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Ham Radio Repeater On The Moon? 133

Posted by Hemos from the buzz-crackle-pop-there's-the-aliens! dept.
kd5biv writes "QRZ.com has an interesting article on Martin Reeves' project to put a small amateur radio repeater on the surface of the Moon. The project includes a Surveyor-style lander with a UHF translator, a directional antenna aimed at Earth, remote controllable cameras, and some other interesting features. If they can solve the basic problem of putting a package that size on the lunar surface, it will make moonbounce operations much easier and cheaper. Then again, a satellite about that size is still waiting for a ride on an Ariane-5 out of Kourou and it's only going to a sun-synchronous orbit .. we shall see how it works out .. "
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Ham Radio repeater on the Moon? More

Ham Radio repeater on the Moon?

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  • I have an idea. Since the governments are interfering with the Internet as is, how about each of us gets a ham radio license? Of course you can't swear or use it for commercial purposes, but it's actually far more funner to use. At least we don't fry our eyeballs looking at a ham radio transceiver :)

    But still, the test is easy (w/o Morse code). I passed it by taking practice exams on the Internet and studying out of a study guide.
  • we must keep our children from this post. while reading it i laughed so hard i started choking on a mixture of "french chips" and coke. holy shit this post is funny!


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Give the guy some credit for hard work and moderate this up! Offtopic or not but it was funny and definetly better than high school history books..
  • The LGM are gonna be really pissed when someone pulls a DDOS attack on their boxen.
  • As the technology progresses ham radios become obsolete, by the end of this year, your average cell phone will do everything and more than any radio simply because you will be able to access the Internet at very high speeds and quite low cost from your Cell. Today it is still not quite there (although there are mobiles with Internet browsers in them.)

    A repeator on the moon would make sence if you are ok with a repeater that is mostly there at night and only sometimes during the day, if you agree with a repeater that takes over 2.5 seconds to propagate your message (1 1/3 sec. one way) if you are ok with the fact that the signal you send will be only 1/100 of the power when it comes back to this planet, if you agree that the money should be spent to design a repeater so robust that will be able to withstand -150C for 15 days (lunar night) and than +150C for the other 15 days (lunar day).

    So, who the hell cares, with 2.5 latency I wouldn't even dare talking about playing Quake over Ham Radio, but that could be a legitimate purpose for it...
  • As a result of the increasing trolling on Slashdot, an innocent bystander has been wounded by an impersonating Troll.

    Good readers of Slashdot, this is The real Steven Woston's website. [mnc.co.za]

    I'll let the site speak for itself.

    A kind request to the troll who's impersonating Steve: Please stop doing this, and ruining Slashdot for the thousands of Slashdot readers who enjoy the intelligent debates sparked by the Slashdot news items.

    This is a great site, but we should be wary of Trolls taking over.

    Cheers, CV.

  • Ham repeaters on the moon have been proposed since before Apollo, and I have always thought they were a bad idea [...]
    As a LEO fan myself (and someone who is anxiously waiting for Phase 3D to get to orbit even if it isn't LEO), I have to say the project probably won't happen. It's a big deal getting a package that size landed safely on the surface, even bigger getting it to survive long, and the proposal seems to be short a few critical clues.

    I just like the thought of making EME sideband contacts with something less than a kilowatt of PEP and an antenna stack that won't fit in my back yard ..

    Oh, BTW, once you post your callsign you're not anonymous anymore. ;-) 73 de KD5BIV/AE

  • Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".

    This is the funniest thing I've read this month!


  • I think the author is right on target. I realize that the costs would be quite high, but this would help raise interest in Ham radio if it could be done. Since it would be one of (if not THE) first civilian landing on the moon, I would think there would be options for research grants to help with the funding. Multi-purpose satellites are not unheard of in Ham radio, and contributions from several countries should be also possible. I think maybe doing a launch from the new International Space Station would be a great idea. Carry the parts up there, launch from the ISS to save weight on the lander's rocket.

    Another idea: piggyback on one of NASA's long-range probes that might be using the moon for a slingshot. Being a replacement for ballast on a flight has gotten several of our satellites into orbit.

  • Re:I'm not a Ham radio enthusiast... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Ham radio operators are allowed to use several bands ranging from 1.800 MHz (close to AM broadcast) well up into the microwave spectrum. These were originally spaced at "harmonic" intervals to reduce the chance of interference to other radio services. Some of the lower frequency bands will be effected by ionosphereic refraction. The higher ones will not.

    As far a radio wave propagation behavior goes: The ionosphere will usually reflect signals at or less than the 10-meter band (aprx 28.000 MHz). Ten meters is the transition band where the ionosphere is less likely to refract the signal back toward the earth. This is far from a hinderance because it allows modest equipment to easily work thousands of miles over the earth's surface. UHF signals (above 300 MHz) will usually just go right out into space. (However, "tropospheric ducting" can "catch" a VHF or UHF transmittion and carry it several hundred miles or more under the right conditions over land.)

    Moon-bounce work is usually done from 144 MHz through just under 1300 MHz. Without a repeater, it is required to run nearly full legal output power (1.5 KW PEP) into a huge antenna array that focuses the radio waves into a tight concentrated beam. The return signals are also very weak and require the same antenna setup to receive them. Having a repeater with a sensitive antenna and an active transmitter will reduce both the power output and antenna requirements for the transmitting station, and the pre-amplifier and antenna requirements on the receiving end.

  • Ok, for the uninitiated among us, what exactly is HAM radio? I know a lot of people think it's great, and I understand it's a form of amateur broadcasting. I assume that it does not fall under the restrictions the FCC has on conventional broadcasting means.

    If someone could elaborate a little bit, I'm sure a lot of us would appreciate it..

  • Re:Good thing ham radio isn't dead (Score:3)

    by wass ( 72082 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @06:09PM (#1051476)
    It's funny that you mention that, because ham radio has been the 'internet' for techies for many many decades. It's a bunch of geeks communicating with other geeks, for fun and general techie-ness. and just the act of taking the simple test to get a technicians license kept most of the annoying folks out.

    HAM's have been way ahead of the game, too. Long before cell phones, HAM operators were setting up phone patches. so with a little HT (a handheld radio, or Handy-Talky) you could patch through the local repeater and phone your friends. Way cool back in the day.

    Then, HAM's have been doing wireless digital transmission for a long time, too. For many decades, HAM's could log, via RTTY and packet radio, into various bulletin boards, some of which connect to the internet.

