Electronics: The Room-Size World

(6 of 8)

Low satellites will need comparatively simple propulsion apparatus to keep them spaced evenly, less rocket effort will be needed to put them in orbit, and more weight will be available for extra voice or TV channels. Randomly spaced satellites with no propulsion can be cheaper still, and devote even more of their weight to working electronics. But more of them will be needed—perhaps 18—to avoid gaps in ground coverage. Because they are closer to the earth, both types will sound louder to ground stations, but expensive steerable antennas will be needed to track them across the sky, and skilled operators will be required to pick them up and switch traffic from one to another.

Flares & Sunspots. While the satellite argument goes on, submarine cables are improving fast, and the longlines department of A.T. & T. takes issue with all estimates of comparative cost and capacity. Transistorized cables of the near future, say Bell engineers, will each be capable of carrying one TV channel or 720 telephone conversations. Their life expectancy will be 20 years without repairs, and they will be safe from all the dangers of space. Satellites, on the other hand, cannot be taken in for repairs, and their life expectancy is unknown. It may be expensively short, especially during periods of high solar activity when flares associated with sunspots are bombarding the earth with high-energy particles. Satellite enthusiasts, to be sure, are not intimidated by solar flares. They insist that tougher electronic components can be built to cope with them. Such potential troubles are dismissed, properly perhaps, as mere "engineering difficulties."

Whatever the combination of satellite and cable that is finally developed will have a profound effect on world communication. Enthusiasts like Rosen are already convinced that in a few years large satellites can be put in orbit with enough power to broadcast TV and radio programs directly to individual homes anywhere on earth. No expensive ground-relay stations will be needed on the receiving end. The programs will be picked up by 6-ft. dish antennas that will cost about $100, if mass-produced. If the satellites are synchronous, as Rosen is sure they will be, the antennas will be motionless, staring fixedly at a single point in the sky.

Rosen's group is proposing a special Educational Television Satellite for NASA. It is designed to carry perfect color or black-and-white TV direct to home receivers. "You ain't seen nothing yet," says Rosen. "The benefit to mankind of such a system staggers the imagination. It may well be the major return to humanity of man's venture into space. What we're trying to do is to save the world."

Even less dedicated men than Rosen see a startling communications explosion ahead. A sampling of their predictions for the near future:

>A World Information Center will catalogue and make available the expanding mass of information now threatening to swamp the world's libraries. With easy access to the center by satellite-relayed phone calls from any spot on earth and with computers programmed to do their tedious reference hunting for them, researchers will save countless man-hours as they make use of all the recorded knowledge of the human race.