China Gets on the Bandwagon To Provide Global Satellite Internet

Over the weekend, China launched a satellite into low-earth orbit, the first step of a plan to provide global satellite internet to people who still don't have reliable access. From a report: Nearly 3.8 billion people are unconnected to the internet, and women and rural poor are particularly affected. The satellite, called Hongyun-1, took off at China's national launching site Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on Saturday (Dec. 22). Hongyun-1, or "rainbow cloud," is the first of 156 satellites of the same name developed by state-owned spacecraft maker China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC). CASIC intends to launch all the Hongyun satellites by around 2022 to form a constellation that will improve internet access in remote parts of China, and eventually in developing countries, a plan first announced in 2016. Most of the satellites will operate 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) above the earth, far lower than satellites are typically placed. The project is "moving the internet currently on the ground into the sky," said Hou Xiufeng, a spokesperson for CASIC, "It's China's first true low-orbit communication satellite... The launch will greatly boost commercial space."

Yeah

[Ryanrule]

Hard fucking pass.

Re:

[DaMattster]

Agreed! I don't want to be part of the China mass surveillance program. If the choice for me ever become between Chinese-provided satellite internet and none, I will happily and readily unplug.

Re: Yeah

[sound+vision]

The areas this is being deployed for are already unplugged. There's nowhere for the plug to go but in.

Re: Rural America will finally be able to get inte

[Anonymous Coward]

You've mistaken "FEEdom" for freedom. There is no freedom in stupid america.

Re: Rural America will finally be able to get in

[spinitch]

Chinese can make fun of your leaders just as freely as you. We have freedom to make fun of our leaders, no so in China, unless you want your organs donated.

Re:

[Dread Cthulhu]

I would wager on Space X being up and running first with their Starlink service.

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[WindBourne]

No doubt starlink will be in place before China, but I wonder if 1-web will be first? There are several others, but I think that starlink or 1-web will be up first.

Re:

[AHuxley]

Spies deep in rural America will finally have a trusted network to send information collected out with.

With all the planned low-orbit satellites planned

[bobstreo]

will there be any room left ?

Should we just plan on building a ring of these around the Earth?

Re:

[jfdavis668]

They will just start running into each other. Survival of the fittest.

Re:

[Dread Cthulhu]

Look at it this way - right now there are more than 52,000 merchant ships sailing the seas. Have we run out of space in the ocean? And then add in the fact that space is 3d, so adding in vertical stacks, the number of satellites that can be safely fit in LEO is huge. Or for harder numbers, the earth has a surface area of 510 million km^2. Figure 1 km^2 area per satellite, and 1 km between orbital levels, and LEO orbits from say 600 km to 1000 km, and you get 204 billion satellites.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Look at it this way - right now there are more than 52,000 merchant ships sailing the seas. Have we run out of space in the ocean? And then add in the fact that space is 3d, so adding in vertical stacks, the number of satellites that can be safely fit in LEO is huge.

Or for harder numbers, the earth has a surface area of 510 million km^2. Figure 1 km^2 area per satellite, and 1 km between orbital levels, and LEO orbits from say 600 km to 1000 km, and you get 204 billion satellites.

Sorry, this analysis totally misses
1) most ships and airplanes travel coordinated, non-intersecting, paths.
2) ships and airplanes also maneuver to avoid each other
3) while you have low density you also have very high sweep-rates

Neither is the case with satellites (although #1 might be possible), and we will soon see a need for such. The actual statistics on oritiabl collision with either other satellites or misc launch debris is already getting pretty grim.

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[White Yeti]

World space agencies have studied the issues and have written "guidelines" [iadc-online.org] (see sect. 4) and self-policing policies, which tend to trickle down to the commercial sector. With government approvals in mind, there seems to be the equivalent of a "land rush" of commercial providers securing orbital real estate.

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[Kjella]

Space is big but it's more complicated than that. One kilometer between satellites is only a little over 0.1 seconds in the direction they travel since LEO is ~7.8 km/s. You also can't just lay them in parallel like lanes on a freeway, the orbits looks like a sinusoidal [scienceabc.com] so the orbits intersect and get squished together at maximum inclination. Finally any satellites you're discarding must pass through the other orbital layers despite orbits intersection as you can't keep the exact same orbit from a different

Re:

[jfdavis668]

Because the human eye is pathetic at seeing things that have vastly different brightness. As long as part of the surface is brightly lit, your eye perceives the rest as dark. See this illustration, If you use a camera and overexpose the bright side, you see that the dark side is indeed red: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[jfdavis668]

That's called Earthshine, and it is very much brighter than the total eclipsed part of the Moon, plus the Moon is much dimmer since it is only partially lit. The full Earth is very large and bright as seen from the Moon. The tiny bit of sunlight that is refracted by the Earth's atmosphere during a lunar eclipse is nothing in comparison.

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[bn-7bc]

So make a GNSS reciever that ignores any data from GPS satelites iand instead bases its calculationd on Galileo etc instead, presto no chance for the US to directly controll the input dara unless ofc the por in a call to ESa GSA and tell thrm to transmit bad data or else, but that is a different question and allso way ot. Have a nice day

155 to go!

[HornWumpus]

155 more by 2022.

Almost 1/week, I believe that.

Propaganda needs to be plausible, this isn't.

Re:

[HornWumpus]

They just launched one you halfwit.

Here goes the Sinophobia again

[DNS-and-BIND]

I look forward to well-reasoned arguments that are totally not Sinophobic and dog whistle racism, just like all the other threads that mention China.

Re:

[ganjadude]

I look forward to the day people stop throwing dog whistle around like its actually a thing

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

That and usage of the word gaslight.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Chang. Do you work for a chink tank?

Re:

[Strider-]

The limitations imposed by Chinese internet filtering are pretty well known.

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[sgt_doom]

I look forward to the day America is not beset with Chicom propagandists who support the offshoring of all jobs to China, China's rampant forced organ harvesting of their political and religious prisoner populations, and their disappeared human rights attorneys and pro-democracy activists, etc., etc.

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

I think you have it all wrong. People have no problem with the Chinese or their culture. The problem people have is with the Chinese government. You act as if you are unaware of their actions.

- they have been suppressing dissent and then hunting down dissidents to jail them
- the re-education prisons that they are putting Muslims into
- the massive video surveillance network they are building out
- the social ranking system they are using keep "undesirables" from traveling or buying things
- let's not forget

Re:

[fustakrakich]

In fact all four of those governments are ran by complete fucking assholes who I believe to be corrupt bastards.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they just came down and took over while nobody was looking.

Don't be an idiot. These people have to win elections. Well, we don't know about China exactly, but west of the Urals? People create their own problems. They don't resist unaccountable authority, on the contrary, they cheer it.

Re:

[fustakrakich]

Obviously! There are no Chinese people in the Chinese government, military, not a single one is collecting a government check, or supports it in any way, right? Where do you suppose they are from? I am fascinated by this hard line that people draw between themselves and their government. I think it's to apply plausible deniability for what the government does, with full consent of theirs in the "west".

Re:

[Gravis Zero]

Well now you've convinced me! Obviously, people always support the actions of their government. I suppose we should nuke North Korea because after all, they aren't victims of their government, they totally back it 100%. /s

How are you this dumb?

Re:

[fustakrakich]

Did I say anything about North Korea? Your absurd distractions are dumb.

Re:

[fustakrakich]

Forgot to ask, since you brought them up: What's the North Korean army made up of? Martians?

Re:

[Actually, I do RTFA]

It's not racism if it's about a political difference with the Chinese government. I can be opposed to the Soviet Union without being anti-Slav or opposed to the Nazis without being anti-Aryan.

Re:

[Freischutz]

I look forward to well-reasoned arguments that are totally not Sinophobic and dog whistle racism, just like all the other threads that mention China.

It's not that I distrust the Chinese any more than other countries, it's just that I simply credit the Chinese with being capable of the same skulduggery as the US, European countries or Russia. So when I see them getting in on the ground level in the emerging LEO satellite internet industry and knowing that in China no company is really private, the Chinese government always has their fingers in everything to some degree, I have to ask: Is there a better way for the Chinese to do what they are seeing the N

Great firewall

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the great firewall be built in, or will traffic have to be routed via a ground station? God forbid users be able to communicate directly with one another via the network.

Chinternet for poor rural women, right

[Anonymous Coward]

They just want to make sure everyone is under total surveillance. China is a disgusting country that fears the flow of information and does everthing possible to stop it. The spiritual opposite of Internet and freedom.

Nobody wants any kind of service from these foul commie slopes.

the best movie on China:

[sgt_doom]

http://www.filmsforfreedom.com... [filmsforfreedom.com]

So what do the evil Chicoms want?

[WCMI92]

World domination of course.

Should I care?

[AndyKron]

Here we are live from [censored] and we're having a [censored] time! Come see [censored] at the [censored]!

It’s the easiest way to control the mass

[ErstO]

Of course this makes sense, both Russia and China figured out how to manipulate the people through misinformation, it’s cheaper then shipping them off to gulags

Glad to hear it.

[John.Banister]

One thing I worried about when learning of other LEO Satellite Internet was the satellites being shot down as they pass over China. So, China putting up their own constellation that could be shot down in retaliation sounds like motivation for them not to throw stones. Plus, it will be amusing when they achieve commercial competitiveness by putting up internet for the rest of the world that is less censored than the internet that they provide domestically.