Space Junk
It must be time for someone to update this assessment of the stuff floating around up there:
http://www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/space_junk.html
NASA's Ames Research Center is teaming with the often sinister-sounding Machine-to-Machine Intelligence Corporation (m2mi) to create a global networking system using small satellites they call "nanosats." The two organizations intend to develop swarms of spacecrafts weighing between 11 and 110 pounds, which will be placed in …
Is that the G-forces to be experienced when the whole shebang (commercially) falls to earth?
Not many seem to want 3G let alone 4. But 5?? LTE?? Bollock*s.
If it *does* take off, it'll scare the bejeezers out of Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, et. al. Plus the global network operators. Guess we'll all have to use The Orange Spit (cingular)
MORE! Tin-Foil Hats :)
Seriously though, it will mean anyone anywhere on the planet will be able to send or recieve phone calls, which will really piss off all the Dictatorships (zimbawbei, china, north korea, Israel, USA, etc...) as they wont be able to stop the suppressed masses from sending/receiving subversive messages to/from the rest ofthe world.
Also it enables any dodgy warlord/dictator to remotly fly his dodgy WMD laden drone aircraft to any destination on just a mobile phone(i wonder if they will put the damage on his bill as well?) though i would suspect he will be using a hacked account or call forwarding.
Can anyone tell me if there's a place left on this planet that does NOT have Mobile Phones or Wi-Fi............YET?
As i would seriously like to move there for some piece and quiet.
mines the crinkly-Tin-Foil Space Suit.....
illuminatus;p
Sorry, it'll make no difference on information availability. The opressed masses are already perfectly capable of getting their messages out / news in right now as long as they can aquire and are prepared to run the risk of being caught with whatever moody kit is required to circumvent the restrictions in place.
Yer "talks to anyone, anywhere" commodity satphone-alike is going to be top of the banned / party-officials-only list in yer average dictatorship / pariah state / revolutionary worker's paradise.
What killed the previous systems (Globalstar, Iridium, ICO) was the expectation that people in the undeveloped world would pay $3 a minute for a phone call. This totally ignored the fact that most of these people didn't earn $3 a week.
Now the value of voice, which is still 80% of the business is tending to almost free with fixed rate plans.
Can you support the cost of a LEO network on $20 per subscriber per month?
It will have to have h big ugly phones and antennas and they won'tt work indoors which is where nearly 90% of calls are made,
I don't think so.
Simon