The First Global Satellite Constellations - How Iridium & Globalstar Changed The World

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  • Опубліковано 21 гру 2023
  • 3 decades before Starlink multiple satellite constellations were in development, constellations which would enable connectivity to anywhere on the planet. Iridium and Globalstar were the ones which succeeded in launching, but, neither were able to make back their investment and entered bankrupt. However they both emerged on the other side and were able to maintain their business without the crippling debt.
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  • Наука та технологія

КОМЕНТАРІ • 291

  • @bloodydamnhell
    @bloodydamnhell 5 місяців тому +220

    The Iridium situation was much more interesting than described in the video. It wasn't Iridium that threatened to deorbit the satellites after they went bankrupt, it was Motorola.
    Really, the whole thing was Motorola running a big financial scam that just so happened to involve some very neat technology. They had already extracted enough money from Iridium and partners to cover the costs of developing and launching the system, so were perfectly happy forcing Iridium into bankruptcy rather than continuing to support the constellation.
    The book Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story covers all this and is a surprisingly entertaining read.

    • @bendeleted9155
      @bendeleted9155 5 місяців тому +4

      Thanks for the tip. Found a copy.

    • @PjPjPaul
      @PjPjPaul 5 місяців тому +1

      Just bought a copy for 7 bucks. Thanks!

    • @bobroberts2371
      @bobroberts2371 5 місяців тому +5

      Also look for the Sept 2004 edition of Air & Space Smithsonian magazine and look at page 60 " The rise and fall if Iridium " ( And yes, it was the last magazine on the pile I was looking through . ) This also has a Beech Starship on the cover.

    • @RCAvhstape
      @RCAvhstape 5 місяців тому +2

      @@bobroberts2371 Wow, I think I remember that cover. I used to subscribe to that magazine.

    • @tredogzs
      @tredogzs 4 місяці тому

      Big financial scams... so an Elon biznas

  • @alistairurie2902
    @alistairurie2902 5 місяців тому +208

    Scott, you missed one fun fact. Iridium was originally designed to have 7 orbital planes with 11 satellites in each plane and hence 77 satellites which is the element Iridium. But they then changed the orbit height and so only needed 6 planes for the same coverage (set by minimum elevation angle..) and so only 6x11 = 66 satellites were needed.. So the constellation should be called Dysprosium.

    • @gordonrichardson2972
      @gordonrichardson2972 5 місяців тому +7

      He does touch on the reduced number of 66 satellites at 08:36.

    • @alistairurie2902
      @alistairurie2902 5 місяців тому +6

      @@gordonrichardson2972 yes but it really shouldn't be called Iridium anymore

    • @datalorian
      @datalorian 5 місяців тому +14

      @@alistairurie2902 maybe you could file paperwork for the company under its rightful name and take it over on the grounds that they have been identifying as the wrong element! kidding of course.

    • @anselml2928
      @anselml2928 5 місяців тому +27

      Renaming it to Dysprosium would have been a bad idea because it means 'hard to reach" translated from the Latin. This wouldn't have be a good name for a sat phone constellation...

    • @LordFalconsword
      @LordFalconsword 5 місяців тому +4

      @@alistairurie2902 Yeah, but Dysprosium doesn't exactly have the same ring to it.

  • @filanfyretracker
    @filanfyretracker 5 місяців тому +36

    in some ways Iridium is why Starlink exists, IridiumNEXT was certainly one of the most important non government contracts for a young SpaceX.

  • @scottwolf9914
    @scottwolf9914 5 місяців тому +29

    Glad you covered this one, Scott. My first job after the Navy was working for Qualcomm as a Field Service Engineer, installing Globalstar ground sites.
    I installed the South Africa and Nicaragua sites, and did upgrades at the Clifton, TX site, three sites in Australia (Meekathera, Dubbo, and Mount Isa), and the Italy site.
    I also installed the system that controlled the entire GS network at both the primary command center in San Jose and the backup site in Sacramento.

  • @ashermil
    @ashermil 5 місяців тому +10

    Hah! I was working at Globalstar during the initial launch period, and was there for the Zenit failure. The system had lots of promise, but international roaming happened much earlier than expected, and pulled the rug out from under us.
    Glad to see the system still being used for SOS services!

  • @ericlburch
    @ericlburch 5 місяців тому +11

    I worked for a large company in the 80's, who rented a transponder 24/7 (at times more than one). They would broadcast video to branches all over the US, which used 4.5 Mb/s. Transponders were good for 6Mb/s, so you had a T-1 sized data path that was mostly used for maintenance and ignored otherwise. But when not needed by the satellite providers (usually about 23 hrs/day) you had this available. The ground sets would strip off the video signal, and many sites had a (company built) card to grab the data path. The uplink was at one of the research locations, and a few sites sent most of their outbound traffic over the satellite, especially that going cross-country. This was before the widespread internet, and most of the corporate traffic was over leased T-1 lines (which multiplexed 24 channels of 56Kb/s, each channel either a data path or a single phone call). Getting bursts of 1.5Mb/s data sped up the entire corporate network significantly.

