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Maria Gurova

Virgin Galactic Wants to Fly You From LA to Tokyo (Through Space, In One Hour) | Mother... - 0 views

motherboard.vice.com/...okyo-through-space-in-one-hour

Technology travel space travel Virgin Galactic transportation supersonic airline

shared by Maria Gurova on 24 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • When Virgin Galactic finally takes its first tourists to space, it'll just be a a stepping stone to what the company's ultimate mission is: Flying people from one place on Earth to another place on Earth, just like any other airline. Except in this version, you'll travel through space and be able to fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in an hour.
  • He's discussed creating a supersonic passenger plane himself, but why settle for an incremental change when, if it works, "point-to-point suborbital space transportation" promises to be a complete paradigm shift?
  • Virgin's daring, sometimes insane chairman Richard Branson has long had his eyes on a supersonic commercial airline
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  • The Concorde failed for a lot of reasons, not least of which the fact that it was very, very expensive. So far, hundreds of people  have shelled out $250,000 to take a quick suborbital spaceflight with Virgin Galactic, but are they going to be willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to save 12 hours flying halfway around the world?
Vladimir Antonov

Project Skybender: Google's secretive 5G internet drone tests revealed | Technology | T... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...rnet-spaceport-virgin-galactic

google internet Technology Social Connected World Global Mobility Internet of Everything

shared by Vladimir Antonov on 02 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Google is testing solar-powered drones at Spaceport America in New Mexico to explore ways to deliver high-speed internet from the air
  • Project SkyBender is using drones to experiment with millimetre-wave radio transmissions, one of the technologies that could underpin next generation 5G wireless internet access
  • High frequency millimetre waves can theoretically transmit gigabits of data every second, up to 40 times more than today’s 4G LTE systems. Google ultimately envisages thousands of high altitude “self-flying aircraft” delivering internet access around the world.
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  • “The huge advantage of millimetre wave is access to new spectrum because the existing cellphone spectrum is overcrowded. It’s packed and there’s nowhere else to go,” says Jacques Rudell
  • However, millimetre wave transmissions have a much shorter range than mobile phone signals. A broadcast at 28GHz, the frequency Google is testing at Spaceport America, would fade out in around a tenth the distance of a 4G phone signal. To get millimetre wave working from a high-flying drone, Google needs to experiment with focused transmissions from a so-called phased array. “This is very difficult, very complex and burns a lot of power,” Rudell says
  • The SkyBender system is being tested with an “optionally piloted” aircraft called Centaur as well as solar-powered drones made by Google Titan, a division formed when Google acquired New Mexico startup Titan Aerospace in 2014. Titan built high-altitude solar-powered drones with wingspans of up to 50 metres
  • Project SkyBender is part of the little-known Google Access team, which also includes Project Loon, a plan to deliver wireless internet using unpowered balloons floating through the stratosphere.
  • In 2014, Darpa, the research arm of the US military, announced a program called Mobile Hotspots to make a fleet of drones that could provide one gigabit per second communications for troops operating in remote areas.
  • Vladimir Antonov on 02 Feb 16
     
    Could this be a next gen. technology that would bring hi-speed internet access literally to every place in the world?
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