Purpose of system is so European users won’t be vulnerable to accuracy degrades by the US, Russian, or Chinese GPS constellations, should any of those players wish to do so.
There will be 24 satellites in the system when fully deployed, plus a few extra for spares. Currently 18 are in orbit. One is close to complete failure for some other reason.
Now there is a problem with failing clocks.
Each satellite has four atomic clocks, two rubidium and two hydrogen maser. Those give accuracy to within one second per three million years. That level of accuracy is needed to get the most precise location data.
Nine of the hyper accurate clocks have failed in orbit. One sat has 2 failures. That means 8 sats have lost one or more clocks.
Does the graph remind you of the newspaper and music industry? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Several articles provide an in-depth view of the disruption taking place in several industries due to the IT revolution.
Hollywood is ripe for the same creative destruction we’ve seen in music, newspapers, and publishing.
New York Times is shrinking their physical space and staff size
Prime time TV still having a rough time
The question to ponder in the back of your mind is what are you going to do when this wave of disruption overturns your industry?
January 2017 – Vanity Fair – Why Hollywood As We Know It is Already Over– Looking for a good article on how technology is going to do to Hollywood what IT has already done to music and publishing? If so, this is what you’ve been looking for.
Check out the article to help understand the massive change surrounding us.
Disruption of music industry
First, music and newspapers. The author saw his first indication the music industry would collapse when he started downloading music. Instead of driving to a store somewhere and spending $20 to get one song he wanted, he could spend a buck and get the song immediately.
Author says the music industry has shrunk by half in the last decade. Remember that is after the first round of disruption hit.
Disruption of newspapers
Next were the newspapers. For a long time, the web part of the New York Times was physically separate from the headquarters. “Banished” is the word the author used. At the same time, startups like Instapundit (yeah Professor Reynolds!) and DailyKos were figuring out how to blog. Then WordPress and Tumblr allowed anyone on the planet to start blogging, and doing so for free.
Author says a lot of people didn’t want to wander over to a newsstand and buy a whole newspaper or magazine when instead they could read the single article they wanted, online, for free.
To illustrate the concept, I’ve never bought a copy of Vanity Fair and doubt I ever will. I certainly didn’t drive over to Barnes & Noble to buy the current edition so I could read this article. A blogger I read (see above!) mentioned it and I clicked over.
Workover rig, immediately north of Williston. Photo by James Ulvog.
Update: Greetings to readers arriving from The Million Dollar Way! Enjoy! Oh, by the way MDW, you are verywelcome. For other readers, if you enjoy my writing on energy in general, Bakken in particular, and the wide open frontier of the energy revolution, somewhere around one-quarter of the credit for what I know goes to the learning provided by MDW.
I’ll make a guess we will be hearing lots more stories of hiring in Bakken. Some recent articles:
Two articles on oil companies hiring fracking crews
Scuttlebutt is staffing shortages to develop
Two articles on Target Logistics converting crew camp into hotel
12/29 – Grand Forks Herald at Dickinson press – Oil companies hiring fracking crews in Bakken – Job Service North Dakota said there are 60 companies wanting to staff up fracking crews. Each crew will need between 45 and 65 workers, so that something in the range of 300 or 350 jobs in the new year.
It takes about two or three days to frack a well. Assume two wells per crew per week. That would be 12 wells a week for 6 crews, or somewhere around 48 wells in a four-week month. Keep in mind that’s on top of whatever fracking crews are in the field now.
Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com before they merged into Adobe Stock.
Drone technology marches forward, regardless of whether you or I think it is a good idea. A few recent article:
Incorporating drones into a home security system.
LA Sheriff starts to use drones
US Navy experimenting with swarms of drone ships
ISIS using off-the-shelf quadcopters to drop small bombs.
1/3 – Engadget.com – Your next home security system could deploy patrol drones – A company has developed a security system with a learning algorithm which ‘learns’ the normal routine at your home. When something happens outside the range of normal, the system can deploy drones to put several cameras on the situation.
Is that robot telling other robots what parts to pull in an Amazon warehouse? Or is it searching databases to develop your profile before picking which call center operator to connect you to? Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Here are a few recent reports of astounding things IT and AI can do:
Amazon warehouses are so heavily automated it only takes about sixty seconds of human labor to pull, pack, and ship your order.
Call centers can construct a profile of you while the phone is ringing.
