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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Globalstar Telecommunications Limited GSAT -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thomas_l who wrote (6916)	8/27/1999 8:13:00 AM
From: limtex	Respond to of 29987

thomas - thaks for the post. I think the question we are all asking is can we pls see a mpa of teh coverage area. I thought I could grasp the way this works but I'm beginning to question my abilities. Still as Clint used to say a man should always recognise hos own limitations! Has anyone on the thread seen acoverage map? If not I'll ask G*. That should make it simple enough even for me to understand it. Thanks everyone, Best regards, L

To: thomas_l who wrote (6916)	8/27/1999 11:19:00 AM
From: Rocket Scientist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29987

Let me try again to discuss coverage areas, gateways, etc., as I understand them. First, the satellite constellation can "see" all parts of the globe between 70N and 70S, as shown on Gs home page. (BTW the "inclination angle" of 52 degrees is with respect to the equator; 0 degrees being parallel to the equator, 90 degrees being a polar orbit. Iridium uses and Teledesic plans to use (nearly) polar orbits and provide true global coverage. G designers selected an inclined orbit as more efficient taking into account few people live at high lattitudes) To complete a call, any satellite has to simultaneously see the user and a Gateway. The satellites aren't very high up relative to the earth's radius (actually closer than I described last night, because I forgot the satellites are at 1400KM, not 1400 miles), so the earth's curvature provides a hard limit to the distance a user can be from a gateway and still see at least one satellite that sees the Gateway. That "hard" limit is probably closer to 2000-3000 miles than 1500. The 1500 mile figure, I assume, provides assurance of a certain call reliability/quality taking into account requirements for satellite hand offs, elevation angle constraints, power limitations, etc. Anyway a real "coverage map" for G* has almost nothing to do with the satellites anymore. It all has to do with GWs. Based on the May 99 plan, the 8-9 GWs planned operational this "fall" will cover most of US and E. Canada, most of Brazil, all of Argentina, Southern Africa, practically all of Europe and N. Africa and a substantial part of China. By the end of the year the "coverage map" should blanket N. and Central America, much of the rest of S. America, and 2/3 of Russia (maybe). After that, it gets fuzzy, but Australia, the N. Atlantic, S.E. Asia, the rest of China, S. America and Russia should come on line in the first few months of next year. Hope that helps.