It must be ronery.

gopher321: "Shuttle" sort of implies it can carry passengers. From the description, it sounds more like a spy sattelite sent up there to keep an eye on the Chi-Coms

/may be wrong

Shuttle implies that it goes back and forth, ie is reusable. Nothing more, nothing less.

Knows nothing about it.

Target practice?

What a shuttle may look like.

KarmicDisaster: What a shuttle may look like.

No, that is a shuttlecock, this is a shuttle:

Article doesn't specify what the minimum separation is. That's important: If they have the same period, but never appear over the horizon to each other, then you can't keep an eye on it.

Looking at the Spaceflight website, though, and apropos of nothing, this seems interesting:

Radio hams tune in to space airwaves
Radio amateurs have always been keen to exploit new means of communication and John Heath provides a fascinating insight into how satellite technology has transformed the world of the radio ham soon after the launch of Sputnik right up to the present day

Like I've said on Fark many a time: Hams are at the forefront of communications technology. You want to know what you'll be doing in 10, 15, or 20 years? Look at what hams are doing today, make it smaller, faster, and with a simpler interface, and that's what you'll be doing in the future.

/Many of the engineers/geeks that design and build modern communications are hams.

dittybopper: Look at what hams are doing today

Yeah, what is Al Pacino up to these days anyway?

gopher321: "Shuttle" sort of implies it can carry passengers. From the description, it sounds more like a spy sattelite sent up there to keep an eye on the Chi-Coms

/may be wrong

Well the rumor is that it can squeeze 8 people into it's cargo module and their Sub-Orbital HALO gear. Does that help?

Slaves2Darkness:
Well the rumor is that it can squeeze 8 people into it's cargo module and their Sub-Orbital HALO gear. Does that help?

how many can fit in the ashtray?

Even spacemen need chinese takeout!

Slaves2Darkness: gopher321: "Shuttle" sort of implies it can carry passengers. From the description, it sounds more like a spy sattelite sent up there to keep an eye on the Chi-Coms

/may be wrong

Well the rumor is that it can squeeze 8 people into it's cargo module and their Sub-Orbital HALO gear. Does that help?



approves

dittybopper: You want to know what you'll be doing in 10, 15, or 20 years? Look at what hams are doing today

What if my parents don't have a basement in 20 years?

Dear assholes that keep linking to Gizmodo articles (and the like):

When you get to the bottom of the article and it says "via some place", or "some place via another", can ya just go ahead and submit the article with the "some place" link? Why the fark point us to something that (a) isn't the original article, (b) is written by a narcissistic 12-year-old, and (c) is nothing but, "Wow! The article you should be reading is so cooooool!"

Seriously: cut it out.

dittybopper: Article doesn't specify what the minimum separation is. That's important: If they have the same period, but never appear over the horizon to each other, then you can't keep an eye on it.

Looking at the Spaceflight website, though, and apropos of nothing, this seems interesting:

Radio hams tune in to space airwaves
Radio amateurs have always been keen to exploit new means of communication and John Heath provides a fascinating insight into how satellite technology has transformed the world of the radio ham soon after the launch of Sputnik right up to the present day

Like I've said on Fark many a time: Hams are at the forefront of communications technology. You want to know what you'll be doing in 10, 15, or 20 years? Look at what hams are doing today, make it smaller, faster, and with a simpler interface, and that's what you'll be doing in the future.

/Many of the engineers/geeks that design and build modern communications are hams.

Seems like you and I have very different opinions of what is interesting and what isn't.

So what are Hams doing today that everyone else will be doing in 20 years?

ArcadianRefugee: Dear assholes that keep linking to Gizmodo articles (and the like):

When you get to the bottom of the article and it says "via some place", or "some place via another", can ya just go ahead and submit the article with the "some place" link? Why the fark point us to something that (a) isn't the original article, (b) is written by a narcissistic 12-year-old, and (c) is nothing but, "Wow! The article you should be reading is so cooooool!"

Seriously: cut it out.

[ahem]

THIS

dittybopper: Like I've said on Fark many a time: Hams are at the forefront of communications technology. You want to know what you'll be doing in 10, 15, or 20 years? Look at what hams are doing today, make it smaller, faster, and with a simpler interface, and that's what you'll be doing in the future.