In our society, where if there isn’t video to illustrate and prove a story, the story didn’t happen, it is getting easier to fabricate video.
For a more overall view (and under fair use) I added up the launches from 1998 through 2006 and then from 2007 through 2016. I chose a break of 2007 because that is when Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed their joint venture, United Launch Alliance. Here are the long-term trends:
Above graph shows the average daily production in North Dakota statewide and in the Bakken field. Output in November dropped to 1,033,693 bopd from October production of 1,043,318 (revised), a change of 9,625, or down 0.92%.
Falcon 9 at Vandenberg SLC 4E, ready to lift 10 Iridium satellites into orbit. Credit Flickr. Courtesy of SpaceX who has placed their photos in the public domain.
I just watched SpaceX lift 10 satellites into low-earth orbit for Iridium. This will allow Iridium to replace their constellation of communication sats. Another 71 sats will go up, of which 60 more will be lifted by SpaceX.
Here are merely two of the super cool aspects of this launch.
WInd farms will soon get 30 year long permits to take out those birds. Image courtesy of DollarPhotoClub prior to their merger into Adobe Stock.
Just a few of the recent articles providing updates on slice-and-dicers damage in general and status of North Dakota wind farmsplants in particular.
Wyoming project may get specific permission to kill eagles
All wind farmsplants get broad permission to kill eagles for 30 years
Massive subsidies for wind power, which is intermittent and unreliable, meaning it is often unavailable when needed
Updates on two N.D. turbine farms
12/8/16 – Denver Post – Wyoming wind project may get permit to kill eagles – The Chokecherry-Sierra Madre wind farmplant, which will start with 500 slice-and-dicers and may expand to 1,000 bird-choppers, could get two critical permits by next month (January).
The first permit will allow destroying eagle nests that are currently unoccupied. I’m guessing that will chase away eagles from the kill zone.
The second permit will allow the facility to kill 14 golden eagles a year for five years. They can also off 2 bald eagles a year for five years.
The slicer farmplant will have to do mitigation for the golden eagles they expect to kill, but not the bald eagles.
Image courtesy of Dollar Photo Club before they merged into Adobe Stock.
Several recent articles reveal research into weaponizing drones:
Russian nuke-armed drone sub
DARPA trying to develop swarm capability
successful test of a swarm
converting full size plane into drone with drop-in package
12/8 – Bill Gertz at Washington Free Beacon – Russia Tests Nuclear-Capable Drone Sub – Published reports in Russia indicates their military is developing a drone sub that can travel 6,200 miles, dive to 3,280 feet, and zip along at 56 knots.
Most troublesome is it will equipped to carry a nuclear weapon, possibly up to the massively huge size of 100 megatons.
I will modify their tally by adding another 15 launches by China as reported by GBTimes, China to attempt close to 30 space launches in 2017. Behind the Black explains that China is somewhat secretive about their space plans, so they don’t announce all their expected launches.
In other news, Behind the Black reports India considers going to Jupiter and Venus. Their first manned flights are planned for 2024. BtB also reports Arianespace wins two contracts, aims for a dozen launches in 2017. Article guesses that Arianspace is getting these contracts because SpaceX has a backlog longer than their current capacity can deliver timely. Article indicates SpaceX needs to up their launch rate to stay competitive.
So, here is the list of planned launches. I also include the lift vehicle. That data is useful for me in order to keep straight what rockets belong to whom.
Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). Fisher Fine Arts Library building. Photo courtesy of DollarPhotoClub.com
The sexual abuse in the Penn State football program has actually had a large dollar cost for the University. Will look at that in a moment and then consider the magnitude of the cost in relation to revenue.
Parabolic Arc – USA, China Led World in Launches in 2016 – Supercool article describes the launch successes and failures in 2016, including a tally of launches by country and life vehicles. Recap of status of all the US players.
I pulled the tally of attempts and successes, including the launch pad failure of a Falcon 9 as an attempt, even though it didn’t get off the ground and thus is not actually an attempt:
This is a really big deal because water is critical for space travel. Obvious use is hydration of astronauts and food preparation. Not so obviously, the H2O can be broken down into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for propulsion.
Combine that idea with the cost of getting anything into orbit, which is somewhere north of $100,000 a pound. More on that in a moment. A gallon of water to drink could cost something in the range of a million dollars, give or take, to get into orbit.
