2009: A Space Odyssey

When I was a kid there was a program on ABC radio called "Jason and the Argonauts".

It came on each weekday afternoon, after school had finished around 3pm. It was somewhat "intellectual" and was meant to be educative. There were prizes for the best Poem submitted to the program - that is for those whose poems were read out and heard Australia wide.  Other than that there was a kind of "Mentioned in Despatches" prize if ones name was announced as having submitted something "worthwhile". 

Jason and the Argonauts was something like a secret society in that ones actual name was not read out  - only ones code name.  You see, you joined Jason and his Argonauts by writing to the ABC and they allocated a code name.  I was given Argus 49.

Argus 49 was mentioned once for having written a poem about a cat.  I did not have a cat - but poetic licence allowed me to have one and write a poem sufficiently well to get a mention!  I think I was 8 or 9 years of age at the time.

For some reason I have long held the belief that Jason was tied up with Ulysses of Homer's Odyssey; but I will have to move on from that as I only recently discovered that the only connection between Jason and Ulysses was that they both had to pass by the temptations of the Sirens.

Oh well, I guess you get that, when you don't have a good classical education.

Anyway, the real point of this yarn is that I have applied to purchase my own piece of the Space Odyssey.  And it is for this reason:

The last time I was by myself crossing the badlands west of Boulia in Queensland, toward Alice Springs via the Plenty Highway, I found that I could not make contact with anyone on my High Frequency Barrett 550 radio which is installed in the Land Rover.  The radio is modified so that I can operate it on the Ham Bands as well as the VKS737 system; but all was quiet.

I thought to myself, what happens if I have a heart attack way out here?

That's the kind of thing that crosses the mind of a 61 year old lone traveller 500 kilometres from anywhere!

Recently I received some advertising for the Thuraya Sat Phone pictured above.  It is pocket sized and about the same size as my mobile phone.  The price seemed right. Thuraya in Arabic means the Seven Sisters, or Pleiades.  The phones come from a UAE outfit, and are regarded as the "terrorists Sat phone of choice".  They were used in the Mumbai attack. 

 

However, they can't be all that bad as my phone will use a Boeing Satellite which sits in a geostationary position 35,786 km above Singapore - and it gets there via a Russian Zenit three stage rocket, fired from a SeaLaunch pad.  SeaLaunch uses a setup like an unmanned Oil Rig platform to launch the rockets which carry the satellites, while the Command Ship stands off at a safe distance of 5 miles or so. There have been explosions; but most launches have been successful. The launches take place in international waters in the Pacific Ocean with Kiribati being the nearest country. 

 

I found all this information fascinating and while Googling around found a reference to an article written by Arthur C Clarke in 1945 in which he predicted that a "geostationary satellite" positioned above the equator would be a good bet for wide coverage relay stations - although his calculated altitude does seem to be out by about 6,000 km.

 

His 1945 article is at the link below. Be warned, it is about 3.3 megabytes in size but, for the technically minded, it is well worth reading, and better than the movie!!

 

Arthur C Clarke "Wireless World" Article1945