So how will these orbiting chips be protected from solar and cosmic radiation? Brent On 3/24/2018 10:34 AM, Keith F. Lynch wrote:
Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
The highway-in-the-sky approach works more-or-less for satellites in exactly the same orbit, but keeping them equidistant may require active maneuvers and hence fuel. Active maneuvers don't necessarily require fuel if the satellites are very light and in a fairly high orbit. Dump a can of Pringles (tm) in a circular orbit a few thousand miles up. Except they aren't potato chips, but computer chips. They're solar powered, and they have patches around their edges which can be turned dark or light so as to use sunlight to maneuver in both position and attitude. These satellite constellations are simultaneously communications satellites, directional antennas, computers, file servers, and cooling fins. They should be able to outcompete all ground-based computer and communications services except those that require low latency. See http://server-sky.com/
All credit goes to Keith Lofstrom, perhaps better known for his proposed launch loop. And now for some shameless name-dropping: http://KeithLynch.net/3keith.jpg is a photo of he and I sitting together on a couch in a hotel in Toronto. The third person is Keith Henson. I'm the only person on that couch who doesn't have a Wikipedia page about him.
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