Satellites : general discussion and musings

[Jonathan]

Dear Simon,

here is my understanding of it:

The dish is just the reflector - the antenna is the small thing in front of it.
The dish is the - preferably large - area which gathers the waves and focuses them at the actual antenna.

Satellite dishes such as those you mentioned and know are parabolic mirrors for the radio waves they capture.
They collect and capture these and focus them at one of their two focal points such a design has.

The shape is - as the name suggests - a part of a parabola or part of a full ellipse.
Which has two focal points.

Draw the mirroring lines from that one focal point (which is the actual receiving antenna also called here an LNB) back to the sky.
It will point to the supposed location of the satellite - which is the direction of the second focal point an ellipse has.

The design is also called an "Offset Design" because the actual antenna and its mounting structures are not in the path of the waves it wants to receive.
Those would otherwise "shadow" some of the area of the dish making it effectively less large and less ... effective.

As for Canada vs. Equador (for example) - different designs are probably used in the latter location.
Since Equador is almost exactly beneath the satellite a parabolic shape and similar location of the receiving antenna (LNB) like seen in Europe for example would not be a good choice.
Their antennas likely look different - not parabolic but parts of spheres (only one focal point) and aimed visibly right at the satellites location.
Almost straight up, that is.
Offset design does not make much sense at the equator.

Parabolic offset designs are preferred here in Europe over spherical designs because they are easier to mount and do not require as much space to do it on a houses wall as seen on the pictures.
Spherical designs would have to be equally large, but tilted more upwards - which requires more distance to the wall they are mounted to - which makes this more difficult.
Plus - snow and dirt and water would fill a spherical dish, thereby reducing the area which can reflect the waves at the LNB (antenna), instead of just falling off of a parabolic design.

...which needs to be mounted appearing almost vertical to actually point at the satellite.

[Jonathan]

There is no explanation for the satcom transmissions I picked up on non-satcom antenna. It is impossible unless the transmissions were coming over standard radio waves utilizing encryption. In fact this is the one and only explanation. GPS utilizes triangulation and encrypted radio waves as well. I pray some day humanity will discard this farce and start teaching real science.

You have no explanation - though there may be one.
Noone knows what you received and how and with what.

And of course: satellites are using perfectly standard radio waves ...
Antennas do not decrypt anything - that happens elsewhere.

As for GPS:

there are a lot of devices, a lot of software making GPS usable.
Mobile Phones for example.

It would be one task to build triangulation capabilities into a software.

It would be a much different task to build software to decode the received signal from satellites - which contains the sending satellites location and exact timing info.

All this also exists as open source software.

And nobody has noticed?

All the smart people creating software are fooled.
They think they decode signals from satellites - and put exactly that into code - while they are in reality building devices (or software for such devices) which actually work upon a much different concept?

And yet it still works?

Not in my world.

[whatsgoingon]

All the smart people creating software are fooled.

Software merely transforms a data stream into another data stream. There is no confirmation that the signals came from satellites. There is no hard data on their existence except from defense contractors, spy stories, NASA launch info, etc.

Sure everything is Satellite these days, but at the end of the day you do not need things in space to get these services done cheaply. You think in the day of people complaining about oil prices that we would be doing GPS and Satellite TV in the cheapest possible manner which is with a simple netwok of ground antenas.

Spy Satellites are U2 planes and these days, Drones. Nothing more is needed.

[Unleashed]

Just wanted to thank the posters who have contributed to this thread.
I find your posts even more compelling reasons to question the viability and rationale for satellites.

Plus I find it downright phony and manipulative this sudden rash of falling satellites. If they were real, then we can reasonably expect this to occur every few months from here on out, no?

No comsats, of course, just these research satellites no one had an inkling of in the first place, so they won't be missed.

I do recall a sort of hullabaloo about a weather satellite that purportedly tracked hurricanes that was defunct and none brought online to replace it years ago. And yet...NOAA has had no trouble producing all sorts of data from this "defunct" satellite. The sat never went away apparently, just the stories about how terrible it was to not have a replacement for it!

[Terence.drew]

Sorry lads I still don't get this'
Put 'Madonna' into google images and guess who appears?