  • @dansiegel995
    @dansiegel995 5 місяців тому +42

    Another major contributing factor to their downfall was the unexpected rapid globalization of IS-136 TDMA, IS-95 CDMA, and GSM cellar technologies, as well as International Roaming. In fact, more cellular was installed in "2nd and 3rd world countries" in the 90s than first world countries. And that's because cellular was cheaper than installing landline infrastructure, which these 2nd/3rd world countries either didnt have at all, or was extremely limited. People were on waiting lists for YEARS to get a landline installed to their home. Cellular simply killed the business model for widespread use of Sat Phones. They still had their niche market, but it forced the cost per minute to be ridiculously and forever out of reach for the common person.

    • @dosmastrify
      @dosmastrify 5 місяців тому

      This is why FTP fiber to premises will fail. Just cheaper to use 5G

    • @rocketman221projects
      @rocketman221projects 5 місяців тому +7

      @@dosmastrify There is only so much RF bandwidth at frequencies not heavily attenuated by moisture or the atmosphere to go around. 5G simply can't compete with the massive bandwidth provided by a direct fiber connection.

    • @alistairurie2902
      @alistairurie2902 5 місяців тому +1

      Totally agree. During the early research phase of Globalstar (aka Bopsat) one thing I was looking at was to understand that statistics on where people sleep (the real source of population density) is nothing to do with where people might be when they want to call or be called and then what's the chance they are not under mobile coverage. Tricky problem and it is basically the entire potential market of a direct satellite system.

    • @smacksman1
      @smacksman1 5 місяців тому +1

      I remember an ad in the Births column of the Rhodesian Herald - ' To John and Mary after 36 months gestation, a healthy telephone line.' Haha!

    • @dansiegel995
      @dansiegel995 5 місяців тому

      @@smacksman1 - lol, to some I bet they can remember the day of their first land phone line better than the day of their first child!!

  • @dziban303
    @dziban303 5 місяців тому +15

    Sat phone calls used to be absolutely absurdly priced, like *$20 a minute* sometimes.

    • @TheGermanHammer
      @TheGermanHammer 5 місяців тому +3

      Even in 2023, I pay $1/minute for Iridium service. 😕

    • @davidmcgill1000
      @davidmcgill1000 5 місяців тому +3

      Does make sense. If there is limited bandwidth for their entire service then you really don't want many customers using it all at once. Only those willing to be paying for it are those competing for the bandwidth.

    • @MarcosWassem
      @MarcosWassem 24 дні тому

      ​@@TheGermanHammerCan't you call through Starlink WiFi?

    • @TheGermanHammer
      @TheGermanHammer 16 днів тому

      @@MarcosWassem Yes.

  • @carrot272727
    @carrot272727 5 місяців тому +18

    Iridium flares are what got me into astronomy. Was very sad to see my last ones knowing they weren’t coming back

    • @GenMagnus
      @GenMagnus 5 місяців тому +1

      Nope. The flairs were from the Iridium first gen satellites. Iridium Next, the second gen satellites, give no flair.

    • @carrot272727
      @carrot272727 5 місяців тому +1

      @@GenMagnus haha that’s why I was sad to know we wouldn’t see them anymore!

    • @bebera487
      @bebera487 5 місяців тому +1

      There are still 16 old Iridium satellites in orbit, and though you can no longer track the flares, you can catch one if you're lucky.
      @dziban303 in the comments told that they saw it, but it was no longer a flare but a flash, which makes sense cause most of the sats had lost their orientation control and are probably tumbling, but also im sure i saw it too. it was some three months ago when i was looking for shooting stars. It was an extremely bright flash, brighter than any star or planet lasting no more than half a second, almost like a camera flash from the sky! Honestly it bugged me for some time, i thought i was just seeing things, happy to know that i am not. Comforting to know that there are still some that are happening.

  • @flemlion13
    @flemlion13 5 місяців тому +3

    I remember supplementing my regular internet with DVB-S reception of usenet group content. That was in Europe on an open channel and your client software would just keep the data for the groups you were interested in.

  • @azdavidza
    @azdavidza 5 місяців тому +8

    I'm hoping the Island of Stability exists so that Starlink gets an atomic-number name

  • @ThatOpalGuy
    @ThatOpalGuy 5 місяців тому +59

    Looking for Iridium flares used to be a favorite hobby for me. Sadly, the satellite tracking sight I use no longer predicts the flares. I suppose they are still orbiting up there, so if you see a super bright light in the night sky (magnitude minus six to eight) that is moving at the speed of a satellite, it is probably an Iridium.

