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Iridium Hardware May Burn
Someone from PenguinRadio was one of the first contributors to write about what may be the ultimate fate of the Iridium network: "For those who were wondering what would happen to all the Iridium satellites that are floating around in space, reports out today say they will be brought down into the atmosphere in a massive burn out. The flames should be just about as cool as watching $5 billion in cash burn in a big bonfire pit, which, coincidentially, is how much it cost to put them up." Or $7 billion, depending on who's counting. Divided by 66 satellites, that equals one very expensive meteor shower.
Bandwidth. Or lack thereof.
make everybody in the world pay $1 for the company,
How? Threaten to rain terror from the skies unless every last person on the globe pays? Besides, a buck may not seem like much to you, but in many countries that is a fairly large sum of money.
and have free satellite access for anyone who wants it?
It's hardly free if everyone has to pay a buck, is it? Also, while that might defray the launch costs, and maybe some of the R&D costs, if it's a one-time charge it ain't going to cover the operating costs.
I bet I could write a perl script to keep the birds flying...
I bet you couldn't. If spacecraft dynamics was easy, everyone and their grandmother would do it. It's not easy.
It's one thing to compute a few simple conics using a point mass model. It's something else to accurately account for perturbations due to other celestial bodies, solar radiation pressure, atmospheric drag (yes, the atmosphere extends that high), and zonal gravitational harmonics (fancy way of saying that the earth is bulgy and not uniform). Throw in the coupling between spacecraft attitude and spacecraft orbit (and we'd really like to keep our antenna pointed at the earth), and you have a very nasty non-linear problem. Trying to control all of this, and maintain a desired orbit, is non-trivial to say the least.
Sometimes I am truly astounded that we got to the moon and back. Not because we couldn't build the rockets, but because the guidance and control is so complex.
Al
I mean, after dropping the # of satellites from 77 to 66, they really should have been calling it Dysprosium. But would they listen to me? NO.
I have no idea why that bothers me so much.
*snicker
(sour grapes maybe?)
Starts at $5,000,000,000.00
Quantity 66
Seller (Rating) motorola001 (0)
Payment Visa/MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Money Order/Cashiers Checks, Personal Checks
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A REAL COLLECTORS ITEM. COMPLETE SET. ONE OF A KIND. LIKE NEW CONDITION. HARDLY BEEN USED.
Can I send a little money to Iridium so they can precision-drop one of their birds on the location of my choice? Somewhere in Seattle, preferably. (grin)
"Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost