UrtheCast's HD Video: Real Product Or Smoke and Mirrors?
UrtheCast’s HD Video From Space Station: Real Product or Hyped Vaporware?
“A Canadian company called UrtheCast has begun to claim that it is going to place the first live HD video feed on the International Space Station in a few months. Despite all of their PR and hype, NASA isn’t so sure that there actually is a real product and service – as advertised by UrtheCast.”
Space Budget Woes Lead to World-Wide Collaboration, UrtheCast
“Few remember that the predecessor of the ISS was Space Station Freedom, a solely American venture to build a year-round floating laboratory in space. President Ronald Reagan directed NASA to complete the project within a decade during his 1984 State of the Union Address. But by 1993 the Freedom project had gone through two major design initiatives and was still nowhere near completion.”
Keith’s note: Um, you really need to check your historical facts as well as your technical facts: Space Station Freedom was an international space station. Japan, Europe, and Canada were partners.
Interesting…around 2009 I discussed with some of the folks at NASA HQ the potential of putting Cosmocam onboard the ISS. Cosmocam is real and has flown a number of times on NASA strato-balloon flights. Cosmocam could be built for the ISS that would not be resource intensive.
Seems like a no brainer….
Cosmocam.com
It seems they wanted something a bit heftier.
Interesting, considering NASA is planning to put its own HD video platform outside ISS (called HDEV – High Definition Earth Viewing) to provide “high definition views of the Earth to interested parties and the public at large”.
Yes this baffles me why they’d say this – the HDEV will be real HD video – more info here http://ipv6.nasa.gov/missio… Plus another external platform with other multispectral (ground-facing) sensors is also in the works.
It is puzzling to me that it has taken so incredibly long to get any useful earth imaging from the ISS when the technology is so straightforward. Ideas for this have been proposed for many years, even the few I know of personally, and seem to have found little support. Could turf be a factor?
Alright, hours and hours of empty rooms or clouds wizzing by with no sound or commentary. Now in gorgeous HD!
Or are they planning to point the cameras at something worth watching?
Big issue is downlink bandwidth. HD needs alot and the current systems can’t support it on a continuous basis. So not much point in flying hardware now.
Yes, please check your facts. The first-ever live broadcast of HD TV from the International Space Station was done in 2009 through a project at the Johnson Space Center called Space Video Gateway. It was a cooperative effort between NASA and JAXA, Discovery HD. It was a Q&A with Japanese students and a slot on Good Morning America, also streamed to Times Square.
Hi, NASAChick is right!
The first HDTV broadcast live from International Space Station to Ground was done on November 16, 2006. http://www.spaceref.com/new…
UrtheCast needs to get their facts together !!!
Did you look at any of the UStream video on their web site? (they claim to be producing these live once a week – including this evening at 7 p.m. EDT) They are utterly incoherent, tossing our random bits of information, some of it random real facts, others utterly invented. This has to be some sort of joke, right? Either it’s an elaborate hoax for fun, or they’re hoping to deceive people into giving them money. Either way, it’s ridiculous.
Sorry, but as originally planned, Space Station Freedom was NOT international. It was a purely American project as envisioned and announced in 1984. It did not become ‘international’ until it morphed into Space Station Alpha in ~1993, and that quickly became the International Space Station.
Skip, you’re wrong.
From the NASA Historical Data Book – Volume V – 1979-1988 – Launch Systems etc.
Chapter Three: Space Transportation / Human Spaceflight
Page 109: “The 1980s also included a push toward the development of a permanently occupied space station. Announced by President Ronald Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union address, which directed NASA to have a permanently manned space station in place within ten years, NASA invested considerable time and money toward bringing it about. The European Space Agency (ESA), Canada, and Japan signed on as major participants in both the financial and technical areas of the Space Station program, and by the end of 1988, Space Station Freedom had completed the Definition and Preliminary Design Phase of the project and had moved into the Design and Development Phase.”
Page 239: “From its start, international participation was a major objective of the Space Station program. Other governments would conduct their own definition and preliminary design programs in parallel with NASA and would provide funding. NASA anticipated international station partners who defined missions and used station capabilities, participated in the definition and development activities and who contributed to the station capabilities, and supported the operational activities of the station.
Events moved ahead, and on September 14, 1984, NASA issued a request for proposal (RFP) to U.S. industry for the station’s preliminary design and definition.”
Dude, I worked on Space Station Freedom as a NASA civil servant starting in 1990 and my very first meeting was in the NASDA (now JAXA) office in Parkridge II in Reston to discuss network interfaces for US payloads in the JEM. There were people on the telecon from Japan and Europe. Bette Siegel (still at NASA) was there with me in the room. Later that day I had my first meeting with my ESA and CSA counterparts. Prior to being a civil servant I had worked as a contractor for NASA for a number of years on Shuttle and ISS projects and the space station program was international then as well.
America *always* saw the space station (Freedom, Alpha, or ISS) as International:
Marcia Smith, Congressional Research Service
http://history.nasa.gov/iss…
“Ronald Reagan State of the Union Speech 1984:
“A space station will permit quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, in metals, and in lifesaving medicines which could be manufactured only in space. We want our friends to help us meet these challenges and share in their benefits. NASA will invite other countries to participate so we can strengthen peace, build prosperity, and expand freedom for all who share our goals.” ….
By the fall of 1985, NASA had settled on a “dual-keel” design for the facility, with four laboratory and habitation modules. Over the next several months, NASA approved other details, including a few changes from that baseline design. Among the changes was reducing the number of U.S. modules from four to two (but the new U.S. modules would be larger so the total habitable volume was relatively unchanged), with plans for two more modules to be provided by Europe and Japan. NASA also agreed to add a U.S. Flight Telerobotic Servicer at congressional urging, to supplement Canada’s planned Mobile Servicing System. …
In 1988, Canada, Europe, and Japan formally joined the program after three years of negotiations. Canada agreed to build a Mobile Servicing System (Canadarm2), while Europe and Japan each agreed to build laboratory modules (Columbus and Kibo, respectively). The partners named the space station Freedom. In return for providing services such as electrical power and crew and cargo transport, NASA obtained utilization rights to half of the research facilities in the European and Japanese modules.”