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Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

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Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#171

Post by Game_Ender »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #156
echoangle wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link, very interesting. So CEP is estimated to be around 100m. Better than I thought but I wouldn’t call it hitting a specific house yet.

What do you consider the primary benefit of pinpointing a particular house in nuclear war?

I don’t know if it matters now but at some point certain targets were hardened to near misses of certain sizes but not direct strikes. So the better your accuracy the smaller the weapon (or fewer) you can use to take out those targets.

So you could say the use would be increased certainty your enemies command and control and other bunkers would be destroyed increasing the odds of “winning” whatever happens afterwards.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#172

Post by kazinator »

gonzo wrote: post #139
kazinator wrote: post #69

Is line of sight light spectrum subject to any permissions/licensing like radio/microwave? If not, that is significant.

how do you license ... light?

How do you license focused beams of microwaves? Supposedly in some jurisdictions, if you aim a microwave beam across the window to another building, you need a license. (Because the telco monopolist has has some government bureaucrats in their back pocket or something.) Could you get around this if it's light?

People will license anything. Something you can get over the counter in one country needs a prescription in another.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#173

Post by femto »

krisoft wrote: post #119
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #41

I'm low key afraid that this stuff is gonna get popular for .mil usage. Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms of jamming. Its usage dots the sci books I've read over the years, but almost always for scary reasons. Here's the Navy today announcing work on AirBorne System for Optical Relay and Broadcast (ABSORB), a (for now) low-cost prototype one-to-many (I maybe mis-inferring what multi-acc…

> Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms of jamming. I’m a bit of two minds about this. Obviously jamming resistant high bandwidth communication enables some scarry possibilities. But the lack of it is what drives and will drive militaries around the world to put more and more autonomy into weapons. It doesn’t matter what kind of treaties we write on paper to prohibit technologies. During a…

> On the other hand if communication is possible that puts a leash on this dynamic

I'm a bit more pessimistic than that. I think the driver for autonomy will be that the speed at which things happen on the battlefield. People being attacked with automated weapons might not be able to make response related decisions fast enough. The automation will be in place to enable a rapid response. It will become an arms race involving speed of attack and response. It will be the military equivalent of high-frequency trading, involving things like swarms and directed energy weapons.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#174

Post by gghffguhvc »

BurningFrog wrote: post #164
aerostable_slug wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To risk being pedantic, US SLBMs (Tridents) indeed use stellar updates for their inertial guidance system. Our ICBMs have no update mechanism at all. Once they're out of the silo, they're completely on their own.

The BM part means "Ballistic Missile", which sounds like they're basically "thrown" into a parabolic path towards their target, like a falling rock. Or am I over-interpreting the name?

Have a read of how MERV part of some ICBMs works. Lots going on as far as targeting goes. Also take a look at Trident 2 which can use GPS for course correction but isn’t reliant on it.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#175

Post by slt2021 »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #154
slt2021 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you detect/find the receiver? thats seems to be a problem

I thought comms was two way.

so you have a laser and want to jam the comms channel. How do you find where the comms channel is, where is the receiver, where do you point your laser to jam enemy comms?

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#176

Post by kfrzcode »

rpmisms wrote: post #95
pmcf wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Line of sight issues are simply a wattage issue. A gigawatt laser is impervious to rain, a bird, a flock of birds, a bird and the tree it sitting in. Probably the entire forest. Let’s just say there are some solutions well in hand.

I like your first sentence as a truism.

It does have a lot of potential.

"At once, the planets stood between us, forever occluding what we yearn to see.

For existence itself could not repent, the time we spent, and yet

Only whence wielding wattage whole had we defined;

-- an oculus toward which we'd partake of thine.

To space and time, no morphisms apply, no longer shall ye escape our Eye."

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#177

Post by mmaunder »

This doesn't work in fog. Space lasers are great. No fog. Everyone wants the 500 Terahertz frequencies to work because bandwidth. They have about 25,000 times the carrying capacity of say 20 Ghz. The lower Ghz stuff penetrates weather to varying degrees. Visible light not so much unless it's a vacuum which is perfect. They should move their nodes into space. Oh wait someone already did that.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#178

Post by beardedmoose »

aerostable_slug wrote: post #111
umvi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Line of sight free space optics can be immune to many many forms of jamming The most powerful weapons on earth already are immune to jamming. ICBMs use celestial navigation (pictures of the stars) to course-correct, which is a form of navigation you cannot jam.

To risk being pedantic, US SLBMs (Tridents) indeed use stellar updates for their inertial guidance system. Our ICBMs have no update mechanism at all. Once they're out of the silo, they're completely on their own.

The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.

In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, the variation being the difference between where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was.

The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn't be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error.

Re: Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers

#180

Post by woah »

refulgentis wrote: post #23
fsh wrote: post #15

This section from the marketing blurb doesn't sound too promising: When atmospheric conditions disrupt the light, our adaptive rate and hybrid architecture maintains the connection, with minimal downtime. In the long run, all these wireless technologies (satellite or optical/microwave terrestrial links) will have a very hard time competing with simply laying down some optical fiber.

It's interesting at 36 to look back at what I think would disrupt connectivity a decade ago: - Google Fiber (it wasn't possible to do it cheaper than incumbents, so it devolved to standard incumbent x why would 40% margin company invest billions to get Comcast's peak profit margin of ~15% profit) - Starry Internet (too expensive to build out, I have it and it's good, but the company certainly didn't scale) - 5G in ge…

It's crazy that almost every house is able to be attached to a pipe carrying high pressure water that will flood if it is broken or attached wrong, thick wire carrying high current that will shock you, a pipe containing explosive gas, and a six inch cast iron pipe full of poop, but adding one more connection to a tiny thin strand of glass wrapped in plastic is too expensive.
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