Big Satellite Systems, Simulated On Your Desktop (sf.net) 44
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?
Farewell editor(s) (Score:1)
Farewell soulskill. So they fired him, how about the others? I can't confirm, only soulskill. Kinda sad at least Dice didn't do layoffs. They were around for so long.
the first time is tragedy, (Score:2)
and the second time is farce,
obviously the third time's a charm
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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.
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Second serious question: Of all people, why is _Timothy_ quoting him? Despite Marx's rather gloomy sense of Historical Inevitability, he was actually a fun guy, and used this phrasing in several of his works.
This looks good for the New Slashdot. They may finally and properly sort out the idiomatic "My vas pokhoronim!" bellowed by Khrushchev. Direct translation fails- it's an idiom after all, from Khrushchev's brutal youth. This too deals with Historical Inevitability; translated into Anglo-Irish, it could
Let hope winners don't take it all (Score:1)
Whatever it be. Branson hopes it won't turn out to be a 'winner takes all' market. Branson does not want to be in one. On the contrary if its a 'losers only market', I don't think he would have a problem with that. After all, Virgin Atlantic was bleeding until recently.
alternative to sourceforge dodginess (Score:2)
install Kerbal Space Program and do lots more besides watch hyperedited satellite constellations appear as green blocks right before the BHOs take over your desktop.
Back, Jack, Do it Again (Score:1)
And the third, fourth, and fifth time is our Middle East policy.
Remmber 70% of time spent over water (Score:3)
Re:Remmber 70% of time spent over water (Score:5, Informative)
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*.
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That's like saying GPS is useless.
GPS is stupidly valuable and most of those are dumb nodes with timers that get synced up a few times a day because drag. (and the occasional blacklist when that one sat failed earlier in the month, RIP)
Having universal access, even IF it is horribly slow 56k speeds, is something we should strive for as a species.
The internets usefulness outweighs the cost needed for basic access to it.
Even in "underdeveloped" countries it can still be useful, especially for learning. (of
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that would require geostationary orbits, which excludes anything North of 55 and anything south of -55. That's a significant chunk if the inhabitable surface.
Cros platform (Score:2)
According to the README, this still supports SGI IRIX! I'm going to fire up my Octane and give it a test run!
Failure is always an option. (Score:2)
These systems are designed in a way that you can not sell service to a single customer until you are 80% complete, that means spending 900 Billion dollars to launch all those satellites and install all your ground station equipment before the FIRST customer can even be sold service.
What is needed is just a couple of Geosync birds over the USA and start having real competition to Hughesnet.
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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
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When Wildblue started they were renting space on the Anik f2 satellite.
Then they launched wildblue 1 which iirc was rated for 300k users. Its called Exede now owned by viasat. hughesnet owned by echostar has been around longer and had not been increasing their speeds until wildblue entered the market.
The US already has two large satellite internet providers I doubt anyone else will try to enter the market If the sirus xm deal was any indication there will probably be only one satellite internet provider in
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I was paying $79.99/mo for 1.5mbps/0.256mbps about 10 years ago through wildblue with a 17GB down and 5 GB upload limit. Also over limit was limited to 64kbps and more than 3 over limits in a calender year resulted in termination of service
Its nice to see overall capacity hasn't improved in the last 10 years.
Live in the sticks? I recommend you check this list in order.
Can you get any wired broadband service?
Fiber/cable/dsl
Can you get any wireless broadband service?
Wisp/cellular
Can you see the sky?
Satellite.
Elon Musk (Score:3)
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won't happen. His long term goal is 6 hour turnaround (48h more realistic) at a cost of US$54million. Before you even start talking about cost to fuel, cleanrooming the payload, mounting and all the rest of it. He's already got turnaround down to a month but the cost to do that, since it is still in the learning curve stage (and replacing the major systems so they can analyse launch stresses on eg the engine bells), is on par with the SLS.
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a soccer ball to an ant sitting on its surface would appear to be flat because the ant is too small to appreciate the scale of the curvature. Is the ball flat? Demonstrably no, because you are standing at some distance from it and you can see the curvature. But the ant thinks it is.
Let me throw this curveball (pardon the pun) at you:
You are lying down on your belly at one end of the main runway at Heathrow Airport. Two and a half miles away, a pigeon is strutting across the apron. Can you see it?
Ask then an
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the fault with that logic is that you're holding attitude and position relative to the GROUND. To hold your position relative to something that matters (for example, the centre of the Galaxy), you'd have to fly directly away from the orbital motion of the Sun at 65 miles a second.
Hop to space (Score:1)