Would there be any benefit in launching a pirate internet satellite?
Similar to pirate radio operating on the laws of the sea, it could potentially provide unregulated internet or data services.
Pirate Internet Satellites
Tyler Sullivan
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arstechnica.com
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
reuters.com
theguardian.com
twitter.com
Bentley Hall
it would be taken down in no time.
Dylan Phillips
How hard would it be for a government to safely take down a satellite they have no control over? Do you think a bunch of pirate satellites orbiting earth would be good incentive for governments to increase funds for their space programs?
Kayden Johnson
MPAA would develop their own line of sat-killer satellite drones and launch them to go after the pirate internet satellites eventually causing Kessler syndrome and cutting off space to humans for 10k years.
Jayden Hernandez
If it operated as a legitimate business service, such as offering cloud services or data storage, it could be that it's 'pirate' use is incidental (e.g. arstechnica.com
I was thinking that there's quite a bit of money to be made in piracy - Kim Dot Com made a quite a sum yearly through ads and subscription services. Throw in some crowd sourcing, wait for satellite technology to become more affordable as other pursuits in space become more competitive and push prices down (such as india wanting to become a satellite launching nation) and it could be that some company could launch them under some spurious business purpose.
Would there be any benefit to having a satellite piracy network? Free from regulation? More difficult to shutdown? Could it be profitable? Would intellectual property rights cease to have effect?
Elijah Nguyen
>How hard would it be for a government to safely take down a satellite they have no control over?
We have missiles built for this.
> Do you think a bunch of pirate satellites orbiting earth would be good incentive for governments to increase funds for their space programs?
No.
Liam Wilson
Most satellites are just radio repeaters. Even if you could get control of one (which would cost a lot, because you'd need a huge high power antenna to transmit), all you'd be able to do is bounce a radio signal farther along. This can already be done using traditional in-atmosphere radio tech. Which is to say, read a book nigger (such as the ARRL handbook).
>How hard would it be for a government to safely take down a satellite they have no control over?
Depends on how much of a threat the government considers you. During the Cold War the government successfully built the ASM-135 ASAT, which is capable of destroying satellites (and nuclear warheads in transit). The US Navy has demonstrated a similar capability:
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Pirate satellites aren't a thing because of the sheer power required to communicate with them. Basically, you'd need a big boat with a big alternator with a big antenna and a highly skilled operator. That's not to say it's impossible, but it wouldn't exactly be a "stealth" operation and the FCC would still get mad at you.
Elijah Murphy
No, more likely they'd have the WTO draft rules allowing navies to more aggressively attack (as in, board and arrest) people making unauthorized or unsolicited communications with their property. Pirate radio only exists, in part, because the coast guard doesn't have the authority to arrest you outside of US waters and it'd be ridiculous to send the military for such a trivial and short-lived broadcast. Hijacking satelittes (which cost tens of millions of dollars to build and deploy) changes the equation.
Nathaniel Jones
consumer-accessible satellites only make sense if you're living on another satellite or on the moon where there is no atmosphere
Cooper Moore
>We have missiles built for this.
But do these missiles make sure the satellite lands back to earth safely? This is easy to do when you have control over what you are landing, but in this case we don't. I feel like it's hard to develop a program that launches missiles that safely de-orbit the satellite, instead I think there would be a mission assigned to a specialized task force that would be responsible for planning the de-orbit and including different risk factors like the mass etc. of the satellite. Is our technology at the point that we can just plug it into a computer and launch a missile or is it more involved than that?
Daniel Sanchez
You could store the information aboard the satellite too. Thus, it wouldn't be a Hughesnet thing and would certainly require some extra hardware on the ground. Every user would need that setup if they wanted "anonymity" otherwise, you'd need to connect to it like you would Hughesnet and that requires an actual ISP and phoneline for uploading through the main transmitting station to the sat. Basically, the sat would be a big dropbox.
>the coast guard doesn't have the authority to arrest you outside of US waters
They can if you are a US citizen. We are not allowed to go someplace else in the world and break US federal laws.
Landon Jackson
thanks for the book suggestion.
I should clarify that I'm less concerned about someone on the ground hacking into a satellite, and more a satellite sent up by a company (similar to this: reuters.com
Granted all this can be done on the ground, so i am wondering if there is a benefit (through law or tech) to launching such a satellite?
Andrew Jenkins
Check the links of this response, ~8 years ago the US Navy destroyed a satellite with a modified RIM-161 missile. I think there were concerns for safety but it ended up being a success with no dangers to people on the surface.
Elijah Harris
>You could store the information aboard the satellite too.
Sure, but the majority of satellites don't have over a Gigabyte of reprogrammable storage. All they're supposed to be are communications relays, this doesn't require much computing. Even GPS satellites don't really do that much computation, they just do a lot of it very quickly.
>Every user would need that setup if they wanted "anonymity" otherwise, you'd need to connect to it like you would Hughesnet and that requires an actual ISP and phoneline for uploading through the main transmitting station to the sat. Basically, the sat would be a big dropbox.
If I'm reading this right this sounds less like a pirate radio thing and more like a tor in space thing. On that note, I'm not certain if it's possible to use hughesnet dishes with anything other than hughesnet satellites. My experience has mostly been with the c-band dish in my backyard.
Isaiah Perry
I don't think satellites have enough power for that, at least not without a ground station to send the data to. At some level you're not really suggesting satellite hacking insomuch as you are suggesting telco network hacking (ie, phreaking).
Ryder King
This guy doesn't understand politics.
Of course it wouldn't name itself pirate satellite.
99,99% of its transmission would be legal.
The pirate/illegal content would be blended in and the satellite would be portrayed as good-honored and productive member of some nation.
Jaxson Cook
I'm not sure you read anything right, but okay.
Jeremiah Howard
Elon Musk is already working global internet, fyi.
theguardian.com
You don't need any bulky equipment. Just use a satellite phone. You can get internet with them already. Just toss up some sats that make it free to connect to.
Levi Long
That Musk guy just says all kinds of things. Rarely he ever finishes anything or actually commits to his ideas. Funny how his PR works so good on nerds and diginatives.
You do know he owns like 20% of his companies?
Aiden Barnes
Well I am not suggesting any kind of hacking.
I'm suggesting a company putting up a satellite that is used for some legitimate and some illegitimate services - the same way KiimDotCom used megaupload as a file hosting service that 'incidentally' encouraged file sharing and copyright breaches. (but thank you for suggesting phreaking I will look into that further.)
Michael Evans
You know all those rockets they are developing? They are doing it for those satellites and Mars.
>pic related