[FPSPACE] 10-40 gigabytes/second air-to-ground

[DwayneDay]

The current issue of Defense News has an article about the T-Sat military comsat that claims that T-Sat could be capable of transmitting 10-40 gigabytes per second.  This is faster than Milstar II.  According to the article, Milstar II takes two minutes to transmit a few megabyte photograph.  The Advanced EHF satellite that will launch in a few years will take about 23 seconds to transmit the same photo.  T-Sat should take less than a second to move the same image.

T-Sat would use lasers for transmitting.  That has never been done effectively before.

Of course, I don't expect T-Sat to actually fly.  The program has been highly criticized by Congress as unrealistic, and I think that it will get whacked in a few years.  But it is interesting to get some datapoints on this stuff.



DDAY