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Technology

Space Technology to Conquer Everest 93

Posted by michael from the great-day-for-up dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "These days, the European Space Agency (ESA) is busy sharing its space technologies. Last week, in "Space technology hits the slopes," it said that the ski maker Rossignol hopes to beat the world speed skiing record of 250 km/h by using skis stabilized by a mechanism developed for ESA's Rosetta spacecraft. And today, the ESA announced that a satellite-based Health Monitoring Kit developed by the Canadian company March Networks and co-funded by ESA, will help climbers to escalate Everest. Of course, this kind of technology can be applied at lower altitudes. This overview contains other details and references about the March Networks Health Monitoring Kit."
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Space Technology to Conquer Everest More

Space Technology to Conquer Everest

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  • What if he crashes? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Number_1_Bigg$ ( 771467 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @06:31AM (#8890619)
    They may need that health monitoring equipment immediately after he finishes going 250kph on his face...

    Or maybe they won't.

    • Re:What if he crashes? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Mal-2 ( 675116 )
      At 250kph, all you need after a crash is a shovel. Motorcyclists who crack up at this speed usually end up scattered across several counties, so I don't see that a skier is going to be much safer (save that there are somewhat fewer obstacles).

      With Everest, the problem everyone faces is that there's precious little air to breathe up there, so unless you're Andean or a Sherpa, you can only survive for a limited time without supplemental oxygen. No amount of monitoring will change this, although it may be abl
      • As CommanderFoxTrot says [slashdot.org], wrecking on skis is generally much better than wrecking on pavement/dirt/grass/etc since you generally just slide. Watch the olympic or world cup downhill races and you can see this in action. In the vast majority of falls, the skier will be simply sliding, straight or maybe spinning on the snow with no more harm than bruising/ice-rash.

        Injury occurs in one or both of two places: either the skier's skis are still on and catch on the snow, starting a bone/joint/neck-breaking tumble,

    • Re:What if he crashes? (Score:5, Informative)

      by commanderfoxtrot ( 115784 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @06:54AM (#8890670) Homepage
      I have skied at over 140kph (that's circa 90mph) down red runs (in the 3 Vallees) in the past. That's measured using a GPS, so add a few mph to take account of the angle.

      Believe me, you really don't want to fall over! I am an instructor, and felt confident even at those speeds, but the biggest danger is as the article says: the vibration. With modern parabolic/carving skis, the slightest angle on the ski will result in it trying to turn away; if this is not what you want, it could be curtains. Those small vibrations you feel skiing at a "normal" 30mph are multiplied dramatically at 90mph. It's not a thing I would recommend to any skier who is not an expert.

      Re crashing, I would hope that one would simply slide a long way; so long as you don't catch an edge falling and start tumbling, you should hopefully be OK. A motorcycle rider will probably correct me here :-) but bear in mind that you're more likely to slide on snow than on asphalt.
      • Nope, you're right. When (not *if* - *when*) you do have the misfortune of crashing on a bike, try and relax. That's why you wear leathers - they abrade and slow your body, hopefully before it wears through the leather and into you... :)

        Tumbling is bad... that's why many times drunk/asleep crash victims survive - their bodies were limp, and didn't tense and begin bouncing and tumbling down the highway.

  • Yodel-a-e-hooo, Arghhh, slide, tumble (Score:3, Funny)

    by malia8888 ( 646496 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @06:34AM (#8890623)
    From the article: The climb to the almost 9000 metre summit has claimed the lives of about one hundred people. The March Networks technology will transmit blood oxygen levels (SpO2), heart rates, blood pressure and body temperatures of the climbers. The recorded data will be stored on Bluetooth-enabled PDA's and ultimately transmitted via satellite to a Canadian-hosted website

    Some of the other data which might be included is yodeling between 3000 and 6000 metres and the screams of a quick descent at 9000 metres.

    • The yodelling data does actually exist. I remember a story on NPR's All Things Considered wherein they made measurements of yodelling. They also looked at the carrying distance of some obscure African languages.

      Can't find a link, but someone may've heard it.

  • Space Technology to Conquer Everquest.

    I don't play EQ, so I don't know how the association could have been made. I saw the first line and the mention of the ESA and wondered what the hell did they want to do with EQ. Then I reread the headline.

  • escalate? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by evanbd ( 210358 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @06:37AM (#8890627)
    Escalate??

    I mean really, is it such a hard word? You scale a mountain. Or you climb a mountain. But escalate means something entirely different. A problem escalates. Not a mountain.

    • No, it's right.

      I think the technology will help the climbers make everest *even harder*, therefore *escalating* it from a 'really fucking hard' climb to a 'even superman shits himself at the thought' climb.

      Although quite _why_ you'd want to do that, I don't know. But hey, that's the only way that sentence makes sense, so it must be right.
    • I bet the article submitter is French:

      escalader = climb/scale

    • Re:escalate? (Score:2, Funny)

      by meshmar ( 11818 )
      Think technology ... they are going to put an escalator up the side of Everest so the out-of-shape geeks can make the climb too! ;-)
    • Actually "problem escalation" is of recent vintage.

      Usually prices/hostilities/tensions escalate.

