Word: orbited
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They are not alone. A clutch of new satellite-based services from a half-dozen similar corporate alliances is launching into orbit. They are likely to turn the earth's lower atmosphere into a space jam of communications links promising to keep us in touch--anytime, anywhere. The systems rely on a new version of an old (at least for the aerospace business) and proven technology...
...first to suggest a band of geosynchronous satellites, dubbed "extra-terrestrial relays," hovering 22,000 miles above the equator and bouncing signals back to the ground. Until recently, most communications satellites have imitated that high-cost-and-high-altitude model, drifting in what scientists call the Clarke orbit...
Boosting heavy chunks of metal that high is expensive, however, and Iridium and its brethren are trying to fly into space on the cheap, relatively speaking. They rely on so-called low-earth-orbit satellites that zoom just a few hundred miles above the planet's surface. They're cheaper to launch since they weigh less; and since the satellites are closer to the ground, devices with small antennas and comparatively small battery packs can reach them. Most important, signals can go up and return with no perceptible delay, which is vital for voice communications. But more of them...
...with almost everything else these days, the most promising future growth area for the low-orbit-satellite phone market will be the Internet. If the Net keeps expanding at its current pace, companies figure that demand for digital connections will skyrocket. Currently, firms in the U.S. pay about $1,000 a month for a 1.5 megabit-per-second pipeline to the Internet. Eventually, satellites should be able to provide an equivalent uplink at one-tenth the cost. Some analysts even see rates plummeting to $50 a month in the future...
...bail-out cost could spiral up to $1.3 billion. The ISS project is starting to look like a farcical inversion of the 60's space race -- by working together over the past four years, the two Cold War rivals have not managed to put a single component in Earth orbit. And then there's the bill, which keeps increasing exponentially. "This still isn't costing as much as the race to the moon," says TIME space correspondent Jeffrey Kluger, "but it's getting there...