I couldn’t resist passing on this story. It appears as if the first Tweet as been sent from outer space. According to the New York Times, Astronaut Timothy Creamer sent the first live tweet from space last Friday. The Astronauts have connections speeds as high as 3Mbps up and 10Mbps down. Here’s their setup:
According to the IT staff, the space station is equipped with 68 IBM ThinkPad A31 laptops and 32 Lenovo ThinkPad T61p devices. The laptops are all connected via Wi-Fi access points, and “there’s also a dedicated IP phone for phone calls and some limited video-conferencing abilities if astronauts need to see their families.”
I think the most interesting part of the story was a comment from a reader…
Hmm…the astronauts have faster internet than me. This is pathetic.
And he was from San Francisco! I can think of whole communities who can’t get that kind of connection.
Just think if NTIA or RUS did an analysis for stimulus on this one. I don’t think they would get many points for reasonable costs!
No but they might get bonus points for remote.