    In QST, that journal of the ARRL, some old timers were criticizing the internet (unjustly so, IMHO) for breeding too many computer-savvy folks that are too complacent with their computers, and thus not wanting to pursue a hobby in radio. Of course, the internet is the new medium, just like ham radio drew people from the realms of horse-riding instead (or other similar analogy).

    But it's an interesting history, of an especially interesting and total geek subject :-) Sometimes, the techs treat radio like operating systems. THey spend more time building/tweaking them then they do using them!

  • <i>At least we don't fry our eyeballs looking at a ham radio transceiver</i><p>

    No, but you wouldn't want to spend too much time near high-power antennas. Especially microwave antennas.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • yes, I should have been clearer... it's somewhat akin to light in a fiber optic... it refracts and much comes back, but there is some reflection at layer boundaries.

    My question should have been more of:
    Across what frequency ranges does the earth's atmosphere pass emf, and which frequencies are 'trapped' within the atmosphere...

    I could figure it out, but I figured some ppl would know offhand, and I didn't want to drag out Cheng's _Field and Wave Electromagnetics_ and scrawl out some radiation equations...

  • Lunar repeaters are a bad idea (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @06:20PM (#1051480)
    Ham repeaters on the moon have been proposed since before Apollo, and I have always thought they were a bad idea for several reasons:

    The moon is a long way away, about 400,000 km. That's 10x the distance to geostationary orbit, meaning signals in each direction are 20 decibels (100 times) weaker than from geostationary orbit. The speed of light delay between earth and moon is 1 1/3 seconds each way.

    It is far more costly in terms of fuel to land on the moon than to reach geostationary orbit. It's also far more technically demanding. The moon has no atmosphere to slow a parachute, so all that velocity has to be removed with retrorockets. Those rockets have to be controlled by landing radars. And a soft lunar landing is obviously a lot less forgiving than a geostationary orbit maneuver.

    The surface of the moon is a far more hostile place for electronics than geostationary orbit. It's dark for two weeks at a time, when the temperature drops to hundreds of degrees below zero. Something has to keep your payload powered and warm during those lunar nights, and it's unlikely hams will ever get permission to fly nuclear power sources (the only practical way to do it). Lunar surface payloads that weren't nuclear powered (e.g., Surveyor and the Apollo 11 ALSEP) had very short life spans.

    The trend is now in the other direction, from geostationary orbit to low earth orbit. Even though many more satellites are needed in LEO to provide global coverage than from geostationary orbit, the lower path losses and reduced propagation delays tip the scales in favor of LEO.

    Phil Karn, KA9Q, AMSAT technical volunteer and former member of the board of directors

  • now communications can come and go with the tide.

    kind of like slashdot.

  • DAGNABBIT! That means we need to add another level to the DNS hierarchy for all the planets.

    1. .me
    2. .ve
    3. .te
    4. .ma
    5. .ju
    6. .sa
    7. .ur
    8. .ne
    9. .pl

    I can see it already. My domain name is going to grow to something like www.christtrek.web.us.te.

    Of course, the question remains whether satellites fall under the domain of the primary body or get their own TLD. And someone's going to petition for "domain name rights" for asteroids and other minor planets.

  • Eaxctly how big would the satallite have to be to be effective?
  • I'd still like to see us colonize the moon by the end of this century

    Yes, that's pretty unlikely, since this century ends in just over 7 months.

    --

  • Moonbounce? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It though the point of moonbounce was to actually bounce a signal off the moon itself, not a repeater. That's no challenge at all.
  • Is the love-of-the-lord what moved you to call him an idiot?
  • I've never come across a call sign written across the side of a UFO.

    If Fox Mulder can get near the alien craft's ham radio.... *hmm*

    Maybe he can send a message to Director Skinner for some help!

    What a way to start the next season!
  • It's so rare that we find a truly creative, and even insightful, troll. But it's still trolling. This is not the appropriate place for it, and it should be modded down as Offtopic (can anyone here possibly deny that this is offtopic?)

    Perhaps we should set up a Troll Board for the trolls; every once in a while they do turn out a true gem, even if they're as close to the proverbial million monkeys on a million typewriters as we'll ever see in this world. On the Troll Board, the "regular" rules of Slashdot don't apply. But troll anywhere else, instant bitchslap. This gives the trolls a place to troll, while keeping Slashdot free for its intended purpose: technical discussion.
  • so pardon the question:

    Shortwave signals are bounced back off of the earth's upper atmosphere, as are other signal ranges (AM to some extent, I thought that UHF did, too)... Does ham radio fall into this range, where any of the various layers of the atmosphere (ionosphere most notably) will prevent them from reaching the moon, and vice-versa? If you are only worried about communications outside of the atmosphere, that would be neat, but... there doesn't seem to be a lot of call for that yet.

    Neat idea though...

    Maybe I should ask KC2BUU and KC2BUT (two friends...)

  • Excellent! Very funny, and possibly the most moderated post I've seen (Twelve?!)

    dylan_-


    --

  • The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @06:25PM (#1051491)
    It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

    Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

    Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

    Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
  • rant/

    This is just another pie in the sky thing that will never fly. The author seems to want something that will 'save' Ham Radio. Well, I'll give him two, both of which have already happened:

    Kill the "Old Geezer" Licensing System

    Tie Amateur Radio and the New Geekdom together

    The first happened April 15th when the FCC (in the United States) decided to eliminate for all practical purposes the testing of Morse code proficiency. (N.B., other countries have done it already.) All you need now to get 99.99995% of the frequencies is knowlege of radio theory and electronics. And, people responded--the FCC was deluged with 20,000 applications for new licenses and upgrades.

    The second, which is FAR more important, is the leverage of the Internet savvy, /.-reading, computer-programming, gizmo-hacking crowd into amateur radio. A new mode of Ham Radio operating, the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) ties HF, VHF, UHF, and microwave radio, satellites, the Internet, Palm Pilots, GPS, real-time mapping, and nomadness into one juggernaut of technology. Interested? Check out www.aprs.net [aprs.net] and www.tapr.org [tapr.org]

    /rant QuantumHack, alias KA9MVA, Ham radio guy

  • control station? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    uhh.. so who would be the control station for this? under what country's law would it be regulated?

    what if the repeater goes down? (like the ones around here do all the time)

  • Re:Anyone care to elaborate? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @06:35PM (#1051494)

    Ham radio had it's origins at the dawn of the discovery of radio. I.E. that you could send useful information by a wireless means. Experimentation was encouraged to find useful ways of sending information using this new technology. And, everyone was allowed to participate at that time free of licensing restrictions.

