, Surveyor 3,4,5,6
1966 - Lunar Orbiter 1,2, Surveyor 1,2
1965 - Ranger 8, 9
1964 - Ranger 7
I took CS for a year and left when I discovered I could teach myself the material quicker on my own and additionally learn tecnology that won't be incorporated into the curriculum for years to come. I currently lead a team of web programmers as director of web development at an marketing agency. At night I enjoy taking classes towards my new academic interest, Geography. I figured I'll get a degree in something the fills my intellectual curiosity. You may wish to do the same.