Talk:Communications satellite/Archive 1

Untitled comment
Perhaps it would be better to not imply that fiber optic communications do not experience a path delay. A common lab experiment for university students is to calculate the speed of light by measuring the path delay through length of fiber optic cable.

--Guggemos 00:26, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hermann Noordung's famous 1929 book, "Das Problem der Befahrung des Weltraums", in which he first proposed communications satellites in geostationary orbit, was re-published in facsimile in 1993 by Verlag Turia & Kant of Vienna, ISBN 3-85132-060-3.

The opening for this article states that modern comm satellites are in geosynchronous orbits. The Telephony section describes the satellites for this purpose as being in geostationary orbits. Is this accurate? --Moppet 20:14, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I've heard roumers saying its only USA whos got communications satellites in the space, or that they control all of them. And it has been used in the war too confuse enemies. Is that right? - 82.194.200.113 08:22, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Major Changes
I've already made major changes to the article and am considering adding a section on spacecraft design (subsystems, equipments, etc.)

Opinions? --Philopedia 7 July 2005 17:33 (UTC)

Removal of Section
I am removing the latest addition ('Extraterrestrial communication satellite'). Although such satellites do indeed transmit results of various scientific results back to earth, this is still a departure from the generally accepted notion of what is meant by a communication satellite.

In fact, every active spacecraft communicates, if only to report on their own health and status. The term communications satellite is used in a narrower sense to denote generally commercial or military applications designed to support either broad information desimination (e.g. TV transmission) or two way communication (e.g. telephony). This definition excludes applications such as weather satellites, remote sensing satellites and interplanetary missions, all of which communicate payload data to the ground.

I suggest that the author of the new section look into reintroducing the material in an article on scientific satellites.

--Philopedia 03:19, 24 July 2005 (UTC)


 * special purpose relay systems (that comprise the NASA DSN) need to go in somewhere. They probably don't fit the scope of an article on (terrestrial) communications sats, but since their only function is communication, they don't really fit in a discussion on scientific spacecraft either.   Matt Whyndham (talk) 06:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

telephony
I do not understand the first two sentences:

sentence 1

"The first and still, arguably, most important application for communication satellites is in international satellite."

...is in international telephony? is in international satellite telephony? What goes here?


 * It's easy: and international communications satellite relays television, telephone, computer data, Internet traffic, and everything else from one country to another - and especially over the oceans, e.g. America-Europe; America-Japan; Europe-Australia. The very first active communications satellite, Telstar 1 relayed either television or phone calls, and so have the others since then. So, there is no implication of telephony for communications satellites. Someone jumped to a conclusion on that one. The first uses of these satelltes were for transatlantic communications, and the other equatorial oceans came just later.

Then, over a decade later, the first domestic geosynchronous satellites came into use, first in Canada, and then shortly afterwards by the United States of America.

sentence 2:

"An analogous path is then followed on the downlink."

there is no reference to what the analogous path is, or the previous action that would warrant a 'then'.


 * yes there is, but it's not especially well written, nor a particularly good use of the word "analogy". The UPLINK is the path from the source of the signal from the ground to the satellite, previously described in the paragraph.  The DOWNLINK path is how the signal gets from the satellite back to the destination, also on the ground.  It follows a similar (but reverse) series of steps, hence it's an analagous path.  Matt Whyndham (talk) 06:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Got questions...
well i dont rely understnd the article...i just wanna ask some questions for my assgnment..

has any satellite used laser communication till now? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.94.179.233 (talk) 07:07, August 28, 2007 (UTC)

1. What are the function of Satellite communication anyway? State atleast 4...

2. What are the transmitting and receiving frequency for satellite communication?

3. Satellite are equipped with multiple repeaters which we call relay station right?? so can u tell me more about relay station but make it simple ok...

Thank you...


 * WP is not a place to get personal help with your homework. Matt Whyndham (talk) 06:49, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Commercial Links?
In the *External Links* section on this page, and a number of other satellite-related pages, I've reverted links to www.prmt.com, similar to this one:


 * Prominent Video satellite glossary & video tutorials on communications satellite technology

I've done it on the basis that the link is a commercial one and appears to me to be against WP:EL.

The links keep getting put back though, and since I don't want to appear to be undertaking a vendetta against prmt.com I'd like to take the view of other editors.

Is this link approapriate to this article, or should it be deleted on the basis of WP:EL?

MarkPos 21:23, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Replied on user's talk page. Hers fold  (t/a/c) 15:29, 25 October 2007 (UTC)


 * OK and thanks.  Based on that reply I've reverted the recent edit to this page by Djaview which adds again the link to www.prmt.com .   I'm happy to discuss this further here if Djaview objects to the deletion of this link. MarkPos 15:37, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

India's contribution
What are India's contribution in communication satellite? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.164.157.111 (talk) 14:34, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Some More Questions
I was reading a recent article about NASA and how the director's difficulties with support from the Federal Government. This got me to wondering a couple of things.

Is there any indication on approximately how many privately owned satellites there are floating around the Earth?