    As the commercial implications of radio were realized, the government created the FCC to regulate both the commercial use of radio and experimentation in the field. This was to address issues and complaints of interference.

    Amatuer radio operators (hams) also had to be regulated by frequency restrictions. Also, certain minimum standards were established to reduce interference with commercial interests. In order to become a licensed ham operator, you have to pass a license examination that requires some knowledge of radio, electronics and FCC regulations.

    Today, Ham radio still has the same basic goal: To provide a hobby that enhances the technical art of radio, communications and electrical engineering. Many new modes of digital communication have been created recently. Packet radio--from the late-80's--simulates the function of a wide area network; whereas your own station can be a "router", a "client", or a "server" of sorts. Also, PSK-31 is a very recent mode that allows nearly error free weak signal communication in the extremely narrow bandwidth of 30Hz.

    Hams also participate in emergency situautions where no other means of communication are possible. During hurricanes, earth quakes and tornadoes this invaluable service has made them known.

  • Exceptional.. Truely exceptional.. Now if only we could rid ourselves of the bad trolls!

    (+6, Funny!!)

  • Re:Lunar repeaters are a bad idea (Score:3)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @06:44PM (#1051496)
    It's a good point presuming you're transmitting from Earth to the moon but what if you're planning to go there? Liberal estimates say we could have permenent colonies on the moon in ten years while conservatives say never. If we DID go there a repeater networking could be invaluable. The repeaters could be used for a variety of things including control of probes and for receiving lower power emergency signals. If we stuck a few antennae on the far side of the moon several km apart we would have a radio telescope with an enormous baseline. As you know a bigger baseline means better resolution.
  • ...thats easy. Ham Radio is a hobby. Once youve got your ticket youre allowed to communicate with other hams around the world on various shortwave bands or on UHF via sattelite. You can also talk to local folks either direct or via repeaters using VHF/UHF. You can just gab, using your transceivers microphone or you can use morse code (anyone asking whats morse good for nowadays - just watch 'Independence Day' ;-) !!!) - or you can get into any kind of other technical stuff that interests you most. All in all its a great hobby with a great history. It was ham radio operators who discovered that worldwide communication is possible using short waves, while the authorities of the times thought such a thing impossible. Im sure many geeks would love it. For you folks in the U.S., check for more details at , which is the American Radio Relay League. ok, now to sign off as we hams do: 73 de Thomas, DL4OBN
  • This is horribly off topic, but who cares? Yhis must be the funniest post I have ever read.
  • This might be a good time to remind people to get their amateur radio license. The test is really simple.

    Then what's the point of testing?

    What are the benefits? Well, it's a good way to communicate,

    To a very limited number of old geezers.

    even in out of the way places,

    where you can talk to yourself because: No one else is on the freq; The repeater is down (again); The net is down (again); Etc.

    and it's free.

    If you don't mind spending $400 or more for a radio.

    There are lots of nifty things you can do with digital transmissions in the amateur radio band.

    If you don't mind 1bps throughput.

    So, go out and get your license.

    I did. And then I got continuous flak for being a no-code (ie: not a "Real Ham")

    A reasonable handheld transmitter/receiver will cost you under $200 and is a good way to get started.

    "Started" is a very appropriate term, because now you'll need a spare battery ($30), an extra charger ($60), a decent antenna for that HT ($30), a fancy holster for it ($20), etc.

    Or you can buy a cel phone and talk to anyone about anything nearly anywhere.

    For the test itself, you won't need more than a $20 book.

    Plus testing fees, etc.

    Ham Radio is a great hobby for teaching basic electronics to children, but it's days of technology advancement are long gone.

    Yes, I'm a Ham. I did packet radio. I participated in Field Days. I chatted on one of the first and largest 2M repeater networks. But the day I discovered 14.4 modems and local BBSs, my days wasted on Ham Radio were over.

    Thanks to the Hams of the past who advanced technology to the point they did. But their work is done now. I believe the Human race has the technology of long-distance wireless communication figured out now.


    --

  • Hmm, thats 3600+ Miles per Hour, no airbag is going to save your repeater at that speed.

    Someone who did a little bit more math....
  • NO.

    A separate Troll Board would destroy the whole point of trolling!

    Trolls are _supposed_ to post offtopic posts in random discussions! (For reasons that are only known to them).

    Any real troll would never use the Troll Board because, being "authorized" it wouldn't be trolling!

  • It has been scientifically proven that those who refuse to believe in the little bang theory are assholes. I could show you the math, but you would have to chop three fingers off first (you'll understand once you see it). I'm also fairly sure Satan was being strait with me on this one... he knows I'll burn his house down, urinate in his gastank, and paint his dog blue if he shits me. And I have acted to save the souls of my fellow men, I've got about 50 so far... I keep 'em in a bigassed jar buried under an exact replica of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly (it's O.K. unless ya lick it) in my backyard.

    And what kind of braindead meat bag doesn't know that the earth revolves around the hottub at the Choo-Choo hotel in Chattanooga Tennessee? I can prove that too, although it involves ingestion of a sub-leathal amount of belladonna.

    "depends on how you count. If your criterium is 'what place is a holy place for most religions' then you have a point. "

    Yeah he's got a point, too bad it's on the top of his head.

    "I'll swallow your soul!" -Unidentified Kandarian Demon

  • QuantumHack wrote:
    The second, which is FAR more important, is the leverage of the Internet savvy, /.-reading, computer-programming, gizmo-hacking crowd into amateur radio. A new mode of Ham Radio operating, the Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) ties HF, VHF, UHF, and microwave radio, satellites, the Internet, Palm Pilots, GPS, real-time mapping, and nomadness into one juggernaut of technology. Interested? Check out www.aprs.net and www.tapr.org

    Ummmm, no.
    Look, I suppose (at 35) that you can call me an "old geezer" because I've got an Amateur Extra class license (KA8KPN) which I got in '81 so I wouldn't have to remember any of the stupid HF sub-band edges. Those were the days of 20 WPM CW requirements and the whole nine yards. I've watched the rise of the "let's turn ham radio into wireless networking" brigade in amateur radio and wondered about all those people who don't seem to have a freaking clue about why some people become radio amateurs, and others don't.

    Amateur radio is not and, furthermore, will never be about technology. Not primarily. Many people who are interested in ham radio are those that are interested, not in the technology of radio, but in using radio to find out about the differing cultures spread all over the world even where the Internet doesn't reach. Others are interested in the challenge involved in radio communications over long distances or through other difficulty. The gadgeteers (of which Mr. QuantumHack certainly appears to be one) are actually a small minority in the hobby.

