Dwayne asks about meteor-bounce communications:
technique extends the idea of bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere (for distance), to bouncing off the atmospheric trails of micro meteors.
Are these particularly common? Or only when there are meteor showers...
The micro-meteors are frequently showering the earth...I seem to recall most systems having to wait on the order of tens of seconds for a suitable trail to appear (and then only for fractions of a second). The transmitters have to be "opportunistic," waiting for a suitable ionization trail and then blasting away for the few hundred milliseconds the trail is active. I think trucks are big users of this system, that is, radio communication with home bases. The data rates don't have to be high, and the sporadic, opportunistic nature is OK. (The same would apply to Net-type communications, of a personal sort, but not the backbone links, of course.) Qualcomm builds truck systems that use other techniques, so perhaps Phil can comment on the current status of meteor-bounce comm systems. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.