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“Whole Earth” origin (1976)
- smacktoward 8y agoThe sad thing is, you could reprint that exact same button today and make a mint selling them to the flat-Earth crowd. Progress!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sp332 8y agoAl Gore got the same amount of ridicule for proposing a satellite that would live-stream the earth 24/7. The trouble is that to get a good view, you have to be so far away that the resolution isn't scientifically or commercially valuable. And to get a daylight view 24/7, you'd have to be in a Lagrange point which is crazy far away - about 4x the distance to the moon. Eventually after years of pushing and shoving, someone came up with a reason to have a probe at L1 (studying solar weather), and they stuck a camera on the back, and now we have daily 2048x2048 multispectral images of the earth, always in full daylight! https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/ Sometimes it gets photobombed by the far side of the moon, and the images of solar eclipses are the best. https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/galleries https://epic.gsfc.nasa.gov/galleries
- nixpulvis 8y agoWell not to mention that there's pretty sound arguments for not allowing the public access to high resolution live images of the earth.
- GuiA 8y agoWould love to read more about this.
- nixpulvis 8y agoI suppose it depends on what we call high resolution, but I know for a fact I don't want a camera on me 24/7 when I'm outdoors. There are also whole cultures where personal photography is bad, and while it's not practical today to complete fufill their wishes, a livestream of the earth in high resolution would be pretty horrific I'm sure.
- pjc50 8y agoI'm not sure if tracking and identifying individual humans from orbit is even optically feasible, but it can certainly be done for cars. And tanks. Such a thing would be used by both sides in urban conflicts to "see round corners" and track targets.
- badosu 8y agoIf 40+ years ago NRO had meters resolution imagine what they could have today... > A perfect 2.4-meter mirror observing in the visual (500 nm) would have a diffraction limited resolution of around 0.05 arcsec, which from an orbital altitude of 250 km would correspond to a ground sample distance of 0.06 m (6 cm, 2.4 inches). Operational resolution should be worse due to effects of the atmospheric turbulence.[24] Astronomer Clifford Stoll estimates that such a telescope could resolve up to "a couple inches. Not quite good enough to recognize a face".[25] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen
- sp332 8y agoSure, I mean the low-rez version is pretty cool but no one would ever fund it. Related: The ISS usually has live video streaming from some external cameras. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-iss-stream http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-iss-stream (If it goes all blue, just give it a minute.)
- dfee 8y agoThis might be the first time I’ve seen the dark side of the moon.
- crazydoggers 8y ago“Dark side of the moon” is a misnomer. Both sides of the moon receive equal amounts of light. A better term is “far side of the moon” since from earth we simply never see it.
- jedimastert 8y agoHere's a video by Vsauce explaining why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxhxL1LzKww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxhxL1LzKww
- romwell 8y agoMore context to the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Catalog The story is by Steward Brand[1], who, besides bringing the Whole Earth Catalog into existence, help Douglas Engelbart present the Mother Of All Demos[2] - the demo that gave us the mouse, hypertext, and many other things that Xerox PARC (and then MacOS and Windows) emulated. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Brand [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
- nixpulvis 8y agoGreat story! Strikes me though that the image we associate with the "whole earth" is only of a specific half. An expansion on the revelation at the heart of many issues today.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y agoI presume that's because the other half is mostly the Pacific Ocean (along one plane), or the empty southern oceans (along the other plane). I assume they went for utilitarianism, as opposed to actively discriminating against people living in Alaska and Japan.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- matthewmcg 8y agoRelated: the GOES “full disc” view is a partial realization of this and it’s mesmerizing: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/FullDisk_band.php?sat=G16&band=GEOCOLOR&length=96 https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/FullDisk_band.php?sat=...
- andrewl 8y agoUse the great American resource of paranoia… He got that right.
- Terr_ 8y agoHonestly I think "insecurity" or "dissatisfaction" might be stronger. But in either case, isn't labeling it "great American" still a kind of exceptionalism, however negative? :P