[pweezy]

This kind of communication seems like an interesting problem for Starlink (or other satellite internet constellations) to solve. What if the satellites had extra antennas pointed outwards and relayed the data back to the ground at high bandwidth?

Seems like it would avoid a lot of the issues like atmospheric interference, frequency congestion, and careful placement of receiver infrastructure.

[jvanderbot]

the gynormous size and sensitivity of ground antennas dwarfs those other factors. Otherwise, don't you think that an agency known for sending things to space would have considered sending things to space?

However, when using laser comms, sometimes a delay does make sense.

[herendin]

>What if the satellites had extra antennas pointed outwards

Pointed outwards towards what?

And I don't understand how that solves atmosphere interference issues. Still gotta go through the atmosphere at least twice for ground to ground

In actual fact, I believe the long term Starlink plan does include satellites in higher orbits, but I don't know their role

Lowest long distance latency is potentially a big competitive advantage for Starlink, so they'll probably try to get the shortest ground to ground path for some high priority customer data, and higher orbits on the signal path will detract from that goal

[bythreads]

I never understood why the spacex sattelites dont have shitty webcams on their "dark side"

Imagine the resolution of that array as it spins around earth...

[ncmncm]

There is no fixed or computable phase relationship in optical wavelengths. But the constellation could operate as an Earth-sized radio telescope pointing all directions at once, probably for a few seconds a day to avoid exceeding downlink bandwidth. There, the phase relationship is anyway computable, in principle.

Probably they have not, yet, because they will be lofting new ones all the time, so have time to get it right. And, it might not really be computable, in practice.