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A satellite constellation like this will actually be more efficient for long distance communication than fiber as hops will be more or less a straight line betw
by agildehaus 10y ago
A satellite constellation like this will actually be more efficient for long distance communication than fiber as hops will be more or less a straight line between a few sats whereas fiber on the ground often takes crazy paths due to terrain and politics.
If SpaceX can prove reusability, which is looking likely, putting up a constellation like this will become significantly cheaper. They also can just reuse first stages that their own customers already paid for (their customers pay for the flight, not the stage itself).
- lsjdfkljdfwkwdf 10y agoEfficient? Long haul fiber (DWDM) capacity is measures in Tbps....
- Retric 10y agoI don't have SpaceX numbers. But, a constellation like this was supposed to provide ~200 Gbytes per month for 5 billion people, which works out to ~3000 terabytes per second or ~5 terabits per second per satellite at a minimum. (More if they are modeling the ocean.) http://www.popsci.com/samsung-wants-launch-thousands-satellites-bring-everyone-earth-internet http://www.popsci.com/samsung-wants-launch-thousands-satelli... ED: Here is the paper. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1508/1508.02383.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1508/1508.02383.pdf
- agildehaus 10y agoIn terms of latency, not raw capacity.