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"A real act of war" - or, more likely, an act of civil aviation rule enforcement. Obstructing airspace is a pretty serious issue. Unlike copyright law in gener
by polemic 15y ago
"A real act of war" - or, more likely, an act of civil aviation rule enforcement.
Obstructing airspace is a pretty serious issue. Unlike copyright law in general, there will be absolutely no absolutely no legal ambiguity if one of their machines is a public safety problem. That's hefty fines or jail time with little chance of public sympathy.
- nitinthewiz 15y agoI'm sure they'll find some countries where simple air balloons by citizens will be allowed. And the real way to go ahead is to think about launching a satellite...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nowarninglabel 15y agoWhy do you assume they would necessarily obstruct air traffic space? There are plenty of places that this could be done in existing no-fly or already obstructed zones, could they not?
- leoedin 15y agoNo-fly zones tend to be sensitive areas. In fact, the only way they could get away with something like this would be to put them in out of the way unrestricted airspace. If you're in an area where visual flight rules (VFR) apply, then you're far less likely to have trouble with aviation authorities. Try and fly something in a no-fly zone, restricted airspace or controlled airspace and you're instantly breaking all sorts of laws. In practice, in the UK, anything under 7 kg flown under 400 ft and within 500 m of the operator is legal without any certification or permission from anyone. It's possible that if you chose to fly your servers over no territory (international waters), and stayed out of accepted airways, then you'd have a little more leeway.
- discodave 15y agoHow high does the airspace restriction go? 10km? 100km?
- tibbon 15y agoRight, don't we have international treaties that say no one owns "space"?
- uxp 15y agoThis was more or less asked a a few days ago on Reddit[0]. The top comment explains it better than I've ever heard before, in the perspective of an American organization. But, like the article hints at, even unlicensed radio frequencies aren't free and as the LightSquared[1] issues that have recently been making news, sending radio signals from space over a designated frequency still has it's own set of problems. [0] http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/qujkt/if_a_rich_man_like_bill_gates_decided_to_finance/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/qujkt/if_a_rich_m... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightSquared#Interference_issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightSquared#Interference_issue...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- discodave 15y agoWell if the range of the radio transmitters is really 50km then a balloon could be well above commercial airspace. 36 000 feet = 11km.
- sliverstorm 15y agoYour solution is to fly in no-fly zones? Really?
- nextparadigms 15y agoBesides putting them in unrestricted areas which I'm sure exist above land, too, can't they just put them in international waters, and use a boat to recharge them in international waters as well?
- polemic 15y ago"just"?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- shocks 15y agoI believe there are weight limits; you can launch whatever you want into airspace as long as it's under 4 pounds or so - so at least it will remain legal for a while.
- kijin 15y agoStuff a styrofoam box with a couple of Raspberry Pi's, an antenna and a battery pack, and tie it to a helium balloon, perhaps?
- platz 15y agoa swarm of networked load-bearing quadcopters.
- X-Istence 15y ago12 lbs (in the USA), it has to be two separate payload boxes though (so 6 lbs and 6 lbs). You can launch a lot of equipment with a single weather balloon and a styrofoam box. I've been there done that: http://nearspace.0x58.com/ http://nearspace.0x58.com/
- sbierwagen 15y agoIn the United States, restricted airspace is (broadly, the rules are not simple) between 1,200 and 60,000 feet. Above and below that is unrestricted airspace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class_%28United_States%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspace_class_%28United_State... Pedantic niggle regarding TFA: Putting a server in a balloon is nothing at all like achieving orbit. An object in orbit is both high and fast. Really high (160km) and really fast. (7.8km/s) 7.8 kilometres per second is 17,000 miles per hour. A server in a balloon is not in orbit in much the same way that a toddler in a tricycle is not a F1 car.
- polemic 15y agoWeirdly - we were talking in the office last week about what it would take to get something into orbit from, for example, a rail gun. We calculated that for a 100m rail gun and a 0.5 kilogram payload you'd need to feed it about a 100 MW power source (over about a tenth of a second) to accelerate it to the necessary 7.8 km/s. That doesn't include the energy needed to get it to altitude. Naturally, if TPB could actually put something into orbit on a commercially viable basis, they could probably afford to fund their pirate service as a teeny part of the Enormous Space Freighting Corporation that would naturally to ensure... just sayin'.
- kragen 15y agoA friend of mine just mentioned http://startram.com/ http://startram.com/ to me this weekend; apparently sending something into orbit from a ground-mounted rail gun is possible in certain parts of the world. They also propose magnetically levitating the end of the railgun by a few thousand more meters for a later version that can use lower G-forces. Last year I did some calculations about mounting the railgun on a dirigible: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/000939.html http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/... The usual way to power railguns (or particle accelerators) is with giant high-voltage capacitors, which can discharge their energy very quickly. I forget the term of art used for this particular kind of capacitor, unfortunately. Startram suggests using superconducting magnetic energy storage, which has apparently become practical recently; and giant homopolar generators with flywheels are another (low-voltage) alternative.