NASA Drone's Sensors Battle California Wildfires 58
An anonymous reader writes "California is burning, but according to this article advanced sensors on NASA's Ikhana unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can detect exact temperatures (within half a degree) through the smoke, enabling the drone to spot for the firefighters battling the more than 300 wildfires. NASA's Ikhana is the same aircraft as the Predator, except it's being used here to save lives."
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And it was on /. [slashdot.org] then too.
Same as Predator (Score:5, Insightful)
The Predator's primary function is to save lives.
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Re:Same as Predator (Score:4, Funny)
I actually sat looking at your post for a full minute before I realised you weren't talking about the particular kind of Predator whose primary purpose is to hunt aliens and humans for sport. I was trying to figure out how that could be construed as saving lives.
Re:Same as Predator (Score:4, Interesting)
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the job of the military is to kill, period.
Without getting yourself and your years of training killed, and your $15M airplane shot out from under you.
"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
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Re:Same as Predator (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought its primary function was to gather intelligence, which hopefully has the effect of saving American, allied, and non-combatant's lives. But it does that by letting us kill enemy combatants better, which seems different on its face from what this article talks about.
-Peter
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I thought its primary function was to gather intelligence, which hopefully has the effect of saving American, allied, and non-combatant's lives. But it does that by letting us kill enemy combatants better, which seems different on its face from what this article talks about.
-Peter
There's a misconception here. the simple existence of the predator drone has the effect of denying the enemy or potential enemy freedom of movement, irrespective of the ability/willingness to harm.
In this particular sense, it forces the conflict down to platoon level , because it is nearly impossible for the opfor to concentrate force effectively; I expect that nothing would suit the allied forces in Afghanistan better than a replay of the Tet offensive, [wikipedia.org] with all the problems of supply and concentrat
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You just made the same mistake as the careless politician. There must be at least a perceived ability/willingness to do harm. And let's face it, you give the other guy the idea that you're willing to harm him by harming his buddies first.
-Peter
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You just made the same mistake as the careless politician. There must be at least a perceived ability/willingness to do harm. And let's face it, you give the other guy the idea that you're willing to harm him by harming his buddies first.
-Peter
actually, no. the point about the predator is that it denies the free use of space and time, and tactical and strategic surprise. in a asymmetrical conflict in which the good guys have the regular army plus political institutions, THOSE are the ONLY weapons that the terrorists have. try imagining the Viet Nam war with predators roaming in the air equipped with that thermal camera. Have you read the book " we were soldiers then and young?" try seeing the situation with a predator add on. it would be the Ma [wikipedia.org]
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try imagining the Viet Nam war with predators roaming in the air equipped with that thermal camera.
I'm pretty sure that the tri-layer canopy would have absorbed human body heat.
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Primary Function: Armed reconnaissance, airborne surveillance and target acquisition
- http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=122
So the air force disagrees with you...
Sure there's the benefit of not having a pilot in the danger zone, but that's secondary. The primary function isn't to save lives, it's to do the three things above.
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All of which save lives.
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All the things above are in preparation for killing people. Nothing our military does saves lives. That would be oxymoronic.
This new duty on the other hand DOES SAVE LIVES.
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Any military has subcomponents which save the lives of the military personnel themselves. Further, while it hasn't happened recently, once in a while there's on occasion for a defensive war, in which case the military is charged with saving the lives of members of the civilian populace it protects (or allies of the same).
To be sure, these goals (of saving lives... that one cares about) are addressed by destroying other lives... but even so, it most certainly can be fairly stated that military apparatus can
If you're gonna be semantic pedants, do it right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Purpose is a goal, aim, intention.
Function is hat something does or is used for.
So, the purpose is to carry out the function without risking human lives, on the ground or in the air.
So the original statement is wrong too. It doesn't save lives so much as it allows recon, surveillance and targetting without risking lives.
Therefore, the Predator is a weapon system which provides, at a relatively low cost, "Armed reconnaissance, airborne surveillance and target acquisition" with great reduction in risk to friendly soldiers and intelligence assets.
Bottom line, the damn thing saves U.S. soldiers from bleeding. Sheesh.
Re:Same as Predator (Score:5, Insightful)
The Predator's primary function is to save lives.
That may be the end result in both cases, but the primary function of Predator is intelligence gathering, and it can lob missiles too.
And let's not kid ourselves. I think it was Norman Shwartzkopf that said the purpose of the military is to break things and kill people. Even if that is breaking things that would be used against others, and killing those that intend to do harm, it is still breaking & killing, and in the process, there is usually some "collateral damage" to those that had nothing to do with the conflict except to be on the receiving end of shrapnel.
