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Space The Internet

NASA Looking for Bandwidth Sponsorship 178

Posted by Zonk from the packets-in-spaaaaace dept.
Neil Halelamien writes "A news release and MSNBC's Cosmic Log report that NASA has a web sponsorship opportunity for companies in return for providing bandwidth support for the two upcoming Space Shuttle missions of Discovery and Atlantis. The missions, scheduled for this summer, are expected to cause 20 to 30 million web site visits each and up to a half million streaming video feeds. The alternative is for NASA to cap the number of visitors. Sponsorship proposals are being accepted through April 13."
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NASA Looking for Bandwidth Sponsorship

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  • Why so many? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:20PM (#12177073)
    The missions, scheduled for this summer, are expected to cause 20 to 30 million web site visits each and up to a half million streaming video feeds

    Why? Are they supposed to blow up too?

    • Re:Why so many? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:32PM (#12177264) Homepage
      Won't people stop with this? A 2% failure rate on a rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt is a very impressive rate for orbital rockets - not just for the US, but worldwide. We may not like this fact, but that's the reality of space travel: it's *dangerous*. You get into a craft for which most of its mass is some of the most eager-to-react chemicals we can produce, made of thin, flimsy materials (because it has to stay incredibly light), has millions of components (the complexity of a real, high performance rocket engine that can take you to orbit makes million dollar jet engines look like child's toys), these materials undergo high vibrational loads and G forces, the engine materials are often exposed to temperatures hotter than the boiling point of iron in extremely corrosive environments, the turbopumps have to spin at tens of thousands of rpms. You're often handing cryogenic materials that can make things that are normally sturdy snap like twigs; cryogenic hydrogen is especially bad, as it also embrittles metals. When you get to orbit, you're constantly bombarded with particles moving at tens of thousands of miles an hour, along with radiation and severe temperature extremes that are eager to freeze up your hydraulics, cause expansion problems, and basically mess up anything that they can. On reentry, you're exposed to ridiculous amounts of heat as you try and burn off all of that energy that you spent accelerating using your proportionally tiny orbital craft.

      Honestly, it's amazing that these craft ever survive.

      • Re:Why so many? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rovingeyes ( 575063 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:40PM (#12177346)
        We may not like this fact, but that's the reality of space travel: it's *dangerous*

        Agreed, but shouldn't NASA also acknowledge that fact and let the people know about it? Case in point, recent "crack" which was discussed on slashdot. Yesterday, I read an article, which states that NASA is downplaying it. May be it is nothing but shouldn't their attitude be more realistic?

        • They hide the risks partially because if they were to openly admit that strapping people onto a rocket and firing them into space was dangerous then politicians and the public would start asking if there really was a point to manned orbital missions if they're so dangerous, which is a question that would leave NASA up shit creek and without a paddle.
          • The problem I think is that the average Joe cannot understand that there is an actual percentage of risk involved, he probably doesn't know what percentage is anyway. So for Mr. Sixpack it is either "dangerous as hell - don't do it!" or "totally safe - will _never_ fail!" The real problem then is that there are a lot of those Joe Sixpacks around, including in Congress and the media.

            So NASA has to translate 1% failure into "this is totally safe - will _never_ fail!" for them in order to get any funding.

            T

            • One of the biggest problems with nuclear power, unlike space travel for which there are no alternatives, is that it is so expensive with current safety regulations in place. Yet, we don't want to go lax on safety, as the Belarusans and Ukranians learned the hard way.

              Yucca Mountain might reduce costs somewhat, since the plant owners would only pay one-time transportation costs instead of long-term on-site storage.

        • Re:Why so many? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ifwm ( 687373 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @01:08PM (#12177680) Journal
          I think most people know it's dangerous. In fact I've seen no evidence to suggest otherwise.

          Two shuttle disasters, numerous rocket failures and a HUGE hit movie whose only focus was a botched space mission have helped drive the point home.

          But I could be wrong. I doubt it though, and I plan to ask a few people in passing conversation about the subject. Maybe I give people more credit than they deserve.

        • Re:Why so many? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by pr0c ( 604875 )
          Agreed, but shouldn't NASA also acknowledge that fact and let the people know about it? Case in point, recent "crack" which was discussed on slashdot. Yesterday, I read an article, which states that NASA is downplaying it. May be it is nothing but shouldn't their attitude be more realistic?