    • @elephantsarenuts5161
      @elephantsarenuts5161 5 місяців тому +6

      The iridium flares were nice and bright. I wonder if their orbits are no longer stable or if they're tumbling.

    • @marsspacex6065
      @marsspacex6065 5 місяців тому +18

      They were mostly deorbited from 2019 on with the next generation deployed (first generation ones that do the flares) only a few are up there still that the company lost contact with before they deorbited them.

    • @ThatOpalGuy
      @ThatOpalGuy 5 місяців тому

      @@elephantsarenuts5161 very likely are tumbling. I am certain I have seen a couple of them, over the past few years, but it is difficult to be completely certain.

    • @ThatOpalGuy
      @ThatOpalGuy 5 місяців тому +2

      @@marsspacex6065 Yeah, I thought I heard about their deorbit capability. And the Gen 2 Iridium were so much more advanced they didnt need the very large aluminum antenna , which reduced their flaring.

    • @dziban303
      @dziban303 5 місяців тому +17

      I saw an iridium flare last month! I was outside waiting for a different satellite to appear when the flare happened. The only sat in the flare location at the time was an older Iridium bird. It wasn't the longish flare we used to see, just a flash, but very bright. probably tumbling

  • @IanMcCloghrie
    @IanMcCloghrie 5 місяців тому +25

    The simplicity of the GlobalStar system was actually thought of as an advantage over Iridium at the time. Keeping the sophisticated electronics on the ground meant it was much easier to repair or upgrade them, simpler satellites were (in theory, at least) more reliable, and the downsides of the "bent pipe" approach didn't really matter much in the real world because the vast majority of the customers were located at lower latitudes. Yeah, you couldn't do cool stuff like routing calls around the world over just the satellites, but did anyone really care?
    Ultimately both of the services failed because ground-based cell networks rolled out faster than expected. Dead spots largely disappeared (at least in places where most people went) and so very few people wanted buy the very expensive phones with the very expensive service, just to get a satellite capability that they would basically never use. Also, the phones were large and bulky, even for the day.

    • @Mike-oz4cv
      @Mike-oz4cv 5 місяців тому

      Isn’t a big problem of the bent pipe approach that you need a ton of ground stations all over the globe? With forwarding from satellite to satellite a single ground station is theoretically enough.

    • @personzorz
      @personzorz 5 місяців тому

      That's also exactly how starlink works

    • @IanMcCloghrie
      @IanMcCloghrie 5 місяців тому

      ​@@Mike-oz4cv Sure, but ground stations are much cheaper than satellites (especially with the cost of LEO in the 1990s!) and you don't need all that many of them. For full coverage you need roughly the same number of ground stations as you have satellites, but you can leave them out in areas you don't plan to cover. GlobalStar didn't cover the oceans or places like Africa because there weren't enough customers in those locations to make it worthwhile.

    • @IanMcCloghrie
      @IanMcCloghrie 5 місяців тому +1

      @@personzorz Starlink has the advantage of 20 years of technical advancement over GlobalStar. Launch costs are way down thanks to SpaceX and reusable rockets, and Moore's law means the satellites themselves can be far more capable at lower mass.
      GlobalStar's costs per phone call were projected to be about half that of Iridium, this was due in part of the "bent pipe" approach. (Also the use of Qualcomm CDMA tech, which made more efficient use of the radio spectrum, so you could get more phone calls into one satellite).

  • @MaxStax1
    @MaxStax1 5 місяців тому +6

    I was out with my telescope one night in the back yard when i observed a bright flare. At first i thought it was a meteor but it was slower moving than a typical meteor. After doing some searches on the internet i learned about Iridium satellite flares. I found a satellite tracking site called Heavens Above, and sure enough one would have been visible in my location at that very time!

  • @chiphappened
    @chiphappened 5 місяців тому +1

    *Digitizing the signals with/ plus “Data Compression & Error Correction” were the capacity game changers.*

  • @christopherrasmussen8718
    @christopherrasmussen8718 5 місяців тому +6

    Was in the military when we got orders to head out overseas. We had a case of Iridium phones. My job was to op check. All the SIMs , and they had expired. Folks there who kept them up were gone. They had new SIMS in 6 hours. I hate to think what that cost. We used those things for data, secure fax and voice. I still have one. It a racket how they sell time limited (like 6 months) SIMS.

    • @lordgarion514
      @lordgarion514 5 місяців тому

      I'm amazed the military let them work for 6 months. If your sim card gets spoofed....
      The military chooses what it gets, companies don't tell it what to accept. The military isn't us.

