Telstar

 If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct it.  If it be a lie, laugh at it." - Epictetus

Pic of the day:  One of the power plants at Ford's River Rouge Complex, built I believe in 1929.  Not so fun fact:  This coal-fired plant was converted from coal to fire on natural gas.  In 1999, it suffered a gas explosion (video link) that killed six people, and badly burned many others.

 

On to the post.

I watched this old "NewsReel" type of documentary about the very first dedicated communications satellite, launched in 1962, named Telstar.  It's fascinating to learn about the amount of effort (and money) required to develop the first overseas communications that didn't involve wires.

 

Nowadays of course, we think nothing of this sort of game-changing technology.  Consumer grade equipment has been available to receive satellite television programming since the mid 1970s. 

Below:  How you used to get TV when you lived in the middle of nowhere, where cable companies refuse to go, due to the scarcity of customers.  This would be pointed to a low-power satellite in geosynchronous orbit, receiving analog C-Band microwaves in the 4-8GHz range.  Initially those satellites had no encryption, so viewers could get raw news feeds from all over the world, without having to watch Peter Jennings spin the news.

Eventually the signals were scrambled, and one had to purchase a decoder box and pay monthly fees.  

Europe, as usual, showed the world the way forward, by building higher-powered X and Ku-Band satellites running signals at 8-12GHz.  This allowed for much smaller and cheaper receiver dishes, and the Broadcast Satellite TV business flourished.    

What got me going on this was that the other night, the wife took the dogs out for their final potty trip before bedtime, and she saw this:  A string of lights overhead, all traveling across the sky in a line, going in the same direction.  There were a lot of them.

It turns out that there had been a Starlink launch earlier, and the satellites had just deployed from the upper stage.  The world really has come a long way in 60 years, from being barely able to launch 170 lbs into orbit, to having a single reusable rocket capable of launching sixty satellites, each weighing 650 lbs.