David Johnson, G4DPZ and Carlos Eavis G3VHF give an introduction to Amateur satellites at the AMSAT-UK
International Space Colloquium in Milton Keynes, October 14th 2017
http://amsat-uk.org/
==//==//==
Peter Guelzow DB2OS informs us about the latest and greatest happening on the Es’hail-2 Geostationary Amateur Satellite project at the AMSAT-UK
International Space Colloquium in Milton Keynes, October 14th 2017
http://amsat-uk.org/
==//==//==
Dr Chris Bridges M0IEB gives us the ESEO update and latest results at the AMSAT-UK
International Space Colloquium in Milton Keynes, October 14th 2017
http://amsat-uk.org/
In “Soonish,” authors Kelly and Zach Weinersmith offer a glimpse of emerging technologies that could play an instrumental role in shaping our future.
Credit: Penguin Press
Visions for futuristic technology can be immensely practical (self-driving cars) or outlandish (personal jetpacks), but they typically are accompanied by certain inevitable questions: How will scientists and engineers get us there — and how much longer will we have to wait?
Science writers Kelly and Zach Weinersmith tackle these questions and more in their new book “Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything” (Penguin Press, 2017), released in the U.S. yesterday (Oct. 17). They combine humorous illustrations — Zach is the creator, writer and artist of the popular science webcomic “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal“— with serious (for the most part) investigative reporting, to explain sophisticated research, discoveries and inventions that are already pushing the boundaries of human achievement, while peering ahead to see where it all will take us next.
Recently, the authors spoke with Live Science about some of the promising tech they entertainingly outline in their book — which includes cheap spaceflight, personalized disease treatment, shapeshifting robots, 3D-printed food and brain-computer interfaces — and described where science is likely to take us from there, and what might be some of the hurdles that could spring up along the way.
This Q&A has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
Live Science: How did you decide on the final list of technologies that ended up in the book?
Kelly Weinersmith: We originally — naively — started off with about 50 technologies. And as we started, it became clear that was going to be an overwhelming amount of research, and each individual piece would have to be so short that it would be better for someone to read the Wikipedia article, we really wouldn’t be adding anything exciting.
So, we teased it down to 25, and after doing a couple of practice chapters, we ended up cutting it down to 10 topics, because we wanted to be able to go into depth. We’re super nerdy, and one of the things that was really exciting to us was the opportunity to take a deep dive into these different technologies — that’s how we ended up deciding that 10 was the right number.
Live Science: Did you have any favorite technologies when you started working on the book? And by the time it was done, did you have new favorites?
Zach Weinersmith: I fell in love with all of them. I’m so excited about fusion, I find the tech itself just sort of objectively interesting. But we learned that it’s a bit of a glum field, more so than some of these other technologies, I think, because it’s been 60 years of not having the successes that some people expected.
ITER [the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, currently under construction in France] is going to cost $20 billion, and not everyone’s sure it’s going to work as well as they want it to. There was one scientist we talked to who said, “Even if we got it to work, it’s not clear that it would be a good idea, because it’s so expensive to set it up in the first place.” If he does this thing and it’s awesome but it takes 400 years to recoup its expense, it’s kind of a bummer.
K. Weinersmith: I don’t think that there were any technologies that I ended up liking less by the end. There were some that I ended up liking more, and then some that I ended up feeling more conflicted about.
Asteroid mining — I ended up being much more excited about. Because our initial impression of this field was that, you go up to the asteroid, you find platinum, you bring platinum back, and now you have a lot more metals and you can build a lot more on Earth, and that’s really cool. But it turns out that’s not what asteroid mining’s about, because it would just be too expensive and it would ruin the market to bring all that platinum back to Earth. Asteroid mining, for a lot of people, is about setting up bases in space and then going to explore space from those bases, where the resources that were used to build those bases were extracted from the asteroid.
And that was even more exciting than I had imagined, so I ended up being even more in love with that field.
But then for cheap access to space, I — and Zach, too — ended up feeling more conflicted. Because, if you have a space elevator and you fling things down to Earth, you could destroy Earth pretty easily. There were a couple of different technologies where the answer at the end was, this could be amazing, but can we really trust humans with it?
Live Science: How did you decide which technologies to leave out?