I share your respect for hams and the importance of their role, but I think you're way overstating things here.

What were hams doing 10 or 20 years ago that foreshadowed Google? Wikipedia? Facebook? Even Twitter? (Yeah, they've been sending short text messages for over a century, but Twitter's global reach and searchability make it fundamentally different.)

What are hams doing now that the rest of us will be doing 10 or 20 years from now? (Not a rhetorical question -- I've fallen away from the community; I don't know what's hot in the amateur realm today.)

Back in the 70's, hams were already doing slow-scan TV to transmit pictures, and amateur satellites have been around for a while as well. But saying that SSTV was a "preview" of the Web or email with embedded images is an awfully hard stretch. And as long as satellite phones still cost a dollar a minute, most of us won't be using them in the foreseeable future.

20 years from now, I expect a lot of ubiquitous networking/computing and a lot of augmented reality. UbiComp just can't happen until you've already done the "smaller and faster" bit, and augmented reality will rely on localization and registration techniques that are still at the limits of our best research systems. Both, I'd imagine, are pretty far beyond the reach of most hams.

It's informative to look at what Steve Mann (N1NLF) (new window) has been doing over the past 20 years or so, and compare it to what's happened in the rest of the world.

ArcadianRefugee: Dear assholes that keep linking to Gizmodo articles (and the like):

When you get to the bottom of the article and it says "via some place", or "some place via another", can ya just go ahead and submit the article with the "some place" link? Why the fark point us to something that (a) isn't the original article, (b) is written by a narcissistic 12-year-old, and (c) is nothing but, "Wow! The article you should be reading is so cooooool!"

Seriously: cut it out.

Because the Gizmodo articles get approved more and Farkers like that tiny little endorphin rush that accompanies seeing our approved article count increment by 1. It's not right, it shouldn't happen that way, and credit (and beneficial traffic) should go to the originator, not to the douchy, often-wrong children that are the Gawker writers, but that's how it is. Apparently "OMG U SHULD SEE WHAT THT GUY SAID!" is better than original analysis.

That said, you're absolutely right. I'd love it if the mods would enforce this idea, give credit where due, and if the headline is worth keeping, just change where it points.

change1211: dittybopper: Article doesn't specify what the minimum separation is. That's important: If they have the same period, but never appear over the horizon to each other, then you can't keep an eye on it.

Looking at the Spaceflight website, though, and apropos of nothing, this seems interesting:

Radio hams tune in to space airwaves
Radio amateurs have always been keen to exploit new means of communication and John Heath provides a fascinating insight into how satellite technology has transformed the world of the radio ham soon after the launch of Sputnik right up to the present day

Like I've said on Fark many a time: Hams are at the forefront of communications technology. You want to know what you'll be doing in 10, 15, or 20 years? Look at what hams are doing today, make it smaller, faster, and with a simpler interface, and that's what you'll be doing in the future.

/Many of the engineers/geeks that design and build modern communications are hams.

Seems like you and I have very different opinions of what is interesting and what isn't.

So what are Hams doing today that everyone else will be doing in 20 years?

Looking forward is harder than looking backwards, so I'll give you some historical examples:

Wireless networking: Hams were doing 'packet radio', a precursor to WiFi, back in the early 1980's.
Cellphones: Hams were using hand-held radios to access the phone system via repeaters and 'autopatch' in the 1970's.
We added GPS beaconing and 'texting' like capability with APRS in the late 1980's/early 1990s.

All of those things had the bare functionality of modern communications electronics, in a slower, bigger, harder to use, and perhaps less portable package.

Looking forward, currently you can send and receive e-mail via ham radio *ANYWHERE* on the surface of the earth. Doesn't matter if you are in the middle of the Pacific, in Antarctica, wherever. Try doing that with a cell phone just 20 miles north of me: You won't be able to (no coverage), and I live in NYS.

