21–30 of 224 posts
I was going to make a silly joke about roaming charges being astronomical, but with the round trip time being approximately 2.7 seconds I think you'd actually have just enough time to request vectors and do a location update... maybe you will be able to bring your own SIM and device.
Launch-pad Ninja 2: "Let me take a team selfie.... that's funny I had my phone here somewhere. Let me check Find My iPhone...... er, oops!"
I would love to see some mock-ups of orbital patterns for a moon based starlink-like network. How does the relative lack of an atmosphere affect things? How large of a constellation do you need when the orbital body is 1/4 the size of earth?
However, since the distance to earth anyway is the limiting factor you don't need low flying sats at all. A handful of sats could do a pretty good job with global coverage.
And so the legendary indestructibility of Nokia's phones shall be put to the test once more. The very first or two digits of any phone number on Earth are the country calling codes. We should add extra digits for a planetary calling code.
Imagine accidentally calling an astronaut. Or doing FaceTime/Zoom with them on the moon. It would be interesting.
Does this mean the ITU is going to assign the moon a country code? I vote for +6666 (MOON). Who decides what parts of the moon get what area codes? Imagine how long it will take to get Orange to instal a landline in a crater!
Cool and all, but I'd settle for a cellular network in Wyoming.
I would love to see some mock-ups of orbital patterns for a moon based starlink-like network. How does the relative lack of an atmosphere affect things? How large of a constellation do you need when the orbital body is 1/4 the size of earth?
I would not be very hard to do. The principle problem is just that the moons gravity is unstable so low flying objects would need quite a bit of fuel to stay in the correctorbit. However, since the distance to earth anyway is the limiting factor you don't need low flying sats at all. A handful of sats could do a pretty good job with global coverage.
If there is intelligent life somewhere out there, when they travel to space, I wonder if they also insist on operating technology that is at least one generation back, for the reason of "proven reliability"? I'd say probably yes. If we ever get a visit from them, that "shmux semiconductor" will be the old model...
I wonder how bad the roaming charges will be for the astronauts if they accidentally use their earthly iPhone SIM with the Moon network.