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Forgive my ignorance but I don't understand why it's an unimaginably difficult task. The satellites are operating in a vacuum with no weather interference or an
by minhazm 4y ago
Forgive my ignorance but I don't understand why it's an unimaginably difficult task. The satellites are operating in a vacuum with no weather interference or anything and have line of sight to each other. I would think that it should actually be easy to pull off, and actually should get easier at scale since the distances between individual satellites would shrink and would be easier to align the laser links.
- samatman 4y agoI see it as one of those enormously difficult and yet practical things, like photolithography. The human sweat to produce this system is surely measured in decades, if not centuries depending on whose effort we want to count.
- count 4y agoThey're also moving in different, independent directions on different planes at extremely high speeds...
- wmf 4y agoSome people have speculated that laser links within the same plane (where satellites are stationary relative to each other) are working and the others are not.
- lsaferite 4y ago> at extremely high speeds Absolute speeds or relative to each other speeds?
- gpm 4y agoBoth, they have two sets of orbital paths at roughly 90 degrees to eachother (I'm just eyeballing it, it's probably not exactly 90). With more sets if you count the satellites in polar orbits. Though they could, if they needed to, only connect to the satellites flying at low relative speed.
- mlindner 4y agoSatellites in the same plane aren't moving at all relative to each other and satellites in adjacent planes move very little relative to each other.
- deelowe 4y agoI don't remember the details, but I believe one of the issues is that the distances are extremely long.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoMirror tracking is hard. Low orbit stuff etches everything plastic with oxygen.
- roflyear 4y agoLasers don't need an atmosphere to make them difficult to shoot over distances either.