A number of different individuals all purported to be the same woman?

Ha maybe.

Madonna..mmmm..wouldn't mind an arm wrestle with her..see those veins bulging out!

Maat already said it all.

Satellites are seen by the reflection of sunlight off of them.
Consider their altitude and path - they are in sunlight much longer than we are in daylight down here.
This can also be observed: they are often seen as appearing suddenly already high up above the horizon - that is when they come out of earths shadow (or it is when their reflecting surfaces are at the right angle to mirror sunlight at your location).
They also disappear like that - often not by going below the horizon but by going into shadow or by not reflecting the sun to your location any longer - then they are observable elsewhere.

These things are easily observable and at least one big question would arise which was already stated:
never in the history of astronomy where these things described though they seem to behave so strangely.
Has nobody speculated or even asked what those would be?

If taking into account that these objects did not exist until about 50 years ago you have one very good reason as to why such things where never described...

Satellites lit from the sun?

This is interesting.



Quote "There are several ways of explaining these two types of shadows, but this one makes more intuitive sense to me. Take a look at the left side of the figure above, and imagine that you are on the other side of the earth from the sun, moving outward and always keeping the earth between you and the sun. As you move away from the earth, it diminishes in size much more rapidly than the sun, which is so much larger and distant.

In A, you are so close to the earth that it completely blots out the sun. The shadow is intense. You’re in the umbra, as are all low-orbit satellites half the time.

In B, you’ve moved outward so far that the apparent diameter of the earth is equal to that of the sun, as seen by you. The earth *just* covers the sun, since the apparent size of the earth and sun are both a little over half a degree. This would be a total eclipse of the sun by the earth, and a little trigonometry will tell you that you’d have to be about 850,000 miles away from the earth to see this, about four times the distance from the earth to the moon.

B represents the limit of the umbra. If you move farther out than 850,000 miles you will be in the increasingly light shadow of the penumbra.

In C, you’ve moved so far away that the earth can no longer cover the sun completely. Here I’ve shown the apparent size of the earth as about a quarter that of the sun. You’d have to be about 5 million miles from the earth to see it like this.

And finally, in D, we’re 50 million miles from the earth and it appears to be only about 1/50 the size of the sun. The penumbra shadowing is very much diminished, because the earth blocks so little of the sun’s light now."

http://sparkleberrysprings.com/v-web/b2/?p=1427

So called Geostat sats are also earth's Umbra. Also the idea of seeing reflected light from something van sized which is supposed to tens of thousands of miles away is ridiculous .

If you have seen lights in the sky this is one possible explanation. It was the afterburner from one of these..



Performance

* Maximum speed: Mach 3.3[82][83][N 4] (2,200+ mph, 3,530+ km/h, 1,900+ knots) at 80,000 ft (24,000 m)
* Range: 2,900 nmi (5,400 km)
* Ferry range: 3,200 nmi (5,925 km)
* Service ceiling: 85,000 ft (25,900 m)
* Rate of climb: 11,810 ft/min (60 m/s)
* Wing loading: 84 lb/ft² (410 kg/m²)
* Thrust/weight: 0.44

Retired in 1998

[hoi.polloi]

You're right. The "reflection" argument would only apply to those satellites traveling some distance from the umbra. The blue circle on the right is our view of Earth from the sun. Note none of the satellites' paths go into the umbra. These are hypothetical satellites but even if they dipped into the umbra for a fraction of their orbit you could have thousands of satellites doing this without crossing paths, supposedly.



In any case they would have to be at the right angle to give you a constant unwavering reflection of the sun, which is difficult to imagine since they are not round objects but perhaps their direct exposure to the sunlight makes them glow?

To me, then the question becomes: how do such things survive such direct exposure to the intense radiation of the sun without exploding, frying or otherwise malfunctioning on a regular basis? If there is no "break" for them from the electromagnetic waves and radiation how do they not constantly heat up until they melt/malfunction? How do the "dark" parts of the satellites get rid of the excess heat? Do they have cooling systems on board? Does the mostly empty space around them serve as enough of a cooling system?

These lights that pass by in the night sky around the equator are something else out of the argument entirely. They are in the umbra and yet they emit such intense light.

