Reply to post: On paper they are the bee's knees!

AI algorithms can help erase bright streaks of internet satellites – but they cannot save astronomy

Bartholomew
Mushroom

On paper they are the bee's knees!

The problem with latency is that it is directly related to the refractive index of the medium through witch the electromagnetic wave propagates. The refractive index of of air/vacuum is close to 1.000 (EM waves travel at ~300,000 kilometers per second ; 186,000 miles per second), and for glass it is closer to 1.5 (light travels at ~200,000 kilometers per second ; 124,000 miles per second). So potentially 50% more latency for a fiber installed over the same path length.

So I can see why LEO satellites constellations are so attractive. Dropping 80 millisecond ping time between the east coast of the US and western side of the EU down to nearly 50 milliseconds is very attractive and can not (easily) be achieved any other way.

But on the flip side when a Coronal Mass Ejection next hits earth directly and kills ALL the satellites in orbit (the 1859 Carrington Event took down the entire US telegraph network ), any under ground/water fiber cable should be fully immune (except for possibly the repeaters every 100 kilometres ; 62 miles and the end points, if not electrically isolated before the CME hits). If a large enough CME hits the earths magnetosphere could temporarily collapse, I wonder what would happen to the Van Allen radiation belt ? That may cause some additional unexpected problems that might take a good few years before the dead satellites can eventually be redesigned for a harsher environment and be replaced. And that would be assuming that the catastrophic consequences of such an event is already planned for ahead of time, I wonder ...

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