The New Space Race: One Man's Mission to Build a Galactic Internet

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2015-01-22/global-internet-greg-wyler-may-beat-elon-musk-google-facebook

by prostoalex • 11 years ago

96 22 11 years ago

businessweek.com

state• 11 years ago

It's true that I live under a rock, but how have I never heard of this guy?

codinghorror• 11 years ago

I guess he was the first to come up with this radial heatsink design?

http://www.google.com/patents/US20040200601

Stock Intel coolers do look like this today and have for a while.

I used to spend a lot of time thinking about heatsinks. It is all tower and heatpipe models today, though, e.g.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6830/cpu-air-cooler-roundup-si...

Originally popularized by the Scythe Ninja back in gosh, what, 2004 or so? It was a super effective design, main refinements over time have been more and more "slices" and direct contact heatpipes. Nobody afaik has beaten efficiency of the tower heatpipe design to date.

rasz_pl• 11 years ago

looks like junk patent, filed 4 years AFTER Thermaltake Golden orb

http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=256

rgbrenner• 11 years ago

did you read the patent? it says: "Priority date Aug 30, 1999" and the first sentence of the description is: "[0001] This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/386,103, filed on Aug. 30, 1999."

which is: https://www.google.com/patents/US6851467 and was indeed filed on Aug 30 1999.

Which is almost a year before the Thermaltake Golden Orb.

Besides, he actually has his name on a number of patents: https://www.google.com/search?safe=off&hl=en&tbm=pts&q=ininv...

mytochar• 11 years ago

150ms is an incredible number, and the volume of satellites required will also increase bandwidth. This seems like a good situation to be in all around. I hope he succeeds at this work.

agildehaus• 11 years ago

SpaceX has suggested around 20 ms latency with 4000 satellites offering near-gigabit speeds. Nothing but promises and a billion Google bucks right now, but I'm also hoping he succeeds. That'd be amazing.

The fun part of his is that its supposed to fund his Mars ventures and be SpaceX's experience for putting a similar network around Mars.

If it pans out, even in 2-3x his expected timeframe, I'll be the happiest geek alive.

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

The fun part of his is that its supposed to fund his Mars ventures and be SpaceX's experience for putting a similar network around Mars.

It would be both incredibly cool and valuable to show up with all of the orbital infrastructure already in place (communications/positioning) waiting for us.

thescorer• 11 years ago

I'm having a hard time translating 150ms into something I understand right now which is Mbps. Can someone enlighten me?

ihsw• 11 years ago

Well, simply put, there's more to a good user experience than having some high Mbps. For example, if your latency is high then loading a web page with fifty small pictures will take longer than one really big picture.

On your phone, when chatting with someone, the connection will be really choppy.

Think of it as having a car that can go really fast in a straight line, but it takes a really long time to make any left or right turns.

richardbrevig• 11 years ago

Mbps is capacity. Think of a water system of pipes...how many gallons of water can be put through per second. Latency is how long it takes to turn on the water.

So, high latency and high mbps = wait a second for image to start to load, once it does, image loads really fast.

Low latency and low mbps = image begins to load immediately but takes forever for the whole thing to appear.

micro_cam• 11 years ago

One problem with existing satellite internet (or phone) is that the signal has to travel to and from a satellite thousands of miles above the equator causing a ~500ms (half second) delay or lag which is noticeable in voice or video calls, ssh sessions, games and even browsing the web. You'll press a key and it will take half a second for it to register, or say something and not be heard right away.

Getting this down to ~100ms puts it in the range of terrestrial communication and will make things much less noticeable.

LiweiZ• 11 years ago

I think one of the main advantages of the space internet is it will further take over the control of internet access. Regional rulers have to face a harder time on controlling internet. This will be a huge power to hold. And I guess it may reshape the world economically and politically. Any other thoughts regarding this?

onion2k• 11 years ago

The only way that affordable internet access is possible in any country is with explicit and complicit action from the government. You can't get everyone online if the government is run by a group of people who actively don't want it to happen. For example, if a government wants to stop its citizens accessing the web all they need to is make the necessary equipment illegal. When the price of being found with a satellite modem is 30 years in prison most people are going to forego internet access.

The sad thing is there are governments that not only have that sort of power but willingly use it.

jsprogrammer• 11 years ago

Making something illegal is not all that needs to be done. The government would still need a detection and enforcement mechanism.

cmsmith• 11 years ago

For a counterexample, check the history of satellite TV in countries with media access laws [1, 2]. There is a lot of political room between 'western media is illegal' and 'we have a network of informants and will put your family in a forced labor camp'.

[1] Iran : http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-iranian-police...

[2] China: http://www.pcworld.com/article/194755/article.html

ztratar• 11 years ago

Rooting for him, though SpaceX has the core competency and capital to get this off the ground much faster. (no pun intended)

dharma12• 11 years ago

some comparison between the two

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=36590.0

dharma12• 11 years ago

will this number of satellites really have enough bandwidth to serve 3 billion people? And how will the satellites 750 miles from earth be upgraded in the future as bandwidth demand increases?

nitinics• 11 years ago

Looks like they use Ka band [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O3b_%28satellite%29 ]. Wonder what were the factors of not choosing the Ku band. As far as I know Ku band is more cost effective and less susceptible to rain fade and such.

icw• 11 years ago

Much faster data rates I suspect - you can spend some of that on forward error correction to compensate for rain fade.

The New Space Race: One Man's Mission to Build a Galactic Internet

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