    In short, the "Internet savvy, /.-reading, computer-programming gizmo-hacking crowd" looks at ham radio---and yawns. The OC3 they've got coming in to their office is a lot sexier than amateur packet radio will ever be. Not when a "9600 baud" packet radio link (the highest in current use) typically gets about a 20 CPS throughput and the setup required costs considerably more than the cost of the equipment required to do 11 MB/s wireless networking which, incidentally, doesn't require a license or much of anything else.

    If you're interested in moving data, then DSL or cable modems allow you to do that at higher speed and you don't have to pass a test, or wait for a license, or cut any trees down to make way for Microwaves. You just set up your server and go. No need to involve radio in it.

    You know, ham radio is a lot like hiking. People who hike are interested in hiking, not travelling from place to place with a maximum of efficiency. They're interested in the challenge of getting places far off the beaten track and the interesting scenery they'll see on the way.

    The people to whom Mr. QuantumHack's vision of amateur radio might appeal are not interested in a leisurely stroll through the backwoods of communications technology, which is just where that vision puts them.

    Not that a lunar repeater is necessarily a good idea, but this "juggernaut of technology" is just as dumb in a different way.

  • D00D that's funny! Now my monitor is wearing my cherry slushie. We both thank you!
  • Frequency-Hopping Spread-Spectrum is relatively private.

    N8USK - http://www.ohioaprs.net/
  • Pathfinder used aero braking and a drogue chute. Hello, the moon has no atmosphere... a bag of balloons wrapped around the retrans lander would not protect it without rockets to take the craft out of orbit and get it to near zero velocity in relation to the moons surface at a low altitude. time to check that triangle design that was perfect for pathfinder but would probably be inadequate for a moon shot. Remember to add the weight of fuel and engines for landing on the moon to the launch weight. Determine whether balloons, and the articulation method used to place pathfinder upright weigh more than the few ounces or pounds of fuel required to take the launder the last 10 meters to the surface of the moon.

  • I don't think the Shuttle is a realistic choice for the launch vehicle. Any payload on the Shuttle has to meet a very high safety standard since it is a manned vehicle. Several tons of liquid fuel and oxidizer is an extreme hazard. A developmental flight on a new launch vehicle would be more realistic. The problem is that these flights have a high failure rate.

  • Re:Anyone care to elaborate? (Score:5)

    by IronChef ( 164482 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @07:12PM (#1051508)
    OK, a quick primer on ham radio for the uninitiated.

    The "ham" in ham radio is a strange abbreviation of "amateur." The amateur radio service is chartered by the FCC in America, and other government bodies in other nations.

    The government has allocated parts of the radio spectrum for hams to use. It's not restricted to high or low frequencies -- there are ham bands up and down the dial, from a few MHz to the GHz range, and everything in between.

    In return for getting radio spectrum, hams have a moral responsibility to further the radio arts and provide emergency communications in time of need. That's the spirit of the deal. In practice, a ham doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to. Just obey the rules -- no swearing, no commercial use, no broadcast entertainment, ID yourself often -- and you are fine.

    Most hams do often use their radios ("rigs") for the public good though -- calling in car accidents, stranded motorists, that kind of thing. I do that all the time. Used my HT (Handheld Transciever) once to call in aid for an injured mountain biker I found. Where I was there would have been no cell coverage, either.

    You do have to take a Federal test to get your ham ticket, and there are harder tests required o get more privileges. But even the entry-level license lets a geek have a LOT of fun. If you have half a brain you can cram for the test in a weekend. If you have any electronics experience, you might be able to cram for it in a day.

    When you pass your test you get a call sign. This is how you ID yourself on the air. Your call sign is analogous to a commercial broadcaster's call sign like KROQ or KNBC. The first call you get is long, like mine: KF6IYW. As you advance in the ham tests, your call gets shorter (provided there are vacant calls to move you up to). A ham with a call like NO6B is a stud.

    Ham radio is cool because you have a lot of options and there are neat toys to buy. You can talk across town on a pocket-sized radio, or blacken the sky with a monstrous antenna over your home with which you talk to the other side of the planet. You can build a transmitter and try to get Morse code to the other side of the country with a few watts of power. It's about problem solving and electronics as much as communication for a lot of people.

    Me, I like the pocket-sized stuff. Does it replace a cell phone? No, but it makes a damn good supplement -- and it doubles as a police scanner, FM radio, and TV audio receiver. You can't stay in touch with a mess of people at once, with no per-minute fees with a cell phone.

    Last common question people have is "how far can that thing talk?" A small handheld radio -- cellphone sized -- can let you talk to someone 100 miles away, or more, if there are convenient repeaters. I commonly use an HT to talk to friends all over the LA area, sometimes farther. A powerful rig that operates on lower frequencies can talk to anywhere on earth, if conditions are good. Some nuts even put this stuff in their cars. That's too much for me. :)

    There, all you ever wanted to know about ham radio...
  • If you can co-ordinate with some other payloads that want to go to the same place, you might try for a launch on a converted decommissioned (Russian) SS-18. An SS-18 has already been used to launch a student satellite (Surrey University in the UK I believe), and with the addition of a Star-48 inside the fairing you should easily be able to get a few hundred kilograms to the moon's surface.

    It's still not going to be cheap. The numbers I've heard are on the order of $10 million for an SS-18 launch. But if you can find a commerical partner going in the same direction, it may be an option, and likely a lot cheaper than most other launch options.
  • I remember reading on slashdot years ago that it had been decided the first person to get a pingable box on the moon gets the domain rights..

    .mo I guess.
  • Remove this post! It is clearly funny, and infringes on my humorous posts.

  • To a very limited number of old geezers.

    I'm in my mid-20's, and I find it very useful. It's great when you're driving, etc.

    And then I got continuous flak for being a no-code (ie: not a "Real Ham")

    I'm a no-code, and I don't get this flak. Then again, I found a group of folks to hang with that aren't a bunch of old-timers who care about such things.

    N8USK - http://ohioaprs.net [ohioaprs.net]

  • Faster, actually. Escape velocity for the moon is 1.4875 mi/sec, or 5355 mph.

    "Ah reckon they gon' hafta use propane fer that, Bubba."

    -----

  • Amateur Radio has done IP on it's frequencies for years.

    We have our own domain: ampr.org.

    We have our own IP space: 44/8.

    Phil Karn, KA9Q who posted earlier developed one of the first freely available Network Operating Systems (KA9Q NOS) which made it possible to use IP from your DOS machine either over modems, LAN or Amateur Radio AX.25 over the radio. (Hi Phil. Very cool that you read /.)

