On Dec 19, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Joe Fitzgerald wrote:
Nate Duehr wrote:
It seems that during SAREX, more crews were active. ISS crews seem either a lot busier (less personal time for ham radio?) or are generally a lot less interested --
I had a chance to speak with our hometown astronaut Suni Williams recently, and she indicated that access to other forms of communication, specifically e-mail and VoIP phones, have become available to the astronauts making radio less interesting to those astronauts not already bitten by the ham bug.
-Joe KM1P
Makes sense, Joe.
The general idea expressed above is a major challenge for getting young (new) people into ham radio everywhere where there's decent IP network access.
The average Joe, or more importantly, Joe's kids even... can communicate with the world, in a multitude of ways now, worldwide, easier than operating any modern ham rig, even FM.
A couple of clicks of the mouse, and they're doing videoconferencing with $20 webcams -- something that only a few years back was only done with multi-thousand-dollar videoconferencing units. Let alone e-mail, IM, chat, and file transfers...
I've shown a few computer-savvy kids (who have their own multi-boot computers already set up at home, just for fun) the guts of IRLP on Linux systems, and they shrug and think it's pretty boring. The percentage that find radio interesting for radio (instead of the more common, "Wow you can talk to someone far away!" astonishment of the past), even when invited to a ham shack to see it in person, is diminishing, and I'm not sure that trend will slow down anytime soon. (Sad, isn't it?)
Kenneth's comment about the VoIP phone even has me more intrigued than the ham station, sadly enough. I want to know how they get the bandwidth up and down on the IP network! (GRIN) Is that a TDRSS function?
Knowing (since I work in telco on VoIP platforms and phones as one aspect of my work) what the bandwidth and latency requirements are for the IP network for a VoIP phone to work properly -- I now know there's "pretty good" data service to the ISS! (I wonder if it's documented anywhere, or if it's all classified...)
(Also makes me wonder who's VoIP phone got space qualified. GRIN!)
Sometimes it sucks to be overly-curious about these things! Curiosity killed the cat... or at least kept him awake nights Googling for info!
-- Nate Duehr, WY0X nate@natetech.com