All right, you need a pretty good pointing accuracy on the sender side for sat to sat laser comms. Which is harder if both the sender and receiver are whizzing about ~8km/s on differing orbits.
If you were to cover the whole US once every month, that's only an average bandwidth of 10Mbps. All of Europe would be another ~10Mbps. Two orders of magnitude less than a plausible first-generation data rate for free space laser communications.
Quote from: Robotbeat on 04/27/2012 04:04 pmIf you were to cover the whole US once every month, that's only an average bandwidth of 10Mbps. All of Europe would be another ~10Mbps. Two orders of magnitude less than a plausible first-generation data rate for free space laser communications.10 Mps for a month is a non-trivial amount of data.If PR truly can achieve the performance that you describe, their core business should be in satellite communications and not imagery or planetary resources.
So one piece of the puzzle is basically an attempt to obsolete Deep Space Network with optical comms network. Given that they are not the only ones trying, and the tech is all basically demonstrated and there, this could be interesting.
Quote from: savuporo on 04/27/2012 05:51 pmSo one piece of the puzzle is basically an attempt to obsolete Deep Space Network with optical comms network. Given that they are not the only ones trying, and the tech is all basically demonstrated and there, this could be interesting.I don't think we'll be giving up on the DSN just yet. Radio communications is pretty nice, and we have all sorts of probes out there right now, so DSN will be needed for quite a bit longer.
Any estimates on how much power they might be able to get from those solar panels?
They are being invested in not because they're going to turn a buck but because they're going to mine asteroids. Do you make your career choices solely based on the amount of money you'd make?
In addition, the telescopes are capable of being pointed at Earth for observati0n, as well. All of this potential for gathering data is a potential opportunity to sell that data to universities, businesses, and government.In addition, Lewicki confirmed to me that they’ll also be putting Arkyds on the market, as well as a tool for private scientific work. There’s not a price set yet, though it will be in the “low single-digit millions,” with the possibility of alterations for specific use...For the Arkyds, the company wants to develop a small, low power, optical communications ability. This ability would be “tech enabling,” according to Lewicki, and would offer some better communications... “One of the robots might be relaying messages to Earth, while another takes pictures and yet another takes pictures from a different angle.”
I suspect the paperwork demanded by the ITU for operating these telescopes (orbital slot allocation, frequency allocation, orbital debris cataloguing, ...) is going to significantly outmass the satellites themselves,
The scientific "consensus" of real geologists is that asteroids are, if not non-starters, they are down-the-road, shall we say, 2nd generation projects that will happen after the entire Moon starts getting depleted centuries from now.
When a business man says he's not in it for the money, you'd better believe he's in it for the money. The world's platinum market is only $5B/year. The Earth satellite business is $160B/year--and growing.
These guys aren't stupid. Mining asteroids is stupid.
It is capable of high-precision optical stability down to the sub-arcsecond level, an increase in capability of almost 2 orders of magnitude over current small satellite stability performance, enabling optical communication at high data rates or over long (interplanetary) distances;
QuoteIt is capable of high-precision optical stability down to the sub-arcsecond level, an increase in capability of almost 2 orders of magnitude over current small satellite stability performance, enabling optical communication at high data rates or over long (interplanetary) distances;Why is the "or" not an "and"?
Quote from: peter-b on 04/27/2012 07:53 pmI suspect the paperwork demanded by the ITU for operating these telescopes (orbital slot allocation, frequency allocation, orbital debris cataloguing, ...) is going to significantly outmass the satellites themselves, Part of the beauty of optical communications is no need for frequency allocation.