<nettime> kosovo panopticon / lost in space

[Pit Schultz <pit@icf.de>]

"The Earth is clearly the ultimate database;
in solving this problem we'll solve a host of others." 
 Marc Pesce, Surfing the Satellites, 
 http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/surfsat.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

SOURCE: LOCKHEED MARTIN
For Immediate Release: April 29, 1999

Athena Investigation
Points to Payload Fairing

DENVER, Colo., April 29, 1999 – The Lockheed Martin Astronautics
Anomaly Investigation Team has determined that, based on telemetry
and flight data analysis, the Athena II’s payload fairing did not separate
properly. As a result of carrying the extra weight of the payload fairing, the
rocket did not achieve sufficient velocity to place the IKONOS 1 satellite
into Earth orbit. 

The aluminum-lithium payload fairing, with a separated weight of
approximately 1,143 lbs (518 kg), is used to protect the satellite from
aerodynamic friction during the early phases of flight and is designed to
separate and fall away from the rocket after it has passed through the
atmosphere. 

The Lockheed Martin Anomaly Investigation Team has determined that
the Thiokol Castor 120® first and second stage solid rocket motors, the
Pratt and Whitney Orbus® 21D third stage solid propulsion system and
the Orbit Adjust Module propulsion system (which includes the equipment
section structure, attitude control system provided by Primex
Technologies, and avionics) have been ruled out as possible causes of
the failure.

Lockheed Martin is continuing its investigation to determine why the
payload fairing did not separate. 

see also "space today"
http://www.flatoday.com/space/explore/uselv/athena/ikonos1/index.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Kosovo 5-meter resolution natural color imagery includes
a 1,700 square mile area, covering  the eastern part of
Kosovo, including Pristina, and was  collected by the Indian
Remote Sensing Satellite in late  1998. The boundaries of the
3D-flythrough are bound by Podujevo  and Kosovska Mitrovicato
to the north; Pristina to the east,  Urosevac to the south,
and the Beli Drim River valley to  the west. Kosovo province
is in southern Yugoslavia on the  border with Albania and
Macedonia. The next scheduled pass  of the Indian Remote Sensing
(IRS) satellite will take place  after April 7, 1999. The
3D fly-through includes annotations, pointing out major cities
and airports. In this version,  annotations can be turned on
and off to suit your preference.  Space Imaging has exclusive
rights to market imagery from  the Indian Remote Sensing
satellite."
 http://www.spaceimage.com/newsroom/hotspot/kosovo/kosovo_avail.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"This is a particular moment in the history of electronic space, 
one when powerful corporate actors and high performance networks
are strenghtening the role of private electronic space and altering
the structure of public electronic space. But it is also a moment when
we are seeing the emergence of a fairly broadbased--though as yet a
demographic minority-- civil society in electronic space. This sets
the stage for contestation."
 Saskia Sassen, the topoi of E-space http://www.tao.ca/fire/nettime/old/1/0115.html 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Slavoj Zizek is quick to remind us that "virtualization is
paid for by derealization." The sharp rise in robotic cameras
accessible through web, nearly instantaneous feeds of information
from and during events throughout the world are catalysts to reflect
on the accelerating trajectory of technology but stand as well for
considering the effects of new media as intrinsically linked with
instrumental notions of progress. T-Vision, the CIA's Corona project,
Minsky's Mentolopis, Chardin's noosphere, Kelly's Neo-biological
civilization, or McLuhan's Global Village are intricately bound
together by technologies whose cunning deployment pose deep questions
for a culture reeling in infomania and paranoia."
 Tim Druckrey, Panorama to Globarama http://www.venge.com/panoram.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Out of this proliferation of scientific and technological projects of
military and corporate parentage has also come what is reassuringly
called the "information society," in which we are now living. Yet the
main beneficiaries of the new capabilities in information production, transmission,
and dissemination are, not unexpectedly, those who were the main initiating agents
of the Cold War era--the transnational corporations, the intelligence, military,
and policing agencies. Especially well rewarded have been the big businesses with
worldwide operations.  With new facilities they have the means to manage their
global activities, move capital, shift production locales, and, on the basis of
these new capabilities, weaken organized labor. At the same time, the Pentagon
and the intelligence agencies have built intercontinental satellite networks for
monitoring the flow of messages of friends and foes alike, and for mapping the
world for possible future interventions--Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba,
inner-city Detroit, and so on."
 Herbert I. Schiller, Media, Technology, and the Market: the Interacting Dynamic
 http://www.rochester.edu/College/FS/Publications/SchillerMedia.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
"Dragonfly" Pocket Sized Reconnaissance Probes  Using an ultra- miniaturized
helicopter turbine and rotary blade mount, stabilizing fins, fiber- optic cameras,
and a cellular modem, these self/ remote guided drones will be able to fly
virtually unnoticed among enemy positions, despite their small size. "
 all american gun frecks: http://pages.prodigy.net/mikemorris/Berserker/r&d.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