So that umbra argument is quite good. Oftentimes, it must be a light source on the object itself. Many alleged satellites would be impossible from the world-view Terrence.drew and I are describing, no?

[Jonathan]

Satellites lit from the sun?

This is interesting.

I do not have the problem of not believing in the existence of satellites.
I also do not have a problem with them being visible via reflection of sunlight.

Draw scale models. Experiment. And you will truly see.

My - to me... - much stronger point was the other one anyway.
Those things are seen - and where not ever mentioned or seen all the thousands of years up until about 50 years ago.

The black airplane and things like it may be an appealing theory to you - but that is all that it is and it does not begin to appeal to me.

All the smart people creating software are fooled.

Software merely transforms a data stream into another data stream. There is no confirmation that the signals came from satellites. There is no hard data on their existence except from defense contractors, spy stories, NASA launch info, etc.

That argument does not hold.
A few points:

It just does not just - and much less merely - transform one datastream into another.
The software operates on hardware. It uses the info which is known to be contained in the data.
The point is much more: how does it do it?

It works on the presupposition that the info is correct and of a certain format.
You can't get meaningful and consistent results working on info which you think contains specific data (from satellites) while in reality it contains entirely different data (from ground stations).
Not without noticing the discrepancies at the very least.

Hardware (antenna) captures the waves carrying the data.
The software then makes sense of it so to say - by knowing the format and possible contents of the data it can compute meaningful results which then are presented via other hardware.
That data would surely be different when coming from satellites or from ground based signals.
And that would need to be noticed immediately by people building the software.
It would become obvious in the early developement and testing stages of such software and hardware devices.

There is no hard data on the existence of that signals/data?
Build your own receiver and see for yourself.
Where it comes from as well as what info it contains.

[whatsgoingon]

It works on the presupposition that the info is correct and of a certain format.
You can't get meaningful and consistent results working on info which you think contains specific data (from satellites) while in reality it contains entirely different data (from ground stations).
Not without noticing the discrepancies at the very least.

I see your point. How does it work is important. No doubt. But the simplest/cheapest system is ground-based antenas. No need for expensive Satellites. The engineering is so easy. Just reserve a band of microwave or whatever for "satellite" transmissions and call it that but use ground networks.

GPS has stable ground markers and beacons on mountain peaks and other areas. You cannot deny that GPS has ground stations. They do exist.

WAAS

You've heard the term WAAS, seen it on packaging and ads for GARMIN products, maybe even know it stands for Wide Area Augmentation System. Okay, so what the heck is it? Basically, it's a system of satellites and ground stations that provide GPS signal corrections, giving you even better position accuracy. How much better? Try an average of up to five times better. A WAAS-capable receiver can give you a position accuracy of better than three meters, 95 percent of the time. And you don't have to purchase additional receiving equipment or pay service fees to utilize WAAS.
What is WAAS?

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Transportation are developing the WAAS program for use in precision flight approaches. Currently, GPS alone does not meet the FAA's navigation requirements for accuracy, integrity and availability. WAAS corrects for GPS signal errors caused by ionospheric disturbances, timing and satellite orbit errors and provides vital integrity information regarding the health of each GPS satellite. Although WAAS has not yet been approved for aviation, the system is available for civilian use, such as for boaters and recreational GPS users.

But lets imagine that the earth stations that receive Satellite transmissions are the Satellites themselves. Now that is pretty much a simple system to implement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_station

If someone traced signals to those sites, then the Pro-satellite folks would say, well yeah, they are getting the Satellite feeds. The ground stations may be the network.

There is no hard data on the existence of that signals/data?
Build your own receiver and see for yourself.
Where it comes from as well as what info it contains.

Good idea. We should build these to triangulate the positions of the GPS nodes. If they are local then we have a ground system. If they are 10,000 miles in the sky, then satellites are there. But who has the resources to do such a project? You are talking about several hundred grand to figure that out.

I am resigned to the simple explanation. Remember we are talking Cold War stuff here. And that was a clever game of smoke and mirrors: NASA, Star Wars, Satellites, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Smoke and mirrors.

