Education and Manufacturing in the next Millennium

The vitality of the Internet has demonstrated the economic and scientific potential of a world-wide multimedia communications network. When issues such as network bandwidth and real-time sequencing of transmitted data are overcome a new wave of virtual reality (VR) and electronic visualization (EV) applications will soon appear. These technologies have the potential to significantly impact global manufacturing, commerce, education, and medicine. Similar applications will appear in aerospace research and exploration. This paper describes our work in the fields of EVNR and the underlying electronics necessary to support these systems. Our research includes investigation of lowpower wireless communications technologies and EVNR technologies for remote visualization, immersive collaboration, and tele-presence. By combining these thrusts we are developing a visualization technology that is tailored for access via wireless communications, but which still retains the capability for integration with existing global wired communications. A key element of this work is defining the EV NR requirements of a space exploration and manufacturing program, and creating the necessary infrastructure to support EV NR access by terrestrial researchers, industry personnel, and students. It makes use of existing Intemet/WWW networks for global distribution, but proposes a distributed microsatellite network for nearand deep-space connectivity.