    Admittedly the data speed has been rather slow, 56k probably being the high-end, but folks over at TAPR [tapr.org] are working on a 900Mhz FHSS radio that would go to 128k or above.

    There's plenty of bandwidth available to do what you want, provided you have the technical know-how and the desire. You want a 2mbit point-to-point wireless link? Do it up around 2.4ghz.

    Anything's possible if you want to do it badly enough.

    N8USK - http://ohioaprs.net [ohioaprs.net]

  • Ham Radios will never be obsolete. In a natural disaster, i'll take a Ham Radio over cell anyday. That aside, They type of peole that enjoy Ham, will always be there. Now it's fine by me if you don't like them, but they won't be obsolete, ever.
  • Send up a new unit.
  • Well, and obviously, UNIX and Linux are obsolete--after all, WebTV and Windows have all the graphics, web access, and multimedia anybody could ever want, right?

    In any case, as soon as you travel outside an urban area, cell phones stop working, but there are often ham radio operators around.

    Obviously, there are network effects at work here as well: the more people use ham radio, the more fun it is, so sign up...

  • The license isn't about instilling a sense of "pride", it's about making sure that you know how to operate your equipment safely, legally, and without interfering with other people.

    For anybody technically inclined (like most people on /.), it shouldn't be hard. If you need your ego stroked, you can still feel satisfied that for the population at large, it's probably a non-trivial test.

  • Actually the escape velocity is proportional to sqrt(g) so v_moon/v_earth = sqrt(g_moon/g_earth) = sqrt(1/6) = 0.4 or about 2.8 mi/sec, all other things being equal (which they aren't). Escape velocity also depends on radius of the body and the intial height of the spacecraft above the center of body. Lots of stuff to keep track of, you do the rest....

    Bill.

  • I'm by no means an expert, but I'm not certain if colonizing the moon is worth it.

    The amount of gravity on the moon is fairly weak, so the human body would degenerate significantly while living on it. It wouldn't be as bad as living on Mir for years, but it's still not good.

    It is exposed to a lot of radiation, since it has no atmosphere. This would mean you'd more or less have to live in a thick stone building, which isn't the romantic bubble dome lifestyle Star Trek would have one think.

    I don't believe there's much in terms of resources one could use to fabricate most of the requirements of life. So you'd need frequent shuttle trips to bring supplies. Of course one could argue that once you've left the earth, traveling from orbit to the moon isn't overly costly. For a long term settlement, though, you'd want a bit more ease.

    Though Mars has about 1/3 the gravity of earth, it's definitely an improvement over the moon. It's slightly better in terms of resources, since there's frozen water (caps, permafrost, ...).

    Of course if there're problems, it's also a lot farther away. Still, I'd rather shoot for a real planet, and leave the moon alone.
  • Oh so funny. I would happily kill a tree to print this post, if I had a printer. :)

    Dave

  • For the love of God, shut up, you anal retentive jackass. It's a figure of speech, for heaven's sake.

    Cripes, no wonder nerds have such a bad reputation for being so self-absorbed. If it's not interesting to you, then don't frigging read it... I sure as hell won't miss your whiney uninteresting crap. I don't find HAM radio interesting either, but I managed to respect those who do. Why? Perhaps it's because I'm an adult - you know, those of us who don't necessarily have to get our own way at every possible turn. Don't worry, you'll get there eventually, big guy.

    I guess we've still got a few more rounds of nerd-evolution to go before we finally weed out the true losers in the bunch.

  • I have a ham radio

    I caught the reference... very nice. I was thinking it too.

  • I doubt very much they would use similar technology for landing this craft like the Mars Lander. Course you have to wonder, if they perfected it for landing on the moon, why would it not work on Mars?

    Maybe we should launch something that would maintain a low orbit in Mars' atmosphere...gain a few readings of landing sites, atmospheric gases, etc...
  • Excellent, truly excellent. Tell me you've got a site somewhere.
  • As the article notes, interest in ham radio has declined noticeably since the rise in popularity of the Internet. Given that the Internet is a cheaper and far more powerful communication medium, perhaps it's time now to retire ham radio? The radio spectrum currently used by ham radio could be more effectively reused for Internet traffic (IP). (Ideally this would be done in a way that would leave at least part of it available to 'amateurs'.)

    "IP over everything!"
  • The hobby of Amateur (or Ham) Radio is a bit like the hobby of sailing.

    Each is based on one or more mature technologies that are used in commerce & transport today.

    Each uses only a tiny bit of its "medium" - frequency spectrum or seaways, resp.

    Yet, one hobby seems to be under regulatory pressure, at least here in Australia (the land of censorship):

    Just last week, we learned that in response to an individual complaint, the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) has informed the Wireless Institure of Australia (WIA) - Australia's national fraternal body of radio hams (like USA's ARRL), that some long-running practices (14 years, in one state) will no longer be tolerated.

    You may ask: What are these evil practices?

    Simply: the on-air listing of individuals' excess electronic parts & radio gear for sale, in WIA's weekly, on-air broadcast to hams.

    It takes no more than 5 minutes of a typical 30-55 minute broadcast... but, now, it's been stopped... by a government edict.

    Why...?

    Well, in law, ham radio is (quite rightly, in many minds) to be "free of pecuniary interests" - like an amateur sailor who, I suppose, can't legally carry goods or people on his sail-boat

    • for money
    .

    However, here, nobody was paying money to get their gear listed on-air, just as nobody pays to post a 'for sale' ad on their Sailing Club's bulletin board.

    There was -no- pecuniary interest; people were simply helping each other... by swapping, selling or buying - often just giving away - their excess items, whether homebuild or manufactured.

    ACA's harsh interpretation of an old law was unduly heavy-handed and violates the rights of individuals.

    It has lead to a ban on a practice that helped keep rural hams involved in the equipment recycle-loop with their city cousins.

    Remember that, in many Australian bush areas, the Internet (which would make it easy to stay in touch) is practically unavailable, with connection rates as low as 2400 baud (if that), and unreliable at any speed.

    (Satelite 'net connections still require a landline link, making that technology impractical for the bush.)

    But there is more to it... and that is an government unresponsive to calls for fair play, at least where valuable radio spectrum is involved.

    Our Citizens Band users actually managed to free themselves of license fees (like their US counterparts), by openly defying the law which, at the time, required them to pay an annual license fee to use their radios.

    (Perhaps, in Australia, 'civil disobedience macht frei'...?)

    Also, like most Internet users, CBer's have no restrictions on commercial use of CB frequencies.

