Comment

Comment by jacquesm

At any one time there can be as many as 50,000 aircraft in the air. You'll probably need more than one stream to get the relevant action so you're looking at substantially more bandwidth than all the communications satellites currently in orbit would be able to provide (and you'd have to shut down all the other services they carry).

You're also going to have to take into account that aircraft are moving relative to the satellites so you'd need to have a way to keep the antennae aligned (phased arrays or actuated dishes or both depending on which end you're looking at).

The only 'plus' in the whole scheme compared to terrestrial stuff is that airplanes are physically a bit closer to the satellites.

And then you'd need double the bandwidth at the satellite ends for the downlinks (unless you want to store at the satellite and only downlink in case of a crash).

Crack this and money will flow your way in wide rivers.

parent jacquesm 11 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton