NASA Building Air Traffic Control System For Drones 38
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, The Guardian got its hands on documents indicating NASA would be working with Verizon to monitor civilian and commercial drones around the U.S. using phone network towers. Now, NASA has confirmed its plans for a drone traffic control system, saying that it wants to help "define" this new generation of aviation. They are testing ways of communicating with drones in flight, both for providing helpful information to drones and collecting information about them. For example, the ATC system could send real-time weather updates to the drones, and inform them of no-fly zones. It could also monitor a drone's battery life and compare its flight path to surrounding terrain. NASA has gathered over 100 organizations to contribute to this project, and they're looking for more. "One of the biggest challenges to integrating UAS into the national airspace beyond line of sight is developing a system that enables the aircraft to see and be seen by other aircraft." This is where the involvement of Verizon and other telecoms is important. NASA is holding a convention next month to develop the idea further.
Flying Cars (Score:2)
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Do you drive? If so do, you want the idiots you see everyday on the road flying over you?
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Alternately, there is ADS-B (Score:4, Informative)
Iridium, NAV Canada, and other ATC organizations are putting together a global air traffic control system:
http://www.aireon.com/Home
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Well something "lower" frequency would also require a corresponding larger antenna... Admittedly ADS-B suffers from collisions as it's purely a one-way transmission not unlike APRS.
Control Looking for a Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
These NASA plans are practically useless and far more likely to hinder the industry than do it any good. Every one of these devices will have a GPS receiver on it, and a terrain map is $10 to integrate. NASA doesn't need to unicast this information - that's just a waste of bandwidth. Any hardware that NASA might want to mandate is already going to be too expensive in terms of components and power consumption to do better than a cellular Internet connection (since they're planning to use Verizon towers anyway) which is already commoditized and ridiculously power-optimized. The aerobots can easily do ad-hoc networking to find their neighbors and avoid collisions - an industry working group is going to have way more information about what those requirements are than NASA might. Aerobot operators have tremendous incentives to not lose their craft, and their insurance carriers will double-down on that; the inclusion of a $5 802.11 radio to handle an ipv6 mesh network in the sky isn't going to ruffle anybody's feathers there.
*Maybe* NASA could be given the job of putting up a web service to keep no-fly zones updated. We'd have to trust their ability to maintain that securely.
The bureaucrats' urge to control everything whether it will help or not ought to be recognized as a treatable mental illness.
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You can't even get American's to admit that hiring a man who never so much as managed a McDonalds to run the country was a bad idea.
I'm no fan of the current president - I think he's got some very mixed up priorities and comes to the job having led far too insular a life. But unlike you, I'll bet he never the less knows how to use an apostrophe. There, I finally said something nice about him. Mostly, I'd prefer that people who point out his unsuitability for the job sound, themselves, a little more put together.
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This is seriously just a proof of concept/training exercise so that NASA can get experience managing the terraforming bots on Mars in the future. Operation "Starling" is what the FOIA requests would turn up. True Story.
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They said N.A.S.A. I think they meant N.S.A.
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Counterpoint; without the FAA, we had the completely predicted Hindenberg disaster. I'm not a huge fan of the FAA; they're actively hostile to private aviation. However, on the UAV scene, they're being deliberate and trying to transfer the lessons learned to the UAV world, which is a whole lot better than accepting the mishap rate from the 20s and 30s. However, the UAV enthusiasts are so hostile to anything that could interfere with their toys that the public desperately needs them to be regulated.
While mod
I don't know (Score:1)
Is the highly bureaucratic NASA the one we want in charge?
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Wrong question. The better question is why do we need any government agency "in charge" of this?
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We want the FAA in charge because they give a shit about safety, whereas the corporations really don't give a shit about anything except profit. Even the Libertarian utopians acknowledge that the FAA is an organization worth paying for. It's only the naïve (and funded) UAV fanboys who think that regulation is bad.
Bad drones! Bad!!! (Score:1)
I'm from the government (Score:1)
Stingray to Drone...Stingray to Drone (Score:2)
Skynet is now 0.50 pct complete (Score:1)
Installing ...
Thank you for the controlled drones, citizen.
The struggle (Score:2)
Is it just me, or is NASA really struggling to maintain relevancy? This doesn't seem like the sort of issue NASA should be concerned with.
NASA? (Score:2)
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While I agree with another comment that I think this is more likely to hinder the industry, there is a simple answer to your question.
The FAA and FCC are regulatory groups. They're just bureaucracies that pretend to know enough about a subject to set sensible rules for it (and often I question whether that is actually true).
NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They've always been involved in actually researching new aerospace related technologies, that's what they're supposed to do. Th
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NASA is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They've always been involved in actually researching new aerospace related technologies,
Air Traffic Control is a regulatory function, not research and development. NASA is not the regulatory agency for airspace. We don't need two. If it is to be done, the FAA should be doing this.