"People were thinking of using nano-satellites for Earth imagery but nobody had thought of using them for voice or text communications," says Israeli former fighter pilot Meir Moalem, the chief executive of Sky and Space Global (SAS). "We were the first."
His firm is aiming to offer customers mobile phone connections via a constellation of 200 shoebox-sized satellites weighing just 10kg (22lb) each. The fleet is set to be operational by 2020 and will provide text, voice and data transfer services to the Earth's equatorial regions - including much of Latin America and Africa - to a market of up to three billion people.
"Our total constellation costs just $150m (£108m). That's less than the cost of a single standard communications satellite. This is what we mean when we talk of a disruptive technology."
SAS is using a non-traditional method of getting its satellites into orbit. They will be air-launched in batches of 24 by Virgin Orbit, part of Richard Branson's Virgin group. Virgin's modified Boeing 747-400 will fly up to 35,000ft (10,000m), then LauncherOne, a two-stage liquid oxygen-powered expendable rocket, will blast the payload into orbit. It's one of a number of air-launch-to-orbit systems under development.
So there's Virgin Trains, Virgin Airlines, Virgin Orbit (which I'd never before heard of), and Virgin Galactic. But aren't we skipping a few ? Where's Virgin Moon, Virgin Asteroid, Virgin Inner Rocky Planets, Virgin Gas Giants, and Virgin Kuiper Belt ? What about Virgin Oort Cloud and Virgin Interstellar ? Virgin Giant Molecular Clouds, anyone ? Virgin X-Ray Binaries, perhaps ? Maybe Virgin Emission Nebulae and Virgin Supernovae Remnants ? Virgin Globular Clusters... okay, I'll stop now.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-43090226
Interesting. I once read of an idea to bounce RF off of the ionosphere to points beyond the horizon. This idea seems similar, but more expensive. Though, I have to say I never heard more of the "ionosphere bouncing" idea. I don't know what happened with it.
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