To the new chief executive of the UK Space Agency, road cycling is simply out of this world!
Cycling owes a lot to the space industry. The advent of satellite television helped indulge my interest for professional road cycling. I’ve been an armchair fan since I was a teenager, watching the Channel 4 coverage of the Tour de France, but when satellite TV came along [in the 1990s] it transformed how much of the sport myself and others were able to access.
Perhaps the biggest of all is GPS. Strava certainly wouldn’t exist. ‘Global Positioning System’ is actually the name of the American system and the one that our bike computers are predominantly using. ‘Sat navs’ - or Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) - is the overarching term for any system that uses satellites for geo-spatial positioning and there are three systems that currently have worldwide coverage: GPS, the Russian’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo.
Esta historia es de la edición January 2018 de Cycling Plus.
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Esta historia es de la edición January 2018 de Cycling Plus.
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Air Apparent - Pollution hasn't gone away. It's still there in every lungful, even if we can't see it in the air or on the news. But there are reasons to breathe easier, thanks to pioneering projects using cycling 'citizen scientists'. Rob Ainsley took part in one...
The toxic effects of pollution have been known about for years. 'Just two things of which you must beware: Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!' sang 1960s satirist Tom Lehrer.Over recent decades, though, pollution has dropped down our list of things to worry about, thanks to ominously capitalised concerns such as Climate Change, AI, Global Conflict, Species Collapse, etc. That doesn't, unfortunately, mean the problem has expired. Air quality often exceeds safe limits, with far-reaching and crippling effects on our health.
No limits
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Josh Patterson was one of 34 starters for the inaugural edition of Unbound in 2006. Now, with more than 5,000 riders taking part in today's event, he charts the rise of the most important race in gravel
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