How do private companies (such as cable companies and cell phone companies) launch their satellites? Do most of them have their own launching facilities, or do they have to rent space and equipment? What does this kind of thing cost? Can NASA benefit from it by leasing locations and equipment?

Thanks for the help! 138.162.0.41 (talk) 19:15, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, a quick clance at the long See Also section shows me no Wikipedia article about the shape of the orbital lift industry, how the launch sites are all government owned, the rockets mostly developed from ICBMs for the Cold War, the worldwide rate of a few launches per month, the hundred or so satellites alive at any one moment and the thousands dead, launch insurance, slot allocation and so forth. This stuff ought to be written by someone who knows more about it than I do.  Jim.henderson (talk) 16:19, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * practically all comms sats are commercially built (even the sekrit military ones). NASA and the DOD try and push launch services to the commercial market whenever they can, as it's not their core competance. Even odd things like the Shuttle are put together by a bunch of contractors. As for the customers, the cable/TV co's and phone co's, they do not have any satellites. But they buy capacity - probably through intermediary companies who operate "backhaul" networks for them - from the providers of satellite services (who are connected with, but not always the same as, the enterprise that owns the satellite)! @ Jim .. WP is a bit weak on general surveys!  Matt Whyndham (talk) 06:47, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Categories
As part of a clean-up of the bloated telecommunication categories I removed Category:History of telecommunications and Category:History of television. The category of the article is adequately categorised already and they ones I remove don't fit in. A potential History of satellite communications would be a good fit for Category:History of telecommunications. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:02, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I see that Category:History of television is already a subcategory of Category:History of telecommunications, so having both was definitely overkill. It seems like "History of satellite communications" could easily be a subcategory of Category:History of telecommunications and a "peer" of the television category.
 * On a separate note, I noticed that a majority of "History of" topics seem to be sorted under the subject (not under "History"), but there are still some under "H". WP:SORTKEY seems to prefer the sorting under the subject (i.e., Internet:History of). Should I go in and fix this, or would this bring back old wars (I haven't done much category work)? Don Lammers (talk) 12:44, 18 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The sortkey is used otherwise all the articles of cats would be under "H" which is not a good look. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:33, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

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"First communications satellite" Cleanup
So, we start out with "The first artificial satellite used solely to further advances in global communications was a balloon named Echo 1" and then we say "The first American satellite to relay communications was Project SCORE in 1958" so right off we're, from one paragraph to another, contradicting ourselves. And then in the next paragraph, we have "The first communications satellite was Sputnik 1.". So, which was the first communications satellite? Sputnik 1? Echo 1? or Project SCORE? You can't claim all three are the first within sentences of one another. I'd like to clean this up but I need advice on how. Insidious611 (talk) 05:32, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

Distance Units
Distance units in this article start with "nautical miles", then go to kilometers and miles (by which I assume is meant statute miles). These should be consistent within the article, and converted. I would gravitate towards kilometers with a conversion to statute miles (which can be done using templates), but thought I should post here before making any changes. I have been unable to find guidance in Wikipedia (which means only that I didn't find it, not that it doesn't exist), but is seems like nautical miles, which are based on distances AROUND the earth, don't necessarily make sense when referring to distances FROM earth. Don Lammers (talk) 21:27, 23 November 2015 (UTC) I somewhat agree with you about the problem with inconsistency throughout the article, and yes we should aim to maintain consistent units. The standard measurement used mostly when discussing airspace/space seems to be Nautical Miles, even though most of the planet uses S.I. units (Kilometres etc.). Just bear-in-mind though With Wikipedia, you can decide what is the standard for this article. So go for it! --Read-write-services (talk) 22:12, 23 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Don,

✅ - All units are now in SI then US customary, using Template:Convert. While making the article consistent, I noticed other problems and tried to fix them as well. The section on MEO's was very repetitive, so I trimmed it down. I think it would help if someone double checked my work; I may have overlooked something. –Sparkgap (talk) 17:00, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I was going to do it, but being basically lazy am just as happy that someone else took it on. I spotted one conversion left that needed to be flipped, and did the honors. I skimmed the article to make sure nothing whacked me over the head and that my few previous edits about firsts were intact, but would hardly call that an edit pass. I'll see if I can take a closer look in the next couple of days. Don Lammers (talk) 19:39, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Aerosats
An aerosat is an aeronautical satellite. Flight first noted the term in 1968. They are used for communications and are clearly notable. At present the page redirects here but there is no mention in this article. Can somebody add something about them? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:51, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Lead section vagueness cleanup recommendations
Describing a communications satellite "used for television, telephone, radio, internet, and military applications" seems vague and possibly misleading complete beginners to develop a conceptual model that radio is some distinct thing from internet, telephone, etc. Additionally, a communications satellite, I assume, could communicate in ways beyond standard radio communications. A better descripotion might be "uses digital and analog radio technology to provide services including telephony (voice communications), data transmission, internet services and television/media; they are used extensively by governments, militaries and private entities." This still isn't quite good enough yet but I would like some feedback on the sentiment of not conflating the word 'radio' with too many meanings in this type of article. EspritsPréparés (talk) 16:14, 1 November 2016 (UTC)