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Re: [at-l] Cell phones and wilderness
Check this out -
>------- start of forwarded message (RFC 934 encapsulation) -------
>From: "Bill Cheswick" <ches@research.bell-labs.com>
>Date: Mon, 2 Mar 1998 09:48:25 -0500
>
>..Iridium puts on a light show
>
> Getting our entertainment where we can find it
>
> These low-earth-orbit satellites will enable worldwide phone ser-
> vices beginning this year. Fifty-one are presently in orbit. It
> turns out that the satellites' antennas catch the sun and cause
> "flares" [17] visible from the ground. For minutes at a time the
> satellites brighten from magnitude 6 (binoculars required) to
> magnitude -2 or even -4 (brighter than Venus). This useful page
> provided by the German Space Operations Centre [18] will calculate
> for you the next seven Iridium flares visible from your location.
> (Their initial mission was to calculate and display appearances of
> the Mir satellite.) First you need to say exactly where on earth
> you are. Using the Census Bureau's Tiger Mapping Service [19] you
> can pinpoint a spot in the US to 4 decimal places of latitude and
> longitude, or within about 6 feet. Start at this atlas of place
> names [20] for rough coordinates that you can feed to the Tiger
> for refinement.
>
> [17] http://www2.satellite.eu.org/sat/vsohp/iridium.html
> [18] http://www.gsoc.dlr.de/satvis/
> [19] http://tiger.census.gov/
> [20] http://www.ahip.getty.edu/tgn_browser/
>------- end -------
>
>
>--------------------------- End Of Message
Tim Hewitt wrote:
> The Motorola project, originally called Iridium because they planned to cover
> the globe with 77 sattelites, is still ongoing. The sattelites were to be low
> cost, low orbit models, thus enabling low power phones to reach them. Initial
> test areas were to be NY City to Washington DC and San Fransicso to LA. I
> have not seen anything about this project in ages.
>
> The concept would enable for the first time, your own personal phone number,
> that could reach you wherever you were - work, home, woods, planes, anywhere.
> If you want to reach someone, simply call their local number, and it will find
> them anywhere int he world. Interesting concept. I'll program all my calls to
> virtual voice-mail when I'm in the woods...
>
> The after market phone system integration and support would be a huge
> business, and the technology would certainly replace the cell phone as we know it.
>
> Paddler
>
> Thomas Greene wrote:
> >
> > >This is the best arguement I've seen against cell phones. The occasional
> > >cell phone user is fairly easy to ignore but all those towers won't be.
> > >Couldn't they work off satellites instead? (I'm not a communications
> >
> > I believe that is coming soon. Motorola is putting satellites
> > in to orbit as we speak. Of course, it will make it so that there
> > are very few places where a cell phone can't be used.
> * From the Appalachian Trail Mailing List | For info http://www.hack.net/lists *
--
Tom Van Veen
Administrative Computer Center
University of Maryland
301-405-1042
* From the Appalachian Trail Mailing List | For info http://www.hack.net/lists *
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