          Do you think you are a fucking rocket scientist!?! Most of them are... you are not smarter than the lowest 5% of people at NASA... why don't you people quit thinking you know everything and leave the worrying up to the
          • And you sir are a tard.

            While many there are rocket scientists, the people doing the downplaying are PR people A.K.A. politicians by a different name.
            -nB
          • Do you think you are a fucking rocket scientist!?! Most of them are... you are not smarter than the lowest 5% of people at NASA... why don't you people quit thinking you know everything and leave the worrying up to the people who REALLY know what they are talking about.

            NASA engineers are smart, but that doesn't mean they, or NASA as a whole, aren't capable of huge errors.

            Go read the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report [www.caib.us], especially the bit where it discusses how exactly the institutional arrogance
      • "Won't people stop with this? A 2% failure rate on a rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt is a very impressive rate for orbital rockets - not just for the US, but worldwide."

        And more so amongst reusable space shuttles it has the best failure rate in the history of mankind. In fact it could be said to set the standard for reusable space shuttle safety.

        Well, wait lets see the only other manned program hasn't had a loss of life since 1971... so in a field of two, the s
        • The Soviets also haven't launched nearly as many astronaut missions; consequently, I was not talking about rates of casualties, but the rates of rocket failures - a much more fair comparison. And the shuttle is among the best in the world. Although, if you want a head to head of shuttle vs. soyuz, both have had two fatal accidents, but the shuttle has launched more (there were more casualties on the shuttle, but that's just because it's a bigger craft with a larger average crew).

          Furthermore, casualties o
          • What statistics are you using? If you are talking about what vehicle has the best safety record that you can fly in today, as opposed to, perhaps, a Vostok vs. a Mercury Capsule, then it's Soyuz vs. Shuttle. And there the difference in mission counts is 86 to 113: within the bounds of "nearly as many," at least enough to allow meaningful comparision.

            Although there's been some hairraising moments, that there hasn't been a Soyuz crew death since 1971, indicates a mature spacecraft design whose reliability
            • Again, you seem to be looking at casualties. Both Redstone and Vostok had rocket failures, but the craft were unmanned at the time. In fact, the Redstone rocket had a *50%* failure rate - just not when people were in it (56 launches, 28 failures). Now not all of these would have been fatal if they were manned missions, but a number would have been.

              There hasn't been a *public* Soyuz crew death since 1971, although the USSR was known to have covered up a number of cosmonaut deaths (including one who died
      • Why? Are they supposed to blow up too?
        ...2% failure rate is a very impressive... it's *dangerous*... eager-to-react chemicals... thin, flimsy... millions of components... vibrational loads and G forces... tens of thousands of rpms... snap like twigs... constantly bombarded... radiation... it's amazing that these craft ever survive.
        If you meant "yes," just say so!

  • Gotta check those links... (Score:4, Informative)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:20PM (#12177076)

    The link entitled "MSNBC's Cosmic Log" actually points to a story about the coverage of the upcoming solar eclipse from Panama...certainly newsworthy in its own right, but somewhat offtopic here..

    In the interest of promoting more discussion, a lot of good info regarding the NASA bandwidth sponsorship can be found here [comspacewatch.com].
    • Try scrolling down a little on the MSNBC page, to the "This space for rent" subtitle. I tried including an anchor in the link that goes down there, but it doesn't seem to be working right. I think the # character is getting converted to something else (can't verify that myself right now, on Treo, but will later).

  • How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandwidt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hulkster ( 722642 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:20PM (#12177084) Homepage
    Be real interesting to see a chart showing bandwidth needs for various high profile sites such as Google [google.com], CNN [cnn.com], Slashdot [slashdot.org], and (most recently) the Vatican. [vatican.va]

    Probably the best qualified to help 'em out would be the p0rn sites ... somehow, I doubt NASA will accept those offers in exchange for a banner ad on Nasa.Gov ... ;-)

    P.S. I noticed Slashdot is offered a Free One Day Pass [slashdot.org] (sponsored by ThinkGeek) - new revenue generator for 'em? Ironically, if you click thru on the article after getting your free one day pass, it says "Posting will only be possible in The Mysterious Future!" - a minor, but funny, typo.

