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Canadian Firm Plans 78-Satellite Net Service
matty619 writes "A CNET article is reporting on another try at low earth orbit satellites for internet access, reminiscent of Teledesic, an ill fated $9 billion Bill Gates/Paul Allen et al venture originally consisting of 840 low earth orbit satellites (LEO-SAT). From the article: 'MSCI, which stands for Microsat Systems Canada Inc., is trying to be a bit of a maverick with its project, called CommStellation. The company said today that its approach of using small, inexpensive satellites in low orbit — about 620 miles above the Earth — means better coverage of the world's population, quicker launch, and better network capacity.' Each MSCI satellite has a data-transfer capacity of 12 gigabits per second. The expected lifespan of each is 10 years, and they can be sent back into the atmosphere at the end of their lives to avoid more orbital clutter."
High ping, high jitter, low bandwidth once you factor in number of users and high cost, what could be better?
With the satellites at 600 miles, and if they truly could cover the entire earth, they could provide internet access of some kind to the ISS. Would beat the current system of vnc over radio link.
More like vaporized in the atmosphere. Not really a big deal.
1 better than iridium!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Satellites naturally end up with modest densities, not super tightly packed (usually). Weight tends to be at more of a premium than space, especially when you have bulky things like solar panels and antennas involved. A few small, dense pieces might reach the ground, but that's not normally an issue. They'll be deorbited over the ocean, for starters, and the total mass reaching the ground is small.
Such a service, flying over the GFW, would theoretically give access to uncensored internet.
Will the company filter traffic from China in exchange to get into that market.
Will China shoot the satellites down?
First, because then it might blow up on accident and there goes your very expensive satellite. Second, it might blow up at a bad time (launch) which would be very bad for the rest of the satellites on your launch. Third, if you blow it up you're going to create a lot of debris you can't track. Most satellites are in GEO and have their orbits raised at the end of life to open up there orbital slots. There's no point to blow those up since the debris wouldn't enter the atmosphere. If you're in LEO then you'd still have to make sure there aren't any satellites below you before you blow up since you'll lose control of all of the pieces, and if you can control the descent of one spacecraft into the atmosphere to burn up you may as well not blow it up. Space junk is actually a huge problem for satellites and it's likely only to get worse.
Becasue pices would go every where, including into a higher orbit.
Also, launching with additional explosive material increased the risk in all phases of the launch.
And it's not necessary, just de-orbit.
Now, if you question is why don't satellites de-orbit when EOL approaches, that's just do to people wanting to save money. IMO they should be designed to de-orbit into the atmosphere at EOL.
It doesn't have to be fast. A gentile 'nudge' that begins spiraling down over months would be fine.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Neither "blowing up" nor "burning up" have much effect on mass. In an atmosphere, "burning up" is pretty close to losing mass because various gaseous oxides just go floating off in the breeze. "Blowing up", similarly, tends to reduce something recognisable into little bits that blend in with the dirt/rocks/whatever.
In space, neither usefully applies. To burn, you would have to bring your own oxygen, and you would leave a big, slowly expanding cloud of assorted oxides(I sure hope those don't like condensing on the solar panels or optics of other satellites...). An explosion just turns one piece of space junk, in a predictable orbit, into hundreds or thousands of shards, most travelling fast enough to ruin your whole day, in a wide variety of less predictable orbits(to be fair, some probably will be kicked into trajectories that force them to re-enter the atmosphere).
Even if you vaporized the satellite completely, space is cold and doesn't have any sort of breeze to disperse the vapor. Once the vapor mass had cooled by radiation, it would likely start to recondense into delightful slowly-cooling balls of molten satellite.
This is why the most polite practice is to nudge the satellite into an orbit that will decay fairly swiftly and re-enter the atmosphere, breaking up and burning in an area where people are unlikely to get upset if some bits hit the ground.
In addition to the reasons listed by others, self destruct mechanisms have mass. Mass is very expensive to lift into orbit.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
In other news, Canadian forces is expecting to introduce their new kinetic planetary bombardment weapon in 2021.
We've been doing that for years - they're called paratroopers. Unfortunately they've recently acquired better parachutes, so their effectiveness has been greatly decreased.
I read the article quickly and may have missed it, but I saw no mention of frequency band. If they plan to use licensed spectrum then it will be interesting to see how they achieve licenses for all of their markets. and for unlicensed spectrum I don't see how they'll reach the throughput they are hoping for. Directionality/tracking capability of the ground equipment is an interesting question too. I would imagine that when all is said and done, the pitch of 12Gbits/satellite wherever it is in the world under any reasonable circumstances it is likely to encounter is probably wildly optimistic.
A more interesting idea to my mind would be to have a "spectrum-administration-hopping satellite that can work on multiple bands and pick the most apt band for the area it is currently orbiting above. ie. perhaps use whitespace, licensed cellular where it owns licenses and UNII capacity when over north america and use something different when over Japan or Europe and anything the hell it likes when over the ocean.
Any idiot can launch a satellite, launching a satellite that is expert in international spectrum licensing law would be something more special.
Nullius in verba