Another possibility is long distance high speed WiFi. Hams get to use higher power and bigger and better antennas then a typical WiFi setup. Friend of mine has a 60 foot tower with a 4 foot parabolic dish that has a 2.4 GHz feedhorn on it, fed with 7/8ths hardline, for ham radio satellite work (2.4 GHz is shared with part 15 devices, and ham radio). He hooked his wireless router up to it for kicks one day, and he saw a couple dozen networks, some several miles away. Impressive, considering he lives out in the boonies, with very few close neighbors.

Another good bet is micro and picosats. We've been putting ham radio satellites up since the early 1960's, and the current interest in small satellites seems to have been sparked by what hams were able to do with very small digital satellites with a standard architecture, starting with the 4 'cubesat' constellation launched in 1990 (AO-16, DO-17, WO-18, LU-19?). There is an interest in using swarms of picosats for communications, sort of a cheaper version of the Iridium constellation.

Currently, there is a literal *EXPLOSION* of digital modes going on right now. Back when I started, digital meant RTTY or some form thereof (like AMTOR), or packet radio. Now there are modes tailored to just about everything: Moonbounce, very weak signal work, digital voice over HF, high speed reliable transmission, reliable data transmission over wonky paths, etc.

If your image of ham radio is an eccentric old guy, bent over a tube radio, pounding away at a morse key, well, some of us still do that, but there is a *LOT* of high-tech experimentation going on. It's definitely not your father's ham radio.

jfarkinB: What were hams doing 10 or 20 years ago that foreshadowed Google? Wikipedia? Facebook? Even Twitter? (

Oh, please. We had BBSes set up on packet, accessible from pretty much anywhere so long as you could hit a packet node. My first "private" e-mail address, in the early 1990's, was [mycall]@ka2tcq.ampr.org, a ham radio/internet 'gateway' that I accessed wirelessly from 100 miles away.

As for Twitter: APRS messages are pretty analogous to tweets. In fact, Bob Bruninga would probably have a good case had he patented APRS that Twitter infringes upon it.

I will note, however, that none of those things you listed are wireless communications, and I suppose I should have specified that. Wikipedia isn't strictly a communications technology, and neither is Google, wireless or not. One is an online encyclopedia, and the other is a search engine.

jfarkinB: Back in the 70's, hams were already doing slow-scan TV to transmit pictures, and amateur satellites have been around for a while as well. But saying that SSTV was a "preview" of the Web or email with embedded images is an awfully hard stretch. And as long as satellite phones still cost a dollar a minute, most of us won't be using them in the foreseeable future.

I was thinking more along the lines of this:

1970's: Hams using handheld transceivers to access the phone network via repeaters and autopatch.
Today: Cellphones.

1980s: Hams using computers, terminal node controllers, and VHF transceivers to do AX.25-based 'packet radio'.
Today: WiFi.

Late 1980s/early 1990s: Hams using their packet radio setups, in conjunction with GPS receivers and mapping software to show their position, beacon it to other hams, and to send 'tweets' or SMS-like messages.
Today: Cellphones commonly incorporate position beaconing, and the ability to send those messages.

The modern consumer versions are of course smaller, faster, have simpler interfaces, and have more capability then their ham radio antecedents, but the basic functionality was there.

gopher321: "Shuttle" sort of implies it can carry passengers. From the description, it sounds more like a spy sattelite sent up there to keep an eye on the Chi-Coms

/may be wrong

They call it a mini-space shuttle because it's an unmanned, mini-space shuttle.


The Air Force used to be a stakeholder in the full-size manned space shuttle but they pulled out after Challenger.

Slaves2Darkness: gopher321: "Shuttle" sort of implies it can carry passengers. From the description, it sounds more like a spy sattelite sent up there to keep an eye on the Chi-Coms

/may be wrong

Well the rumor is that it can squeeze 8 people into it's cargo module and their Sub-Orbital HALO gear. Does that help?

As in, some straight-up Starship Troopers shiat? Daaaaaamn...

It's now official: we are living in The Future.

dittybopper: change1211: dittybopper: Article doesn't specify what the minimum separation is. That's important: If they have the same period, but never appear over the horizon to each other, then you can't keep an eye on it.

