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A comment on Starlink Maritime. Parent comment
I don't understand what this means. If you mean Facebook-- Facebook didn't drop billions of dollars in to free space optical comms.
> GEO to LEO is not LEO to LEO
Yes, GEO-to-LEO is worse in every way (assuming the LEO satellites are in the same inclination and have the approximate same orbital period):
* Longer link distances. (More path loss, worse link budgets)
* Higher peak angular rates for pointing.
LEO-to-Earth is mostly worse:
* Shorter link path, but atmospheric dispersion (More path loss, worse link budgets, plus things like multipath).
* Less demanding pointing precision due to shorter path, though.
The hard part isn't the optical comms in space. The hard part is fitting multiple precision-pointed transceivers into a tiny volume and mass budget.
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I don't understand what this means. If you mean Facebook-- Facebook didn't drop billions of dollars in to free space optical comms.
> GEO to LEO is not LEO to LEO
Yes, GEO-to-LEO is worse in every way (assuming the LEO satellites are in the same inclination and have the approximate same orbital period):
* Longer link distances. (More path loss, worse link budgets)
* Higher peak angular rates for pointing.
LEO-to-Earth is mostly worse:
* Shorter link path, but atmospheric dispersion (More path loss, worse link budgets, plus things like multipath).
* Higher peak angular rates for pointing.
* Less demanding pointing precision due to shorter path, though.
The hard part isn't the optical comms in space. The hard part is fitting multiple precision-pointed transceivers into a tiny volume and mass budget.