[nonhocapito]

I see your point. How does it work is important. No doubt. But the simplest/cheapest system is ground-based antenas. No need for expensive Satellites. The engineering is so easy. Just reserve a band of microwave or whatever for "satellite" transmissions and call it that but use ground networks.

I feel as if this discussion is going a bit in circles. The same statements are being made, followed by the same rebuttals, for pages on end. Maybe we should all take more time to read previous posts before putting forward our conjectures.

As to this particular point: gps and satellite phones work also for ships in the middle of the pacific and thousands of miles away from any station and any antenna. They work in the middle of the Sahara desert. So I don't think they can be explained away with ground stations.

Also, it seems difficult to imagine that the objects that go about at night are anything else but satellites, considering it is a phenomenon never recorded by any astronomer or simple star-gazer prior contemporary times.

That satellites might not exist is a fascinating idea, but right now perhaps we should work at not creating two "parties" in this thread, that face each other from progressively entrenched positions.

Those who want to prove that satellite are fictional should maybe admit that there are parts of their story for which reasonable explanations still have to be found.

As to those who maintain the reality of satellites, let's just say that this conviction is only there pending further evidence, and with the perfect knowledge that certainly a lot about satellites is misinformation and cover-up.

* * for reference, we have three threads about satellites right now, the other two are:

Falling Satellites and Dangers from Space viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1100
Hubble or Bubble? viewtopic.php?f=23&t=977

[chuck22]

Radio waves at or below 30MHz easily travel across the earth even when being propagated from a ground station. A combinational use of frequencies from various spectrums is a capability as well, i.e. simultaneous transmissions at different frequencies. Talk to any old timer who knows about radio waves and they will tell you HF can easily traverse the world. Tie this together with lower spectrums and various encryption, and you now have the explanation of satellite communications. The transmissions are real, they just aren't coming from those shiny objects floating in the sky as sold in the fairy tale. Someday people will wake up from their stupor brought on by the likes of NASA and other science frauds.

RIP Gus Grissom

[whatsgoingon]

Radio waves at or below 30MHz easily travel across the earth even when being propagated from a ground station. A combinational use of frequencies from various spectrums is a capability as well, i.e. simultaneous transmissions at different frequencies. Talk to any old timer who knows about radio waves and they will tell you HF can easily traverse the world. Tie this together with lower spectrums and various encryption, and you now have the explanation of satellite communications. The transmissions are real, they just aren't coming from those shiny objects floating in the sky as sold in the fairy tale. Someday people will wake up from their stupor brought on by the likes of NASA and other science frauds.

RIP Gus Grissom

Good point. From a wickedpedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere ) I calculated then that a ground station needs to angle its dish at about 6 degrees above the horizon to use ionosphere to reflect a signal.

I used 10^5 for the electron density of the ionosphere, which incidentally is greatest near the equator, which is also where those satellites seem to be. I get a maximal frequency for a 90 degree reflection at about 3 MHZ. But you can get to 30 MHZ at an angle of ~6 degrees off the horizon for the minimal frequency to get ionsphere reflections.

Lots to think about on designing a pure ground based system. Perhaps we should design a ground based system and see what you would need to get the job done.

[nonhocapito]

Radio waves at or below 30MHz easily travel across the earth even when being propagated from a ground station. A combinational use of frequencies from various spectrums is a capability as well, i.e. simultaneous transmissions at different frequencies. Talk to any old timer who knows about radio waves and they will tell you HF can easily traverse the world. Tie this together with lower spectrums and various encryption, and you now have the explanation of satellite communications. The transmissions are real, they just aren't coming from those shiny objects floating in the sky as sold in the fairy tale. Someday people will wake up from their stupor brought on by the likes of NASA and other science frauds.

RIP Gus Grissom

Good point. From a wickedpedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere ) I calculated then that a ground station needs to angle its dish at about 6 degrees above the horizon to use ionosphere to reflect a signal.

I used 10^5 for the electron density of the ionosphere, which incidentally is greatest near the equator, which is also where those satellites seem to be. I get a maximal frequency for a 90 degree reflection at about 3 MHZ. But you can get to 30 MHZ at an angle of ~6 degrees off the horizon for the minimal frequency to get ionsphere reflections.

