Inflight broadband services is something we’ve liked for years. Why? Satcom love, baby.

Connexion by Boeing was a real winner. In fact, it’s probably still being used by Air Force One and other U.S. agencies — especiallly over the Pacific via GE-23. Ed loved it, as did most users who’ve experienced it.

We like Row 44 now, since they’ve got satcom love working for them. In the U.S., there are two other options, but they use ground-based communications systems to make the connection. Alaska Airlines (see above aircraft with satellite antenna housing) and Southwest are using Row 44’s equipment and service. Good decision.

Dvice.com published this comparison chart last week:

 No VoIP, ey? I’m sure there’s a hack for that.

The Situation:

Background –

In the satellite industry there have been some rather spectacular satellite failures, as well as significant in orbit anomalies, that have seriously affected missions and caused many insurance claims over the last 10 to 15 years.  This has generally been due to design or test oversights and errors discovered very late in a program, or not at all, ending up in orbit.

As Mr. Keith Vokert (CEO, Satellite Consulting, Inc.) has pointed out in a great paper on this topic titled “THE NEED FOR ONE MORE LOOK or WHEN WHITE HAIR IS A GOOD THING”, the causes of the problem are generally as follows:

·          No single cause but often a combination of factors

·          Relying on process

·          Schedule pressures

·          Fewer senior experts on staff

·          Less time for reviews

·          Limited number of independent reviewers

·          Much smaller customer teams

·          ITAR has reduced content

·          Financial pressures 

Mr. Volkert goes on to analyze the situation in much greater detail and strongly suggests that the pool of retired engineers, readily available as consultants, should be utilized “to provide at least one last look through a more experienced set of eyes.”

You can find this August 28, 2007 paper at the following link:

www.aerowebspace.com/aiaa/archives/volkert.ppt

I totally agree with Mr. Volkert’s assessment and also the use of the words “at least”.  This is because, for companies without sufficient senior staff or who may not have their own customer team, the use of these readily available experienced senior consultants throughout the course of a satellite program provide an invaluable substitute, or supplement, to any direct staff deficiencies. 

Experience versus Process –

Although most aerospace companies would indicate that they understand and appreciate the value of the experience senior technical personnel (i.e., those with 20, 30, or more years of experience) bring to the table to help insure the technical quality of the spacecraft produced, history does not necessarily support this.  Senior professionals are often the first to be laid off in tough economic times, industry consolidation, and/or company reorganizations.  In addition, there has also been a natural loss of experienced people overall due to the retirement of these older individuals who started when the aerospace industry was in its early stages (i.e., primarily in the 60’s and 70’s) and the fact that the number of young people entering the aerospace industry since that time has declined, favoring computers, software and other fields.  The loss of senior professionals leaves the younger less experienced engineers to fill the void and as it used to be said to “re-learn the wheel”.   Essentially, these younger engineers end up having to learn from their own experience what their senior counterparts could have advised them about from their past experience, had they still been available to them.  This loss of resident experience often means repeating past problems and mistakes over again as well as ineffectively handling new ones.  To compound this problem further, some of these same companies have eliminated the use of consultants who could have compensated for the loss of resident experience and also help mentor and advise its younger engineers.  Essentially these consultants, many of whom retired after over 30+ years of experience in the industry, working in conjunction with their younger counterparts, could be a good solution if utilized, to maintain the necessary technical quality for mission success. 

The bottom line is that aerospace companies as a whole often have less experience on their staffs than they once had and some of these companies also have a tendency against using consultants that might supplant this loss of experience.

