Really Rocket Science

According to government official in its Commission of Electronic Commerce, Juan Fernandez, Cuba is funding the Internet. While this may seem a little bit surprising, coming from a country whose widely known for limiting citizen access to the ‘net and censoring any access a citizen does find, the problem is a little complicated:

"Once the underdeveloped countries have undertaken this tremendous effort and sacrifice to create the minimum conditions for them to be able to connect up to the Internet, then they find themselves confronted with a situation whereby they have to pay for the connection up to the Internet at the same level as the developed countries, even though this might also be a channel used by users in the developed countries.

Which means that you can have technical means whereby you can do away with this paradox. And these poor countries seem to be financing (the) Internet by this system."

The only problem with making this argument, Wired’s Declan McCullagh points out, was that representatives from industry and researchers responsible for hooking Latin American countries up to the net were at the UN Internet Governance Forum during which Fernandez posed his argument and could respond, citing instead Cuba’s telecommunications monopoly and censorship policies as the source of the island nation’s struggle to pay for its Internet connection. Bill Woodcock, research director for the non-profit Packet Clearing House, stepped up and noted these challenges:

"Remember that the Internet is an end-to-end model. Zero percent of Cubans are connected to the Internet. The Cuban government operates an incumbent phone company, which maintains a Web cache. Cubans who wish to use the Internet browse the government Web cache. They do not have unrestricted access to the Internet.

And the question about whether there is an inequality in Cuban access to the global Internet, ask yourself whether a Cuban Internet service provider would face any challenges in connecting to a network in the United States or in Europe. And the answer is that, no, these are unregulated markets. They would face exactly the same costs as anyone anywhere else in the world."

The ultimate bit of irony? The UN Summit that this is all taking place at, opened by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, is occurring at a hotel in Athens that — get this — doesn’t have working Internet. Ooops…

While I’m not really certain what this all means, it has lead to some really amazing images and movies.

Astronomers have new evidence that the Andromeda spiral galaxy was involved in a violent head-on collision with the neighboring dwarf galaxy Messier 32 (M32) more than 200 million years ago. This infrared photograph taken with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope revealed a never-before-seen dust ring deep within the Andromeda galaxy (highlighted by the inset). When combined with a previously observed outer ring, the presence of both dust rings suggests that M32 plunged through the disk of Andromeda along Andromeda’s polar axis approximately 210 million years ago.

Check-out a high resolution image of the collision (2.1 MB) and a great simulation of the collision.

According to a press release connected to the images, the findings may be important for the clues they might provide about our own galaxies’ future. Similar to collision pictured above,

"Astronomers have predicted that Andromeda and the Milky Way will collide in approximately 5 to 10 billion years. That collision will erase the separate identities of each galaxy, leaving a single elliptical galaxy in their place."

At least we’re not going to be around for that one, right? 🙂

NASA’s STEREO Mission is set to launch this evening at 8:53 PM EST and things seem to be going well, according to the mission website:

"The STEREO mission is about to begin. Safely installed atop a Boeing Delta II rocket, the twin spacecraft are ready for launch Wednesday at 8:38 p.m. EDT. The vehicle’s second stage was loaded with storable propellants on Monday. The launch weather forecast remains favorable, with virtually no concerns. High pressure behind a passing front has brought pleasant conditions for the next two days. There is still only a 5% chance of weather violating launch constraints, due to possible development of thick clouds."

The launch blog will start reporting the happenings starting two hours before the launch (around 7pm EST).

The STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) Mission, for those who don’t already know, intends to use stereoscopic 3D vision to construct a complete picture of a sun and the nature of solar flares. In addition to helping us know a great deal more about the world’s most important star, the mission should help us learn how we can best protect future astronauts from the dangerous effects of solar flares.

Looks like there were no winners in the X Prize Cup’s space elevator cup competition this past weekend in Las Cruces, NM. The competition, which  we wrote about last week, put twenty teams against one another in two categories, climbing and tether strength. According to an article on earthtimes.org:

Although none of the teams were declared winners, the University of Saskatchewan Team (USST) was just two seconds short of winning the prize, as they managed to climb 200-foot- high carbon fiber ribbon in two seconds over the time allotted to them.

While there weren’t any winners, this year teams did far better than they have previously, according to Ben Shelef, an executive at the Spaceward Foundation that sponsored the competition. Shelef reminded those interested interested in the competition that:

"For year one, we attracted seven teams and didn’t climb the tether. This year we had four teams make it up to the top, and one came very close to claiming the prize. We didn’t want to make the competition too easy and we can’t make it too hard, so it looks like we are walking the line."

Interested in taking a stab at the challenge during next year’s cup? Looks like you might have an even greater incentive to succeed: Shelef announced that the prize money from this year’s competition will rollover to next year’s, leaving the climbing and tether strength competitions with a combined purse of $500,000.

Even if it means having to take the stairs this year, building the (space) elevator next year has become even sweeter…

The latest on Wildblue’s upgrade from 10/24/06 Skyreport:  

The date to which WildBlue Communications planned on reopening its currently-inoperable spot beams – shut down for system upgrades – has been pushed back another month to ensure the software has been thoroughly tested. To avoid potential network disruptions for the company’s subscribers, WildBlue has extended its network upgrade schedule from Nov. 1 to Dec. 1 of this year.

In a letter written to its dealer base obtained by SkyREPORT, WildBlue said it expects "many or all of the beams that reopen will have to be suspended again before our second satellite is operational. How long they stay open for new orders is dependent on how much additional capacity was added by the upgrade and at the rate at which new orders are being entered."