  • @andrewward4218
    @andrewward4218 27 днів тому +1

    G’day Scott, I’m a great fan of your unbiased no nonsense reporting of ALL things space.
    As a matter of interest, as of around mid April, Thuraya service is no longer available in Australia, apparently due to an unrecoverable failure on the Boeing satellite that covers our region. Australians can use their Thuraya phone as a paper weight. It may have been a cheaper option than the alternatives, and I guess that’s the risk you take relying on just one satellite for service. Enjoy your aviating. Cheers.

  • @paulmicks7097
    @paulmicks7097 День тому

    Great coverage of topic , thank you Scott

  • @milesmalone4186
    @milesmalone4186 5 місяців тому +1

    I had a brief spell carrying around a company-paid-for iridium handset circa 2002, I recall as soon as I was back from whatever I was doing in the middle of nowhere in the Australian outback it'd be snatched back off me and I'd have to give some justification to the bill I'd racked up on any *actual phone calls* I used it for out there lol. I forget exactly what the wording was like, but I still remember you'd get an american accent voice message to the effect of "Please wait while your call is connected over the iridium satellite network" or the like every time you made or received a call

  • @roberthevern6169
    @roberthevern6169 5 місяців тому

    Hey Scott! Love your channel!
    Happy Holidays from Boise, Idaho!!

  • @MCsCreations
    @MCsCreations 5 місяців тому

    I've seen some Iridium passages. Amazing stuff indeed!
    Thanks, Scott! 😊
    Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
    And happy holidays!

  • @jimlaz7456
    @jimlaz7456 5 місяців тому +3

    Skort Munley! Whaddy'at?! Can't wait to see ya at the Astra awards!

  • @amogusenjoyer
    @amogusenjoyer 5 місяців тому +32

    This just goes to show how much launch capacity is the game changer for a viable service.

    • @stevensmith797
      @stevensmith797 5 місяців тому +1

      starlink : first by an orbital launch company who build there own rockets and engines :) , hard to beat that lol

    • @Awaken2067833758
      @Awaken2067833758 5 місяців тому +4

      The problem was never lauch capacity, the problem is keeping the infraestructure working and making a profit before going into bankruptcy. The only way starlink can keep going is lots of taxpayers money

    • @nabormendonca5742
      @nabormendonca5742 5 місяців тому

      😂

    • @amogusenjoyer
      @amogusenjoyer 5 місяців тому

      @@Awaken2067833758 Keeping the infrastructure working and not going bankrupt goes hands in hands with good launch capacity. You are right that I should've specified that it also needs to be cheap launch capacity (which is usually easier to have if it's your own at that scale). Also, what taxpayers money? You mean when the government pays to launch stuff it wants to be launched? I'm pretty sure starlink is already profitable or near profitable according to space x

    • @Ergzay
      @Ergzay 5 місяців тому +1

      I'd say more than launch capacity it's launch cost. The price SpaceX charges internally to launch the satellites is so ridiculously low.

  • @ste_zace
    @ste_zace 5 місяців тому

    appreciate this series of videos, great stuff

  • @justinnamilee
    @justinnamilee 5 місяців тому +1

    Absolutely loving this series.

  • @colinboynton192
    @colinboynton192 5 місяців тому +3

    Was definitely expecting some sweet iridium flare pics/vids. They were the only naked-eye manmade objects that were better viewing than an ISS overhead pass

    • @FatovMikhail
      @FatovMikhail 5 місяців тому

      yeah, I've seen iridium flash, it was incredibly bright

  • @Pico-hq7ws
    @Pico-hq7ws 5 місяців тому

    Merry Christmas Scott

  • @chiphappened
    @chiphappened 5 місяців тому +2

    Scott -Remember, it wasn’t until the late 80s that the Signals were Digitized. Prior to that, signals/ handsets was analog! This held up capacity and the value of putting these satellites up any earlier. I know I worked for Alltel and BellSouth mobility from the beginning of the cellular in industry.

  • @alamIbbar
    @alamIbbar Місяць тому

    Good background video, thank you!

  • @Allan_aka_RocKITEman
    @Allan_aka_RocKITEman 5 місяців тому

    Great video, Scott...👍

  • @AEFisch
    @AEFisch 5 місяців тому +6

    I was running a venture fund and had the deal, said iridium would fail-it didn't work inside a building! But Then in bankruptcy I wanted to buy it for things we were doing like fleet logistics and handheld sync data. $25 million for the whole thing!!! But we failed to raise a new VC fund.

    • @hewhohasnoidentity4377
      @hewhohasnoidentity4377 5 місяців тому

      I believe the world suffered substantially by letting Qualcomm maintain control of satellite communications in the logistics world.

  • @simongeard4824
    @simongeard4824 5 місяців тому +11

    We used a home satellite internet service for a while in the late 90s, something our local ISP started offering. No idea how it worked technically, but it used a big dish on the roof for downlink, while still using the dial-up modem for uplink, so probably similar to the DirectPC setup. Not bad for the time - I remember using it to download Linux ISOs insanely quickly - but it was never very reliable, and obviously the latency was pretty dire.