    • Re:escalate? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gardyloo ( 512791 )
      Yeah, settle down there, turbo. My Spanish roommate, when he's not quite sure of the English word, picks something close (like 'scale') and does his funky Spanification on it. I'll ask him later, but I'll bet you that 'scale' will turn into 'escalate'. If the other poster is correct about a French parent poster, I see no problem with it. Sure, it's sloppy English, but they're doing a damn sight better than most Americans I know.
    • Dude, when you can speak French better than the poster speaks English, you have a right to be so snarky.

  • splat (Score:1, Troll)

    by jerkos ( 680278 )
    I hope that he's not using thier technology to stop(read land) after going 250kph, cause he'll prolly hit something and never be heard from again.
  • surely everest is high enough already?

    oh, I get it. scale. ah.

  • Great for autopsies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NMerriam ( 15122 ) <NMerriam@artboy.org> on Saturday April 17, 2004 @07:01AM (#8890687) Homepage
    So it records vital signs on a bluetooth enabled PDA, which can later be used to transmit the data when they get back to the satellite system. That's great -- if there is an emergency, all they have to do is find the bodies, hope that they used the kit during the emergency to gather data, bring back the PDAs, and they'll know exactly what killed the climbers!

    Forgive my sarcasm, we did this in 1998 and 1999 (Everest Extreme" [meditac.com]), except we were sending the data in real time over 900mhz radio to the doctor at base camp and via sat back to the hospital in the USA. And it was gathered 24/7 because they were wearing the monitors, not some box of medical tools to be used briefly. That way, if someone was having trouble, we could actually tell what was wrong and where to find the climber (GPS is handy that way).

    The things that kill on Everest are getting lost/falling off in bad weather and hypothermia (dehydration is actually the biggest medical problem, but it doesn't usually kill).

  • When people climb Everest (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LOL WTF OMG!!!!!!!!! ( 768357 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @07:17AM (#8890714) Journal
    They often seem to ignore their waning health. The kind of people that attempt a feat like this are often willing to accept the consequences of death.

    It's interesting to note that quite a few people have made it to the peak of Everest, and then died on the way down.

    • Re:When people climb Everest (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @07:34AM (#8890751) Homepage
      It's interesting to note that quite a few people have made it to the peak of Everest, and then died on the way down.

      I think this may have to do with the psychology of the person. Maybe they get some sort of idea that once they get to the top, there will be blondes in bikini's there to meet them (Oxygen deprivation will do that to ya) and then everything will be fine, so they press on, when they should rest. They make it to the top but then don't have the energy to get down.

      Perhaps these real-time life sign monitoring eqiupment can be used to help prevent that. Climbers of Everest pay some hefty fees just for the privlidge of the climb. Maybe we could have a doctor or two in a chateau at the bottom looking at everyones lifesigns in realtime? Could save a couple lives, especially with the last few seasons being particually deadly. Hey, why not. They're rich white folk. (well, mostly white)

      • But if they're stuck near the top of the mountain, dying, there isn't much anybody can do. I don't think it's possible to get helicopters up that high (they use those to get the base camp which I believe it at around 18k feet).
        • The goal, uptimately, is to stop accidents before they start. Accidents are frequently caused by fatique. Any skier can tell you that accidents are far more likely to take place in the afternoon. A doctor monitoring things could warn the climber he was too tired. If he didn't listen? I donno, a severe penalty or something.

      • Re:When people climb Everest (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Lots of factors.

        On most large mountains (himalayas, denali, aconcagua etc) the standard approach involves spending a couple of weeks acclimatising and moving your gear up the mountain. This involves lots of going up and down with huge packs. Very gruelling.

        Then you wait for a break in the weather, get yourself to the high camp and prepare yourself for "summit day". You start before dawn, you are freezing cold, you may be on bottled oxygen but the lack of o2 still makes you feel absolutely knackered.

        Th
    • It's interesting to note that quite a few people have made it to the peak of Everest, and then died on the way down.

      So as long as they don't impregnate someone at the top, its a gene that will eliminate itself. See, these are the kinds of things that would spice up the Darwin Awards [darwinawards.com].

      Of course it will pale in comparison to Phase 2, when the European Space Agency augments the Skis with a JATO pack for the return trip, and possibly suborbital flight.
    • It's interesting to note that quite a few people have made it to the peak of Everest, and then died on the way down.

      Interesting, perhaps, but not surprising. If you include the descent as part of the whole expedition, then the summit is really just the halfway mark. And the descent can be just as risky, if not as strenuous.

  • As I skimmed over the abstract, I first imagined the solution involved placing a set of gyroscopes on each ski.
  • And here I was, hoping space tech would come to EVERQUEST. I read it several times until I saw it was everest...
    Serious gaming addiction problem?
  • I want my healt monitor to say things like...

    yellow elf needs food badly

    green warrior is about to die!

    That way I always know when to eat and passers by can get a chuckle before I expire.
  • Am I the only one that read that as:
    Space Technology to Conquer Everquest
    More... coffee... needed...
  • If that skier's flying down the mountain using the same stabilizing technology they used on the Beagle 2, I don't think the health monitoring kit will help.

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