Ground control of computers is child’s play when it comes to the capabilities of satellite constellations, reports Bill O’Neill
Microsoft dominates the world of personal computers and, whatever the result of current action by the United States Justice Department, looks set to determine the future of the Internet, too.
For Bill Gates, the company’s boss, has already made plans to soar beyond terrestrial jurisdictions with one of the most astonishing technological ambitions of the age: a scheme to put 288 satellites in orbit around the earth and so provide an alternative network to link computers.
This “Internet in the sky” would be capable of providing anyone, regardless of their location on the planet, with access to telecommunications infrastructure equivalent to that of a modern city. And, satellite network company Teledesic received a major boost last month when it was announced it had entered into a strategic partnership with another network, or “constellation”, Iridium.
Iridium’s 66 low-orbit satellites will supply cellular telephone-like sat-phones around the world and is expected to be operational by September. Motorola, which is backing the Iridium project, has taken over from Boeing as Teledesic’s primary contractor for the system.
The first Teledesic satellite is due to be launched, appropriately enough, in 2001, and the last one by the end of the following year – an unprecedented spurt in the earth’s population of orbiting objects. Most of the 8 000 or so satellites launched since Sputnik 1 first went into orbit on October 4 1957 are now defunct.
Satellite Internet transmission is going to be the next generation in providing Internet connectivity.
Last week, local Internet service provider M-Web announced it would begin offering downloads by satellite soon.
Teledesic, as the scheme is known because of the way its array of satellites follows the shape of the earth, would be much more than a global telephone system like Iridium’s.
As the Teledesic satellites fall past the earth, retained by gravity in polar orbits just 780km above the surface, clever choreography will ensure that they provide every location with a constant shadow from within which telecommunications could be transmitted and received.
As one satellite starts to disappear over the northern horizon, a following one in the same orbit will come up from the south; or, as the earth rotates about its own axis, another satellite in an adjacent orbit will take over.
The entire array, which is designed to be tied into terrestrial networks where these are available, will pass data traffic backwards and forwards from one side of the globe to the other. If one satellite develops a fault, a neighbouring one will be capable of compensating for the loss.
The need for impressive celestial choreography is the downside of placing the satellites in what are known as low-earth orbits.
Traditionally, communications satellites have been positioned 35 000km above the earth’s surface, where their orbits are synchronised with the earth’s rotation and their shadow remains over one particular spot, albeit a large one.
The downside of this arrangement of so-called geostationary orbits is the delay in sending signals over such long distances and the need for huge power packs to support the system.
Craig McCaw, the young billionaire who developed Teledesic after selling his mobile phone business to US phone giant AT&T in 1994, described it as an alternative “Internet in the sky”.
The original dream was to install 840 satellites in the array at a total project cost of about R42-billion. When this ambitious target, which would have provided huge capacity from the outset of the project, was revised, many analysts began talking of Teledesic as little more than the whim of men with more money than sense.
That was, at least, until last month when a renowned entrepreneur from Saudi Arabia, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, spent R1-billion buying a 16% stake in the scheme.
Alwaleed has earned his reputation from investing in struggling companies that have subsequently seen their stars rise. Most notable among them is Citicorp bank, in which his investment of around R3-billion in 1991 is now reckoned to be worth R37,8-billion.
McCaw’s technological vision is what attracted Gates to become an equal partner in the project in 1996; the pair own a third of the equity apiece.
Gates’s personal wealth is said to increase by R15-million an hour. So, if the terrestrial world won’t let Gates play in its game, then he has more than enough money to make his own.