Looking at the Spaceflight website, though, and apropos of nothing, this seems interesting:

Radio hams tune in to space airwaves
Radio amateurs have always been keen to exploit new means of communication and John Heath provides a fascinating insight into how satellite technology has transformed the world of the radio ham soon after the launch of Sputnik right up to the present day

Like I've said on Fark many a time: Hams are at the forefront of communications technology. You want to know what you'll be doing in 10, 15, or 20 years? Look at what hams are doing today, make it smaller, faster, and with a simpler interface, and that's what you'll be doing in the future.

/Many of the engineers/geeks that design and build modern communications are hams.

Seems like you and I have very different opinions of what is interesting and what isn't.

So what are Hams doing today that everyone else will be doing in 20 years?

Looking forward is harder than looking backwards, so I'll give you some historical examples:

Wireless networking: Hams were doing 'packet radio', a precursor to WiFi, back in the early 1980's.

Very, very badly. And they still do it in the exact same way, with the same broken protocol.

And did you ever try TCP/IP over top of a ax.25 packet link? At 1200 baud? With more than just you and the other station on-channel? At a power level just high enough such that the station you're trying to communicate with can hear you?


Cellphones: Hams were using hand-held radios to access the phone system via repeaters and 'autopatch' in the 1970's.

"Ship to shore radio" (which would get patched thru to the PSTN)

Look a little forward (or read back-issues of QST (Ha! Q-signals: Something that should have died with the advent of voice)) to the 1950s and 1960s and you find ... "phone patches" - hams providing voice commx for soldiers to their loved ones back here in the states.

Or consider pre-cellular car phones.

We added GPS beaconing and 'texting' like capability with APRS in the late 1980's/early 1990s.

Badly. Very, very badly.

All of those things had the bare functionality of modern communications electronics, in a slower, bigger, harder to use, and perhaps less portable package.

Looking forward, currently you can send and receive e-mail via ham radio *ANYWHERE* on the surface of the earth. Doesn't matter if you are in the middle of the Pacific, in Antarctica, wherever. Try doing that with a cell phone just 20 miles north of me: You won't be able to (no cover ...

Provided the condx are right. Provided the station you're trying to communicate with isn't down.



It's a hobby, not an infrastructure.

/T-4 years to QCWA membership...

bandy:
Provided the condx are right. Provided the station you're trying to communicate with isn't down.

You should check out what is being done with Winlink 2000.

It's a hobby, not an infrastructure.

A good point. I wasn't saying it was perfect, just that there were identifiable ham radio precursors to modern communications technology, and that if the pattern holds true, you can look at the cutting edge of ham radio today and see what might be in the future.

I'd also point out that from an emergency communications standpoint, the fact that it isn't an infrastructure is a feature, not a bug: When the actual communications infrastructure goes down, you can still use it. I've actually done that before. When the Verizon switch in Schenectady got flooded back in December of 2000, cutting off all phone access to 60,000 people (you could get sporadic cell service on the fringes of the outage), I was one of the hams that provided communications coverage for places like nursing homes, hospitals, schools, etc.

Of course, that was a minor incident compared to the role ham radio played in incidents like the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami, or the 9/11 attacks, or just about every single major hurricane to hit the US. In fact, ham radio coverage was one of the things that actually "worked" post Katrina.

/You're favorited as a ham for the next Fark QSO Party.
//I'm T-3 to QCWA myself.
///I do CW mobile, 'cause I'm funny in the head.

I live in Dayton OH, so I am getting a kick out of the ham nerds' replies...

ArcadianRefugee: Dear assholes that keep linking to Gizmodo articles (and the like):

When you get to the bottom of the article and it says "via some place", or "some place via another", can ya just go ahead and submit the article with the "some place" link? Why the fark point us to something that (a) isn't the original article, (b) is written by a narcissistic 12-year-old, and (c) is nothing but, "Wow! The article you should be reading is so cooooool!"

Seriously: cut it out.

Probably because fark and gizmondo have a mutual content sharing policy. Kinda like how Fark, and Cracked are buisness partners? And kinda like how all the sites are content agragagtors. When revenue is created from click through counts?

Shuttles.

Parthenogenetic: I live in Dayton OH, so I am getting a kick out of the ham nerds' replies...