The date extension comes on the heels of WildBlue’s announcement with satellite TV provider EchoStar and its DISH Network to provide customers with a high-speed internet solution. The push back has affected DISH dealers as well forcing the company to issue a statement of its own.

In a letter posted on its dealer website, DISH said it will be suspending new customer orders in certain regions affected by the extension and have taken the measures to "ensure quality service levels for current WildBlue customers in the affected beams."

DISH said it was encouraging its dealers to enter "as many orders as possible prior to the suspensions" because those "will be able to be installed after the suspensions take place." Both companies urged their dealers to create a waiting list for the customers who placed their orders after the suspensions because the stoppage will be "relatively short."

WildBlue said its new satellite is slated for launch before the end of this year and will become operational sometime during the first quarter of 2007.

"Consistent with this policy, the United States will: preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so; take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

Click here to read the unclassified version.

Interesting: a comparison to Clinton’s policy of 1996.

This morning we stumbled across this article in the Columbus Dispatch (written under contract by NASA), and we were reminded again of one of the cooler images to come from our solar system in the last few years.

The image is of a dust devil moving across a Martian plain on a hot spring afternoon a year ago:

The image was caught by NASA’s ‘Spirit’ Mars Rover in April, 2005. 

Both rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) have recently been upgraded with new software that enables them to better understand when a dust devil is moving across the martian surface, and to begin snapping pictures when they sense that movement:

NASA’s Space Technology 6 mission, or ST6, had already proven this "artificial intelligence" software in space. ST6 used it to help an Earth-orbiting satellite take pictures of erupting volcanoes on Earth. So NASA knew the software would help Spirit and Opportunity capture images of dust devils.

ST6 is part of NASA’s New Millennium Program, whose job is to test new technologies in space before putting them on NASA missions of discovery.

Other images and video from Mars can be found on NASA’s Mars Exploration Program website. 

Chinese news service, Xinhua, reports that government officials in the PRC have announced what songs will be broadcast back to earth from the country’s first lunar-probing during next year’s Mid-Autumn Festival. According to the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, the organization in charge of the lunar project:

"Most of the songs [will be] Chinese folk songs. The song [that] got [the] most votes was [the] folk song ‘My Wonderful Home Town’, followed by ‘I Love China’, ‘Singing Praises of Motherland’ and 27 others."

In other Chinese space-related news, the U.S.A. Today reported yesterday that U.S. defense officials are concerned tests China has been conducting of ground-based laser devices capable of jamming U.S. spy satellites over their country. Given the amount of money the U.S. has poured into developing satellites for intelligence gathering purposes, defense analyst with the Lexington Institute Loren Thompson suggests we have cause for concern:

"Space is a much bigger part of our military posture than it used to be, so any effort by the Chinese or anybody else to jam our satellites is potentially a big deal."

While these new devices merely jam the satellite signal over PRC territory, some are saying that it might be possible to disable satellites using lasers in the future… certainly something the U.S. is going to have to consider in spy satellite construction in the future.

If you’re like some of us here at Really Rocket Science, you look back upon 1977 as a watershed year — a year when, for the first time, you realized what you wanted more than anything else in the world.

And what you wanted, of course, was to be Luke Skywalker. Or maybe Han Solo. At the very least, you wanted to have your own droid — a faithful mechanical friend like R2-D2.

Fast forward nearly thirty years. Dude, where’s my droid? Technology and industry haven’t exactly delivered the type of personal-pal robot that we saw in Star Wars.

But there’s no need to wait any longer. Want a droid? Do it yourself at Astromech.net. 

Astromech has a complete tutorial page that will help you build your droid — with instructions and real-world experiences on every part, from the dome to the feet to the lights and and cute little R2-D2-like sounds. 

For inspiration, be sure to check out the photogalleries of droids built by other fans. There’s even a video section showing close-ups of completed droids beeping and blinking in action, and (as an added bonus) this video of droid bloopers taken from the original filming of Star Wars.

The articles section of the Astromech site is a fine place to idle a few hours away before you get to work on your droid (you are going to get to work, aren’t you?);  we recommend taking a quick gander at this review of the original R2-D2 robot from the December, 1977 Electronics Today.

 FARM AID® 2006 takes place on Saturday, September 30 at the Tweeter Center at the Waterfront in Camden, New Jersey. The entire event will be broadcast live on XM Satellite Radio starting at 3:30 p.m., EDT (on X Country, XM Channel 12).

The event will feature president and founder Willie Nelson, board members Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews, as well as Jerry Lee Lewis with Roy Head, Los Lonely Boys, Arlo Guthrie, Gov’t Mule, Steve Earle, Allison Moorer, Steel Pulse, Shelby Lynne, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Jimmy Sturr & his Orchestra, Pauline Reese and Danielle Evin.

Of course, there’s also a webcast. I like their blog, too. Philly’s Bling blog will be covering it as well.

What’s espcially interesting is how the environmental impact of this year’s concert is being worked. Purchasing Green Tags from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation is offsetting all of the electricity used at the concert, replacing it with sustainable wind energy. Title sponsor Silk Soymilk has also purchased additional Green Tags to offset the energy used for an estimated 25,000 attendees to drive to the venue. Last I checked, tickets were still available.

Their local promotion, Fresh from the Family Farm, a restaurant promotion to benefit Farm Aid, is well worth it (if you live, work or plan to visit the area this weekend).