The main reason these companies usually give for reducing their more senior staff and eliminating the use of consultants is that they have to operate leaner.  Operating leaner generally means reducing your higher paid senior staff and perceived expensive consultants.  Also management often tends to believe that they can maintain the quality of the product and avoid problems just by improving the processes.  Basically management sometimes tends to believe that the senior experience is less critical to quality than a better management plan.  I have seen companies unsuccessfully try to apply six sigma techniques in an attempt to improve satellite quality, replace successful program management methods with poorer ones, stay with failing processes too long before fixing them, badly fix other processes before first proving them out, and even reduce technical team size reasoning that process improvements trump team size.  Oftentimes the managers in charge have not come up through the spacecraft technical ranks and therefore don’t always appreciate what is necessary for quality and mission success.  This lack of appreciation frequently leads these managers to reduce costs without any thought to the impact it might have to the end result.

Misconception Related to Consultant Usage –

Speaking of costs, there is often a misconception that using consultants is more expensive to a company than hiring someone full-time.  In a recent article in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine (Sept., 2009 Edition, Page 80) on Consulting it states the following advantage of being a consultant:

“As for drumming up business, you may have an edge in the current economy.  Companies are looking to hire consultants because they are cheaper that full-time workers.”

While it’s true that consultants generally demand a higher hourly rate, it is also true that consultants are less costly for a number of other good reasons as highlighted in the following advantages.   Specifically advantages number 3, 4 and 5 save the company considerable expense relative to direct employees.  To be fair there are also disadvantages shown in using consultants.  However, as far as these disadvantages are concerned, as shown in red they are often not really significant or can easily be overcome.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Consultants vs Direct Employees

• Advantages –

1.       Consultants provide a valuable service to the company by bolstering company teams with experienced and knowledgeable people to help insure the program requirements are met and that the quality of the satellites are as good as they can be.

2.       Can provide expertise that a customer may not have in its current employee staff.

3.       Consultants need no training (i.e., can hit the ground running).

4.       From the companies perspective consultants are flexible and can be hired and let go as needed.

5.       Consultants provide the company with significant financial benefits.  The company does not take on the overhead and benefits obligation of a direct hire such as health & insurance benefits, vacation, family relocation & associated compensation, potential cultural adjustments, and/or other considerations.

• Disadvantages –

1.       When consultants leave long term assignments (e.g., as residents at spacecraft manufacturers or subcontractors), they walk away with a good amount of knowledge gained that is not written down or passed on to their company colleagues.  Even though they provide weekly reports, it is inevitable that not all daily information learned gets disseminated.  This means that the company may have less in-house knowledge than it would ordinarily have if its own people were located at the manufacturer facilities.  This can be an important deficit if anomalies occur and have to be resolved over the life of a particular satellite (i.e. the availability of all historical documentation and knowledge is critical to the successful resolution of on-orbit anomalies).  On the other hand the company can write consultant contracts to assure all information collected during the course of the program (paper and soft copy) is handed over by the consultant to the company as their property.

2.       Because consultants can be hired and let go at a moments notice, they may not share the same feeling of ownership in the satellite or program like their direct employee counterparts.  On the other hand, consultants being retired work primarily for the love of the industry making them generally focused totally on the job at hand and independent in their thinking and analysis (i.e., not being direct employees they have no political allegiances and no pre-determined biases that can often negatively affect the independence and attitude of direct employees). 

Conclusions:

So with the above in mind, the following conclusions are made:

1.       Senior technical professionals with their past experience and knowledge are still a critical component to assure spacecraft quality and mission success.

2.       Retired technical professionals are a cost effective way to supplement a company’s staff with critical expertise.

3.       Processes can be improved, but are not a substitute for the application of senior technical expertise and experience.

Let us know what you think!  We welcome your comments, opinions and thoughts on this important topic.

Consultant Service Question for Prospective Clients:

Would there be an interest by prospective clients (i.e., Spacecraft Buyers, Operators, Manufacturers or any others interested in this posting) in a spacecraft related training or mentoring course for your younger technical staff members and/or managers?  One possible series could be from DAEMAR Principal Consultant Robert Youngblood, a recognized expert in spacecraft/mission operations, who previously developed a series of seminars that cover the various aspects of spacecraft fleet maintenance and operation as well as the examination of fundamental principles and real-world decisions.