  • NASA needs this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:21PM (#12177096)
    Didn't we once /. one of their servers?
    Only on a subdomain, but it still shouldn't be possible.

    • Re:NASA needs this (Score:4, Informative)

      by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:57PM (#12177567)
      Do you understand that NASA subdomain servers are often just single boxes with Apache running on them? It's not like everyone's running a server farm, and if one day their pictures suddenly become popular, well... they don't have the funding to do much more than watch the boxes start smoking. It's also not as if they're each connected to the web on their own gigabit pipe.

      If www.nasa.gov went down, I'd be concerned, but let's be reasonable...

      -Erwos
      • Do you understand that NASA subdomain servers are often just single boxes with Apache running on them?
        Yes, and that is why they need better hosting.

        I wasn't blaiming them.

  • To paraphrase... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mogrify ( 828588 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:22PM (#12177099) Homepage
    It will be a sad day when our corporations get all the money they want and NASA has to publish a sponshorship opportunity to run a website.

    • Re:To paraphrase... (Score:4, Informative)

      by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:41PM (#12177369)
      It will be a sad day when our corporations get all the money they want and NASA has to publish a sponshorship opportunity to run a website.

      Corporations don't 'get' money (in the way that NASA does), they have to do something in exchange for it (like, sell something) or talk investors into delivering it. NASA, on the other hand, works on tax dollars, which means that everybody in the country (at least, the part of the country that pays taxes, anyway) funds their programs. I think they should have a much bigger budget, but a lot of people don't.

      Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense to avoid a potentially more bruising budget fight in front of the administration and congress when some donors (who will very carefully think about who the audience is for these events, and will only provide resources if it makes sense for their business model) are willing to take up some of the slack. Episodic events (like shuttle launches) are ideal for this sort of sponsorship because the need for that overhead is fleeting, and can be tied to a date on a calendar. That works well for people in the PR/marketing side of things, and allows NASA to focus more on actually safely hurling people and equipment into space [slashdot.org] and have to worry less about which project to extend [slashdot.org] or kill [slashdot.org].

    • Re:To paraphrase... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by avalys ( 221114 )
      Why? Corporations get money from a free and voluntary exchange of goods and services with the general public. NASA gets money taken from the general public by force.

      And really, saying that corporations get all the money they want is completely absurd. They get all the money that the public wants to give them, which is quite a big difference.
    • Actually, poignant appeal aside, I meant this to be more of a [+1 Funny] than [+1 Insightful]... haven't you guys seen the bake sale/bomber bumper sticker?

      Glad to stimulate discussion though...

  • One word: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FiveNines ( 235767 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:22PM (#12177101)
    bittorrent....

  • Are we helping their problems? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Inkieminstrel ( 812132 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:22PM (#12177105) Homepage
    Nasa is having bandwidth problems... let's post links to them on Slashdot!
    • Nasa has bandwidth problems because they have a flash spash page, and video on their homepage! I mean, seriously. Before they go crawling to the corporations begging for handouts, perhaps they should slim down their site a bit.
      • It used to be that they did Internet broadcasting using a vast network of CU-SeeMe reflectors across the globe, transmitting only a single low-res B/W video stream. (For colour, you plugged into the multibone, but that was only one stream from them, too.)

        These days, they do video broadcasts using higher-resolution point-to-point protocols.

        And they wonder why they don't have any bandwidth???

        I do have one question for them, though. If they can't afford to do Internet-based television, what makes them th

        • I do have one question for them, though. If they can't afford to do Internet-based television, what makes them think they can afford to run a space program? I'm just curious, that's all.

          Perhaps because they think that instead of spending loads of money on improving their bandwidth infrastructure for an unusually large two-time spike, it'd be better to spend that money on science and exploration?

  • BitTorrent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by svanstrom ( 734343 ) <tony@svanstrom.org> on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:22PM (#12177110) Homepage
    Why stream it all to a few, instead of using BitTorrent to send the complete files to everyone that wants them?
    • Is there a torrent-like streamer out there? Would be cool to see a live-feeding BitTorrent... This would be perfect for that, too.

