Earthlings and astronauts chat away, via ham radio [Los Angeles Times]
The International Space Station cost more than $100 billion. A ham radio set can be had for a few hundred bucks.
Perhaps that explains, in part, the appeal of having one of humankind’s greatest scientific inventions communicate with Earth via technology that’s more than 100 years old. But perhaps there’s a simpler explanation for why astronauts and ham radio operators have been talking, and talking, for years.
NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock was just a few weeks into his six-month mission at the space station when feelings of isolation began to set in.
The International Space Station cost more than $100 billion. A ham radio set can be had for a few hundred bucks.
Perhaps that explains, in part, the appeal of having one of humankind’s greatest scientific inventions communicate with Earth via technology that’s more than 100 years old. But perhaps there’s a simpler explanation for why astronauts and ham radio operators have been talking, and talking, for years.
NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock was just a few weeks into his six-month mission at the space station when feelings of isolation began to set in.
Wheelock would be separated from loved ones, save for communication via an internet phone, email or social media. At times, the stress and tension of serving as the station’s commander could be intense.
Ham Radio Links to Earth for Lonely Space Station Astronauts
The first amateur radio transmission from space was in 1983 from astronaut Owen Garriott aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. He was a licensed ham who used his equipment in Houston to chat with his father in Oklahoma. by Samantha Masunaga, Los Angeles Times / December 23, 2020 NASA astronaut Nick Hague floats inside Europe s Columbus laboratory module during a HAM radio session using the International Space Station s call sign NA1SS in 2019. (NASA) TNS
(TNS) - The International Space Station cost more than $100 billion. A ham radio set can be had for a few hundred bucks.
host: it s so good to be with you, professor michael gazzaniga, today, to talk about your new book, who s in charge, free will and the science of the brain. let me pick up actually right on the title. you have free will in it. it s a little hard to miss and that is a concept that has been around for centuries, millennia actually and it s been a major thorny and controversial debate for so many years so now why is there something new to say about it? guest: i think the occasion to think i had something to say about it was to give a series of lectures where you pull together 60 years of brain research. in doing that, one can t help but think of the brain from a mechanistic point of view, how the brain works, how it does its stuff. and there s been, you know, incredible advances in the last 60, 70 years on that topic. and you walk away with the view that, well, this is how the brain works. and then you ask yourself the question, well, given we re kind of understanding how th