Comments on: What Goes Around: Teledesic 2.0

By: Maureen

Maureen — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:55:49 +0000

Hello from france BOB,

In Reply to Cringely, I hope that one day the “google world” will not became true.
Google energy, Googleternet, googleDNS, googleADSsearch, free I’m not sure; they scared me.

See you guy, Maureen

By: Lee Schlesinger» Look, up in the sky! Track satellites with SaVi

Lee Schlesinger» Look, up in the sky! Track satellites with SaVi — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:23:17 +0000

[...] despite a picture credit being SaVi’s one requirement,” Wood notes. “For example, a recent Robert X. Cringely article took a SaVi image from my first academic paper in 1997 without a credit, and ignored requests for [...]

By: I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Google 2010: What Makes the Muskrat Guard his Musk? - Cringely on technology

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:57:32 +0000

[...] her explain how Google is going to launch a satellite Internet service similar to one I described in a recent column, specifically to bring freedom of information (and advertising) to totalitarian regimes [...]

By: Soifoine ibrahim

Soifoine ibrahim — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:04:00 +0000

This is great to hear from you. I met you in New-york when I was working in this ambitious project called African Sky. Back then,one of my inspiration was indeed Teledesic. Like Teledesic,African Sky disappeared for luck of support and funding but I never give up in the project.Quite the contary.I become more involved than before although I have to re-write the project and adapt it in a bankable one.
To read your piece after those years is just encouraging,to say least. Bob! If you remember me,as I hope you do,I will welcome your advice today as I did then

Best,
Soifoine

By: THGD

THGD — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:30:41 +0000

Fascinating article, but what I would really like to know is where did all those SS-18 missiles go. Are they still in the ground waiting for our Russian friends to reactivate the launch codes ?

By: george

george — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:01:53 +0000

How is this different from Iridium?

By: Freemon SandleWould

Freemon SandleWould — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:14:42 +0000

hi tech bully pulpit would come just in time for our communist mildly retarded president Obamby who sympathizes with Hugo Chavez to discourage the developing world. Yuk.

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:22:32 +0000

Having worked on the ICO (MEO) project I think Teledesic will run into the same problems: during the development program the specification was updated to reflect advances in technology that had made their way into commercial terrestrial networks, mainly data speed, but also new services. The design was obsolete even before launch. I agree with the 800+ pieces of junk assessment (more work for the scow then

By: Ian W

Ian W — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:30:19 +0000

That’s exactly along the lines of what occurred to me when I read this. Any sort of orbital radio communications are very unlikely to beat the reliable vanishingly-low latency inherent to fiber optics… Let alone the fact that a few hundred satellites simply aren’t going to be able to provide broadband to hundreds of millions (or more) of people and businesses simultaneously — at least, no satellites anyone could presently imagine. Do you know of a technology simultaneously capable of receiving, routing, and transmitting that many signals at once, within the size and power constraints of a few hundred satellites, that would be cheaper to implement and better-performing than just stringing fiber to the hinterlands? Those LEO satellites would have to be regularly refueled to maintain orbit, too. All several hundred of them. We should throw a nuclear reactor in each of them, and go ahead and implement Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program, while we’re at it. Wait — I know!!! We should just modify our submarine fleet and launch it into space. Free Internet for all, and damn the torpedoes!!

By: gwern

gwern — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:31:28 +0000

> They we have 800+ worthless pieces of junk floating around the planet doing jack. We’re basically moving consumerism from citizens to governments and the military, who overpay for everything and are even worse than citizens at cleaning up after themselves.

Was launching every satellite ever a bad idea? If they’re in low earth orbit, then that means disposal is trivial – wait a few decades for the orbit to decay and shallow reentry will utterly destroy it, or put a very small rocket on the satellite and push it down early.

As long as they aren’t bigger than Skylab or filled with hundreds of pounds of hydrazine, reentry is the perfect disposal method.