DARPA Fractionated Spacecraft Program Starts 59
An anonymous reader writes "Start buying Cold War nuclear shelters and piling up the canned food, because Boeing Advanced Systems has started System F6: 'DARPA's Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange space technology program.' In other words: multiple, networked specialized spacecraft swarms that are intelligent enough to perform a single coordinated task together, like analyzing the crops or deciding to destroy humanity, Skynet-style. Actually, it could completely change satellites for the better, according to some experts."
Obligatory... (Score:3, Funny)
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It's an acceptable way to go, that's for sure.
Re:Obligatory... (Score:5, Funny)
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But what is fractionated? (Score:2)
Is fractionated some kind of wierd post tensile enconjurfiverbificationization of fraction? What's wrong with divided? Or distributed may be better.
While some may think that inventing new words with more syllables makes them sound more intelligent, it just makes them sound really, really stupid.
Oh yeah, it's US defence... sorry, as you were...
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Ob Sesame Street (Score:5, Funny)
oblig cliches (Score:2)
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You gotta love press releases. (Score:3, Funny)
Dude, gives a whole new meaning to "the threat of hacking"
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Two probable early applications (Score:5, Interesting)
2.) Synthetic apertures. NASA is planning a future mission using station-keeping or physically separated mirros to create an ultra-high resolution telescope. The idea is already used in ground scopes (and the basic principles are used in the F-22's radar). This can also be applied to increasing the resolution of topographic maps and of satellite imagery.
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Since the US Military no longer uses shortwave radio a shoot down of our communication & GPS satellites would make us blind and deaf.
This project reduces the size and increases the number of putative targets the Chinese anti-satellite missiles would have to hit to eliminate our space born communication, tracking and attack systems.
What a relief (Score:1)
Worst. Article. Ever. (Score:4, Informative)
The submission is just a blatant ripoff of the gizmodo article it links to, which in turn is incredibly vague and sensationalist without any real content whatsoever.
If
Hre, let me fix that for you ... (Score:2)
it is a little known fact that the editors are shells
Oops, mis-spelled "shills" again! Maybe next time I'll use "preview".
Seriously, this is one f'ed up article.
25 minutes and no whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag? (Score:1)
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department of redundancy department (Score:2)
Basically a dupe (Score:5, Informative)
Fickle Fingers of Fate (Score:5, Funny)
Oh Noes... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's been said before but it seems like lately there has been a lot of fear mongering going on in the world. I understand when I see it on TV; all the soccer moms of the world need to know the latest threat to their little angels.
But Slashdot should be better than this. Every time an article comes up that mentions AI, virusses, bacteria, censorship, anything remotely threatening it gets the fear mongering going.
Here, we have a developement that could save millions of dollars worth of launch costs; yet we fear it because... why exactly? It might spontaneously gain intelligence and attack the human race? Someone might hack it and tell it to attack? Attack using what exactly? I hope that the poster was joking, but honestly, I doubt it.
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The "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag is most likely used sarcastically by many slashdotters. I think you may have been desensitized to sarcasm, having watched too much Fox News or something...
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Re:Oh Yes... (Score:2)
Here's the difference: the issues of AI, censorship, etc. are real issues that are not well understood by most people and underreported or misunderstood by the media.
FFFFFFSUIE -- what an acronym (Score:4, Funny)
Is it just me or... (Score:1)
1. a result of the new Terminator series on TV or
2. we really have something to worry about.
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Yes but... (Score:1)
Millions of 2lb pieces of space debris (Score:2)
Blogger can't read (Score:2)
In his paper, Molette concluded that even while fractionated spacecraft will have overall higher mass and cost than traditional satellites, these penalties will be outweighed by the advantages of having modules mass-produced and launched into space, which would introduce the same economies of scale and efficiency that PC clusters have over supercomputers.
FTFWA (from the fucking wiki article):
Molette's and subsequent analyses[5] concluded that the benefits of fractionated spacecraft were outweighed by their higher mass and cost.
Who should I trust? Some blogger that writes a sensationalist article that uses a star wars reference and can't be bothered to read his own sources, or a wiki article that lists proper sources? Decisions, decisions ...
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It depends ... if Jimbo himself was involved in the edits ... that $325 per bottle champaigne [blogspot.com] he's charged to Wikipedia may have clouded his judgment. like this [valleywag.com], etc [blogspot.com], etc [anorak.co.uk].
Nomination (Score:2)
Surprised Slashdotters don't see the parallels... (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember back in the old days when there was one monster mainframe that served all the users and access to it was tightly controlled? Then we discovered the wonders of having thousands of smaller computers all networked together, giving incredible flexibility and scaling?
That's what this is for satellites. Instead of having billion-dollar single point failures floating around in space, DARPA is trying to develop the technologies to have constellations of tens, hundreds, thousands of smaller satellites
Cool! A Sarah Connor/Summer Glau Love Scene! (Score:1)
It's interesting to note the 2-hour season ender for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, focused around thwarting the construction of a network of traffic monitor sensors. It's rare to see science fiction lagging behind
Earth is doomed... (Score:2)
Now where did I put that link... (Score:1)
Dammit, every time I have a computer crash, I lose more than the operating system; I lose a zillion small, fun, interesting, and could-be-useful-if-I-meet-Summer-Glau links.
I just hate crashes.
mutter, mutter, mutter.