A commenter on another site had a fantastic idea, in my opinion: before sending the last of the orbiters to a musuem, use the SCA to take it on a tour of the US. This would be a great opportunity for millions to see it and the modified 747 together.
Wow, that brings back memories. The Enterprise went on a tour like that back in the early 80s. I saw it at Dulles airport, where they parked it out back of the terminal still mounted on the SAC. The crowd was so big they closed one of the runways and turned it into a parking lot. (My VW bus broke down in the heat and I had to call a tow truck out to the runway!) The Concorde took off on its flight to London, and got special permission to flyby overhead. When the pilot waggled his wings in honor of the shuttle, it was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.
Doubt you'd get that much of a crowd these days, and of course the Concorde is gone, but it would still be a trip to see it again.
Jan 2009 is carefully chosen to be right after the next big election, Nov 2008. The broadcasters have tremendous influence in elections through control over TV coverage. If the broadcasters still don't like the transition plan in summer 2008, they will be able to arrange a further deadline extension through pressuring the political parties.
Thanks to whoever posted the FCC ID. The ID is O7JGL2411AP (note first character is letter O, which is not what they posted). The post didn't say which of the OEM brands this corresponds to, but I expect all are the same.
This device is certified for only 82 mW of output power. 100 mW is a violation.
So indeed, the FCC will be upset by the hack. In this case it is the license grantee who will get in trouble (global sun technology inc, jung li city, Taiwan) for building a device that users can take out of compliance.
View the FCC license for the device if you are interested.
Could someone with one of these access points please read the FCC ID off the sticker on the back and post it here.
I want to look up what transmit power the device is certified for. From that I can answer everyone's questions about whether the FCC cares about this particular hack.
The factor pushing against this approach is time to earn a return on investment.
The asteroids are far far away. I'd be very interested to see orbit calculations for a "safe" trajectory. Given the time it takes NASA deep-space probes to reach the asteroid belts, I suspect a gentle, incremental trajectory would take 10-15 years to ease the asteroid into earth orbit. Maybe 25 years from investment to first income. That's a really long time horizon for the investors backing a mining company.
Just think -- you're going to be shooting megatons of material towards the earth from some distant orbit. One slightly malfunctioning rocket means you just dropped it on New York or Tokyo. Even if national governments didn't declare the operation illegal from the get go, just try buying insurance for a company with near-infinite risk.
If you look through the NASA article you'll see that all applications they talk about are use of extraterrestrial resources for extraterrestrial needs. Terrestrial needs will be satisfied from local sources until they run out.
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A commenter on another site had a fantastic idea, in my opinion: before sending the last of the orbiters to a musuem, use the SCA to take it on a tour of the US. This would be a great opportunity for millions to see it and the modified 747 together.
Wow, that brings back memories. The Enterprise went on a tour like that back in the early 80s. I saw it at Dulles airport, where they parked it out back of the terminal still mounted on the SAC. The crowd was so big they closed one of the runways and turned it into a parking lot. (My VW bus broke down in the heat and I had to call a tow truck out to the runway!) The Concorde took off on its flight to London, and got special permission to flyby overhead. When the pilot waggled his wings in honor of the shuttle, it was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.
Doubt you'd get that much of a crowd these days, and of course the Concorde is gone, but it would still be a trip to see it again.
Jan 2009 is carefully chosen to be right after the next big election, Nov 2008. The broadcasters have tremendous influence in elections through control over TV coverage. If the broadcasters still don't like the transition plan in summer 2008, they will be able to arrange a further deadline extension through pressuring the political parties.
Thanks to whoever posted the FCC ID. The ID is O7JGL2411AP (note first character is letter O, which is not what they posted). The post didn't say which of the OEM brands this corresponds to, but I expect all are the same.
This device is certified for only 82 mW of output power. 100 mW is a violation.
So indeed, the FCC will be upset by the hack. In this case it is the license grantee who will get in trouble (global sun technology inc, jung li city, Taiwan) for building a device that users can take out of compliance.
View the FCC license for the device if you are interested.
Could someone with one of these access points please read the FCC ID off the sticker on the back and post it here.
I want to look up what transmit power the device is certified for. From that I can answer everyone's questions about whether the FCC cares about this particular hack.
The factor pushing against this approach is time to earn a return on investment.
The asteroids are far far away. I'd be very interested to see orbit calculations for a "safe" trajectory. Given the time it takes NASA deep-space probes to reach the asteroid belts, I suspect a gentle, incremental trajectory would take 10-15 years to ease the asteroid into earth orbit. Maybe 25 years from investment to first income. That's a really long time horizon for the investors backing a mining company.
Just think -- you're going to be shooting megatons of material towards the earth from some distant orbit. One slightly malfunctioning rocket means you just dropped it on New York or Tokyo. Even if national governments didn't declare the operation illegal from the get go, just try buying insurance for a company with near-infinite risk.
If you look through the NASA article you'll see that all applications they talk about are use of extraterrestrial resources for extraterrestrial needs. Terrestrial needs will be satisfied from local sources until they run out.