Z. Weinersmith: We cut chapters when we didn’t feel like we could do any good for the topic in the allotted space. Quantum computing was super-exciting and we loved it, but I got to where I’d written maybe half of the chapter and it was already 20,000 words — and that was with no jokes.
K. Weinersmith: For room-temperature superconductors, even the scientists we talked to weren’t convinced that the applications to day-to-day life would be true. I think that was the moment when we decided to cut it.
Z. Weinersmith: With some of those chapters, skepticism won out. Space-based solar is a good example of that. It sounds really neat — I would love it if there was a good reason to put gigantic space stations up in space! — but it didn’t seem plausible even under really favorable circumstances.
And then there were a couple other things that we looked into briefly — like weather control — and I don’t want to speak out of turn because we didn’t research it too much, but it just didn’t feel like there was a whole field oriented around it. So, we cut stuff that we weren’t sure about, from a perspective of being skeptical.
Live Science: Were there any research stories that really excited you, but once you looked at them more closely, you realized that their future wasn’t as promising as you’d hoped?
K. Weinersmith: It was interesting to us how often economics could end up destroying a technology. In [the “Soonish” chapter about] synthetic biology, we talk about how Jay Keasling at UCSB [University of California, Santa Barbara] and Chris Paddon at Amyris, Inc., made a yeast that’s able to make artemisinic acid — it’s like a precursor to artemisinin, which is an important drug for beating malaria. The reason that they made it was that, in the Chinese wormwood from which artemisinin usually comes, there’s large changes in supply and demand over time — prices fluctuating wildly, sometimes there’s enough of it, sometimes there’s not — and so they wanted to make it stable.
They spent almost a decade genetically engineering this yeast, and then when they went into production, it was during a year when Chinese wormwood was grown in large quantities — and that was true for a couple of years — so they had trouble making a profit. I’m not sure where the company is right now, but random economic stuff can just totally destroy the technology you spent a decade on, and it was surprising how often that came up.
Live Science: Can each of you tell me one thing that you learned while you were working on “Soonish” that really blew your mind, about where technology was going and how it might change the world as we know it?
Z. Weinersmith: There’s this one technology in the space launch chapter that’s pretty implausible, about how you could maybe use lasers to get a much more energetically efficient space launch. The idea is you get this ultra-powerful laser, 50 times more powerful than the most powerful continuous laser we’ve ever used, and you shoot it up the back of the rocket. Apparently, if you can do this — it’s not clear you can — it could save you a lot of fuel costs.
And another paper said you could also shoot another laser — like if you just happened to have two 50,000-megawatt lasers sitting around — you could shoot another one in front of the rocket, and it rarifies the air, which not only makes it easier to go, but you could in principal steer with it, by creating tunnels in the air, of rarification.
There are a lot of these older rocket scientists that get into this sort of thing later in life, and just really work out the math of these implausible technologies. That was something I found amazing, the image of a rocket surrounded by giant lasers.
K. Weinersmith: When we asked Gerwin Schalk [a neuroscientist and associate professor at the Wadsworth Center in New York] where the future of the brain-computer interface was going, I had assumed that the answer was going to be: the most amazing prosthetics you could possibly imagine. Like, one day we’ll all have an extra arm that’s controlled by our minds, to pick things up for us. [How the Human/Computer Interface Works (Infographics)]
But then his answer was, “We’re going to connect all of our thoughts together in a giant cloud, and we’re going to become one big super-organism that shares our thoughts!” It blew my mind that for at least some people that was the goal. I actually asked everyone that we interviewed in that chapter, “Is this actually something that everyone accepts as where the future of this field could go?” And everyone was like, “Yeah, probably at some point.” Personally, that’s not a future I necessarily want to see, but it was interesting to see that’s the direction where that field was going.
Live Science: As amazing as these technologies of the future sound, why are people perpetually intrigued by what the future might bring?
Z. Weinersmith: I wonder if it’s part of the modern condition — sci-fi as such didn’t really start until the 18th century, and it really took off in the 19th century. It’s not a coincidence that this tendency to be looking forward coincides to some extent with the scientific revolution. If suddenly you’re not even in a special part of the universe, maybe you can think of the future as being special and different and exciting.
Part of why it’s exciting is that we can get overly optimistic. We were writing an early draft about the space elevator, and we thought there was reason to believe that it would be plausible within 30 years — to me that’s exciting, because maybe I’d be alive for it, or at least my kids would be. I guess we’ll see.
K. Weinersmith: This is maybe tangentially answering the question, but we felt that if we could write a book that would get people — particularly young people — excited about these new technologies, maybe we could encourage some of these people to look ahead and figure out the path they would take to be the person to solve that problem. They could be the one who changes the world.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Lee McLamb<kt4tz@cfl.rr.com>
Date: 2017-10-22 21:49 GMT+08:00
Subject: [ans] ANS-295 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins
To: ans@amsat.org
AMSAT NEWS SERVICE
ANS-295
The AMSAT News Service bulletins are a free, weekly news and infor-
mation service of AMSAT North America, The Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation. ANS publishes news related to Amateur Radio in Space
including reports on the activities of a worldwide group of Amateur
Radio operators who share an active interest in designing, building,
launching and communicating through analog and digital Amateur Radio
satellites.
The news feed on http://www.amsat.org publishes news of Amateur
Radio in Space as soon as our volunteers can post it.
Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to:
ans-editor at amsat.org.
In this edition:
* AMSAT Describes RadFxSat/Fox-1B Commissioning Plans
* CAS-4A and CAS-4B Amateur Radio Linear Transponders Activated
* Caution Urged in Using High Duty Cycle Digital Modes via Satellite
* ARISS International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, Wins G3AAJ Trophy
* AMSAT-UK YouTube Channel Updated with 2017 Colloquium Recordings
* Upcoming ARISS Contact Schedule as of 2017-10-19
* Satellite Shorts From All Over
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-295.01
ANS-295 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 295.01
From AMSAT HQ KENSINGTON, MD.
DATE October 22, 2017
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-295.01
AMSAT Vice-President Engineering, Jerry Buxton, NØJY wrote what to
initially expect when the AMSAT RadFxSat/Fox-1B cubesat is launched
as a passenger on NASA’s ELaNa XIV mission on Friday, Nov. 10, from
Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.
Liftoff will be aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket from
Space Launch Complex 2 and is targeted for 1:47 a.m. PT (4:47 a.m. ET,
9:47 am UTC) at the opening of a 65-second launch window. Launch cov-
erage will begin on NASA Television and the agency’s website at
1:15 a.m. PT.
RadFxSat/Fox-1B will automatically come up in Beacon Mode, transmitting
a beacon and voice ID (Veronica saying “RadFxSat Safe Mode”) every two
minutes, starting about 50 minutes after deployment. The AMSAT command
stations will want to see voltage and current data to determine that
it’s healthy and conduct various tests before opening it up for general
use.
Telemetry makes the engineering and operations teams very happy,
starting ASAP after startup (~55 minutes after deployment) and for
the next 72-96 hours at least as we look for successful startup, watch
the general health and function as the satellite begins to acclimate
to space, and perform the on orbit checkout. Ground stations are also
invited to continue uploading received telemetry for the life of the
satellite.
If you are capturing telemetry with FoxTelem please be sure that “Upload
to Server” is checked in your settings, and your Ground Station Params
are filled in as well. You can help AMSAT and everyone waiting to get
on the air with RadFxSat tremendously, by capturing RadFxSat telemetry.
In the initial Beacon Mode, the transmitter is limited to 10 seconds on
time then does the two minutes off cycle as Paul pointed out. For those
of you capturing telemetry, that means that you will only see Current
frames and no High or Low frames because the High and Low are truncated
as it takes just over 10 seconds to send two frames. Veronica may also
be cut off before she gets to say her whole ID string. If Veronica is
speaking, “RadFxSat Fox-1B Safe Mode” which is the full ID, if it’s cut
off then we’re still in Beacon Mode. If we are seeing good data from
user telemetry data, it is likely when it comes over the U.S. for the
first good pass we will command it from Beacon Mode to normal Safe Mode,
which then puts RadFxSat in full (still Safe Mode though) operation and
transmits a full two frames of telemetry which is one Current frame
followed by, and alternating each ID cycle, a High or a Low frame.
Veronica now has time to make the whole ID announcement, in Safe Mode.
YOUR HELP IS NEEDED!
——————–
Jerry, NØJY commented further …
Help your friends and all of our satellite ham friends get on the air
and have fun sooner by being polite and patient!