Lots to think about on designing a pure ground based system. Perhaps we should design a ground based system and see what you would need to get the job done.

I am not an expert like you guys seem to be, but... Are those signals bouncing off the ionosphere reliable in term of reaching a specific target? Or would a conversation over satellite phone be broadcast to entire regions?

[Terence.drew]

Jonathan I will quote you from earlier.....

Maat already said it all.

Satellites are seen by the reflection of sunlight off of them.
Consider their altitude and path - they are in sunlight much longer than we are in daylight down here.
This can also be observed: they are often seen as appearing suddenly already high up above the horizon - that is when they come out of earths shadow (or it is when their reflecting surfaces are at the right angle to mirror sunlight at your location).
They also disappear like that - often not by going below the horizon but by going into shadow or by not reflecting the sun to your location any longer - then they are observable elsewhere.

These things are easily observable and at least one big question would arise which was already stated:
never in the history of astronomy where these things described though they seem to behave so strangely.
Has nobody speculated or even asked what those would be?

If taking into account that these objects did not exist until about 50 years ago you have one very good reason as to why such things where never described...

This is a discussion about the reality of satellites. Satellites reflecting sunlight is one of your (and others here) main arguments.
Are you going to respond to what I have posted regarding the Earth's Umbra and the impossibility of reflections of Satellites within this Umbra or not????

I do not have the problem of not believing in the existence of satellites.
I also do not have a problem with them being visible via reflection of sunlight.

Draw scale models. Experiment. And you will truly see.

My - to me... - much stronger point was the other one anyway.
Those things are seen - and where not ever mentioned or seen all the thousands of years up until about 50 years ago.

The black airplane and things like it may be an appealing theory to you - but that is all that it is and it does not begin to appeal to me.

What "appeals" to you or what does not is your own business. I mention the blackbird aircraft because lights in the night sky cannot come from reflected sunlight. If you are sure they do please post proof and evidence. The afterburner from a mach 3 capable aircraft, which can fly from the east coast of America to the west coast in 64 minutes is a prime contender for a mysterious fast moving light in the sky.

Do you get it or do you not?

[Jonathan]

Radio waves at or below 30MHz easily travel across the earth even when being propagated from a ground station.

Wavelengths used for satellite comunication are are much smaller than that - frequencies much higher.

Such high frequencies won't propagate as far when coming from ground stations - just little more than line of sight.

Now look at the design of a satellite antenna and you (can) know which frequency it is resonant to.
There you have one verification of the frequency used.

Try to pick up a satellites signal from anywhere, for specifity try to pick up a TV-satellites signal from anywhere else than its supposed location and see what you get.
There you have another verification.

Or believe what you want to but don't expect others to ignore all the easily verifyable facts.

But who has the resources to do such a project? You are talking about several hundred grand to figure that out.

The task is far less costly than you suggest.

Get a GPS capable smartphone - Android powered for example but an IPhone will do too.
Mine cost me 100 Euros.
Used is even cheaper.

Then you are almost ready to hack your own GPS application.
No need to just use the already available software while all the while doubting its working basis.
Hack your own - Android is Open Source - thereby verifying the existence, format and correctness of the data.
What is in it. What you can use to pinpoint a location.
It will become obvious along the way that those signals are indeed what we are told and what you doubt.

It is even easier to pinpoint the location, the source, the direction those waves carrying the data are coming from.

A budget of one grand will enable you to get very far.

You resigned to an idea ... don't want to know?

Self created smoke and mirrors, but just as effective.

[Jonathan]

... Do you get it or do you not?

I get what you mean - I think

And I already did respond - with my suggestion to use scale models, to experiment.
To really see for yourself the effects of earths shadow from the sun.
Kindly look at hoi.polloi's post too.

What appeals to me is my own business - exactly.
Same goes for everyones including yours.

Afterburners from aircraft can be made to resemble an explanation.
It just does not appeal to me - as a good theory.

For just one:
To me it lacks probability - the other explanation is much easier.

It usually works the other way around:
theories are falsified - else they stand.

I'm tired...