Would you chip some money in to keep the Air Force Space Surveillance System going?
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| Sep 5th 2013, 19:51 | |
Bart_KJ6BWBTotal Topics: 0 Total Posts: 0 |
The Air Force Space Surveillance System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Surveillance_System was just defunded. From the recent 05 Sep 2013 ARRL newsletter, it sounds like the Air Force is planning on just walking away from at least the antenna in Texas. Is there any interest in licensed amateur radio operators chipping in to keep it going? Something as amazing as that is surely just too awesome to let it rust away. I did a Google search for "Air Force contact", went to contact.airforce.com and asked in the live chat there, but apparently the recruiters there have no idea how to go about contacting the Air Force for general questions. I said that when I worked telephone support, I at least knew how to tell a person where to go to find more information, that I know it wasn't the person's policy, but the company's policy, and that I was just amazed that the Air Force would set things up like that. So, perhaps the Air Force is fragmented enough that there's absolutely nothing that any of us could do to keep the antenna operational. But, if there was, who'd be interested? The one in Texas which has just been shut down was (according to Wikipedia), "the most powerful continuous wave (CW) station in the world, at 768 kW radiated power on 216.97927 MHz." I'm not asking that the Air Force set it back up again -- they're planning on building a bigger better system using high frequency wavelengths instead, but if there's any way that the system could be taken over by a group of amateurs. Perhaps it could be part of MARS, run and financed by amateur volunteers? If it was run and maintained by volunteers, I'm sure it would greatly decrease the operating cost. |
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