The on orbit checkout procedure is similar to Fox-1A/AO-85 and could
be completed in as little as a few days if we have the cooperation of
the users. It is very important, not to mention just plain good Amateur
Operating Practice, to refrain from using the transponder uplink so we
can do the on orbit tests, including when we turn on transponder mode
for testing. I can’t stress enough, the importance of this cooperation
not just for us but for all users, simply having a little patience so
we can conduct the tests as quickly and accurately as possible.
AMSAT will make it broadly known when the tests are complete and the
transponder is available for all to use. If you hear someone on the
transponder, please don’t assume that it is open for general use –
check the AMSAT website, Facebook, Twitter, to be sure you’re not
accidentally jumping in with and unwittingly interfering with the
commissioning process.
Lots of hams put thousands of volunteer hours of their time into making
RadFxSat happen. Just like any ham radio project you might undertake,
we build satellites. We do it because we like to, and when we’re done
we freely share our project with hams everywhere as is the spirit of
amateur radio.
I am asking all satellite hams to contribute just a little bit of your
time to the fun now, by being patient and just gathering telemetry,
not using the transponder uplink, and helping us complete the last few
days of getting RadFxSat in orbit and operating for all of you.
Thank you very much, see you on the bird!
[ANS thanks AMSAT Vice-President Engineering, Jerry Buxton, NØJY, for the
above information]
———————————————————————
CAS-4A and CAS-4B Amateur Radio Linear Transponders Activated
On Wednesday, October 18, 2017 the amateur radio linear (SSB/CW) transponders on
the CAS-4A and CAS-4B satellites were activated.
CAMSAT’s amateur radio payloads piggybacked on the optical remote sensing micro-
satellites ZHUHAI-1 01 (OVS-1A / CAS-4A) and ZHUHAI-1 02 (OVS-1B / CAS-4B) that
were launched at 0300 GMT on Thursday, June 15, 2017 from the Jiuquan Satellite
Launch Center, on the CZ-4B launch vehicle. The primary payload of the launch
was a hard X-ray modulation telescope satellite (HXMT).
CAS-4A Amateur Radio Payload:
Call sign: BJ1SK
VHF Antenna: one 1/4? monopole antenna with max. 0 dBi gain located at +Z side
UHF Antenna: one 1/4? monopole antenna with max. 0 dBi gain located at -Z side
CW Telemetry Beacon: 145.855 MHz 17 dBm
AX.25 4.8k Baud GMSK Telemetry: 145.835 MHz 20 dBm
U/V Linear Transponder Downlink: 145.870 MHz 20 dBm, 20 kHz bandwidth, Inverted
U/V Linear Transponder Uplink: 435.220 MHz
CAS-4B Amateur Radio Payload:
Call sign: BJ1SL
VHF Antenna: one 1/4? monopole antenna with max. 0 dBi gain located at +Z side
UHF Antenna: one 1/4? monopole antenna with max. 0 dBi gain located at -Z side
CW Telemetry Beacon: 145.910 MHz 17 dBm
AX.25 4.8k Baud GMSK Telemetry: 145.890 MHz 20 dBm
U/V Linear Transponder Downlink: 145.925 MHz 20 dBm, 20 kHz bandwidth, Inverted
U/V Linear Transponder Uplink: 435.280 MHz
[ANS thanks Alan, BD1DU, for the above information]
———————————————————————
Caution Urged in Using High Duty Cycle Digital Modes via Satellite
A report in ANS-288 discussed an experiment operating with the
WSJT-X FT8 via satellite. Satellite operators have gained more
experience with this mode over this past week.
As a result of on-the-air observation other satellite users
planning to try FT8 or MSK144 modes via satellite are encouraged
use caution using these modes and possibly avoid their use
completely in light of problems.
Dave, KG5CCI wrote, “He noticed a very hard time getting into the
transponder. The pass was nearly overhead, and the 3w-4w that is
normally sufficient was barely cutting it. I also noticed it was
‘up and down’ alot, whereas some moments it was easy to get in,
then it would be nearly impossible. There were also pockets of
‘noise’ all over the transponder, that sounded somewhat digital,
but I just couldn’t place them.” Further investigation revealed
that an MSK144 signal in the transponder passband was causing the
problems.
Matthew, NJ4Y noted, “Experimentation isn’t the problem, too much
power is. It’s bad enough on SSB, worse with CW, and killer on
constant duty cycle modes like FT8.”