How badly does the annual 'fest fark the town? (I have a reason to go to the other corner of Ohio, so...)

dittybopper: I'd also point out that from an emergency communications standpoint, the fact that it isn't an infrastructure is a feature, not a bug

Absolutely yes. Cell service worked in parts of Joplin, but it was the hams (SATERN) riding along with the Salvation Army that made sure that folks were taken care of. I was part of the only RACES group called out for the '91 hill fire in Oakland/Berkeley ... and boy did the lids showing up and occupying "our" (listed north-county emergency) frequencies screw things up, especially that one asshat who turned his mobile on cross-band repeat and left it ... not bothering to set it for tone or to turn up the squelch all the way ... when the noise floor rose after dark (as all the other folks showed up to "help"), it trashed "our" freqs so we had to move to an alternate channel and we ran a simplex net (drill, drill, drill!) all night, just in case the fire jumped to the next hill north. That would have taken out city, county, fire, pd, and cellular towers as they were all sited on the same hilltop. Fortunately, that didn't happen, so all I did was to direct some spaghetti dinners and have someone bring coffee & donuts in the morning to the firefighters I was shadowing. (Both arrived courtesy of the SA. ARC was "in" on the action, in the form of begging for funds all over the (broadcast) radio and tv.) The article that appeared in QST six months after the fact had little to do with what had happened that night, of course.

The other group that contributes well and often is the SKYWARN folks, providing eye-witness reports of tornadic activity - which is important, due to the geometric (and observational) restrictions hampering NOAA's RADAR installations. RADAR can sometimes see a tornado as a tornado, but more often, it's (trained!) ground observers who see not only the tornado, but the cloud formations that occur before the twister hits the ground. APRS aside, though, they're not necessarily high-tech. It's basically the same folks who started doing it fifty years ago, only with smaller, more reliable, and more powerful equipment.

ArcadianRefugee: Dear assholes that keep linking to Gizmodo articles (and the like):

When you get to the bottom of the article and it says "via some place", or "some place via another", can ya just go ahead and submit the article with the "some place" link? Why the fark point us to something that (a) isn't the original article, (b) is written by a narcissistic 12-year-old, and (c) is nothing but, "Wow! The article you should be reading is so cooooool!"

Seriously: cut it out.

side note: tried to get to the original source, Spaceflight magazine published by the BBC that requires a subscription, didn't see any other link at the bottom

Is there an actual free link to this info that isn't the junk food green lighted?

change1211: dittybopper: Article doesn't specify what the minimum separation is. That's important: If they have the same period, but never appear over the horizon to each other, then you can't keep an eye on it.

Looking at the Spaceflight website, though, and apropos of nothing, this seems interesting:

Radio hams tune in to space airwaves
Radio amateurs have always been keen to exploit new means of communication and John Heath provides a fascinating insight into how satellite technology has transformed the world of the radio ham soon after the launch of Sputnik right up to the present day

Like I've said on Fark many a time: Hams are at the forefront of communications technology. You want to know what you'll be doing in 10, 15, or 20 years? Look at what hams are doing today, make it smaller, faster, and with a simpler interface, and that's what you'll be doing in the future.

/Many of the engineers/geeks that design and build modern communications are hams.

Seems like you and I have very different opinions of what is interesting and what isn't.

So what are Hams doing today that everyone else will be doing in 20 years?

Practical application and understanding of technology that is magic as far as most screen poking morons are concerned.

_{/not a HAM}

I wouldn't be surprised if that X37b has some weaponry or at least a self-destruct bomb. If the Chinese station starts engaging in major dickery then the X37b can probably take it out.

dittybopper: bandy:

/You're favorited as a ham for the next Fark QSO Party.
//I'm T-3 to QCWA myself.
///I do CW mobile, 'cause I'm funny in the head.

+6 years for QCWA. However, I refuse to sign up as the magazine is a list of Sk's in God's waiting room.

Sign me up for the next FARK QSO party.

I do HF CW and SSB contesting, as well as hunt DX.
/329 worked out of current 340

dittybopper: Looking forward, currently you can send and receive e-mail via ham radio *ANYWHERE* on the surface of the earth.

What exactly does one need in order to do this, and how large is the equipment?

