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The German tech company KLEO Connect aims to establish its own network of satellites in low Earth orbit that can provide internet to remote locations, hoping to rival Starlink.
The German tech company KLEO Connect aims to establish its own network of satellites in low Earth orbit that can provide internet to remote locations, hoping to rival Starlink.
Gosh darnit, people. You’re all thinking of this as civilian tech. Just as we all know every military needs a satellite navigation system a la GPS to guide rockets and what not, with the Ukraine war it’s become painfully obvious that every military needs a satellite communications system a la Starlink. China and India are inevitably going to launch their own systems soon. Russia too, if it has any money left after this war. That’s how you have to think of this system.
China already have their own system in orbit
Constellation based systems are not a good system.
The only benefit they bring is low latency, and they have severe downsides to get that latency. Their orbits are so low that they need to account for atmospheric drag, and many satellites simply burn up in the upper atmosphere before their lifespan is complete.
Geosynchronous or other high altitude satellites also offer global coverage without costing billions in maintenance launches, and are only a few dozen milliseconds slower for connections. High altitude satellites are also less vulnerable to physical attack, and only need to be replaced when they run out of station keeping fuel.
Have you ever been on geostationary satellite internet? Pings of 1,000 - 2,000 are common.
The minimum additional ping is 240ms purely due to the time it takes light to move 13,816 km and back. That is ping added on top of all the standard network latencies. It’s fundamentally a high-latency system.