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That's the innovation this is taking advantage of -- the downlink antenna will be tiny and can be embedded. This is a new market, not entering into an existing
by diminoten 8y ago
That's the innovation this is taking advantage of -- the downlink antenna will be tiny and can be embedded.
This is a new market, not entering into an existing market.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoI'm sorry but you are incorrect. You cannot innovate your way around the laws of physics. Do you want 5 Mbps from a LEOSAT? Fine, you need a pointable antenna. An Iridium-style omni antenna cannot accomplish this. The S/N ratio is simply too low.
- diminoten 8y agoSorry, but there are no laws of physics preventing innovation in the antenna space.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoI suggest you study information theory and antenna theory. What you are suggesting is theoretically impossible. If a satellite could paint the continent with a megawatt, it might work. But satellites transmit with tens of watts, which gets spread over a large geographic area. The ground antenna must be pointed for decent bandwidth, either physically (with motors) or virtually (phased array) to achieve the requisite S/N ratio.
- shaklee3 8y agoThis is correct. Basic antenna theory covers C/N and how it relates to antenna size. There's no magic allowed.
- diminoten 8y ago> What you are suggesting is theoretically impossible But then... > it might work Are you an expert in this field? I'm guessing no based on this exchange...
- dragonwriter 8y agoYour deceptive edits are...deceptive. The “it might work” was preceded with a hypothetical condition and then followed with the real condition. It wasn't “its theoretically impossible but it might work”, but, “its theoretically impossible; if satellites could carry transmitters two orders of magnitude more powerful than they actually can, it might work.”
- diminoten 8y agoThat's not what "theoretically impossible" means. You literally just described a scenario where what I said would be theoretically possible, based on your own understanding of the technology, which is decidedly incomplete. You also didn't answer the question about your expertise, I'm assuming because your answer is, "No". Maybe leave the correcting of others to the actual experts...
- dragonwriter 8y ago> That's not what "theoretically impossible" means. Sure it is, if the hypothetical is pointing out a constraint on the boundaries of theoretical impossibility (or, in theory, if the hypothetical is itself possible to describe but theoretically impossible because of physical limits, though that doesn't appear to be the case here; there might be a theoretical lower limit on the size of a transmitter of the require power output or the supporting power system, but in theory there is no limit to the size of a satellite except the bound at which it becomes the primary because it's larger than the thing it is supposed to orbit.) > You also didn't answer the question about your expertise A careful examination of the thread will find that no such question was previously raised. There are more than two people on HN, so just because you get a response that doesn't make the person responding necessarily the person to whom you were responding. HN shows comment authors handles in case you ever need to know to whom it is you are responding, which you might want to do before attacking them based on assumptions about their identity.
- diminoten 8y ago
- maccam94 8y agoIt will not be tiny, but they are designing a pizza box sized phased array antenna with a target price of $100-300.