    • Re:BitTorrent (Score:5, Informative)

      by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:40PM (#12177361) Homepage
      You can't do live video over BitTorrent, since it does not provide in-order delivery.
      • But Dijjer does [dijjer.org] and works along very similar lines.
        • Very cool. Much fewer hoops to jump through than BitTorrent. Peercasting possibilities. Sounds like dijjer [dijjer.org] could replace BT, if its efficiency and reliability works as advertised. My only concern is there appears to be no way to turn it on or off.
      • But it's a partial solution though: offer torrents of the video after the event and you significantly lower you bandwidth bill for the post-live portion of your event.
      • "Ok, here we have them landing on the moon.....no wait, now they're loading up to go home....errr....now they're taking off......OMG! The shuttle blew up!!!.......oh wait, there they are again on the moon......no wait, now the parts are dropping into the ocean!!!"

        Hmm....on second thought, in-order delivery might be more important than I first thought.

    • MBone (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      The simplest, easiest, quickest, cheapest answer is for NASA to persuade ISPs to enable multicasting. Then bandwidth ceases to be an issue and nobody has to run any additional servers on anything.

  • Nice shuttle roll-out pics (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MagPulse ( 316 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:23PM (#12177120)
    NASA has some nics pics of the roll-out [nasa.gov] from Wednesday. This one [nasa.gov] is my favorite, and thanks to the high resolution it makes great wallpaper.
  • Google is good about helping out good causes. NASA does use a TON of open source though so maybe M$ should do it. After all M$ runs ads in Linux magazines.

  • Half a million viewers? I think not... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eyeball97 ( 816684 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:30PM (#12177221)
    Half a million streaming video clients? More than a little ambitious, I'd say.

    Even at a modest 64kbps stream this would consume 32Gbps of bandwidth - that's THREE OC192's or, although the figures vary quite widely (Here's one [ziplink.net]), approximately the entire capacity of the "Internet" as it currently stands.

    There are technologies that can handle this using a mere 64kbps in total (e.g. multicast) but they're not widely adopted/available (side note - why??)

    You'd think an agency that can put someone on the Moon and vehicles on Mars would have the tech savvy to know off the top of their heads that they're dreaming!

    • Of course, you've made the assumption the streams all need to start from a single source location.

      Someone like an Akamai may be in a position to accomplish the job.
    • Reluctantly replying to my own message, before anybody else points out the faux-pas I should apologise for the misleading statistics - the web page I linked was for a "large city" not the 'net in general. Now, I'm having trouble finding stats pages for the 'net in general - been a few years since I needed to look them up (or was interested)! Sorry!
    • There are technologies that can handle this using a mere 64kbps in total (e.g. multicast) but they're not widely adopted/available (side note - why??)

      First, because only one service can really be using a single multicast address at a time. And there are a limited number of them. Second, you have to get everyone in the path to allow that multicast address. This involves the internet backbone providers (mainly those telecoms like SBC everyone keeps complaining about) and all the internet companies allowi
      • I don't think we'll ever get milticast working across the Internet at large. What's more likely to work IMHO is caching proxies.

        Get Comcast to do this in a few major cities and you've made a serious dent in the problem. Comcast would save big money by decreasing traffic on their backbones, and NASA would obviously save a lot too. Now the only question is how to make streaming media proxy-cache friendly.

        Hmm, apparently it has been done [wisc.edu]. I wonder if the big ISPs do this?

  • I wonder (Score:3, Funny)

    by elid ( 672471 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .dopi.ile.> on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:30PM (#12177232)
    Is there a way to use Coral [coralcdn.org] for distributing the feeds?

  • Multicast feeds of NASA TV (Score:5, Informative)

    by Danathar ( 267989 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:40PM (#12177343) Journal
    Unknown to many, If you are an internet2 (most universities) connected college or university then you probabaly have access to the multicast feed of NASA TV being broadcast by the University of Oregon. WHY NASA does not provide this themselves since NASA is connected to Internet2 is beyond me. (I even wrote to the web site asking about it...nobody responded).

    They could save a TON of bandwidth from multicast enabled users clicking on unicast streaming servers...if only they would POST that it's available!

  • Dear NASA, (Score:5, Funny)

    by th0mas.sixbit.org ( 780570 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:40PM (#12177362)
    I have a DSL connection. It should handle fine unless we're playing xbox online but I'll keep that to the off hours. Gimme a call.

  • Funding? (Score:2, Funny)

    by dangitman ( 862676 )
    If they want more money, why don't they just put a PayPal link up?