While DAEMAR does not currently advertise this service, let us know if there would be an interest in this kind of course or seminar series as a consulting service?

Best Regards,

Mark Halverson

CEO, DAEMAR Consulting and Enterprise Group LLC

The Situation:

Background

In the satellite industry there have been some rather spectacular satellite failures, as well as significant in orbit anomalies, that have seriously affected missions and caused many insurance claims over the last 10 to 15 years.  This has generally been due to design or test oversights and errors discovered very late in a program, or not at all, ending up in orbit.

As Mr. Keith Vokert (CEO, Satellite Consulting, Inc.) has pointed out in a great paper on this topic titled “THE NEED FOR ONE MORE LOOK or WHEN WHITE HAIR IS A GOOD THING”, the causes of the problem are generally as follows:
 

• No single cause but often a combination of factors
• Relying on process
• Schedule pressures
• Fewer senior experts on staff
• Less time for reviews
• Limited number of independent reviewers
• Much smaller customer teams
• ITAR has reduced content
• Financial pressures

Mr. Volkert goes on to analyze the situation in much greater detail and strongly suggests that the pool of retired engineers, readily available as consultants, should be utilized “to provide at least one last look through a more experienced set of eyes.”

You can find this August 28, 2007 paper here. 

I totally agree with Mr. Volkert’s assessment and also the use of the words “at least”.  This is because, for companies without sufficient senior staff or who may not have their own customer team, the use of these readily available experienced senior consultants throughout the course of a satellite program provide an invaluable substitute, or supplement, to any direct staff deficiencies.

Experience versus Process

Although most aerospace companies would indicate that they understand and appreciate the value of the experience senior technical personnel (i.e., those with 20, 30, or more years of experience) bring to the table to help insure the technical quality of the spacecraft produced, history does not necessarily support this.  Senior professionals are often the first to be laid off in tough economic times, industry consolidation, and/or company reorganizations.  In addition, there has also been a natural loss of experienced people overall due to the retirement of these older individuals who started when the aerospace industry was in its early stages (i.e., primarily in the 60’s and 70’s) and the fact that the number of young people entering the aerospace industry since that time has declined, favoring computers, software and other fields.  The loss of senior professionals leaves the younger less experienced engineers to fill the void and as it used to be said to “re-learn the wheel”.   Essentially, these younger engineers end up having to learn from their own experience what their senior counterparts could have advised them about from their past experience, had they still been available to them.  This loss of resident experience often means repeating past problems and mistakes over again as well as ineffectively handling new ones.  To compound this problem further, some of these same companies have eliminated the use of consultants who could have compensated for the loss of resident experience and also help mentor and advise its younger engineers.  Essentially these consultants, many of whom retired after over 30+ years of experience in the industry, working in conjunction with their younger counterparts, could be a good solution if utilized, to maintain the necessary technical quality for mission success.  
 
The bottom line is that aerospace companies as a whole often have less experience on their staffs than they once had and some of these companies also have a tendency against using consultants that might supplant this loss of experience.

The main reason these companies usually give for reducing their more senior staff and eliminating the use of consultants is that they have to operate leaner.  Operating leaner generally means reducing your higher paid senior staff and perceived expensive consultants.  Also management often tends to believe that they can maintain the quality of the product and avoid problems just by improving the processes.  Basically management sometimes tends to believe that the senior experience is less critical to quality than a better management plan.  I have seen companies unsuccessfully try to apply six sigma techniques in an attempt to improve satellite quality, replace successful program management methods with poorer ones, stay with failing processes too long before fixing them, badly fix other processes before first proving them out, and even reduce technical team size reasoning that process improvements trump team size. Oftentimes the managers in charge have not come up through the spacecraft technical ranks and therefore don’t always appreciate what is necessary for quality and mission success.  This lack of appreciation frequently leads these managers to reduce costs without any thought to the impact it might have to the end result.

