al@ames-lm.UUCP (Al Globus) (07/06/84)
Any thoughts on the feasibility of a USENET satellite? The satellite would in some fairly low orbit and act as a USENENT node with a low power omni antenna. It would pick up USENET files from sites near the orbital path, analyse the destinations and drop the mail off when it passed over the appropriate site. There might be long delays for a high inclination satellite, but an equitorial satellite in low orbit (4-500 miles?) could deliver mail rapidly to equitorial nations. There's also the possiblity of multiple satellites in various orbit that send to each other as they pass nearby. Perhaps AMSAT could get into something like this, I'd think that power requirements should be quite low leading to a relatively cheap satellite. From the half baked ideas of Al Globus
kiessig@idi.UUCP (Rick Kiessig) (07/07/84)
It's much simpler to use VIR space off of an existing
television channel. Lauren gave a talk on this at the last
Usenix conference.
--
Rick Kiessig
{decvax, ucbvax}!sun!idi!kiessig
{akgua, allegra, amd70, burl, cbosgd, dual, ihnp4}!idi!kiessig
Phone: 408-996-2399ron@brl-tgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (07/09/84)
Actually, a more practical and on the way to being implemented solution is that of Lauren Weinstein. He plans to buy some vertical retrace time on one of the super tv stations to continuously broadcast netnews. -Ron
karn@mouton.UUCP (07/17/84)
The project which you suggest is in fact being done by AMSAT: it's called PACSAT. Actually, there are now three distinct projects for packet radio hardware (i.e., hardware containing HDLC decoding/encoding, memory, etc, as opposed to straight "bent pipe" transponders). PACSAT is one involving a dedicated payload to be deployed from the Shuttle on a Vandenburg launch. The working figures are 9600 bps PSK up and down, with 4 megabytes of CMOS bulk RAM. The Japanese are also working on JAS-1, which will contain a smaller pacsat-like unit, although the memory capacity and transmission speeds will be smaller. The orbit planned for JAS-1 is approx 1500 km, high inclination but not sun-synchronous. JAS-1 will also carry a more conventional real-time transponder similar to that of Oscar-8 (which also carried a transponder of Japanese construction.) There is now a new project underway to include some form of packet radio store-and-forward unit as part of Phase 3-C, to be launched on an Ariane in a few years. A new group of amateur packet enthusiasts in the Munich area (which I just visited) is starting this work. All in all, there is a lot of interest in this type of work. However, for USENET there are some fatal problems. First, amateur radio cannot be used for business purposes. Since this is how we justify USENET to our employers (regardless of what the traffic actually looks like) it would be somewhat hypocritical to use amateur radio. Second, many countries do not have rules quite as liberal as the USA and "third party" traffic (communications involving a non-amateur party) are not permitted. Third, some administrations do not as yet recognize digital transmissions in their amateur rules. Phil Karn, KA9Q Asst VP Engineering, AMSAT