    It's very different for the Hams...

    Our more law-abiding Radio Amateurs, unlike their US counterparts, have been paying $50 dollars / year to keep their licenses, and - with them - the age-old restriction on use.

    While various other media & technologies (e.g., Internet) enjoy freedom of expression, this human endeavor is strapped down tighter without reason.

  • Man, you have to respect the amount of work that went into this. Clearly this is the greatest troll post of all time. Bravo!


    --

  • Well, they've got pingable satellites [bbc.co.uk] now, so do they get to name the TLD?

    .. (dot dot)perhaps, given it's so far away.

  • I don't believe that.

    Amateurs have communicated with space shuttles, with MIR, will communicate with the International space station, have built and launched about 50 small satellites.

    Why would you think a repeater on the moon would yield so much better PR than the above feats?

    IMHO (just as in Phil's) it would just be a gigantic waste of effort to build that repeater, and see that it is useless in practice. As everyone can see, it is already taking lots of resources to construct Phase 3D and get in launched, so much that even a geostationary satellite (let alone a cluster of 3) is widely seen as impossible to realize.

    It is better to stay with both feet on the ground, and attempt only realistic projects. There have been enough proposals that cost a lot of effort and never became realized.

    Rob

  • This might be a good time to remind people to get their amateur radio license. The test is really simple.

    What are the benefits? Well, it's a good way to communicate, even in out of the way places, and it's free. There are lots of nifty things you can do with digital transmissions in the amateur radio band. And people learn about interference as part of the reading material (useful for computer folks who may not be aware of the interference they are causing).

    Amateur radio is one of the last refuges on the spectrum that is non-commercial and it needs new participants, or else it will slowly be taken over by commercial interests. And the digital aspects of amateur radio need new people to bring better technology and new ideas to them.

    So, go out and get your license. You can get started at the ARRL [arrl.org] web site. A reasonable handheld transmitter/receiver will cost you under $200 and is a good way to get started. For the test itself, you won't need more than a $20 book.

  • Although I would like to see the repeater on the moon, I don't think this is all that newsworthy, at least from a ham perspective. Perhaps the slashdot fans just are not familiar with ham radio enough to understand this type of experimentation has always been going on. There are radios built into tuna and even altoid cans. Almost every issue of the QST ( the magazine of the ARRL) has a new and different project idea. Although some hams are only interested in buying fancy equipment and using it, there are a great number of them that will sit down and think of "new ways to make the wheel". Hams are already bouncing signals off the moon, a repeater is just another step forward.

    One area I do find hams a little lacking is using linux, I would have thought that the majority of individuals that pride themselves in being able to take their equipment apart and redesign it would demand an open source operating system where they have more control, but unfortunately, the majority of hams and ham related software is for windows.

  • On the topic of truth and religion...

    In The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett, there was a funny little quote about two pages in...

    "Every tribal myth is true for a given value of true."

  • IIRC, the fcc has handed some enforcement over to local law enforcement. IAAH (i am a ham) and I and most of the hams I'm friends would clean up their signal if it's noisy. Check to see if there is a ham radio club in your area and try to get them to help you with your neighboor (if he isn't a ham). Some of the amplified CB signals is incredibly noisy. But so are most paging services. 73 de KC5ZGH
  • You mean "more", as in costing $0.30/minute, rather than free for ham?

    Yes, I agree, it doesn't make sense to drop a repeater on the moon, geosynchronous and/or Low Earth Orbit are the way to go. The round trip time of speed of light to the moon make interactive communication awkward. Plus, an array of satellites would probably cost the same as single lunar repeater, which would be much more susceptible to failure.

    A repeator on the moon would make sence if you are ok with a repeater that is mostly there at night and only sometimes during the day.

    You mean the moon spends more time on the side of the Earth facing away from the sun than the side facing towards the sun? That's news to me! (Granted, when the moon is near to eclipsing the sun, the RF noise from the sun would probably make communication impossible, so a repeater would be slightly more available at night.) But just 'cause you can't see the moon in the daytime doesn't mean it's not there!

  • Hummm...yes. It is aginst the law to call someone and fool (present day: idiot).

    However, you can say someone is acting like a fool (or an idiot).

    Loopholes...

  • Good gods man, that was hilarious. If I wasn't at work I would laugh out loud. On the way home I just know I'm going to think Roman Empire BSOD's and lose control of my car, tossing pedestrians and stary animals helter skelter. Thanks, this was the best pseudo laugh I've had in a good long while...
  • In fact, using something like the Optima line of batteries, sealed, depleted-electrolyte lead-acid, with a 30-psi seal, gas recombinant, with adequate thermal control to keep 'em from freezing and direct exposure to sunlight, should work. Careful definition of the power budget allows you to calculate how much battery you need; careful atention to over-sizing by some percentage precludes being overly surprised when something draws more current than you expected.

    Add an orienting solar array and charging logic, steering diodes and such and you're in pretty good shape.

    And, yes, I've got a clue of what the design parameters should be for something like this.
  • But that's OK when it's this extremely Funny!
  • The dark side of the moon is the part which always faces away from earth. The dark side and the light side never change so the device would never switch the dark side. The dark side gets light from the sun, we just can't see it. Your point is still valid though since the light side isn't always light.
  • Remember, by treaty, internationally you can only use the ham frequences for two way communications of a technical, personal, or unimportant nature.

    And no encryption is allowed either. Not cypherpunk friendly.

  • These guys are putting together a space mission on a personal budget w/o any government involvement. Is there a possibility of an open source space program? I imagine something like that would be somewhat succesful.

    Have an open forum for discussion of ideas.
    Different entries for modules and designs.
    And heres the kicker. Run it on contributions.

    If its succesful, all the data gathered is made freely available under whatever liscense you prefer. Maybe have free use of the module too.

    I propose an open source spy-cam so i can spy on natalie portman.
  • this is the funniest thing i have ever read on /. thank you!
  • it actually has not declined as much as one would think. and would you really want to take away the spectrum used for experimentation? the same experimentation that has led to some of the wireless technologies you take for granted? it has much in common with the open-source movement, and in the grand scheme of things, amatuers have _very little_ spectrum allocated to them. if you want spectrum for ip, go after the allocations held (and underutilized) by the railroad industry and the military.

    amateur radio still has it's benefits and is still a much valued service/endeavor. after all, what is more fun than converting an old radar detector into a 10Ghz 25mW fm transceiver? :)

  • Even if it were easy to achieve, that project would be effectively dead before it started, for the same reasons as amateur radio is effectively dead as a full-power communications medium.

    The reasons? Centralized control by men in robes commanding the power to send 'round men with guns, and the severely limited bandwidth of a centralized communications hub (and let's not forget Shannon).

    The fact that it's still a very enjoyable social activity and even very effective in niche applications doesn't invalidate the underlying point that amateur radio is unusable as a power building block in a world where Internet-quality communications (in both freedom and bandwidth) is an assumed minimum starting point. The reasons why the medium is so limited are of course entirely political: in principle radio amateurs could have multi-megabit, peer-to-peer dynamic networks capable of vastly more than the Internet right now (the aggregate amateur bandwidth is about 5GHz, much of it usable today), but the end result would be worthless except as a technological achievement. The gates of the amateur radio prison are still firmly shut.

    Oh well, too bad. People have now discovered the freedom of the net, and as a result certain types of dinosaur will die out. It's the way of change.

  • Apollo went to the moon, so what ?

    As a 5 year old, I remember the excitement of the first landing. We're all geeks here, so we care about this sort of thing, but the sad fact is that the vast majority didn't give a damn beyond the initial novelty. How long is it since we went back ? Jo Sixpack doesn't care, and certainly won't want to fund any attempt to return.

    Commercial space is about geosynchronous DBS and low orbit constellations. Interesting exogeology is already looking past the moon. Our most likely chance of returning to the moon is if George Lucas decides he wants it for a location shoot - no-one else is going to pay.

    PS - A quick "I'm not worthy" to the illustrious creator of KA9Q. Thanks for my connectivity during a large part of the early '90s 8-)

  • >Joshua asked Our Lord to stop the Sun, you ignorant asshole, not the Earth. What possible good would it have done to stop the Earth from moving?

    please. your lord. stopping the earth would stop nightfall.

    >If the Earth did rotate, then one would expect to see tornadoes in the area at the centre of rotation. This would imply that Kansas is the centre of the Earth, a thought pleasing to my personal sympathies, but contradicted by scripture. There has never been a tornado in Jerusalem

    Or Jerusalem is not the centre of the world

    >Your blasphemous statement that the Moon "reflects" light from the Sun directly contradicts Genesis 3:16, in which it is made perfectly clear that "he created the moon, that the slimy crawling things by night might see". Which part of "he created", don't you understand? Your pathetic advocacy of the fraudulent theory (and it IS a THEORY, not some bourgeois, East-Coast elitist idea of a "fact") is sickening

    actually, that doesn't say anything ofcourse. the above says NOTHING on the method of illumination, which could well be by reflecting the sun's light.

    //rdj

  • HISTORY OF THE WORLD (Score:5)

    by Yu Suzuki ( 170586 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @05:27PM (#1051555) Homepage
    2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.

    100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.

    10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.

    3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.

    2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.

    1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.

    490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".

    399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.

    336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.

    4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.

    A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.

    A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.

    A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.

    A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.

    A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.

    A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.

    A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)

    A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.

    A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).

    A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition. A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".

    A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."

    A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).

    A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.

    A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.

    A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.

    A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.

    A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that mayn of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.

    A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.

    A.D. 1776: Trolls, angered by CmdrTaco's passage of the Moderation Act, rebel. After a several-year flame war, the trolls succeed in seceding from Slashdot and forming the United Coalition of Trolls.

    A.D. 1789: The French Revolution begins with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Bastille.

    A.D. 1799: Attempts at discovering Egyptian hieroglyphs receive a major boost when Napoleon's troops discover the Rosetta stone. Sadly, the stone is quickly outlawed under the DMCA as an illegal means of circumventing encryption.

    A.D. 1844: Samuel Morse invents Morse code. Cryptography export restrictions prevent the telegraph's use outside the U.S. and Canada.

    A.D. 1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Japan and forces the xenophobic nation to open its doors to foreign trade. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Japan finally "gets it".

    A.D. 1865: President Lincoln is 'bitchslapped.' The nation mourns.

    A.D. 1901: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marcoli first demonstrates the radio. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich immediately delivers to Marcoli a list of 335,435 suspected radio users.

    A.D. 1911: Facing a break-up by the United States Supreme Court, Standard Oil Co. defends its "freedom to innovate" and proposes numerous rejected settlements. Slashbots mock the company as "Standa~1" and depict John D. Rockefeller as a member of the Borg.

    A.D. 1929: V.A. Linux's stock drops over 200 dollars on "Black Tuesday", October 29th.

    A.D. 1945: In the secret Manhattan Project, scientists working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, construct a nuclear bomb from Star Wars Legos.

    A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.

    A.D. 1965: Jon Katz delivers his famous "I Have A Post-Hellmouth Dream" speech, which stated: "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the geeks of former slaves and the geeks of former slave geeks will be able to sit down together at the table of geeks... I have a dream that my geek little geeks will one geek live in a nation where they will not be geeked by the geek of their geek but by the geek of their geek."

    A.D. 1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon. His immortal words: "FIRST MOONWALK!!!"

    A.D. 1970: Ohio National Guardsmen shoot four students at Kent State University for "Internet theft".

    A.D. 1989: The United States invades Panama to capture renowned "hacker" Manual Noriega, who is suspected of writing the DeCSS utility.

    A.D. 1990: West Germany and East Germany reunite after 45 years of separation. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Germany "gets it".

    A.D. 1994: As years of apartheid rule finally end, Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa. ESR is sick, and sadly misses his chance to triumphantly proclaim that South Africa "gets it".

    A.D. 1997: Slashdot reports that Scottish scientists have succeeded in cloning a female sheep named Dolly. Numerous readers complain that if they had wanted information on the latest sheep releases, they would have just gone to freshsheep.net

    A.D. 1999: Miramax announces Don Knotts to play hacker Emmanuel Goldstein in upcoming movie "Takedown" [dorsai.org]

    Yu Suzuki

  • Some words from the article:
    "I'm not an expert on all the technical aspects involved in such an endeavor (Im no rocket scientist); nor do I have any idea of the cost involved, but I think I can reduce my plan into words here and let the engineers take it from there."

    Qualifications anyone? could this be little more than an AC rant on Ham Radio?
    ___

  • Q: What's the first communications satellite??? (Score:5)

    by wass ( 72082 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @05:31PM (#1051558)
    But that takes out all the fun of doing a moonbounce ;-)

    quick, what was the first communications satellite? Nope, not Echo. That's right, it was the moon! For many decades people have been doing moonbounces, or EME (Earth-Moon-Earth).