Misconception Related to Consultant Usage
 
Speaking of costs, there is often a misconception that using consultants is more expensive to a company than hiring someone full-time.  In a recent article in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine (Sept., 2009 Edition, Page 80) on Consulting it states the following advantage of being a consultant:

“As for drumming up business, you may have an edge in the current economy.  Companies are looking to hire consultants because they are cheaper that full-time workers.”

While it’s true that consultants generally demand a higher hourly rate, it is also true that consultants are less costly for a number of other good reasons as highlighted in the following advantages.   Specifically advantages number 3, 4 and 5 save the company considerable expense relative to direct employees.  To be fair there are also disadvantages shown in using consultants.  However, as far as these disadvantages are concerned, as shown in italics they are often not really significant or can easily be overcome.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Consultants vs Direct Employees

Advantages

• Consultants provide a valuable service to the company by bolstering company teams with experienced and knowledgeable people to help insure the program requirements are met and that the quality of the satellites are as good as they can be.
• Can provide expertise that a customer may not have in its current employee staff.
• Consultants need no training (i.e., can hit the ground running).
• From the companies perspective consultants are flexible and can be hired and let go as needed.
• Consultants provide the company with significant financial benefits.  The company does not take on the overhead and benefits obligation of a direct hire such as health & insurance benefits, vacation, family relocation & associated compensation, potential cultural adjustments, and/or other considerations.

Disadvantages

• When consultants leave long term assignments (e.g., as residents at spacecraft manufacturers or subcontractors), they walk away with a good amount of knowledge gained that is not written down or passed on to their company colleagues.  Even though they provide weekly reports, it is inevitable that not all daily information learned gets disseminated.  This means that the company may have less in-house knowledge than it would ordinarily have if its own people were located at the manufacturer facilities.  This can be an important deficit if anomalies occur and have to be resolved over the life of a particular satellite (i.e. the availability of all historical documentation and knowledge is critical to the successful resolution of on-orbit anomalies).  On the other hand the company can write consultant contracts to assure all information collected during the course of the program (paper and soft copy) is handed over by the consultant to the company as their property.
• Because consultants can be hired and let go at a moments notice, they may not share the same feeling of ownership in the satellite or program like their direct employee counterparts.  On the other hand, consultants being retired work primarily for the love of the industry making them generally focused totally on the job at hand and independent in their thinking and analysis (i.e., not being direct employees they have no political allegiances and no pre-determined biases that can often negatively affect the independence and attitude of direct employees).

Conclusions

So with the above in mind, the following conclusions are made:

• Senior technical professionals with their past experience and knowledge are still a critical component to assure spacecraft quality and mission success.
• Retired technical professionals are a cost effective way to supplement a company’s staff with critical expertise.
• Processes can be improved, but are not a substitute for the application of senior technical expertise and experience.

Let us know what you think!  We welcome your comments, opinions and thoughts on this important topic.

Consultant Service Question for Prospective Clients

Would there be an interest by prospective clients (i.e., Spacecraft Buyers, Operators, Manufacturers or any others interested in this posting) in a spacecraft related training or mentoring course for your younger technical staff members and/or managers?  One possible series could be from DAEMAR Principal Consultant Robert Youngblood, a recognized expert in spacecraft/mission operations, who previously developed a series of seminars that cover the various aspects of spacecraft fleet maintenance and operation as well as the examination of fundamental principles and real-world decisions.
 
While DAEMAR does not currently advertise this service, let us know if there would be an interest in this kind of course or seminar series as a consulting service?

