Slashdot Mirror
Japan Launches "Super-Speed" Internet Satellite
A number of readers wrote in about the launch this morning of a Japanese H-2A rocket carrying a Kizuna ("Winds") satellite into orbit. Kizuna is intended to provide "super high-speed data transmission" for Japan and Southeast Asia. The news stories on the launch, such as the AP's linked here, are short on technical detail. For example they say the satellite successfully achieved orbit 175 miles above the earth — hardly suitable for Internet communications to a specific area on the surface (remember Teledesic?). Reader nebulus4 provided a link to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency site with an illustration and a little more detail. Such as the fact that Kizuna is destined for geosync orbit, and that a 45-cm antenna will equip eventual users for 155 Mbps down / 6 Mbps up, whereas a 5-m antenna will allow enterprises and ISPs to tap into 1.2 Gbps down. Given the latency to geosync orbit, you probably wouldn't want to use Kizuna to play an online shooter.
Don't let them get nukes!!
So a subsistence farmer in rural Indonesia gets a better download speed than me, a sophisticated suburban Australian. Awesome.
Don't worry the kiwi's have apparently come up with a sheep powered device that's even faster. Coming to Australia soon.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Countries that don't have niggers in the population develop the best technology.
Correction - it isn't really racist. What does race have to do with it ? He just is worried about the Japanese nuking us as revenge. And hell, they did start the whole friggin thing.