Hackers in Space | Hacker News Reader

Hackers in Space

events.ccc.de

90 pointsc3o18 comments

FYI, it's a 3500 attendee camp. It is also almost sold out (presale currently), so if you plan to attend and don't have a ticket, now is a good time.

Thanks to emerging low-cost satellite launches (like from http://interorbital.com/), fun projects like http://sat.mur.at/ are already in the real of being possible. I may be an hopeless optimist, but some relatively low-bandwidth hacker-operated satellite network within 20 years is not totally impossible.

In twenty years, as long as you got something up, it will be high bandwidth compared with today.

phase two: Put a hacker into orbit.

Phase 2.5: console widow, figure out how to get him back down. Alternate phase 2: send cat into space instead, start new meme and initiate hacker war with PETA. (jk)

Phase 2 is already in progress.

Check out the Copenhagen Suborbitals guys, they launch succesfuly their first suborbital rocket a month ago.

http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/

Nice video on their page. I especially loved their "caution fragile" marker -- on a rocket!

Considering how most hackers build stuff at hackerspaces ("i don't know how to build this, so let's go with trial and error and learn as we go!") this sounds dangerous.

But cool.

By the way, we'll set up a Ruby village at the Camp. Come and join us:

http://railscamp.github.com/ruby-village

You can also just support our cause to spread some Ruby love with a few bucks in our Pledgie, which is only 50% complete at the moment:

http://pledgie.com/campaigns/15397

Other interesting projects include an attempt to have a transparent open source leaking platform to carry on Wikileaks legacy.

OpenLeaks; "Instead of publishing the documents, OpenLeaks will send the leaked documents to various news entities or publishers."

Wish I was kidding: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Openleaks

I agree this policy of OpenLeaks is a bit dubious. The project the Chaos Computer Club are working on is called 'GlobalLeaks'. I cannot determine if it is going to be respectable.

EDIT: Just saw that OpenLeaks are going to be at the conference. GlobalLeaks is a group attempting to create open source leaking platform. It might be that 'OpenLeaks' = 'GlobalLeaks'

Are there going to be presentation slides / videos / ustreams? Would like to cross the atlantic to come see but can't.

They usually are recorded.

The last camp apparently was in 2007: http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/CCCamp07/video/m4v/

(More events: http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/ )

I can't be the only one with a sudden, fond memory of the Muppets.

Which I find, indeed, hackerish. Jim Henson and crew hacked an entire presentation medium, mainstreaming an entire character type (the puppet, formerly relegated to kids shows and ventriloquists).

I hope this combination of earnest endeavor and levity can escape our gravity well.

Sounds like it might be a little more expensive than an arduino kit and some free time.

Yet I remain optimistic that it might eventually only cost the same as a transatlantic flight does today to get a 180lb human into orbit.

PCs were started this way...

The Hacker Space Program should tackle the next piracy: 3D printing (Formally known as Reprap) [0].

[0] http://reprap.org/wiki/EndOfIntellectualProperty

This is absurd -- the hacker movement is too small and undisciplined, and it lacks substantial knowledge about engineering and physics, to make this its central project for the next 30+ years.

I'm all for big projects, but the hacker community should focus on what it knows how to do -- write software.

Neat, but in order for me to take this seriously they have to at least spell 'satellite' correctly.

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