This has been the wolf that Dr. Peter Pry (RIP 2022) has been crying about for a very long time. No one paid attention to him, which is probably unfortunate, because he had a legitimate concern.
I suspect this is a handy "man-bites-dog" story to fill blank space. If it were for real, the Deep State would be struck dead along with everyone else. If it isn't real, there are alternatives to the internet, such as Starlink.
Even though you "might" be able to connect to a satellite, you still need internet to get to servers around the earth once starlink downlinks. Additionally, if the datacenter or its connectivity where your destination url resides is offline it's not gonna respond.
INB4 reroute, it is correct that the internet can re-route to get to a site, but at some point there are few entry points into the datacenter and a local outage can take them offline.
It won't be easy. But Starlink depends on a monstrously-large constellation, which suggests that Musk is looking toward a direct link between the user and the constellation. If the constellation is linking only to a modest number of portals, there would be no need for such a large constellation. This is the way in which his (former) support of the Ukraine armed forces would make sense, since battlefield connectivity depends on radio communication. This has always been the long-term goal of large-scale satcoms, and why they are attractive to nations (such as in Africa) which have poor existing internet connectivity.
Also, there is the possibility that the EMP threat is overblown, or that measures have been taken by government and private actors (or at least I hope so). Many were convinced that we would have a worldwide computer glitch once the 21st century arrived, but it turned out to be a nothingburger.
The large constellation is to allow connectivity only, much like access points. Alot of them are needed to cover the large geographical area. Each starlink satellite has a finite footprint on the earth it can service because the angles and distances make the connection unstable.
Starlink does NOT host web services and systems in space other than the access point (and future cell service via tmobile). So you still need to downlink to earth for access to connected systems and services. There are many downlinks and the system can transfer connections via satellite to a better downlink location. But you still need the earth's internet.
Regarding the hope that government and private business are prepared.. they like to say they are but the reality is somewhere around the dunning-krueger-esc "we are prepared" to "were working on it".
The problem here is its all simulations, nothing real. The last real nuke test for emp was just before the airburst treaty went into effect and the blast pegged all the measuring equipment.
We don't know what we don't know. Be prepared for life without...
Thanks for the clarification. My prior experience was some exposure to the Teledesic project, operating with an antenna footprint of 700 km2. These footprints move along at orbital speed (~7.8 km/sec for low Earth orbit), so dwell times are probably measured in a matter of a few minutes at most. There will be considerable packet switching to connect with a ground terminal.
I looked up Starlink to get some sense of the downlink distribution and support and it is pretty amazing. A complete terminal is priced to be available to commercial or industrial entities. A lesser capability is potentially available to those who can afford it, so links direct to user may not be far off at all. It was a quick scan of a long article, but it seems that the system relies on wifi for the final path to the end user, instead of landline.
The government apparently issued a response strategy in 2018, so, yeah, they're "working on it."
Were you thinking of the Starfish Prime test in 1962? There is plenty of theoretical dissection of what happened, based also on a similar Soviet test that same year. Underground tests still provided data on nuclear detonations, and we've also learned more about the structure of the upper atmosphere since then.
This has been the wolf that Dr. Peter Pry (RIP 2022) has been crying about for a very long time. No one paid attention to him, which is probably unfortunate, because he had a legitimate concern.
I suspect this is a handy "man-bites-dog" story to fill blank space. If it were for real, the Deep State would be struck dead along with everyone else. If it isn't real, there are alternatives to the internet, such as Starlink.
Even though you "might" be able to connect to a satellite, you still need internet to get to servers around the earth once starlink downlinks. Additionally, if the datacenter or its connectivity where your destination url resides is offline it's not gonna respond.
INB4 reroute, it is correct that the internet can re-route to get to a site, but at some point there are few entry points into the datacenter and a local outage can take them offline.
It won't be easy. But Starlink depends on a monstrously-large constellation, which suggests that Musk is looking toward a direct link between the user and the constellation. If the constellation is linking only to a modest number of portals, there would be no need for such a large constellation. This is the way in which his (former) support of the Ukraine armed forces would make sense, since battlefield connectivity depends on radio communication. This has always been the long-term goal of large-scale satcoms, and why they are attractive to nations (such as in Africa) which have poor existing internet connectivity.
Also, there is the possibility that the EMP threat is overblown, or that measures have been taken by government and private actors (or at least I hope so). Many were convinced that we would have a worldwide computer glitch once the 21st century arrived, but it turned out to be a nothingburger.
The large constellation is to allow connectivity only, much like access points. Alot of them are needed to cover the large geographical area. Each starlink satellite has a finite footprint on the earth it can service because the angles and distances make the connection unstable.
Starlink does NOT host web services and systems in space other than the access point (and future cell service via tmobile). So you still need to downlink to earth for access to connected systems and services. There are many downlinks and the system can transfer connections via satellite to a better downlink location. But you still need the earth's internet.
Regarding the hope that government and private business are prepared.. they like to say they are but the reality is somewhere around the dunning-krueger-esc "we are prepared" to "were working on it".
The problem here is its all simulations, nothing real. The last real nuke test for emp was just before the airburst treaty went into effect and the blast pegged all the measuring equipment.
We don't know what we don't know. Be prepared for life without...
Thanks for the clarification. My prior experience was some exposure to the Teledesic project, operating with an antenna footprint of 700 km2. These footprints move along at orbital speed (~7.8 km/sec for low Earth orbit), so dwell times are probably measured in a matter of a few minutes at most. There will be considerable packet switching to connect with a ground terminal.
I looked up Starlink to get some sense of the downlink distribution and support and it is pretty amazing. A complete terminal is priced to be available to commercial or industrial entities. A lesser capability is potentially available to those who can afford it, so links direct to user may not be far off at all. It was a quick scan of a long article, but it seems that the system relies on wifi for the final path to the end user, instead of landline.
The government apparently issued a response strategy in 2018, so, yeah, they're "working on it."
Were you thinking of the Starfish Prime test in 1962? There is plenty of theoretical dissection of what happened, based also on a similar Soviet test that same year. Underground tests still provided data on nuclear detonations, and we've also learned more about the structure of the upper atmosphere since then.