6 ms·
What exactly does it mean to have an optical link in space that's not a radio? Radiowaves are light, aren't they? Is this just semantics in regards to light nea
by Boxxed 9y ago
What exactly does it mean to have an optical link in space that's not a radio? Radiowaves are light, aren't they? Is this just semantics in regards to light near the visible spectrum vs not?
- bdamm 9y agoFrequency matters; masers are much more challenging than lasers, for example. But in any case, a direct laser link can carry enormous amounts of data. Even indirect LED transmission has been shown to viably carry many Gb/s. The challenge, of course, is the aim. It's not that easy to hit a pea that's several thousand of km away. I imagine feedback aiming systems where the vessels steer each other's transmitters, but that requires some amount of surface area for reception and that part doesn't scale as easily as fibers do.
- jakobegger 9y agoDiffraction affects laser beams just like all other radiation. You can't just focus a laser beam on a pea over a distance of 1000km. (well, theoretically you could, but you need a 20m parabolic mirror to focus it)