    • @Mike-oz4cv
      @Mike-oz4cv 5 місяців тому +2

      They offered the same here in rural Austria.

    • @thesteelrodent1796
      @thesteelrodent1796 5 місяців тому

      there have been numerous variants of satellite based internet since the 90s. Most of them worked by buying surplus capacity on regular communication satellites, so the speeds and prices for the services varied greatly, and typically the reliability was all over the place because if the satellite was busy doing what it was designed for (usually phone calls or television), there was not much, if any, bandwidth left for internet

    • @watcherzero5256
      @watcherzero5256 5 місяців тому

      Yeah I think it was quite big in the rural US where you could be miles from Cable TV and the regular phone network wasnt good enough to support decent download speeds. In the UK the phone network coverage was pretty comprehensive and if you wanted faster than 33/56k and were willing to pay then 128k or 256k ISDN was widely available. Northern Europe and Japan had about 6x as many ISDN users per thousand on average as the US.

    • @simongeard4824
      @simongeard4824 5 місяців тому +1

      @@watcherzero5256This was actually suburban, not rural. Not a great use case for satellite internet today, but residential ISDN was basically non-existent in NZ, no major ISP offered it, and the low density of internet users in those days (even in a city) made satellite viable.

    • @cerealport2726
      @cerealport2726 5 місяців тому +1

      not uncommon in rural Australia, even now some areas are only served by satellite.

  • @oakyiaw
    @oakyiaw 5 місяців тому +6

    Apple has Globalstar (GSAT) under it's umbrella now. Launching new gen satellites with SpaceX newt year. LOADED Globalstar stocks!!! Hope you don't miss out.

    • @oakyiaw
      @oakyiaw 5 місяців тому

      @@trippyvortex Still cheap

  • @freespacexl
    @freespacexl 4 місяці тому

    Interesting video, thanks!

  • @chronus4421
    @chronus4421 5 місяців тому

    Great video, thank you!

  • @doltsbane
    @doltsbane 5 місяців тому +5

    Do you think the communication satellite series might include a Sirius/XM installment someday? Cellular broadband has taken the place of satellite radio for me now, but I was an early adopter of XM back in the day. I'd be interested to hear about the history of the industry.

  • @Umski
    @Umski 5 місяців тому

    Thanks for this snapshot of satellite comms - it’s on my “training” to-do list for my day job in mobile telecoms 😊👍

  • @clffeingold
    @clffeingold 5 місяців тому

    Very cool. I had no idea. Thank you.

  • @SuperMonkei
    @SuperMonkei 5 місяців тому +3

    I remember hacking this Directpc thing, from Vladivostok, in 99 or something. We only got 5-15 minutes a day of connection.

    • @SuperMonkei
      @SuperMonkei 5 місяців тому

      And now you call me an existing customer.....

  • @marsspacex6065
    @marsspacex6065 5 місяців тому +2

    Omg a new episode awesome series.

  • @davidkaufman1
    @davidkaufman1 5 місяців тому +1

    Scott, You completely missed Loral Cyberstar. We were building a leo constellation for Datacom. I was there 1997-2000. The only reason why it failed was because in 1999 Bernie Schwartz announced Cyberstar wouldn’t go public. All the engineers bailed looking elsewhere for stock options. I ended up at Cisco.

  • @mhyzon1
    @mhyzon1 5 місяців тому +1

    My uncle worked for Motorola in the late 80s and 90s and helped to write the OS for the Iridium satellites.

  • @panda4247
    @panda4247 5 місяців тому +2

    Wiuld be interesting to see some numbers for Iridium - total cost of development and launches, how much did it cost for the customer and how many customers they actually got

  • @Humuku
    @Humuku 5 місяців тому +2

    I once used a Spot Tracker powered by GlobalStar to track the flight of a balloon to stratosphere. Undortuntely I did not know, that tracking is started when the tracker is sensing some amount of acceleration. So no data was received until the balloon finally burst.

  • @Humuku
    @Humuku 5 місяців тому +1

    I am grateful to Iridium for the safety net they provide while hiking. The Garnin inReach iridium terminal is tiny!

  • @mikeissweet
    @mikeissweet 5 місяців тому

    Been looking forward to this video. Love this series!
    Wish this and the atomic bomb series would never end

  • @mrahob275
    @mrahob275 5 місяців тому +1

    Marine realm guy here .. Mini Vsat is still a thing alongside Iridium (see the Go!) and others like starlink .. fun times

  • @dachsdk1559
    @dachsdk1559 5 місяців тому +1

    Did a 2 year tour on an arctic base in the early 2000's. Our only link with civilization were voice calls over Iridium and HF radio. I suppose they have broadband Starlink these days, what a world.