Best Regards,

Mark Halverson

CEO, DAEMAR Consulting and Enterprise Group LLC

Satellite Industry News Bits August 14, 2009

atrexx introduces SCPC satellite services to South America and the Caribbean using its 2way2sat platform and the Intelsat 903 satellite.
[SatNews – 08/14/2009]

Thaicom expects to launch its IPStar broadband service in India later this year, as it reports a net profit of $5.8m for the second quarter.
[Satellite Today – 08/14/2009]

Integration of Optus D3 on Arian 5’s core stage clears way for JCSAT-12 to be integrated in upper position, in preparation for August 21 launch.
[SatNews – 08/13/2009]

GSA to manage purchase of $5b worth of commercial satellite services during next 10 years for all federal agencies including defense department.
[SatNews – 08/13/2009]

U.S. gives OK for the Indian Space Research Organization to launch Algerian satellites having American components using an Indian launch vehicle.
[SatNews – 08/13/2009]

Ukraine plans to launch an Earth remote sensing satellite in April 2010.
[SatNews – 08/13/2009]

Satellite news gathering is taking on a new look, with smaller vehicles enabled by small automatic antennas and broadband connectivity offered by systems such as C-COM Satellite Systems’ iNetVu.
[TMCnet – 08/13/2009]

Harris raises 2010 forecast on 2009 fiscal year results which included 13% increase in net income, and a fourth quarter of new order bookings of $129b.
[FloridaToday – 08/13/2009]

Lockheed Martin begins construction of new facilities in Newtown, PA to support satellite construction programs for government and commercial customers.
[Satellite Today – 08/13/2009]

Intelsat sales increase 10% in second quarter, driven by demand for communications infrastructure.
[Washingon Business Journal – 08/12/2009]

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. announces that the UK-DMC2 satellite has commenced operations and is delivering images.
[Satellite Today – 08/12/2009]

Satellite gravity maps show disastrous draining in India’s breadbasket, resulting in shrinking aquifers.
[IEEE Spectrum – 08/12/2009]

Gilat second quarter revenues down from 2008 by $9.6m, with net loss of $1.2m.
[GlobeNewswire – 08/11/2009]

Globecomm Systems to design, build, and test RF electronic upgrade kits for legacy X-band terminals deployed around the globe which are no longer supportable, under $2m government contract from a major global organization.
[SatNews – 08/11/2009]

Asiasat 5 is launched into space aboard Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on August 10.
[Space – 08/11/2009]

WildBlue Communications announces successful start of rural broadband service on a third satellite, EchoStar’s AMC-15, a satellite provided to Echostar by SES Americom.
[Agriculture OnLine – 08/10/2009]

Dish Network shows signs of getting churn under control as it shows positive subscriber growth in second quarter for the first time in five quarters, adding 26,000 net new customers.
[Bloomberg – 08/10/2009]

SPOT LLC to provide real-time race tracking and GPS mapping for Primal Quest Badlands co-ed teams race through South Dakota’s Black Hills and Badlands.
[Globe NewsWire – 08/10/2009]

Keystone selected by Channel One to provide nationwide satellite distribution to schools of the school news broadcast.
[Business Wire – 08/10/2009]

Delays in U.S. Navy satellite program and decision by military not to launch more backup transmitters and receivers may lead to dead zones in communications coverage for U.S. troops and operatives in very remote regions of world in 2010.
[Defense News – 08/10/2009]

Iridium second quarter profit is up by 53% over 2008, at $28.6m.
[Washington Business Journal – 08/10/2009]

Western Canada’s Telus reaches 115,000 IPTV customers overall, with a gain of 17,000 subscribers in second quarter, a gain of 125% over last year; its Bell TV satellite TV service reaches more than 90% of the households in its region.
[FierceIPTV – 09/10/2009]

Dish Network profit slides 81% due to costs of litigation with TiVo, although it was able to add subscribers and maintain revenue.
[CED Magazine- 08/10/2009]

New undersea cables to Africa planned to provide broadband alternative to satellite, with 10 planned to be in service by middle of 2010.
[NY Times – 08/09/2009]

Commercial satellite transponder demand growth appears to be set for steady growth over next 10 years, though specific S-band and Ku-band trends vary substantially by region.
[NSR Report – August 2009]

