Richard Garriott W5KWQ in Space

Richard Garriott, W5KWQ is on his way to the International Space Station (ISS) as the sixth "space tourist" riding on a Soyuz spacecraft. This would be just another rich guy buys a ride into space story, except that Richard is a ham radio operator, a successful technogeek and the son of a famous astronaut.

For me, the story starts back in November of 1983 when the Space Shuttle mission STS-9 included an astronaut named Owen Garriott, who is a radio amateur (W5LFL). This was the first flight that had SAREX (Space Amateur Radio Experiment) on board, which was a modified commercial VHF FM handheld radio set for the 2-Meter ham band. Everyone was listening for the first ham radio transmissions from space, myself included. I was living in the greater Seattle area at the time and I happened to hear the first transmission between W5LFL on the Shuttle Columbia and WA1JXN in Montana. Columbia was coming in over the Pacific Ocean and I could hear W5LFL very clearly. So clearly, I wondered if it was really him (or could some local guy on 2M FM be messing with us.) In retrospect, I should have known....after all, a transmission from the shuttle overhead is a slam-dunk, line-of-sight piece of cake QSO on 2 Meters. AA5TB has made a few audio recordings of W5LFL radio transmissions available on the web.

Owen Garriott's son Richard wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps as an astronaut, but found out as a kid that his eyesight would keep him out of the astronaut corps. There is a great article in Wired magazine that gives the background on Richard's journey into space. (If you are interested in this story at all, the Wired article is a must read.) Richard has his own RichardInSpace website that is also interesting. So instead of being an astronaut, he ends up writing computer gaming software and makes millions of dollars. (Apparently, Richard is famous in the computer gaming world.) Not a bad tradeoff, I suppose, as he is now able to pay for the ride up to the ISS.

While the ARRL announcement tells about the ham radio side of the story, the mainstream media has picked up on the "son follows father into space" story, sometimes with a mention of ham radio. Richard plans to transmit pictures from space using Slow-Scan Television (SSTV). The ARISS (Amateur Radio aboard International Space Station) sent out this announcement:

The ARISS team received word from ARISS Russia delegate Sergey Samburov,
RV3DR, that the current ISS crew expect to transmit SSTV on October 12 from
18:00-21:00 UTC. This is your opportunity to test out your SSTV reception
capability and to post images on the ARISS SSTV Gallery. The planned
downlink for this operation will be 145.80 MHz with Robot 36 as the expected
SSTV mode of operation.

You should be able to receive these photos yourself by using an FM receiver on 145.80 MHz, a PC with soundcard and the MMSSTV software. Oh, the ISS needs to be within radio range, which means you need to figure out how to track it in real time. Or just go to this NASA website. The ARISS team has established a blog for providing updates on the SSTV operation and a web page for sharing of SSTV photos from around the world.

Just so it doesn't get missed: there is another radio amateur on board, Mike Fincke (KE5AIT). Some web pages to watch for current information include http://www.ariss.org/, http://www.amsat.org/, http://www.arrl.org/ and http://www.issfanclub.com/ .

All of this is very interesting to me, taking me back to 1983. Then, I realize that was 25 years ago. Is the space shuttle really that old? Afraid so.

73, Bob K0NR

Sweet Little Acer Aspire One PC

My spouse's notebook computer died a few weeks ago, about 1 year after the 1 year warranty expired. This was not very satisfying. I also had my notebook PC die this past year, so it is starting to look like notebooks are disposal devices. Funny, my desktop PCs just keep on going year after year without a problem. This probably has something to do with the abuse that notebooks get being carried around from place to place.

So if we are going to end up replacing these things every few years, I got interested in lowering the cost. There are a number of compact netbooks that typically run Linux on the Intel Atom and use a solid state drive (no spinning hard disk). We settled on the Acer Aspire One, which is $329 from Amazon (free shipping). This computer has a 1.6GHz Atom N270 Processor, 8GB solid state drive, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM, 802.11b/g, Ethernet, three USB 2.0, VGA output, 1.3 megapixel camera, SDHC and multi-format media readers. I popped an 8GB SDRAM card into the expansion slot and it now has 16 GB. It uses the Linux LinpusLite operating system. (Some netbook models are going with WindowsXP, but I think these minimalist machines are better off with the small footprint of Linux.) The only thing I wish it had was a good-old dialup modem for those rare times when you are stuck without a decent wireless connection. (I'd trade that for the VGA display output.)

It comes ready to run with Linux and the key applications already loaded. For web browsing (Firefox), email (Acer Email) and writing (OpenOffice), it is ready to go. I did decide to load Thunderbird for email (instead of the supplied Acer Email application). This machine is configured like an appliance with not much thought of how the user will add applications. However, a little fiddling around on the web and the use of my (cough) extensive (cough) knowledge of Unix commands got Thunderbird loaded.

So far, this computer has exceeded our expectations. It is really compact, has a great display and is easy to use. What it does, it does well. However, it is NOT a full-size, full-featured notebook computer. For the intended use of internet communications, email, web, basic document creation, it works great. I am hoping that the simple design, with no hard drive, with also last a little longer. Did I mention that this thing boots fast? Go, Linux.

I can't get it out of my wife's hands. Trust me, I've tried.

73, Bob K0NR

Followup Oct 11: I've noticed that the netbook product category continues to be dynamic with new products being introduced all of the time. Check out the latest offerings from Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, MSI, etc. before making a purchase.