  • @DreadMerlot
    @DreadMerlot 5 місяців тому

    Mentions of those "brick-sized" cellphones always remind me of "The KLF - 3AM Eternal" music video.

  • @paulbrooks4395
    @paulbrooks4395 5 місяців тому +2

    I wish satellite internet had gotten off the ground earlier, it probably would have helped Net Neutrality and forced investment by cable, fiber, and DSL. There are still many areas (including NY and CA) that have monopoly providers with dubious service and no alternatives.

    • @anthonypelchat
      @anthonypelchat 5 місяців тому

      Been changing since Starlink. Multiple areas finally started doing proper upgrades to keep customers. Still no competition for fiber customers. But at least providers are now forced to keep everything reasonable.

  • @JoeSchmoer
    @JoeSchmoer 5 місяців тому

    Iridium flares got me interested in space and rocketry many years ago

  • @Max_Flashheart
    @Max_Flashheart 5 місяців тому

    Merry Xmas.

  • @RCAvhstape
    @RCAvhstape 5 місяців тому +1

    A side note to Iridium is that the first collision between two satellites was between an Iridium vehicle and an old Russian satellite in 2009.

  • @thetommantom
    @thetommantom 5 місяців тому +8

    I remember the iridium flare app that would tell you the transit time and intensity and if you found the right one with the right weather at the right location you were in for a truly incredible viewing experience after a few seconds your perspective shifts and all the stars start flying past the satellite and you as you lock onto the satellite you really feel the speed of you and the satellite now with space X I just saw 20 launch and I thought it was world War 3

  • @Jonathan_O
    @Jonathan_O 5 місяців тому

    While looking at real estate a few days ago, I saw one of those old one-way DirectWay dishes in the front yard of a house.

  • @agoatmannameddesire8856
    @agoatmannameddesire8856 5 місяців тому +5

    Watching this on Starlink... I've had to carry an Iridium phone before, it was trash 😂 I also had DirecPC in the 90s, it wasn't bad for downloads but the latency was atrocious, like 1000ms+.

  • @TheWebstaff
    @TheWebstaff 5 місяців тому

    I remember having a sat connection in 2002 at work in the uk.

  • @keruetz
    @keruetz 5 місяців тому +3

    I was working for Motorola when Iridium was introduced. I remember sitting in an auditorium in Austin when management presented Iridium to the employees that would be involved in building it. I remember a video with a guy walking at what looked like one of poles, by himself, when his phone rings and he answers it. I never really understood why they thought they could make money with it. How many customers were in that video?

    • @MarkSummersCAD
      @MarkSummersCAD 5 місяців тому +4

      I worked at Lockheed Austin about the same time. The final assembly was going to happen at the Austin facility before being transfer ti Sanders and the Austin plant eventually closed. Their motto was "Five Days Dock to Dock". It was like an evangelical meeting when I went to Motorola in Schlumberg for a kickoff meeting. I created some 3D CAD models of the satellite using IDEAS CAD software on a $30,000 Silicon Graphucs computer system. Great times while they lasted!

    • @jeromeball859
      @jeromeball859 5 місяців тому

      @@MarkSummersCAD I'll second the "great times" sentiment. I was a consultant commuting from Dallas to Chandler for 2 years working on the systems engineering of Gen 1 Iridium (various types of call handovers). Always considered it the high point of my career. The protocol design issues were fun -- in the 48 spot beam layout under a satellite, the inner spot beams had very sharply defined edges in signal and handovers between beams thus had miniscule amounts of time available for a protocol to negotiate anything before the call lost its RF resources as the beam edge passed over. Handing off calls between satellites was more complicated logically, but you had more time to ship a few messages around on control channels. Good times, indeed! To the kids building Starlink: It's inspiring to watch you from the past, keep on amazing us!

  • @nkronert
    @nkronert 5 місяців тому

    9:25 It looked pretty busy at the poles!

  • @brotus02
    @brotus02 5 місяців тому

    Are yoy going to play ksp 2 ? Love your ksp 1. Your mind is crasy good for the fun and still make it fun to hear 🙌🙏

  • @maneeshs3876
    @maneeshs3876 5 місяців тому

    Nice blog and like revisiting history, Were there any engineering challenges too related to real-time data transfer latencies from earth to satellites and satellites-satellites hops ?

  • @The_Angry_Medic
    @The_Angry_Medic 5 місяців тому

    I remember staring at the DirectPC display at CompUSA the day I went in and bought my USR 56K modem.

  • @jason1440
    @jason1440 5 місяців тому +1

    I wonder if any of these countries packed on any extra eavesdropping hardware on those satellites they launched for Iridium?

  • @boblynch2802
    @boblynch2802 5 місяців тому

    Used to love watching for Iridium flares!

  • @bwjclego
    @bwjclego 5 місяців тому +3

    LOL at the Westford comment.

