Big Satellite Systems, Simulated On Your Desktop (sf.net)

An anonymous reader writes: Big systems of hundreds of satellites are under development to provide wireless Internet globally, with Richard Branson's OneWeb and Thales' LeoSat aiming at consumers and business markets respectively. It's like reliving the late 1990s, when Bill Gates' Teledesic and Motorola's Celestri were trying to do the same thing before merging their efforts and then giving up. And now you can simulate OneWeb and LeoSat for yourself, and compare them to older systems, in the new release of the vintage SaVi satellite simulation package, which was created in the 1990s during the first time around. Bear in mind Karl Marx's dictum of history: the first time is tragedy, and the second time is farce. Do these new systems stand a chance?

Comments

the first time is tragedy,

[fustakrakich]

and the second time is farce,

obviously the third time's a charm

Re:the first time is tragedy,

[Richard_at_work]

So much for the mantra of "try try try again" - we failed twice, fuck it, its too embarrassing to try any more because we might be violating some bullshit that Karl Marx spouted a hundred and fifty years ago.

Re:the first time is tragedy,

[thinkwaitfast]

Yes. I've used a 9600baud modem over Iridium. Also ran PPP for and used ping, FTP and a web page.

Remmber 70% of time spent over water

[thinkwaitfast]

70% of the capability these systems will be unused when over water and/or the polar regions. Generally paying customers are grouped together in small dense areas, that is what they found out with iridium. And small dense areas are mostly now served by cell networks.

Re:Remmber 70% of time spent over water

[ihtoit]

you conveniently missed out the fact that these satellites are part of a dynamic mesh network, which are in a state of continuous reconfiguration to provide 100% coverage. What this means, is that even when a satellite is flying over the middle of the South Pacific, it's still providing a bridge between New Zealand and Peru by connecting two satellites either side of it.

Ergo, no satellite is ever idle as long as the network is in use *anywhere*.

Elon Musk

[dixonpete]

If Elon Musk's SpaceX can use recyclable rockets to toss satellites into orbit for the cost of fuel he'll have a huge leg up compared to competitors.

Re:Failure is always an option.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite true, you can't sell CONTINUAL service until you're almost complete, however there is no reason why this kind of system would not be able to sell intermittent service, say for remote weather/sea stations, ships, etc until they're completely up and running. Also your $900 billion is a "bit" off, even at current launch rates SpaceX could launch around 18,000 Falcon 9s for that much. Even the most audacious plans only put a few thousand satellites in orbit and most of those are probably launched in batches of 6 or more per rocket (just look at OrbComm's 11 satellites launched on a single Falcon 9). Also geosynchronous communications satellites have several major drawbacks, first off they can only serve a limited number of customers due to bandwidth limitations and their latency is a bit high.