" TransTerraFirma: After Territory
Territory: an area of limited political rights; contested ground of animal
altruism and animal agression, but also a device for limiting aggression;
play ground, mating ground, holy ground; area of jurisdiction, vital interest,
prized resource. Terrestrials as we are, we find the notion of territory
embedded within every concept we can utter, and in every concept territory
figures ominously large. 

Our understanding of territory is undergoing rapid and fundemantal changes:
within the scope of pragmatic experience both space and community are rapidly
becoming non-local. At the level of advanced theories concerning the nature of
space and time, we already live in an astonishingly different place than any
other culture on earth has imagined. In either case, what Virilio calls the
'big optics' of media communications at the speed of light result in a collapse
of the horizon, divider of earth and heaven, or, to be more literal, demarcator
of the borderline between the concrete and the abstract. 

Another horizon, this one less evident, has fallen: in the creation of a navigable
electronic non-place that nonetheless can be experienced as a fully dimensional
space, we have breeched a new frontier with a new instrument: we have opened our
inner worlds to ourselves and to each other through architecture as
interface to the imagination. We have invented the esoscope. 

As our horizons shatter, new spaces open within their fractured razor's edges:
the places of neither here not there, or both, or other than both: the hybrid
territories. Into these territories we will now bring all our social instincts,
animal and human, for better or worse."

markus novak - Hybrid territory and hybrid territoriality: territoReality
http://www.t0.or.at/~krcf/nlonline/nonMarcos.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every normally verticalised person is able to go from form to content, from
pie-chart to what is charted, from statistics to the market forces, from
book-keeping to profit, from words to the reference of the words, from
story-telling to agency, but no, not them, they are like so many blind
termites, unable to see beyond the forms, the numbers, the charts, the
stories, the inscriptions (another of their buzz words) that collectively,
they argue, create all those representations by a certain kind of speedy
circulation. If you object that everyone else sees what they fail to see,
it does not bother them in the least, and they will quietly retort to
you "Who is everyone else? How many of them are there? How strongly have
they been connected? How long did it take to knit their consensus? How
costly it is to maintain it from one year to the next?". And they will
get themselves busy trying to answer those absurd questions! 

Bruno Latour, The Flat-Earthers of social theory 
http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/popart/p54.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The purposes of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy
Act and the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy
Act (the Acts) are:
 
to provide a right of access to information under the control of institutions
in accordance with the principles that, 

          - information should be available to the public, 

          - necessary exemptions from the right of access should be limited
            and specific, and 

          - decisions on the disclosure of government information should be
            reviewed independently of government;(1) and 

to protect the privacy of individuals with respect to personal information
about themselves held by institutions and to provide individuals with a right
of access to that information.

Geographic Information Systems
http://www.ipc.on.ca/web_site.eng/matters/sum_pap/papers/gis.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

---
#  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl