space junk is a problem

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debris.html

The system is still very much in use. All the Garmin InReach and Zoleo satellite communication devices use it.

Okay I didn’t know that! I guess I’m alittle behind

I hadn't thought about it like that.

You should call them.

Not just that but people who have no respect for wilderness. Oh, things are uncomfortable I need to call a helicopter. BS. If you choose to go into wilderness, you get yourself out.

The reverse link is always the issue

The innovation for everything is a Wi-Fi chip that posts to social media. So lame nowadays

And drive itself into oncoming traffic

Lol

Yeah upon rereading I get that. Technically I'm an Olympian since I hail from Olympia... All I have are participation trophies though.

XD

Ah that makes more sense. The "Olympics" means something completely different to the rest of the world /s

When I go hiking I like to be off grid as much as possible. The best hiking around me is in the Olympic mountain range of Washington State. If phones start working in the middle of nowhere it's just a matter of time until people use it frivolously and I'll be sad.

What?

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wow what year is this i havent heard that name in years...those phones are HUGE.

I don't know man, I get the emergencies contact stuff but the first time somebody casually texts on their phone when we're 14 miles deep into the Olympics I'm going to lose my shit.

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Lol i tried it. Whats the issue? Still the best AR software out there. Yes fov was small but not terrible and that was hololens 1

I've read about it and it's pretty interesting. I'd like to know more about the technical details of how that could work. You can pick up a satellite signal on a phone without much of a problem because it's a powerful transmitter but how does the return signal get to the satellite since it's a small device with a low-power transmitter designed for local communications? SAT phones usually are larger and have a much bigger external antenna so how can they do it on a normal smartphone is very interesting.

And speed isn’t always defined by distance. It’s just the time it takes to get from A to B, units can be anything I.e 100MB/S (gasp!)

The time it takes a message to be received, according to Iridium, up to 10 seconds. 6 messages per minute for the pedantic

> if ground stations are the bottleneck

You’re half way right and I think this is why Iridium is claiming speed - they’re reusing marketing material without specifying which conditions hold true.

Ground stations are the bottleneck in two situations:

• example: customer is in Australia tracking a product on other side of planet. It needs to somehow get the data back to Australia.
• example: a user wants to send an emergency message to another user, like using Garmin SOS device.

But with emergency SOS the ground station nearest you will be the one handling your request, so beaming across multiple satellites is pointless.

Also iridium has less total number of ground stations, so less coverage on earth, they just make up for it with better satellite-to-satellite coverage

Hmm, maybe Iridium can only transmit straight back down, and it has to go through terrestrial switching stations to get to a central processing location, that then goes back out and activates EMS, rather than one or two steps through line-of-site satellites and directly to a central location?

Not sure, but if their claim is that ground stations are a bottleneck, getting more information on that seems like the question rather than just saying 'hmm, I don't know about that...'.