    • @jamescraig4479
      @jamescraig4479 5 місяців тому

      480,000,000 needles in space! 🤦‍♂️

    • @marsspacex6065
      @marsspacex6065 5 місяців тому

      Now that’s space junk

  • @phasm42
    @phasm42 5 місяців тому

    Company I worked for had DirecPC, yeah it was a weird arrangement. But prior to cable modems, that download speed was amazing 😅

  • @bobroberts2371
    @bobroberts2371 5 місяців тому

    See also:
    Air & Space Smithsonian Sept 2004, Page 60 " The rise and fall if Iridium " ( And yes, it was the last magazine on the pile I was looking through . ) This also has a Beech Starship on the cover.

  • @TheGermanHammer
    @TheGermanHammer 5 місяців тому

    Iridium user here: I still use my 9505A Iridium phone on a daily basis...
    There are many areas I go, daily, that do not have 5G/LTE/3G/2G cellular service, and where Starlink would take way too long to set up, yet my old Iridium phone just instantly works.

  • @grrey01
    @grrey01 5 місяців тому +2

    56 kpbs wasn't "terrible" It was pretty fast when it came out, and all you had were BBS and then the early Internet...it's just that data grows to match capacity.

  • @Rob2
    @Rob2 5 місяців тому

    20 years ago, a system like you describe for "fast internet" indeed was operational here in Europe as well.
    It used Eutelsat satellite transponders. The users would connect via a phone modem and receive their downlinks via the satellite.
    The transmission actually used a PID on a standard DVB-S multiplex, so there could be radio and TV stations on the same transponder.
    On the specific PID used by the service, IP datagrams were sent just like MPEG streams would be sent for TV.
    Actually it wasn't encrypted at all! Probably encryption for such "fast links" was not really feasible at that time or would conflict with export regulations.
    And because almost all traffic was in plain http those days, one could actually eavesdrop on the traffic for the users of that system.
    There was a program (appropriately named "skynet") that collected all complete TCP sessions and wrote them to files, identifying the content and assigning an appropriate (random) name to each file. Letting that run for a while would yield a large number of files, e.g. BMP, JPG, MP3, MPG etc.
    As you rightly remark, all the users shared the single bandwidth, which would only be a couple of Mbit/s. So for each individual file, the actual transfer rate was not high at all, not even as fast as a phone modem.

  • @ralphlorenz4260
    @ralphlorenz4260 5 місяців тому

    West Ford - that made me chortle...

  • @retireeelectronics2649
    @retireeelectronics2649 5 місяців тому

    I miss the iridium flares, so cool to ask the wifey to look up there will be a bright spot.

  • @skyrat3816
    @skyrat3816 5 місяців тому

    It really blagged my head a few years ago to find out that our overseas internet was carried by cables on the sea floor. As I had assumed that continents and island nations were connected via satellite. It makes more sense when payloads to orbit was explained and how much it costs to get enough satellites into orbit to cover the connections. Which would then be costly for the consumer who will want a large band width at a competitive price.

  • @OrenTirosh
    @OrenTirosh 5 місяців тому +1

    Just wondering: at what date did Starlink exceed the original planned size of Teledesic?

  • @Danger_mouse
    @Danger_mouse 5 місяців тому +1

    Interesting subject, and very useful, but I truly worry about so much hardware up there.
    It really is getting out of hand, and now Blue Origin wants to get a constellation going too 😢

  • @jimf671
    @jimf671 5 місяців тому

    I manage a number of satellite phones. We used Gloalstar back in their Dark Ages and it was truly dreadful. Between the complexity of their normal operating procedures and timing use of the degraded constellation it was close to unusable. We then had an opportunity to change over to Iridium at very low cost and I jumped at the chance. One still has to drum into people that satellite stuff happens s-l-o-w-l-y but the simplicity and reliability was hugely improved. Globalstar have since upgraded their constellation and found ways of using their constellation for data tasks, like SPOT, that are not as demanding as voice. One of our problems with Globalstar was the 52 degree orbit tilt which, since we operate at around 57 degrees North and in mountainous terrain, meant we often could not register with a satellite. Iridium, on the other hand, being a polar orbiter, or 84 degrees, is more latitude independent, or possibly better at higher latitudes. The same latitude problem arises, but to a lesser extent because they are MEO, with GNSS and SAR satellites since most are on 55 or 56 degree tilt. This explains why GPS says I was walking across Knoydart at 1000mph. 🙄

  • @Bramon83
    @Bramon83 5 місяців тому

    HOLY DIAL UP TONE BATMAN!
    say it with us Scott.
    MO-DEM
    MO-DEM
    You madlad you.

