Posted by Amaranth Rose on Mar 08, 2002 at 15:34
(65.172.150.176)
I'm tutoring a student. The answer to this question isn't going to affect her grade, the homework's already turned in. Feel free to email me if you don't wish to expose yourself to the, er, "friendly" atmosphere here at SAGG.
The question is this: assume a planet of about earth's size, covered in water except for a group of land masses in the middle latitudes (45 degrees North, for our purposes). There is one radio transmitter on this planet. How many communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit would it take to be able to transmit a signal to every point in the universe (assuming there were people there to listen) at all times, from this one single radio transmitter?
You are given that a satellite can bounce a message off another satellite, and that the nature of the message is unimportant other than that it is electromagnetic in nature and obeys the known laws of physics (i.e., it does not punch into Calabi-Yau space or do anything "supernatural", and it does not travel reliably through or skip off of the planet's water oceans.) Assume the planet's size and mass are approximately Earth-like.
What's the miniumum number of satellites needed, and how would they have to be placed to achieve transmission to every point of the universe?
And no, this is not a joke. I told her I would post it here for her because I didn't think she should be here. It's one thing to flame me; it's another to do it to my student.
Re: How about 4? Dale 13/3 10:44
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