    It's a pretty cool way to talk to someone on the other side of the world (albeit probably one of the least efficient). You can actually notice the delay from the return trip time for the radio signal to travel to the moon and back.

    In fact, about a year ago, the ARRL just awarded two hams for doing the first single-yagi to single-yagi moonbounce. A typical EME involves an array of yagi antennas aimed at the moon. Lots and lots of wattage, so a small reflecting amount can hit a receiver sufficiently. In reflecting radio waves, the amount of received power varies inversely as R^4, so the moon being pretty far away makes this vastly difficult.

    But that's what makes it all the more fun! (although i must confess, i've never done it, it's one of my goals when I get around to it)...

    But seriously, a repeater on the moon is pretty cool, it'll still be a good challenge to key it successfully. Maybe it'll offer real-time pictures of earth for packet download too...

  • I'm glad FCC didn't agree with you.

    Take a look at the restructuring rule-making documnent. You'll find my name in attribution several places throughout the document.

    There is no going back now.

    Bruce

  • "Ham radio".. ha!
    "ARTeMiS" is merely a
    front operation

    for the communist
    conspiracy to launch nukes
    and blow up the moon

    as a response to
    the U.S. moon-nuke program [slashdot.org].
    (They're behind scedule.)

    The truth is out there
    but you refuse to believe.
    (score, 0: flamebait)

  • Better lander technology (Score:3)

    by jcwren ( 166164 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @05:36PM (#1051563) Homepage
    It's an interesting idea, and certainly feasible from a technology standpoint.

    However, the cost of getting the repeater there is extremely high. It's cost AMSAT [amsat.org] a huge amount of money just to get Phase 3D into orbit, and it's not even up yet. Vibration testing, platforms costs, etc, etc, etc. So while I'm sure funding could be arrived at, I think it would actually be more difficult to raise the funds because of the perceived usefulness (Phase 3D promises usage with 5 watt handheld radios, versus steerable high gain antennas).

    I wonder if using the Mars Lander airbag technique might not be a better method for safely delivering the payload to the lunar surface. While you certainly can't parachute it down, I wonder if something like a braking rocket with the payload suspended from it might work. Once some distance above the surface, the payload would be cut loose, the airbags inflated, and the device garanteed to arrive in a safe and upright condition (many people say that the Mars Lander landed softer than UPS handles most packages!)

    -- Chris, K4JCW
  • Can it be overloaded by a bunch of geeks if it works? >:)
  • Phil,

    I think you miss the whole point of the article.

    While the practical aspects of the mission are daunting, and the technical payoff is less than stellar (no pun intended), the PR payoff is absolutely brilliant. The US went to the moon in 1969, and nobody's been there in 25 years. Certainly no private party has dared to go there. "Too expensive!" "No payoff!"

    Even if a lunar repeater is impractical for the average ragchew, just to say that "a bunch of old fossils" had the vision and drive to put it there despite the naysayers is reason enough to go for it. And a Ham license becomes far more than access to a "dying medium". It becomes a ticket to the Moon!

    Think about it.
    Eric Lloyd, KC7ZDS
  • Something has to keep your payload powered and warm during those lunar nights

    Just keep the amp powered -- all those tubes should do the trick just fine =)

    hihi de N0RZT k
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • >Are you stupid, or just being ignorant of the Truth of our Lord? If God wants to stop the Earth then he can do so and have night fall as well if He so pleases. That is what omnipotence is.

    1) no, I am not stupid
    2) I am not ignorant of the truth of your lord. I just dispute it as The Truth.
    3) I just learnt that stopping the earth wouldn't do any good. the earth doesn't even rotate. So god cannot stop the earth, since it is already stationary.

    >Again your ignorance astounds me.

    I live to please ;)

    >Jerusalem is the spiritual capital of the world,

    Thank you for completely discounting the Tornado-theory

    >and as such if the centre of the world in every way which counts.
    depends on how you count. If your criterium is 'what place is a holy place for most religions' then you have a point.

    //rdj
  • The atmosphere works a little like a lens in this respect. Shine a flashlight through the lens on someone's glasses. The reflection back off the glasses is the waves bouncing off the atmosphere. All the rest of the light (radio waves) are going out into space. Unfortunatly, the moon is so much farther away that any bounced off it is weak compared to the amount reflected by it. (which is why people trying E-M-E bounces use directional antenna farms loaded up with the peak wattage available and the best low signal detection equipment.)
  • This is kinda cool. I'd still like to see us colonize the moon by the end of this century (no way in hell :( It's still funny when you think of people 20 years from now saying "Oh jesus! we can put a repeater on the moon but we can't make a car that doesn't break down."

    BTW - my favorite quote from a NASA representative: "this IS rocket science"


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • I didn't think you were the original poster. but you did discount the tornado theory by the original poster. and cut it out with the personal insults. The lies of satan have convinced me that the big bang is a decent theory, but by no means perfect. And my philosophy is not atheist, but that's a whole other discussion for which I do not have the time right now.

    >But until you accept the love of the Lord into your heart and act to save the souls of your fellow men, you are still one of Satan's dupes, and as such destined for Hell.

    hell, here I come!

    Granted, you as a nameless, faceless entity are closer to a god than me.. a 'mere human'. I'd be happy to continue this discussion, but not with people calling me ignorant, idiot or asshole.

    //rdj
  • Totally unlikely. The moon's gravity is 1/6 that of earth, meaning that the escape velocity is 1/6 that of earth as well. Escape velocity of earth is 7 miles per second, which means that your "rebound" would have to be on the order of 1 1/6 mile per second for the rebounding satellite to escape the moon's gravity well. I don't think so.

    Do just a little math, and you can figure these things out.


    ...phil

  • If you are having problems with your neighbor's transmissions, you should go talk to them. To a person, amateur radio operators are always glad to help resolve interference problems (they are required to, by law).

    On the other hand, you might have a CBer who doesn't give a flying f*ck about the law, in which case you will have to call cops (or the FCC).




    ...phil

  • Radio signals are absorbed, refracted or unaffected by the ionosphere in varying degrees depending on their frequency and the state of the ionosphere. At frequencies above shortwave (say FM radio or TV frequencies or above), signals mostly pass through the ionosphere. Ham radio includes operation at frequencies from MF (just above the AM broadcast band) to high microwave. Ham radio satellites (of which there are several) generally operate at VHF or UHF frequencies that are relatively unaffected by the ionosphere. For a brief introduction to the topic of propagation, see this page [arrl.org].

  • I want to set up some sort of system so I can moonbounce http, so that when you go to my website, you're getting it from the moon.

    Nice.

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