  • @rougeneon1997
    @rougeneon1997 5 місяців тому

    I really miss watching "iridium flares" from those satellites! : (

  • @smacksman1
    @smacksman1 5 місяців тому

    In 2004 I tried to help a friend on his yacht in Brazil download an update on his laptop using his Iridium link. I failed because every time I tried, it lost connection of a packet part way through the download. Iridium was OK for voice and short emails though.

  • @MegaSynner
    @MegaSynner 5 місяців тому

    Encrypted downlink? I distinctly remember leeching these (or in any case a) downlinks with my scsi equipped nokia sat receiver.. was fun seeing the images scroll by..

  • @chiphappened
    @chiphappened 5 місяців тому +1

    *Anyone else miss:
    “Iridium Flares”?*

  • @darryntodd5890
    @darryntodd5890 5 місяців тому

    So are all those satellites still orbiting , or how many are redundant and still circulating ?
    Scot Manley can you please do a video on this

  • @yuriypostrekhin6154
    @yuriypostrekhin6154 5 місяців тому

    Decoding satellite traffic was very easy btw.

  • @jeromethiel4323
    @jeromethiel4323 5 місяців тому

    I find it interesting how communication using electrical technology had gone from wired, to wireless, back to wired, and now back to wireless.
    I.E. Telegraph to broadcast radio/tv to cable/internet to sattelite.
    What i would to see is starlink having outward looking antenna, so that deep space craft and communicate to earth ground stations using hundreds of satellites nearly simultaneously receiving the data. Would make for a very robust solution that doesn't need super precise aiming, and you'd get a lot of redundancy, which should help data reliability.

    • @lordgarion514
      @lordgarion514 5 місяців тому

      It hasn't gone to and from anywhere.
      With the exception of true telegraphs, all the others are still used. They didn't replace. They found a better solution to a different question or problem.
      And at the distances of deep space, the Earth itself is a target that requires precise aiming for probes to hit. The signal they send is well bigger than the earth when it gets here. And a satellite big enough to detect it, on the right side to hear it, will. NASA has 3 massive dishes spaced out so everywhere is covered.

  • @LabyrinthMike
    @LabyrinthMike 5 місяців тому

    Fun Fact: I worked with a guy at Motorola in the late 1980's who left my group to go work on Iridium.

  • @forbiddenera
    @forbiddenera 5 місяців тому

    We had 7mbit in 96ish!

  • @thanksfernuthin
    @thanksfernuthin 5 місяців тому

    I like the fact a few companies are trying to compete with Starlink. We all benefit from that.

  • @declan9876
    @declan9876 5 місяців тому

    nice

  • @scottd9448
    @scottd9448 5 місяців тому +1

    "Space Porn" Sounds like a great 70's movie.

  • @gitmoholliday5764
    @gitmoholliday5764 5 місяців тому +1

    how much % of that task could we also do by simply use connected airplanes... ?

  • @reggiep75
    @reggiep75 5 місяців тому

    The ping of satellite interest was painfully slow! 😂

  • @StYxXx
    @StYxXx 5 місяців тому

    Internet via satellite was (and still is) also offered in Europe. But I can't find what the first service was. Astra 1K (2002) seemed to support internet, don't know about the 90s though. Also Eutelsat and other companies are in the business. I remember tariffs using the same trick mentioned in the video: upload via modem, download via satellite.
    But Europe is more densely populated than the US and since mobile networks support fast internet speeds (LTE) today I don't see much potential for customers there.

    • @anthonypelchat
      @anthonypelchat 5 місяців тому

      Starlink has a decent amount of customers in Europe, not counting Ukraine which is heavily dependent on Starlink. Faster speeds than LTE, though not for cell phones.

  • @yes_head
    @yes_head 5 місяців тому

    Wow. Looking down through the comments reveals that most of Scot Manley's audience are satellite internet technology experts. 😁

  • @bigdogben
    @bigdogben 5 місяців тому +3

    Get well soon Scott.

  • @Linuxpunk81
    @Linuxpunk81 5 місяців тому

    We called the last resort, back up satalite comms the "iridium phone".

  • @Brooke95482
    @Brooke95482 5 місяців тому

    I thought Iridium flares were off the solar panels, not antennas.

  • @Xoron
    @Xoron 5 місяців тому

    I miss the Iridium Flares.

  • @lextacy2008
    @lextacy2008 5 місяців тому

    I dont expect Starlink to make back its investment either. They are launching 100x the hardware for the same service

  • @johndododoe1411
    @johndododoe1411 5 місяців тому

    So which Apple devices can send and receive faxes by satellite to any regular fax, a bit like the one used by Steven Seagal in that train heist movie (where he hooked his Apple device into a mobile payphone to indirectly fax the Pentagon about a hijacked NRO asset)?

  • @tntuof
    @tntuof 5 місяців тому

    Wouldve been intresting to hear the 2.4kbps audio, as the stories make it sound almost unintelligbe 😅