Have you ever wanted to go to space? To be on board the International Space Station and be able to look down on Earth as your vessel orbits the planet we call home? Then UrtheCast may be just the service you’re looking for.
Space – The Final Frontier
Humanity has long had a fascination with space, but it was only just over 40 years ago that we first ventured out there and landed on the moon. Thanks to technological advances space is now much closer as a destination than it ever has been before.
Unlike Richard Branson’s ambitious plans to fly everyone into space on a commercial basis, UrtheCast is bringing space and a view of Earth to you in your home. Thanks to the power of streaming video.
UrtheCast (EarthCast)
is a Canadian company which is embarking on an ambitious effort to take streaming video to space by installing two high-definition camera with immensely powerful zoom lenses on to the International Space Station (ISS).
Viewers watching online will be able to pause, rewind, and zoom in on specific locations, so long as the ISS passes over those locations.
The service is being sold as “a blend between Google Earth and YouTube,” which is very simplistic way of describing that it features live, real-time video footage of Earth.
UrtheCast is a truly terrible name, evidenced by the fact we need to explain how to pronounce it. I can see what play on words they were going for, but it’s not great.
Still, I guess the name won’t matter so long as the service is good. And not so overpriced as to make it an option only for people with more money than sense. Because I’m guessing this won’t be free.
Conclusions
I love the idea of this, and suspect many other will as well. But do I love it enough to pay money for the service, and sit in front of a computer watching the world literally go by? Probably not. If it was ad-supported, on the other hand…
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[Via PopSci]
