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Author Topic: Google Is Building A 100KW Radio Transmitter At A Spaceport And No One Knows Why  (Read 1385 times)

Offline skeezix

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http://hackaday.com/2016/03/02/google-is-building-a-100kw-radio-transmitter-at-a-spaceport-and-no-one-knows-why/

You can find the funniest things in public government documents. There’s always ample evidence your local congress critter is working against the interests of their constituency, nation, and industry controlled by the commission they’re chairperson of. Rarely, though, do you find something surprising, and rarer still does it portend some sort of experiments conducted by Google at a spaceport in New Mexico.

In a publication released last week, Google asked the FCC to treat some information relating to radio experiments as confidential. These experiments involve highly directional and therefore high power transmissions at 2.5 GHz, 5.8GHz, 24GHz, 71-76GHz, and 81-86GHz. These experiments will take place at Spaceport America, a 12,000 foot runway in the middle of New Mexico occasionally used by SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and now Google.

For the most part, this document only tells the FCC that Google won’t be causing harmful interference in their radio experiments. There few other details, save for what bands and transmitters Google will be using and an experimental radio license call sign (WI9XZE) that doesn’t show up in the FCC database.

Of the few details listed in the documents, one thing does pop out as exceptionally odd: a 70-80 GHz transmitter with an effective radiated power (ERP) 96,411 W. That’s close enough to 100 kilowatts to call it as such. This is the maximum effective radiated power of the highest power FM stations in the US, but radio stations are omnidirectional, whereas Google is using very high gain antennas with a beam width of less than half a degree. The actual power output of this transmitter is a mere half watt.

The best guess for what Google is doing out in the New Mexico desert is Project Skybender, a project to use millimeter waves to bring faster Internet to everyone. There aren’t many details, but there is a lot of speculation ranging from application in low Earth orbit to something with Google Loon.
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Offline Pigmeat

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Fansome's ex-wife works out that way. She's probably talked Google into a plan to attempt to get his home planet to take him back.

Offline kmorgan

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There need not be a reason. As long as Google is getting that free govt grant gravy, they can build another leaning tower of Pisa, made out of real pizza. The "project" can be completely useless and go nowhere, but a few people got a cushy contract paying big money (YOUR money...) and Google gets publicity and made to look big 'n' cool, and they keep raking and raking and raking in taxpayer dollars. They never use their own $$, it's always someone else funding. In USA, it's taxpayer monies. Any article you come across that mentions Google building some "high speed internet" network coming to your area, read the whole article, and find out that it is in reality a US grant to implement the Rural Health Initiative and its only building the backbone for that crappy project. All it is is "Strategic partnerships", which translated is fascism in action. Fascism is a real type of government where the citizens are forced to pay for corporations profits. Your tax dollars are used to profit Google. You have no option to pay or NOT pay, taxes.  That project, again, could be a useless nothing, but someone is getting paid, that's all that matters.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2016, 0334 UTC by kmorgan »