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The satellite was headed to geostationary orbit over africa, 4Deg west. Unless you live in northern africa the satellite would never be overhead.
by pocketstar 9y ago
The satellite was headed to geostationary orbit over africa, 4Deg west. Unless you live in northern africa the satellite would never be overhead.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gnode 9y agoBeing pedantic: In GEO, with an orbital radius of about 42Mm, and earth having a radius of 7Mm, that gives a radius of 7Mm * acos( 7Mm / 42Mm ) ~ 9800km around 4°W (almost a hemisphere), for which it would be overhead. But admittedly it would only give service to a portion of that.
- perilunar 9y agoProps for Mm, instead of 'thousand km'.
- 908087 9y ago1.) I assumed that they would be launching more than 1 eventually. 2.) Even that one satellite would likely be used to serve up things like "free basics", which would assist Facebook in further convincing the people being served by it that Facebook is "the internet". 3.) Satellites in geostationary orbits are still "constantly orbiting overhead", in case what you were doing was just trying to be pedantic or imply that I was trying to say this one satellite was going to be circling the globe. So my point stands.