The Irish Times: Could constellations of mini-satellites prevent the splintering of the internet?

[jim bell]

 Ha ha, quite appropriate.  
Although, just within the last couple of days I saw an article which argued that these satellites should be painted flat black to avoid reflection of sunlight.  Sounds like an excellent idea.  And, over the last few years, I've occasionally read of producing the "blackest blacks" by growing a forest of carbon nanotubes on a surface.  This recent record,   http://news.mit.edu/2019/blackest-black-material-cnt-0913   refers to the surface absorbing 99.995 of incident light.   And, what isn't absorbed will probably be reflected in a Lambertian pattern.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambertian_reflectance  

Further, I wonder if the problem of satellites producing images on astronomers' telescopes is a genuine problem.   On the rare occasions that I have seen satellites with my eyeball, it is very close to (after)  dusk, when my piece of the earth is in the dark, and the satellite I am looking at is exposed to the Sun.  That's easy if the satellites are at geosynchronous altitudes, but if these SpaceX satellites are at LEO (low earth orbit), then they cannot reflect much light during times when they are in the shadow provided by earth.  
The reason I posted the link to this article   https://www.irishtimes.com/business/innovation/could-constellations-of-mini-satellites-prevent-the-splintering-of-the-internet-1.4138431?localLinksEnabled=false   is that the existence of this kind of communication has some cypherpunks-relevance, in addition to the more mundane concept of a cheap, universally-available satphone replacement, internet service from space, and a cheaper form of ELT  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_radiobeacon_station   (EPIRB, PLB).
Currently, sending information on the internet to a target that wants to remain anonymous is difficult, mostly because you have to send data "to" something, which ultimately will include an IP address.  The current way, using TOR, suffers from the difficulties we already know of.  But what if, someday, part of the routing for a one-way packet is to "have a satellite close to 45.5 degrees North, 123.5 degrees West transmit it, towards earth.".  (Between East Portland Oregon to Gresham Oregon.)  At the altitude of 710 miles, that's probably sending to a circular target at least 200 miles in diameter.  Who received that packet?  Nobody knows.  Transmitting to such a satellite would be relatively anonymous.  
              Jim Bell


    On Friday, January 17, 2020, 06:29:02 AM PST, Steven Schear <schear.steve at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 Since SpaceX and these other services will essentially be replacing the stars in many areas night sky why not charge people to name them?

On Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 8:15 AM jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:

The Irish Times: Could constellations of mini-satellites prevent the splintering of the internet?.
Could constellations of mini-satellites prevent the splintering of the internet?

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Could constellations of mini-satellites prevent the splintering of the i...

The concept of a constellation of low Earth orbit satellites to provide for a global communications system is no...
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