Technology has really come along way. In the early 80's I worked with a special unit whose mission was to design, build, test and field a machine that allowed photos from a spy plane be annotated and blown up and sent to our targeteers located in Saudi Arabia. The machine had to be ruggedized, able to be dropped from 800 feet (with a parachute) and start operating as soon as it was plugged in. The actual time for the image to go from Langley to Saudi had to be completed in mere minutes. Image resolution had to be good enough for a pilot to be able to recognize a target while flying very very fast.
Ok reality, we had the requirements from the field, we took it to many black world engineers and they designed a Tactical Digital Facsimile. The requirements were loosely met, several issues had to be worked out, electricity was 110 not 220, transformers had to be developed to drop with the TDF, along with generators,communication dishes of course who can forget you need an Uninterruptible Power Source when ever you are traveling in another country. The list went on from there, paper had to be designed to withstand the heat, parts had to be developed so an intelligence officer with no tech support could unplug and plug in to make the system operational. We had over 40 contractors on the configuration management board who all had a piece of the pie. In less than six months we had fielded the fax and it worked! Targets were identified, bombs were dropped and the requirements for a bigger, better, faster and more user friendly system were developed.
Flash forward to 2014 - I have the future on my kitchen table. The resolution, speed and cost so unbelievable that 30 years ago if someone had told me I would own a TDF, and would use it daily to send recipes, photos and documents over my phone line I would have smiled and said someday maybe. Now is that someday. Technology is moving so fast maybe that Teleportation requirement SpaceCom requested will be possible. Never say never.
Ok reality, we had the requirements from the field, we took it to many black world engineers and they designed a Tactical Digital Facsimile. The requirements were loosely met, several issues had to be worked out, electricity was 110 not 220, transformers had to be developed to drop with the TDF, along with generators,communication dishes of course who can forget you need an Uninterruptible Power Source when ever you are traveling in another country. The list went on from there, paper had to be designed to withstand the heat, parts had to be developed so an intelligence officer with no tech support could unplug and plug in to make the system operational. We had over 40 contractors on the configuration management board who all had a piece of the pie. In less than six months we had fielded the fax and it worked! Targets were identified, bombs were dropped and the requirements for a bigger, better, faster and more user friendly system were developed.
Flash forward to 2014 - I have the future on my kitchen table. The resolution, speed and cost so unbelievable that 30 years ago if someone had told me I would own a TDF, and would use it daily to send recipes, photos and documents over my phone line I would have smiled and said someday maybe. Now is that someday. Technology is moving so fast maybe that Teleportation requirement SpaceCom requested will be possible. Never say never.