On 2015-07-27 09:57, Henry Baker wrote:
Does these calculations make sense?
glass has density of 2.5 g/cm^3
typical single mode fiber core diameter 8.3 micrometers.
geosynchronous orbit: 42,164km radius; 265,000km circumference.
volume of glass for geosynchronous fiber: pi*(8.3µm/2)^2*265000km = 0.014334011188882 m^3 (?)
density of glass = 2500kg/m^3
Mass of geosynchronous glass = 36 kg (?)
I'm quite sure that today's geosynchronous satellites weigh more than 80 pounds!
(Yes, I know, this is only for the core of the fiber; a geosynchronous fiber would also require cladding, but one might optimize the cladding for this particular application if one were to really pursue this technology.)
So a geosynchronous optical fiber ring is eminently doable with today's technology!
Such a ring could conceivably transmit 1 Tbit/second at ~2/3 c (= 200,000km/s)
This ring would hold 1.3 seconds of data = 1.3 Tbits = 162 GBytes.
Yeah, threads don't weigh much. I once computed that a molecule of polyethylene spanning the observable Universe would fit in Hangar 1. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/home/2008/hangar_index.html --rwg