[ANS acknowledges the comments submitted via amsat-bb from W5RKN,
KG5CCI, KB1PVH, W5PFG, and others]
———————————————————————
ARISS International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, Wins G3AAJ Trophy
ARISS International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, has been honored with the Ron
Broadbent, G3AAJ, Trophy. The presentation came during the AMSAT-UK
International Space Colloquium this past weekend.
“AMSAT-UK totally shocked me yesterday at the colloquium with the Ron Broadbent
Trophy,” Bauer reacted. “I was nearly speechless when asked to come up and
receive the trophy for ARISS work. I mentioned that, early on, Ron was a
phenomenal supporter and contributor to ARISS, with his sage advice and
guidance.”
The G3AAJ trophy is awarded annually by AMSAT-UK to an individual or group for
outstanding service to the Amateur Satellite service. The trophy was donated to
AMSAT-UK by the late Ron Broadbent, G3AAJ.
ARISS received the G3AAJ trophy last year in recognition of the ARISS UK team’s
dedication in working with the UK Space Agency to facilitate the Principia
Mission of astronaut Tim Peake, KG5BVI, aimed at engaging students in 10 UK
schools in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects.
[ANS thanks ARRL for the above information]
———————————————————————
AMSAT-UK YouTube Channel Updated with 2017 Colloquium Recordings
AMSAT-UK has begun uploading recordings of all talks from the 2017 Colloquium,
October 14-15 to the AMSAT-UK YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AMSATUK
Some of the videos have already been uploaded; refresh your screen
occasionally to to catch additional 2017 Colloquium uploads.
Chiddix Junior High School, Normal, IL, direct via W9AM
The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be NA1SS
The scheduled astronaut is Joe Acaba KE5DAR (***)
Contact is a go for: Mon 2017-10-23 15:31:15 UTC 27 deg (***)
Beaconsfield State School, Mackay, Queensland, Australia, telebridge via
IK1SLD (***)
The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be IRØISS (***)
The scheduled astronaut is Paolo Nespoli IZØJPA (***)
Contact is a go for: Thu 2017-10-26 08:23:02 UTC 40 deg (***)
Glanmire Community College, Cork, Ireland, direct via EI5CRC and Colegiul
National Calistrat Hogas Piatra Neamt, Piatra Neamt, Romania, telebridge
via EI5CRC
The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be OR4ISS
The scheduled astronaut is Joe Acaba KE5DAR (***)
Contact is a go for: Thu 2017-10-26 09:55:45 UTC 68 deg (***)
Istituto Tecnico Tecnologico “Enzo Ferrari”, Borgo A Mozzano, Italy and
Liceo Statale “G. D. Cassini”, Sanremo, Italy direct via IQ5LU and IQ1SM
The ISS callsign is presently scheduled to be IRØISS
The scheduled astronaut is Paolo Nespoli IZØJPA
Contact is a go for: Sat 2017-10-28 08:13:31 UTC 24 deg (***)
Watch for Ham TV (***)
[ANS thanks Charlie, AJ9N, for the above information]
———————————————————————
Satellite Shorts From All Over
+ Valdir Lima, PY5/PW8PM and Dave Swanson, KG5CCI completed a 7763km
contact via AO-7. During his activation of the GG35 and GG36 grids
Valdir also made contact with PT9BM PU2NGB PT2AP LW2DAF NJ4Y KO4MA
K4FEG KG5CCI. Video of the contacts can be found on YouTube: https://youtu.be/L2m0byYTxug (via Valdir Lima, PY5/PW8PM)
+ Sean Kutzko KX9X was interviewed on Ham Talk Live Episode 86.
The topic was Getting Started with Satellites with KX9X
Listen to the podcast at:
In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership in the
President’s Club. Members of the President’s Club, as sustaining
donors to AMSAT Project Funds, will be eligible to receive addi-
tional benefits. Application forms are available from the AMSAT
Office.
Primary and secondary school students are eligible for membership
at one-half the standard yearly rate. Post-secondary school students
enrolled in at least half time status shall be eligible for the stu-
dent rate for a maximum of 6 post-secondary years in this status.
Contact Martha at the AMSAT Office for additional student membership
information.
73,
This week’s ANS Editor,
Lee McLamb, KT4TZ
kt4tz at amsat dot org
