The Future Of Communication?

High speed communication may be about to get even faster. Until now we've always used radio waves to communicate with, but in an up coming test, NASA will be using lasers to send and receive data. NASA will be testing the effectiveness of the system with it's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, which will be launched on September 6th, 2013.

If all goes well the test will proceed as follows. First, when the satellite, while orbiting the moon is in view from earth, three ground stations will shoot a laser at it's location. Once one of the beams illuminates the spacecraft, the orbiter will begin transmitting it's own laser toward the ground station and the two signals will connect, lock together, and then begin transmitting.

Data transmission from the earth to the spacecraft should happen at a rate of 20 Mbps while downloads should take place at the even faster rate of 622 Mbps. That's about ten times the speed of current radio transmissions. From this, NASA will be able to send and receive high resolution images, movies, and 3D.

If the use of this technology proves to be successful in future missions within our solar system, especially missions to Mars, it may at some point find it's way into all manner of terrestrial applications. Use of lasers to communicate here on earth my mean not only greater bandwidth but higher communication speeds with less interference, signal loss or degradation.

This is just one more piece of evidence that the future may indeed be, now.

Sideways

On August 13th 2013, SpaceX launched it new experimental reusable rocket nicknamed "Grasshopper," for a successful test flight. The rocket's test marked the first time that a man made spacecraft lifted off and then landed vertically.

The 10 story tall rocket took off from SpaceX's launch facility in McGregor, Texas. The rocket flew to an altitude of 820 feet before flying sideways for about 328 feet. Then, in mid air, it flew back to it's original position and then quickly descended for a perfect landing back on the launch pad.

While the entire flight only lasted for just over a minute, lateral movement, or divert tests are important for showing how well a reusable rocket can be controlled. The larger the rocket the more difficult that can be. At 10 stories, one can see how this successful test will help in designing spacecraft that may one day be used to deliver payloads to the International Space Station.

SpaceX already has a contract with NASA under which it uses it's Falcon 9 rocket and robotic Dragon Capsule for cargo runs to the ISS. One day it may be possible to cut cost by using Grasshopper to carry supplies into space and then fly the rocket back into the atmosphere for a pinpoint landing.

It's conceivable that at some point, with continuing advancements in rocketry, that it may one day be possible to have manned space flights using rockets patterned after "Grasshopper's" design. It might sound like hyperbole, but we may be on the cusp of a new paradigm in space flight technology.

No Absolute Time

It's August, already? That's what I thought the other day when I saw that it was time for preseason football again. As much as I love football, it seemed, at least to me that for some reason, this year, the new season had come a little sooner than expected. 

Of course the reason could be that I had been so busy with various things that I hadn't noticed the passage of time. Days had seemingly whizzed by. Remember when we were kids and days seemed like weeks, weeks seemed like months, and months seemed like years? 

It makes me think back to what Einstein said about time. He said that it was an illusion. He said, “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.”  It would appear that our perception of time is what it all comes down to.

As we get older, the time we spend having a particular experience can become shorter, as a result, the amount of detail that that goes into our stored memories becomes less and less. Because of the lack of greater detail, we get a sense that time is passing faster. The more information that we receive from our experiences the longer our days seem to be and slower our days appear to pass.

What I find most interesting about what I mentioned above is that Einstein also said that the past, present, and future are three stubbornly persistent illusions. He went on to say that space and time are essentially one and the same. For that reason, he believed that the past, present, and future all exist at once, without separation. 

Such a notion can be a bit confusing. I tend to sort it all out by thinking of the past as what we remember and the future as what we anticipate. To put it in another way, the present is the future becoming the past. This is just my opinion, but as humans, even though no two of us can have the same exact experience, we all perceive the world in the same way. The color red is the same to all of us regardless of what language we speak.

It just may be true that we are all suffering from temporal distortion. And, we are not yet able to get beyond a comfort zone where what we know, think, and feel about the passage of time allows us to live above a certain level of frustration that would certainly exist if we thought about such things too long or too hard.

But, maybe that’s just what we need. More time thinking, as we are living.    

What The Numbers Say

I guess that there's two possible views that readers take when they read an economic report about digital music sales. This is just my opinion, but it seems that most are totally disinterested, or what a blogger says about digital music sales can cause a mild fluctuation in the stock market. Either way, no matter how important it may be to share such information, it can come off sounding a bit dry or uninteresting.

This past week Business Insider reported that download sales had "plummeted," from just a year ago. This was the headline they used as they interpreted a report from Digital Music News, that there had indeed been a decline. The data was taken from a Nielsen SoundScan report that stated that sales of digital downloads had fallen from to 682.2 million from last years 698 million. You can clearly see that that's about 16 million or a difference of 2.3%. While that is a drop, you could hardly say that sales have plummeted.

In fact, Billboard just released a report stating that this is more a reflection that digital download sales are merely slowing in their growth rate. They go on to say that due to the increased interest in streaming music services, that this was to be expected. In actuality, digital album sales are up 6.3% for the first half of this year while single unit sales were up 1.6%.

Though some major label artists have already released their albums for this year, there are still many more to come, as most will try to release their projects in the fall. Starting in September major labels begin releasing albums as we head toward the holidays and the Christmas shopping season. The numbers above still place the industry on a pace to match or at least come close to the total digital sales of 2010.

While none of this may make for an exciting read, it does serve to put things into perspective. There's no volatility here, at least that I can see. There seems to be enough room for everyone. It might even be possible that the prediction I read not long ago about 2016 being a big year for the music industry, at least the digital aspect of it, may yet come true.