I started/ran a commercial satellite provider (in war zones) for a while last decade. The big transition just happening then (but not in my region, due to a ro

I started/ran a commercial satellite provider (in war zones) for a while last decade. The big transition just happening then (but not in my region, due to a rocket blowing up during launch) was Ku -> Ka band. Ku has big enough beams (thus, less freq re-use) and low enough bandwidth (due to cost of space segment) that it really wasn't economic for "regular" Internet for people -- hundreds or thousands of dollars for a high-latency connection with other performance characteristics of the worst DSL. Ka is an order of magnitude or more better (although more subject to rain fade); smaller and cheaper equipment, too. I was kind of sad Google went with "project loon", which seems kind of..loony to me..rather than UAVs, tethered aerostats, or LEO constellations. It looks like they're not just doing loon. I want to figure out how a Gerald Bull space cannon or RAMAC (10-50k G force launch of 1m diameter satellites, for $100/pound) could be used to build an LEO constellation.