Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Researchers Propose 4,600 Micro-Satellite Space Network
Bismillah writes: Samsung Electronics has proposed a network consisting of 4,600 micro-satellites that could act as backhaul for terrestrial cellular networks and take low-cost internet access worldwide. They project that by 2028, cellular and Wi-Fi traffic will exceed 1 zettabyte/month, and their goal is to design a system with equivalent capacity (PDF). "With the satellite-based backhaul, cellular and wi-fi deployments become practical in remote regions of the earth where there is no wired Internet infrastructure." The plan would require significant amounts of wireless spectrum, as well as satellites capable of 1 Tb/s or higher.
Why not up that number over 9000?
I watched the Horizon programme about space junk the other week - it was good - and one of the points raised in it was concern about cubesats not having any movement capability and being cheap and considered "disposable" and thus much more likely to become part of the junk problem that other, expensive, satellites.
4600 micro sats sounds to me like even more junk waiting to happen. Keep it up and we'll not be able to have any nice things in orbit soon.
Even better question - who is gonna clean up all that space junk once the satellites die, or track it all while it's active? That's a lot of pieces that can potentially puncture a rocket, satellite, or crew capsule on it's way up, and we've got a lot of hazardous crap up there as it is.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Even better question - who is gonna clean up all that space junk once the satellites die, or track it all while it's active? That's a lot of pieces that can potentially puncture a rocket, satellite, or crew capsule on it's way up, and we've got a lot of hazardous crap up there as it is.
This concern cannot be heard over the thunderous roar of Capitalism.
Neither can common sense.
Don't worry though. The irony will hit humanity like a fucking brick to the face once we find we have the technology to get off this rock, and yet cannot figure out a way to safely navigate through the cesspool of debris we've put in orbit.
In order to deal with latency, I doubt they are talking about using the geosynchronous ring. These are probably low earth orbit and need a steady stream of replacing as they deorbit and burn up in the atmosphere. The size target is probably small enough not to even leave a pebble left after reentry.
The major problem is clearly stated in the article:
The plan would require significant amounts of wireless spectrum, as well as satellites capable of 1 Tb/s or higher.
Where we could build the satellites, what doesn't exist is the wireless spectrum. This is basically going to suffer the same fate as Light Squared did when they attempted to get some spectrum reassigned for high power terrestrial use. All of this about spectrum space.. Well, most of it is.
This basically amounts to putting up 5K cell towers sans the towers using satellites. The Cellular spectrum is very crowded and expensive to obtain in the industrialized world. It's not going to happen, it's way too expensive and will be very difficult to internationally manage the legal aspects of such a system.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If the EM drive does turn out to be a usable reactionless thruster then an automated debris cleaning satellite is very possible.
It could rendezvous with debris, close in on it as slowly as needed, and snag it with a magnetic front plate or something else. When enough debris is collected it enters a deorbit or moon collision trajectory, releases the stored debris, then burns itself back up to a stable orbit to target more debris.
Give the thing a grapple arm and it could double as a service transport to grab old satellites and bring them to a station that can deal with the satellite not having a standardized servicing design.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Every business plan based on making "remote regions" pay has failed. "Remote" regions that have the money have already installed infrastructure that will make this expensive and everyone else is too poor to make it worthwhile. Either a government steps in like the USG did for Iridium or this will disappear in short order.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
tiny space cows
That's kind of adorable.
Uh, the Earth's atomosphere?
I took the time to skim the paper for the LEO detains that the Australian ITNews article skimmed over. The ITNews article was (sadly) a good summary - discussion of LEO satellites was limited to the altitude (160 to 2000 kilometers) and why LEO is better for signal strength than synchronous orbits. No mention at all about the inclination of the orbits (or even if polar orbits were considered). No consideration was given in the paper to existing uses of LEO (such as the Hubble Telescope or the ISS - but they'd probably be out-of-commission by the time anything remotely like this proposal was attempted.) No thought was given to what it would take to replenish the satellites in orbit (i.e.: how many launches per. year) or how small satellites would de-orbit at the end of their useful life or any consideration at all about satellites that had failed and needed to de-orbit.
A particular point I'd like to consider is that the authors didn't seem to give any consideration of the coverage the satellites would offer based on the inclination of the orbits. It appears that the authors assumed equatorial orbits - which would certainly exclude coverage of polar regions (including coverage of trans-arctic flights.) I'd be curious if any consideration was given of coverage north (or south) of 45 degrees - such as Canada, all of Scandinavia, most of Russia, and so on.