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Internet Policies

NASA May Limit Web Streaming

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 15, 2012
Filed under , ,

NASA Announcement for Partnering Opportunities for Delivery of NASA Content To The Public
“In the existing infrastructure without our delivery partners, NASA may have to cap the number of visitors and hours of web streaming coverage or eliminate it entirely for particular peak activities. This would force visitors to seek content from other venues that may or may not cover NASA missions. To avoid this situation, NASA seeks to broaden its ability to reach new audiences and numbers of people through access to multiple venues.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

10 responses to “NASA May Limit Web Streaming”

  1. jimlux says:
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    This makes good sense.. NASA isn’t supposed to compete with industry, so you have a hard time justifying an “in-house” high volume delivery capability, and you really should contract it out.  Didn’t they contract with someone for the MER landings, for instance.

  2. bdunbar_nasa says:
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    We’ve always outsourced this function, as far back as 2003. The issue now is cuts to the overall web budget that may limit what we can afford.

  3. bdunbar_nasa says:
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    We’ve outsourced this function since we started using it in 2003, originally with Speedera then with their successor Akamai. The issue now is budget cuts, which may force us to reduce the bandwidth we pay for.

    Brian Dunbar
    NASA.gov, Office of Communications

    • Marc Boucher says:
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      That is very unfortunate as NASA TV over the web has become very reliable.

    • yg1968 says:
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      Despite the budget cuts, with a $17B budget, you would expect that public outreach should still be one of NASA’s biggest priority.

  4. Jeff2Space says:
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    That stinks if it impacts streaming of NASA TV.  My cable provider doesn’t provide NASA TV for free.  I would have to pay an extra $6 a month for a package which contains it. 

  5. Prickly_Pear says:
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    Just another reason to lobby your federal representatives to make sure NASA is adequately funded.

  6. Richard H. Shores says:
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    With the end of the Space Shuttle program, is there a real need for spending a lot of taxpayer dollars for streaming NASA TV on its web site except for special events such as the upcoming Mars landing? Sad to say, but it is true, how many people care about watching ISS updates? And to be brutally honest, the move to HD full time was way too late.

    And to Jeffrey, I am fortunate that my local cable company has NASA TV, albeit in SD in its economy package. I know it stinks that you would have to pay six more bucks a month to get NASA TV in a bundle with other channels you probably do not care about but if you are a fan of NASA TV and the caps on the web streaming come to fruition, would you spend the extra six bucks a month to get NASA TV from your cable provider? 

    This decision is unfortunate. However, I know this has to be a difficult situation and decision for Mr. Dunbar and his staff in light of budget cutbacks and the nature of the beast of taxpayer funded programs.

  7. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Instead of cutting back on capability, I wonder if they couldn’t just stop altogether showing the boring stuff, and run for say 1 to 2 hours at a time, 3 times a day, much like TV stations handle news and weather.

    Steve

    • bdunbar_nasa says:
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      We’ve looked at that, and the bulk of our bandwidth usage is for the special events, like launches and planetary encounters. Streaming only those events wouldn’t save much in raw bandwidth costs, and overall it’s more economical to just let the streaming servers run than turning them on and off.