Hmm brings to mind the Big Bang Theory episode in regard to getting someone the other side of the world to turn your lights on and off.
'Bundle' signals from SPACE seize control of small car in Germany
An internet hookup intended for interplanetary use has been used by an astronaut on the International Space Station to drive a small lego car located in a laboratory in Germany. Station commander Sunita Williams was able to drive the car around the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt last month by sending out …
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Friday 9th November 2012 19:05 GMT Blain Hamon
Re: Wtf?
Ironically enough, it's not about directly driving mars cars from earth. The sluggish speed of light means ping times would measure at about half an hour. Directly controlling on the moon, maybe, where the ping would be 2 seconds and change.
The key difference is a new, flexible protocol that isn't hand-crafted to the task at hand. To analogize, this is TCP/IP whereas the current mars rover setups are doing direct dialup to a late 80s, early 90s-era BBS. (Would this make Voyager 1 morse code?)
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Monday 12th November 2012 10:41 GMT James Micallef
Re: Wtf?
"through the BP network in a series of short hops"
I see how that can work to bounce off a few satellites to go, for example, to the moon... but if we want to be sending signals to Mars there's still going to be at least 1 enormous hop involved. Best case I guess would be to have a set of comms satellites orbiting in mars-o-stationary orbit
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Friday 9th November 2012 20:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Here on earth...
Can't wait for this to be more public and ported to OpenWRT.
I have a system that is rather like the DSN - wifi routers chained through the bush. Nodes come online and disappear according to patches of direct sunlight, and the amount of water on the foliage.
I have been trying nodes that have no battery (a backpack with 20 gelcells is not so much fun) - so the node comes up when direct sunlight hits the panel, and dies when a cloud goes over, regardless of what the OS thinks it is doing at the time.
I have plans for some satellite nodes that hikers carry so that some valleys will get a brief satellite pass, as the hiker crests a pass.
In some planned locations data traffic might stall the whole winter.
And you thought BNC ethernet was a bit dodgy .....
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Saturday 10th November 2012 03:49 GMT Captain DaFt
R2?
Since they already have R2 on the station, why didn't they let ground control manipulate it?
Seems that actually controlling a real robot in space would be a better test than driving a toy car around.
Or was it a safety concern? "Oops! My bad, that panel marked 'Environmental Control ' wasn't important, was it?"