  • ESM (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DesiVideoGamer ( 863325 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:59PM (#12177582)
    Why can't they use ESM [cmu.edu]? That should save them bandwidth.

  • First... (Score:2, Funny)

    by BJZQ8 ( 644168 )
    First they find crack in the fuel tank, now they're capping visitors. What's next, a 3-album deal with a major record company, complete with ho's, Crystal and an Escalade?

  • Manifest Destiny in Space (Score:3, Funny)

    by manganese4 ( 726568 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @01:16PM (#12177763)
    I like there vision statement The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Vision is: To improve life here, To extend life to there, To find life beyond. It is #2 that troubles me.

  • Suggestion... (Score:3, Funny)

    by raam ( 206445 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @01:24PM (#12177847) Homepage
    Sell the super-secret Air Force shuttle on ebay.

    That'll buy some bandwidth.
  • Using fundraising to make up budget shortfalls is a big mistake. All the beancounters and PHBs will see is that NASA made do with less, so they will get the same or less money in the next years budget.

  • space porn (Score:4, Insightful)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @01:46PM (#12178089) Journal
    If NASA needs private sponsorships and advertising to get along, why not let true private enterprise (instead of quasi-private) take over the aspects of spaceflight which it's not prepared to support? I'd much rather see Pizza Hut paying -- voluntarily, and with clearcut goals of their own! -- for spaceflight than me, my landlord, and my neighbors, who are not given any specific choice about it.

    (Please don't tell me that "we as a society decided to give money to NASA to do it" unless you believe that every government decision represents societal concensus. Consider this: if U.S. tax return forms had a checkbox for NASA, reading something like "Yes, I'd like to direct a dollar of this tax money or contribute an additional [dollar amount, please fill in] ______, enclosed, to NASA," then *that* would be voluntary -- and a good idea, to boot, sez me. It would sure knock down the whole argument I made in the first graf here ;))

    Militarily, there's reason for NASA: among other things, they help launch satellites. Defense is a natural imperative, so I'll assert, not just concede, that part. To a lesser extent, though I think it's mostly a budget- and political carrot rather than near-term reality (Hey, what happened to the Bush plan to put folks again on the moon?), NASA research on practical matters of human life in space is somewhat justifiable.

    What about abstract knowledge part of NASA? While I realize this makes me an anti-science troglodyte who hates any advance in human knowledge, I don't think that tax dollars should be paying for edge-of-galaxy explorer probes, or satellite telescopes looking outward at the various nebulae -- fascinating and good as those things are! (Golf carts on Mars is easier to swallow, wrt the Life in Space loophole, and so are satellite views of Earth, which show, among other things, how humans affect the planet.)

    Note: I'm not saying no one should be interested in or study abstract, non-practical, just-for-insatiable-curiosity things about space -- far from it. I'm only raising the issue of how they're paid for and justified. The government doesn't spend our money very well, and frequently act with it in ways that decrease the national well-being; my biggest gripe about the way NASA money is spent is that it amounts to a tax subsidy, year after year, for a handful of entrenched companies that are technically private but mostly exist because of their (to mix a metaphor) pole position at the public teat.

    Ahem.

    timothy
  • I'm waiting for NASA to rent space on the side of the shuttle for banner ads. Can you picture
    Ronald McDonald holding up a big mac airbrushed on the shuttle's underside during takeoff?
  • With all this insulation worry, why can't they put the stuff on the inside of the liquid fuel tank?

  • i'm a sponsor (Score:2, Insightful)

    by underworld ( 135618 )
    in fact, everyone who pays taxes is a sponsor ;-)

  • P2P (Score:2)

    by Cyno ( 85911 )
    Well, if these old timers would wake up there's technology out there that would be ready to handle this today.

    Instead of supporting this peer to peer technology they have to go begging for help like some homeless hippie. That's sad.

    I suggest they get with the times and start promoting technology that could save us all some money. Imagine if every web browser had some efficient P2P software integrated/standard. Without encryption or obfiscation it could be very efficient and legal content, like this, co
  • NASA can "invest" billions in secret missions for the military and intelligence agencies, but can't invest 0.001% of that in bandwidth to promote their flashy public missions to the public? We're paying for it, they should use some of our money to show it to us. Corporate sponsorship is a certain way to pervert NASA missions' science according to some inevitable corporate agenda.

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