WBMSAT PS – Satellite Communications Consulting Services

Live dangerously: smoke. Oh, and light up with via a laser, via Instructables…

 WARNING: This kind of laser can cause permanent damage to eyesight in less than a second. NEVER look into the beam or reflection of ANY laser including this one

Great piece in Wired’s Danger Room on a new iPhone app developed at MIT:

Her crew of 30 grad students and undergrads is chasing a number of new ideas and technologies, all aimed at easing the sometimes unwieldy interactions between machines and their human masters. As an example, she refers to the complex, suitcase-sized controller that soldiers must haul around to control hand-thrown Raven unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. Cummings wants something simpler. And what could be simpler than an iPhone?

Actually, using an iPhone was her undergrads’ idea — because experimenting with it as a basis for a new robot controller meant she’d have to buy them all iPhones of their own. “We had the idea in June,” Cummings told Danger Room. “In six weeks, we went from the idea to a real flight test,” using MIT’s indoor robot range. (See video.) The total cost? $5,000 for a new, commercially available, quad-rotor robot — plus the cost of iPhones for her crew.

The iPhone bot controller is basically just an app, like any other. It relies on only the iPhone’s existing gear, and the phone can still be used for regular calls, web-browsing, texting, etc. HAL’s bot-wrangling app sends GPS coordinates to the robot, which navigates around using its own, built-in “sense-and-avoid” capabilities. Along the way, the bot can stream video or snapshots back to the iPhone.

 Yeah, there’s a video…

It’s no secret satcom has wildly optimistic projections for providing service in India — television and Internet. Direct-to-home satellite television probably has the greatest potential. All you need to do is get beyond government bureaucracy. Simple.

Satellite companies have been trying to get more business from India for years. The AAP-1/NSS-11 satellite’s South Asian beam was specifically designed for DTH. Did they get the business? No. The government insists on majority ownership by Indian entities. Antrix books plenty of space on it, but no DTH business.

So how will they satisfy demand? Buy a satellite from another operator.

Antrix Corp, India’s only space services company, is out to break new ground in the $2.5 billion industry.

The Rs 1,000 crore firm is scouting for joint ventures with similar overseas firms to own and operate satellites.

It is talking to one European and a regional company, to buy a large sized communications satellite, managing director K R Sridhara Murthi told DNA.

"We are looking to build strengths in new areas and have kicked off talks with these parties to own and operate satellites," Murthy added. But he refused to divulge the names of the involved parties pending finalisation of a deal.

The move follows an earlier attempt at a similar JV in 2004 with Malaysia’s MEASAT Global to develop a satellite neighbourhood for broadcasting and telecom customers across the wider Asia-Pacific region. 

 Given last month’s space agreement with the U.S., it seems India will be next real power in space.

For your next summer vacation adventure, check out Canadian company Jetlev:

Our first production model JETLEV-FLYER is undergoing final testing by MS Watersports GmbH, our German licensee, and results will be available soon. There will be two versions, one with a 155 HP engine and the other with 215 HP. Top speed of the 215 HP model is expected to easily exceed 40 mph (64 km/h), and flight ceiling will still be restricted to 28 feet (8.5 m) for safety reasons. Specifications are subject to change and will be announced after final testing has been completed.

For performance and duration records and other special applications, future versions of JETLEV-FLYER could reach speeds in excess of 50 mph (80 km/h), altitudes of 50 feet (15 m), cruise duration of 5 hours, range exceeding 180 miles (300 km), and carry payloads in excess of 1000 lbs (454 kg). Ultimately, it is largely safety considerations, not technical limitations that will dictate the limits of design.

Besides the obvious recreational and entertainment applications, there are many potential practical applications of Jetlev technology including beach patrol, search-and-rescue, offshore services, marine/bridge inspection and maintenance, maritime safety, harbor security, anti-piracy missions, and the military. Interested parties are encouraged to explore joint ventures with or license the technology from Jetlev Development Corporation in Canada.

Here’s the Fox News report:

Can’t drive 55? Try 1 million MPH:

Stars in a distant galaxy move at stunning speeds — greater than 1 million mph, astronomers have revealed.

These hyperactive stars move at about twice the speed of our sun through the Milky Way, because their host galaxy is very massive, yet strangely compact. The scene, which has theorists baffled, is 11 billion light-years away. It is the first time motions of individual stars have been measured in a galaxy so distant.

While the stars’ swiftness is notable, stars in other galaxies have been observed to travel at similarly high speeds. In those situations, it was usually because they were interlopers from outside, or circling close to a black hole.

But in this case, the stars’ high velocities help astronomers confirm that the galaxy they belong to really is as massive as earlier data suggested.

Bizarre, indeed

The compact nature of this and similar galaxies in the faraway early universe is puzzling to scientists, who don’t yet understand why some young, massive galaxies are about five times smaller than their counterparts today.

"A lot of people were thinking we had overestimated these masses in the past," said Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, leader of the new study. "But this confirms they are extremely massive for their size. These galaxies are indeed as bizarre as we thought they were."

Scientists used the new velocity measurements, conducted with the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope, to test the mass of a galaxy identified as 1255-0. The same way that the sun’s gravity determines the orbiting speed of the Earth, the galaxy’s gravity, and thus its mass, determines the velocities of the stars inside it.

That’s awesome. Check the NASA site for details.

Astronomers confess that it is a difficult riddle to explain how such compact, massive galaxies form, and why they are not seen in the current, local universe. “One possibility is that we are looking at what will eventually be the dense central region of a very large galaxy,” explains team member Marijn Franx of Leiden University in the Netherlands. “The centers of big galaxies may have formed first, presumably together with the giant black holes that we know exist in today’s large galaxies that we see nearby.”

To witness the formation of these extreme galaxies astronomers plan to observe galaxies even further back in time in great detail. By using the Wide Field Camera 3, which was recently installed on the Hubble Space Telescope, such objects should be detectable. “The ancestors of these extreme galaxies should have quite spectacular properties as they probably formed a huge amount of stars, in addition to a massive black hole, in a relatively short amount of time,” says van Dokkum.

This research follows recent studies revealing that the oldest, most luminous galaxies in the early universe are very compact yet surprisingly have stellar masses similar to those of present-day elliptical galaxies. The most massive galaxies we see in the local universe (where we don’t look back in time significantly) which have a mass similar to 1255-0 are typically five times larger than a young compact galaxy. How galaxies grew so much in the past 10 billion years is an active area of research, and understanding the dynamics in these young compact galaxies is a key piece of evidence in eventually solving this puzzle.

 Looking back in time, 10 billions ago. A million mile per hours. This astronomy stuff can be so mind-boggling.

Just about everybody I’ve ever met in the satellite business was a good person. Honest, smart and nice to work with. Yeah, some of you may disagree with that assessment. Those that aren’t any good, don’t last long.

Take the news from Montana about the satellite TV installer who moonlighted as a burglar. During installation, he was actually "casing the joint," as they used to say. Not anymore. He’s going to jail because that’s just not cool, dog. Watch the video from KHBB-TV.

A local TV technician was sentenced today (8/5) for stealing thousands of dollars of items from the houses he worked in. Court papers say while Kyle Peck was working as a satellite installation technician at Buzzard Wireless in Great Falls he studied the homes of his clients and then came back later to rob them. During that time, he apparently stole video game systems, TVs and cash.

Today, he pleaded guilty to three felony counts including theft and burglary.

Under the plea agreement, he will serve a five year deferred sentence. Peck had two accomplices during his crimes, which he had previously met at juvenile drug court.

Axle Cremer was Peck’s lookout. He also pled guilty to theft today and will serve a three year deferred sentence.

Though most of the stolen items were returned, together the teens must also pay $700 in restitution.

There may be "nothing there" in Montana, but there certainly is justice.