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The Predator's primary function is to save lives.
And "Peace is Our Profession."
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The Predator's primary function is to save lives.
...the lives of people who are themselves killing others. So really, the Predator's primary function is to rebalance the distribution of loss of life in favour of more enemy deaths and fewer allied deaths, not to "save lives".
Also IIRC the Predator has been used extensively for direct strikes against human targets in Afhanistan.
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The Predator's primary function is to save lives.
They should upgrade the thing to carry more weapons, so that it can save even more lives.
(War logic is always twisted)
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Coincidence? (Score:2, Funny)
Has anyone considered the possibility that perhaps these NASA drones are the ones starting the fires? Is it a coincidence that once this technology arrived that the number of forest fires skyrocketed? In a couple of weeks NASA will roll out a better technology and the rate of forest fire creation will plummet. NASA will be hailed as a hero and they will get the budget increases they always wanted--to build their doomsday machines!
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The funny (sad/scary) thing is that the same sort of logic is used seriously in other places:
-- The USA flew planes into the World Trade Center to start a war (as if a reason was necessary)
-- Atmospheric scientists are faking the climate change data to get more funding for atmospheric sciences
NASA, NASA, NASA (Score:3, Interesting)
Mars Lander's Robot Arm Shuts Down To Save Itself [slashdot.org]
Phoenix Mars Lander To Begin Rasping Ice Shavings [slashdot.org]
NASA Contractor Needs Urine [slashdot.org]
NASA Drone's Sensors Battle California Wildfires [slashdot.org]
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Don't get me wrong. I wasn't complaining. It was more of a stunned appreciation.
Mind you, in my mind I was saying NASA, NASA, NASA the way that Jan Brady would say "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!").
not to be hatin but... (Score:2)
Re:not to be hatin but... (Score:5, Informative)
the problem is forests are supposed to burn down from time to time.
50 years of 'only you can prevent forest fires', strict anti-fire laws, and fast acting fire departments have caused forest debris to build up, resulting in these super infernos.
more frequent fires = less dangerous fires, more nutrients in the soil, young trees releasing more oxygen into the air, etc.
an automatic system would seem to work for a little while, but it would only delay the problem. eventually an ueber-inferno will come through and the system will be useless.
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Mod parent up. Putting out forest fires has proven to be yet another form of short term thinking that gets us into a lot more trouble in the long term. Sometimes you really do have to destroy a forest in order to save it.
Re:not to be hatin but... (Score:4, Informative)
That's a bit simplistic, the idea is to burn the undergrowth not destroy the forrest.
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Eh, it was mostly just a rhetorical flourish. To many people a healthy burn looks like total destruction, and I've always appreciated the resonance of the "destroy the village in order to save it" phrase from the Vietnam war.
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Actually, some trees cannot reproduce without a forest fire scorching them. Can't quite remember the species though
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That may have been true in the past, but this has been understood for some time now, and modern fire management has been applied in recent years to let more acreage burn, even setting frequent intentional fires to try and implement controlled burns (though sometimes this can go horribly wrong, as in the Los Alamos conflagration a few years back).
The real problem is that you have people planting houses in the middle of these areas, and there's a mission to save human life that you can't just write off. In s
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Pull a number from somewhere for how much you think it would cost to cover a square mile with your 'solution'. Now multiply it by thousands and thousands of square miles.
Already been done (Score:2, Informative)
Ya, they did this last year when Southern California was on fire. All the pretty pictures of the San Bernardino mountains (next to my house) were from a NASA UAV. It was picking out the hotspots for the planes and choppers flying out of the Hot Shots place at San Bernardino Int'l Airport down the street.
AUAV next step (Score:3, Interesting)
Now we just need a swarm of automatic choppers which can then be directed by a point and click interface at command and control.
"Suppress "this" area."
or an emergency button for crews on the ground:
"drop water on me."
It would be like the roomba of California.
This issue with California is (Score:1)
Ikhana (Score:1)
Forest Service has been doing this for years (Score:3, Informative)
The USDA Forest Service Research Station in California has been doing this for a few years now posting rectified images on their website for fire suppression and anyone else to view. Images are rectified and draped over maps showing temperatures in false color and can be seen with Google Earth and with Zoomify, a Flash applet. The images are converted to shape files for Forest Service use, too.
The aircraft, a Piper Navajo light twin engine aircraft, is unfortunately out of service for engine replacement.
That's good (Score:3, Funny)