Posted on 04/04/2019 8:48:25 AM PDT by Red Badger
I don’t know if it re-entered, but while it was in orbit, the Air Force was tracking it.
We had objects as small as a bolt, nuts and washers in our sat catalog. Even some Russkie ejected human waste.
A frozen turd at 14,000 miles an hour can really do some damage!
Wow.
That’s some cool shirt.
At least one of those fool children at google needs to read the book “Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story”.
The hard part isn’t putting up and operating the satellites but getting every nation on earth to agree to allocate a common communications spectrum just for this purpose AND to allocate ENOUGH of that spectrum ...
spectrum allocation has ALWAYS been the problem with ALL wireless data communications, and the bigger the area, the more powerful the signal, and the broader the bandwidth the bigger the problems, both technically and politically ...
all of these johnny-come-lately satellite constellation promoters are truly promoting pie-in-the-sky BS ...
Amazon, not Google...............
“Iridium satellites are still working. About 20 years, kind of sort of.”
actually, Iridium just finished replacing their entire, original constellation with new and improved satellites ...
“They should buy Iridium (IRDM) and add a box for internet capability to the sats”
The new Iridium satellites already do internet ...
Amazon [Jeff Bezos, the ‘richest man in the world] doesn’t buy ‘used’ stuff....................
“Amazon, not Google”
ROTFLOL! I keep getting those two monopolies mixed up!
Liberals, they’re ALL THE SAME!.........................
Lol... I suppose it wouldn’t be as large of a write off either.
At least it’s his money, and not mine or yours. So more power to him....................
Iridium II...
Because Iridium I was such a success.
Well in a way... All write offs are lost revenue. But... they are sometimes and meant to be an investment towards a better economic situation overall. If write offs are given freely I would rather they be practical and beneficial than just thrown away on some “hobby” with no real practical benefits in exchange as it was designed to do. :)
But I agree, as long as the taxpayers don’t end up subsidizing this in anyway on top of the write offs that is an absolute plus.
400 mile altitude should only add 2ms of latency vs a landline all other things being equal.
Not being geostationary means it has to be omnidirectional. Might be signal quality issues.
LOL!......They just didn’t do it the right way!.................like communism apologists always say...............
At 500 km, orbital decay time is around 10 years, and at 700 km it's around 100 years. I think they picked the altitudes so that the satellites will start re-entering not too long after their expected lifetimes.
Oh, the principle works, Iridium proved that. It’s the long term problems that will eat them alive..................
Their lifespan depends upon their velocity, orbit type (circular or elliptical) and altitude. Given their altitude of 375 miles, their orbital period is 1.6 hours at a velocity of 4.7 miles per second. The drag on that is considerable and unless they put a butt load of fuel on board, it won’t last anywhere near 10 years. If it is a relatively inexpensive satellite, then they will have negligible fuel onboard and last 1-3 years.
Iridium just finished replacing their entire, original constellation with new and improved satellites ...
The new ones do NOT reflect the sun, the end of viewing Iridium flares.
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