How graduate students amuse themselves

[DavidDvorkin]

A group of scientists and engineers is working on an ambitious project to revive a unique UK satellite - still in orbit after almost 40 years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14783135

[MineralMan]

1. Cool. I hope they manage to talk to it.

So much of the technology we have launched into space is dead and useless. It's a pity, really.

[Rex]

5. A huge waste.

[customerserviceguy]

2. It's also an interesting exercise

in digging up what is needed to find things that may be lost to history. So very many limited-use pieces of software and other communications protocols have been used, and subsequently discarded that it will be tough for others to decode 20th Century technology in the future.

Their studies will be of benefit to anyone seeking to decipher any old format music discovered in someone's trunk. Can you imagine an unreleased Beatles or Rolling Stones song found in the attic of a band member's descendant? Someone will need to find a way to play it, and this graduate study will provide part of the blueprint for doing that.

[MineralMan]

7. It's a little different. If old musical recordings are found,

someone will have the equipment needed to play it, ready to go. Someone like me, who has a 100-year-old oak wall phone in my kitchen, still connected to the telephone lines and still working. I have an Edison cylinder phonograph, too, so I can play any old cylinders I find. I have a friend with an Edison record player, so he can hear that format of recording.

Reel to reel tape is no problem. 8-track, either. I have working 8-track player that's also compatible with 4-track cartridges, too. I'd have to borrow my neighbor's laser disk player, though, if I wanted to view a laser disk.

There's always someone who keeps the old technology for popular media. Always. It's the one-off things like this British satellite that are the problem, really. Consumer and common professional formats are not really a problem. Someone has the equipment needed to deal with it.

[customerserviceguy]

9. Ok, bad example

But surely there are other people who are going to find obsolete technology that they want to utilize in some way, or merely decode. I regret that my imagination was not prepared to come up with a better example of how these folks' endeavors will help others who wish to trod along a similar path.

I tip my hat to those who labor to communicate with this satellite, and have hope that their success is beneficial to others.

[a la izquierda]

3. No, no, no...

that's how geeky graduate students amuse themselves. Us nerdy graduate students in field of history amuse ourselves by arguing politics and the best presidents over beers. And we also find it great fun to debate the actual academic disciplines of geeks, nerds, and dorks (all of the above are true, and in fact, I thanked my special group of nerds for precisely the above alcohol fueled conversations in my dissertation).

[csziggy]

10. Or join SCA if they are interested in earlier periods

I was an early SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) member. Our group liked the applied archeology aspects of the group, and some of the people with an interest in theater liked dressing up. Plus, a good time was had by all with partying.

We were all burned out on politics by Nixon and Watergate - most of us voted against Nixon and watched the Watergate hearings as much as possible - and we wanted a more escapist approach to history/anthropology.

[Lucian]

4. Ah, but we graduate students in the field of archaeology...

discuss theory over drinking beers. We don't do cool stuff like that.

But I like how they say Duthie's team could be the world's first astro-archaeologists. :thumbsup:

[DavidDvorkin]

6. My son loved the astro-archeologist label

He also speculated a time in the future when Chinese and Indian robots are examining the leftover US and Soviet/Russian space junk from the Cold War and thereafter, while the US and Russia complain and are increasingly ignored.

[stevedeshazer]

8. I dunno. The thing is probably 6-volt positive ground.

Like my old Sunbeam. Never could keep the thing running.

[MineralMan]

11. Another old British car buff, I see.

Lucas - Prince of Darkness.

[Blue_Tires]

12. They'll find out the satellite's TRUE purpose was listening to Brezhnev sing in the shower...

:crazy: