Viewers of BBC's Top Gear, here is the "ghost" Spanish airport used as a test track..
Category: Thoughts
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I’ve moved this blog Google+
Over the last few years I have posted here less and less, while I find myself posting much more on Google+ and Twitter. So as of today I’m moving my blog over to Google+.
Follow me at +ed parsons
I’ll see you there!
At just after 9:00 am on the 29th May 2003, I achieved a lifetime ambition and flew Concorde ! Concorde had six months of service remaining with British Airways so the rush was on for fellow Aviation geeks to organise the trip of a lifetime.
The journey was perhaps the last occasion that I could describe as an example of glamorous air travel. The dedicated Concorde lounge at JFK’s Terminal 7 had a real buzz about it, although the usual compliment of banker and celebrity passengers was supplemented my people such as myself who were here for the ride..
Clearly visible through the wall to celling windows was the flagship of British Airways fleet, G-BOAC. After the obligatory glass of champagne it was time to board and I took my seat 6D inside as everyone says the rather cramped cabin, similar to a modern Embraer E jet .
I had specifically chosen to fly back from New York to London on flight BA002 as my Concorde experience for what happened next.. Anyone who flew on Concorde will tell you the take off was like no other experience after all it was the only commercial airliner to take off using afterburners ! But the take off from New York was even more special, because of the need to carry out noise abatement procedures very quickly after take off, Concorde made a hard left turn, enough to make you feel both pushed down and back into your seat from the acceleration – very roller-coaster like !
This video give you some sense of this unique departure..
Very quickly after take off the afterburners are switched off and there is a noticeable deceleration and reduction in noise. After a few minutes and another glass of Champagne and canapés, it was time to really get going.. the Captain made a short announcement switched on the afterburners again which felt like a kick in the back and we rapidly accelerated to Mach 2.0 1330 MPH and an altitude of 56,000 feet.
At such a speed and altitude there was no real impression of speed, other than perhaps from the heat felt when touching the small windows, the heat a product of air friction.
Looking out of the window produced a view quite different to the 747 flying only half as high as Concorde. The sky was much darker and it is possible to just about see the curvature of the earth, and the thin blue line which represents the vital but very fragile part of the atmosphere in which we all live.
I will never in all likelihood be as high or travel as fast again in my life as I did for those couple of hours ten years ago, indeed the captain made the point at that moment there were only five people higher than the 100 passengers in Concorde, and they were on the International Space Station !
I completely understand the economics of why Concorde no longer flies, but is still seems wrong that the technological masterpiece on which I flew now sits in a Museum at Manchester Airport !
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to take part in the ImaGIne conference organised by the European Umbrella Organisation for Geographic Information in Dublin. The conference although not very well attended did contain both excellent presentations and perhaps unusually great discussions which really seemed to address some of the key challenges of using geospatial technology in Europe.
A talk on the use of Geo in the context of Europe brings us inevitably to the Inspire Directive and it’s progress and impact. Inspire which came into force almost exactly six years ago is the programme to build an European Spatial Data Infrastructure by October 2020. Inspire was the topic of much discussion at the conference as this year a number of important articles of the directive must be implemented.
An obvious concern expressed by many, included myself, is the difficulty of legislating to build an information system over such a long time. Developing quite prescriptive rules as to how to share information is almost impossible with the speed of technological development online.
The issue is perhaps more problematic when you think that many of the ideas and principles enshrined in the Directive were developed during the five years leading up to 2007, a time before social networking, big data and the mobile internet.
In hindsight of course perhaps a less rigid approach which articulated the principles of sharing environmental data and their benefits might have been a better outcome, concentrating on policy issues around reuse of information rather than the actual mechanics. And yes of course I accept the point that without harmonisation of data and the creation of (limited) metadata data sharing is difficult, nether-less often inspirational ideas are best when they plant the seed of an idea and accept that how the idea is accomplished may differ.
Before the conference in Dublin, I was asked to speak at a meeting at the European Commission in Brussels and was asked to bring along a object which to me represented the Inspire programme. Feel free to suggest your own in the comments, but I brought along my rather battered copy of Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon“.
Along with HG Wells, Verne is credited with pioneering science fiction, and with this book although published in 1865 demonstrates the power of a inspiration idea. Both Wernher von Braun and Robert H. Goddard cite the book as a catalyst for their interest is rocketry and space exploration. Published 100 years before the actual moon landings Verne was able to make some uncanny predictions, correctly suggesting that three men would leave the earth in a capsule launched from Florida after much political horse trading! Of course technology moved on and 1969’s great achievement was made with liquid fuel rockets and computers not the large cannon suggested by Verne – still the idea was the inspiration !
So perhaps we should look at the Inspire programme in the same way, a moon shot idea that today may be achieved is different ways to at first considered..
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)
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God Speed Nexus One…
A Nexus powered satellite to be launched today – fingers crossed, welcome to the age of the Maker Sat ?
STRaND-1 (the Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator), is a shoe box sized satellite weighing just 4.3kg.
It will launch into a 785km sun-synchronous orbit on ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from Sriharikota, India.
STRaND-1 will also be the first UK CubeSat to be launched and has been developed by University of Surrey’s Surrey Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL). Amazingly the build and test phase of the project was completed in just three months.
The brains of the satellite is a Google Nexus One smartphone running Android. The Nexus One contains manages several key functions of the satellite providing cameras, radio links, accelerometers and high performance computer processing.
This in my mind is a great demonstration of what is possible by taking a different approach to engineering in the age of sophisticated consumer electronics, that said the guys at Surrey are Rocket Scientists who really know their stuff and launching even 4kg into orbit still needs access to powerful and expensive machines, but tinkering with my Raspberry PI and Arduino projects I can still dream..
Follow the launch at @SurreyNanosats
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)
Congratulations to the successful recipients of the Google Winter Research Awards from the GI Science community. In this round six awards were made for proposals including Remote Sensing of volcanoes using UV imaging, Spatial Cognition, and VGI.
Congratulations to;
- Andrew McGonigle, University of Sheffield
- Johannes Schoening, UCL/Hasselt University
- Evdokia Nikolova, Texas A&M
- Long Quan, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
- Cyrus Shahabi, University of Southern California
- Tae Hong Park, New York University
If you are interested in applying the next round of funding is detailed here, the deadline is April 15 2013.
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)
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At last the OS app !
Welcome to the future…
The future of the consumer business of Ordnance Survey (OS) that is..
Just in time the OS has launched an app for iOS, with Android in the pipeline, that demonstrates there is a future role of the agency in the post paper map age.
For a number of years the OS has relied on apps produced by it’s partners to distribute its mapping products on PC”s and the increasing important market of mobile devices.
The distribution of OS maps digitally is strategically important to the agency as it represents the future where paper maps are increasingly a niche specialised product, expensive and difficult to buy outside of specialist stores.. The only surprise therefore is how long it has taken the OS to enter this market, and the app in my opinion is a really good first effort.
The OS has wisely integrated the purchase of mapping data into the Apple Appstore add-on process which although it means paying a margin to Apple on every sale, it makes the app from the users perspective very easy to use, almost too easy to pay £2.49 for a tile of 1:25:000 mapping.
The mapping is on the expected high quality scanned produced at a high enough resolution to replicate the paper product, and of course you get all the benefits you would expect in terms of GPS and track creation functionality.
A less obvious highlight is the OS Gazetteer powered search function which allow you to search for place name text from the maps themselves, a simple function in an app, but a great advantage over paper maps.
Welcome to your future OS, I just hope you fully embrace it !
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)
Within the first few weeks of joining the Ordnance Survey 10 years or so ago I was shown a prototype map of the New Forest printed on silk, for reasons anyone who has read the “Innovators dilemma” will understand it was never turning into a product, and I still have the prototype in a drawer at home.
So when my old friend from the OS David Overton launched SplashMaps via Kickstarter last month I immediately supported the project.
I supported the project not just because I think the product is a great idea, but that is is a real example of Open Government Data supporting small business innovation. As David points out, he was willing to license commercial data from the OS, but the usual licensing maze in Southampton actually made using the newly available OS Open Data and OpenStreetMap data a better alternative.
If you believe in the principle of open government data, support it with your bank account and help SplashMaps meet it’s target.
Written and submitted from the Hilton Hotel, Vienna (48.206N, 16.383E)
If you are going along to the AGU in San Francisco this year, I would recommend registering for this event which is being run by the Google Earth Outreach team. It’s free, but there are only 100 places.
This is a “hands on” event so you need to bring your laptop and knowledge of Javascript/Google Earth !
If there is enough interest we could arrange a similar event in Europe, let me know..
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)
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My presentation from PinPoint London..
The past, present and future of maps..
Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)