HairBolus: I wouldn't be surprised if that X37b has some weaponry or at least a self-destruct bomb. If the Chinese station starts engaging in major dickery then the X37b can probably take it out.

Unlikely.
The most it would have are probably scuttling charges.
I think the air force is more interesting in testing out cameras and maneuvers for a launch/move/recover on demand system than an actual weapons platform.

Not that they couldn't make one, its just not the best use of the platform when they already have things like ASAT to kill space vehicles.

I'd go with the "coincidence" theory.
China tends to do thing for practical reasons, and they chose this orbit already knowing that we have vehicles using it. The article mentions that we use it for regular access over the middle east. They have interest in the middle east too, and in our space ships.

So they can watch us watching them while watching our interests in the main war zone of this last half century.

dittybopper: jfarkinB: Back in the 70's, hams were already doing slow-scan TV to transmit pictures, and amateur satellites have been around for a while as well. But saying that SSTV was a "preview" of the Web or email with embedded images is an awfully hard stretch. And as long as satellite phones still cost a dollar a minute, most of us won't be using them in the foreseeable future.

I was thinking more along the lines of this:

1970's: Hams using handheld transceivers to access the phone network via repeaters and autopatch.
Today: Cellphones.

1980s: Hams using computers, terminal node controllers, and VHF transceivers to do AX.25-based 'packet radio'.
Today: WiFi.

Late 1980s/early 1990s: Hams using their packet radio setups, in conjunction with GPS receivers and mapping software to show their position, beacon it to other hams, and to send 'tweets' or SMS-like messages.
Today: Cellphones commonly incorporate position beaconing, and the ability to send those messages.

The modern consumer versions are of course smaller, faster, have simpler interfaces, and have more capability then their ham radio antecedents, but the basic functionality was there.

So nearly 30 years after Ma bell did it, the hams copied it.
Ok.
"The first mobile telephone call made from a car occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on June 17, 1946, using the Bell System's Mobile Telephone Service."-Wikipedia
http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reput ation/timeline/46mobile.html

Something else that Gizmodo et all did not mention is: the X-37 was launched in March, and the space station was launched later in September.

MBrady: Sign me up for the next FARK QSO party.

Favorited.

Herr Flick's Revenge: So nearly 30 years after Ma bell did it, the hams copied it.
Ok.
"The first mobile telephone call made from a car occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on June 17, 1946, using the Bell System's Mobile Telephone Service."-Wikipedia
http://www.corp.att.com/attlabs/reput ation/timeline/46mobile.html

From a car?

I was talking about a portable, hand-held device.

The WindowLicker: Something else that Gizmodo et all did not mention is: the X-37 was launched in March, and the space station was launched later in September.

"X-37B is now flying at an altitude of 186 miles (300 kilometers) with an orbital inclination of 42.79 degrees. Tiangong-1-which launched later-is flying with an orbital inclination of 42.78 degrees."

/lolwut

raygundan: dittybopper: Looking forward, currently you can send and receive e-mail via ham radio *ANYWHERE* on the surface of the earth.

What exactly does one need in order to do this, and how large is the equipment?

All you need is a computer with a soundcard (a netbook will work fine), an HF radio, an antenna, the cables to connect them all together, and of course the proper software installed on the computer (Winlink 2000 and WINMOR). If you use PACTOR instead of WINMOR, you might need an external (and pricey) modem also, but that's why WINMOR was developed, so you don't need that.

It's not quite plug-and-play, of course, but you could fit the whole set-up in a briefcase, and provided you have some form of power like batteries, essentially send and receive e-mails (with attachments) from anywhere. It won't be like having a fast internet connection, of course, but it's better than nothing.

TheNyquilKid: The WindowLicker: Something else that Gizmodo et all did not mention is: the X-37 was launched in March, and the space station was launched later in September.

"X-37B is now flying at an altitude of 186 miles (300 kilometers) with an orbital inclination of 42.79 degrees. Tiangong-1-which launched later-is flying with an orbital inclination of 42.78 degrees."

/lolwut

Yes, because it's *IMPOSSIBLE* for a satellite launched before another one to change it's orbit. Simply impossible.