Satellites I love
I am right now in Canada, 70 feet above the ocean, watching lobster boats pulling up traps and writing this. I live part of the year on Prince Edward Island, in the Maritimes. Since my place is a little remote, I can't get straight broadband and am forced to use satellite Internet connectivity.
All in all, it's not bad. It got me thinking about satellites and how they're starting to play a big role in our daily lives, at least for us early adopter types.
How do we use satellites?
The Internet connectivity piece actually works. It's about twice, three times as expensive as DSL, but when it's the only option, it's not a bad one. The thing that you really notice though, is slow uplink speeds and latency caused by same when you're browsing. Even a one second hesitation adds up quickly when you're on a website that's linking all over place to Double Click. But if you're in a remote location or on a boat, it's amazes me that it works at all.
Satellite radio is new for me. I had Sirius put into my car before I set out on a cross-country trip this month. Wow, what a difference. Being able to have radio everywhere you go is fantastic, and by radio I mean non-country. It's also nice to be able to have continuity with the same station for awhile. In the old days with AM or even worse, FM, you'd switch stations every 20 miles or so, which is a lot when you're on a 3,000 mile road trip.
GPS is a necessity for me. I use it locally and globally. Sometimes it helps answer the basic "where am I" question, but even more importantly it tells me how to get somewhere. It has its limitations, most don't do well at overpasses or in cities with tall buildings, but I still love it.
Satellite world phones. I don't have one, but if it was a little cheaper, I would. A theme that runs through a lot of satellite technology, is how much better it is to not have to be in line of sight of an antenna. I imagine that's really nice when you're on a mobile phone.
What else could potentially be on satellite? Streaming video, for one. Hollywood is already rolling this out for theatre distribution, but there's no reason that it couldn't be used by consumers, other than the obvious intellectual property ones.
So, if we're doing so much on satellites and even more in the future, how come we (America) don't have a more robust space program? It seems to me that the countries that can put commsats up, USA, EU, Russia, Japan, China, could have a stranglehold on future commerce. For instance, a country with political filters on the technology could extend that bias right into the relay circuits. I wonder if the US intelligence agencies have any surprises as payloads onboard commercial commsats? Hmm.
Posted on June 13, 2006
