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.

Comments

Re:Remember Pearl Harbor!!

[palegray.net]

Remember Hiroshima; don't let anyone have nukes.

Re:Remember Pearl Harbor!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's worse is that our resident genius couldn't even be bothered to post his reply to your comment in the right thread.
 
(By the way, the Japanese could easily nuke someone if they wanted to, but they're not stupid enough to start a nuclear war.)

Re:Remember Pearl Harbor!!

[Adambomb]

Yeah, High population density + low land surface area is definitely not a position to start a nuclear war from heh.

Re:Remember Pearl Harbor!!

[TubeSteak]

or the fact that you posted anon so you could mod down anyone that responded to you. Next time you get mod points, log out, clear your cookies, and post anonymously.
Then log back in and try to use your mod points in that thread.
Anonymous isn't so anonymous.
Maybe it's just IP based, but it could easily be more complex than that.