Early Bird

Early Bird may refer to:

Entertainment

Aircraft

Early Bird (Cogswell)

"Early Bird" is a science fiction short story written in 1973 by Theodore R. Cogswell and Theodore L. Thomas. The story was first published in Astounding: The John W Campbell Memorial Anthology. It takes place within the same universe as Cogswell's 1952 novel The Spectre General and features the character Major Kurt Dixon of the Imperial Space Marines.

Synopsis

After the Marines have defeated the Galactic Protectorate, the Empire's trade routes start being invaded by the Kierans. The Kierans are an alien race that use ships equipped with a seemingly invincible weapon that clouds the brains of the crew of the ships that try to follow them. Major Kurt Dixon is given command of a scout patrol that follows a Kieran ship to its home base, but he is "fogged" and left unconscious.

Dixon's ship is equipped with an experimental computer that generates a cybernetic personality to support him on long lonely space patrols. The computer, known as Zelda, manages to land the ship on an uncharted planet, inhabited by huge organo-metallic creatures that prey on each other with awesome weaponry and computerised defences.

DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe is an American commercial vendor of space imagery and geospatial content, and operator of civilian remote sensing spacecraft. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange on 14 May 2009, selling 14.7 million shares at $19.00 each to raise $279 million in capital.

The WorldView satellites should not be confused with WorldView company, a division of Paragon Space Development Corporation offering flights to near-space.

Origins

WorldView Imaging Corporation was founded in January 1992 in Oakland, California in anticipation of the 1992 Land Remote Sensing Policy Act (enacted in October 1992) which permitted private companies to enter the satellite imaging business. Its founder was Dr Walter Scott, who was joined by co-founder and CEO Doug Gerull in late 1992. In 1993, the company received the first high resolution commercial remote sensing satellite license issued under the 1992 Act. The company was initially funded with private financing from Silicon Valley sources and interested corporations in N. America, Europe, and Japan. Dr. Scott was head of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories "Brilliant Pebbles" and "Brilliant Eyes" projects which were part of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Doug Gerull was the executive in charge of the Mapping Sciences division at the Intergraph Corporation. The company's first remote sensing license from the United States Department of Commerce allowed it to build a commercial remote sensing satellite capable of collecting images with 3 m (9.8 ft) resolution.