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Iridium Pushes Ahead Satellite Project

Posted by samzenpus on from the space-business dept.

oxide7 writes "Iridium (IRDM) continues its push into the market for satellite data and telemetry services, as it announced the company that would build its second generation of satellites. Iridium's old network of 66 satellites was designed for voice calls; the new satellites will also be able to handle data more efficiently, and include cameras as well. The company also plans to share the satellite platforms with some scientists for use in studying the Earth."

6 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Cameras?? by spectrokid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just one little sentence. They will include cameras as well. WTF?? Privatised spying? Own your own weather-sat? Delivering Google-earth quality pictures (or better) is not only going to take one hell of a lens, but also a hefty infrastructure on the ground. They must have a solid business case. This isn't like putting a "camera" on a 50€ cellphone.

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    10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then

    1. Re:Cameras?? by f3rret · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is Iridium we're talking about, they don't worry about details like "buisiness plans". When they first rolled out their service their business plan depended on the fact it would eventualy be as pervasive as cellular phones and that sure worked out fine.

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      Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
  2. Re:Can Slashvertisements get any more obvious?! by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Many business magazines include ticker symbols for the companies they mention in articles, even if the article is a serious piece that is critical of the company. So I think this assumption of yours that a ticker symbol is some sort of flag that something is an advertisement is plainly wrong.

  3. Re:Business Plan? by Biogenesis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a suburban inhabitant who's used to small mobile phones it's natural for you to assume that satellite phone size is a major issue, but for people who would regularly require satellite phones they only need to have a better cost:performance* ratio than remote communication alternatives, such as HF radio.

    *performance in this context would be a subjective measure which includes factors such as reliability, size, weight etc.

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    ...just so Google finds it.
  4. Planning for bankruptcy? by confused+one · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I could have sworn launching the first set of satellites bankrupted the original Iridium owner. Not that that's ever stopped anyone.

  5. Re:Can Slashvertisements get any more obvious?! by Alioth · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...and it's really annoying. If people really want to look at the stock price it's not hard to look it up. The worst articles are the ones that are written like:

    "Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT, people, news) today challenged Novell (NOVL, people news) to a duel today after Novell announced it was to use Solaris (SUNW, people, news) to power its new IBM (IBM, people, news) Intel (INTL, people, news) based servers"

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