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Monday, January 2, 2012

Hackers going extra-terrestrial

Hackers plan space satellites to combat censorship
Graphic of a Vostok spaceship 50 years after Russia's first piloted mission, hackers plan to send their own people beyond orbit
Computer hackers plan to take the internet beyond the reach of censors by putting their own communication satellites into orbit.
  
The scheme was outlined at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.
 The project's organisers said the Hackerspace Global Grid will also involve developing a grid of ground stations to track and communicate with the satellites.

Longer term they hope to help put an amateur astronaut on the moon.

Hobbyists have already put a few small satellites into orbit - usually only for brief periods of time - but tracking the devices has proved difficult for low-budget projects.

The hacker activist Nick Farr first put out calls for people to contribute to the project in August. He said that the increasing threat of internet censorship had motivated the project.

"The first goal is an uncensorable internet in space. Let's take the internet out of the control of terrestrial entities," Mr Farr said.

My own stupefied reaction is that there must be a fortune to be made out of hacking.  Obviously, money is not a stumbling block ...

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