Scrapbook 2: Jul 1962 — Telstar
First round in the battle to get world communication into the space age
By JOHN DAVY Our Science Correspondent
ON Tuesday the Telstar communications satellite is due to be launched from Cape Canaveral.
Later this month it will relay the first TV programme ever transmitted direct across the Atlantic. A huge 340-ton horn antenna at Andover, Maine, will beam signals at the satellite, which will rebroadcast them to be picked up by the G.P.O.’s big dish on Goonhilly Down, Cornwall.
For 10 minutes, viewers all over Europe will be treated to brief glimpses of the American way of life—shots of principal cities, a look at Labrador, Fords at Detroit and glimpses of Canadian and Mexican borders.
More convenient
For another 10 minutes, American viewers will enjoy a lightning tour of Europe, set up through the European Broadcasting Union, and piped to Cornwall to be beamed at the satellite from Goonhilly Down. The British contribution to the programme is expected to include shots of the Houses of Parliament and the Atlantic pounding the rocks at Land’s End.
At first the satellite’s orbit will not be appropriate for transatlantic broadcasting. Then, later in the month, it will hurtle rapidly over the necessary part of the Atlantic in the early hours of the morning—“not really peak viewing time,” one G.P.O. official comments.
Assuming that the satellite continues to function, its orbit will gradually become more convenient for viewers. However, its purpose is not to encourage mutual geography lessons for Americans and Europeans, but to provide some thorough tests of this new means of long-distance communications which promises to become of immense commercial importance.
Gold plate
This accounts for the fact that the costs of developing and launching Telstar are being met entirely by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. It is virtually the first entry of private enterprise into space.
The satellite itself, developed at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, is a remarkable three-foot sphere tricked out with platinum, sapphire and gold plate, and filled with pink plastic foam.
It weighs 170 lb., and its outer surface is formed by 72 flat facets. Most of these facets contain solar cells to generate electricity from sunlight, mounted in a platinum frame and covered with a protected plate of transparent sapphire. Some facets house a mirror which will catch the sun in space and reflect a bright flash to earth to aid tracking.
Radio command
The electronic equipment is housed inside a 20-in. canister suspended inside the sphere on nylon cords and bedded in pink plastic foam to absorb vibration and shock.
It is probably the most powerful receiver, transmitter and amplifier for its size and weight in the world. It could relay 60 simultaneous two-way telephone conversations, 600 one-way voice channels or a one-way television programme.
Telstar’s egg-shaped orbit will be tilted at 45 degrees to the Equator, its nearest point 500 miles and its furthest point 3,000 miles above the earth. It will circle the earth every two hours 40 minutes.
Besides its relay equipment, Telstar contains devices which enable it to be switched on and off by radio command from the earth, and a battery of instruments to monitor both radiation in space and its own innards.
This is one of the most important parts of the Telstar experiment, because radiations in space are for electronic engineers what moisture and smog are for civil engineers on earth. Both make vital materials gradually deteriorate.
One of the biggest question-marks hanging over communications satellites is how reliable they will be—and Telstar will be able to provide a kind of running commentary on its own gradual senescence.
Telstar is only one of many possible types of communications satellite. There is much debate at the moment about the best solution. One plan is to launch lots of small, relatively cheap satellites at low altitudes, and replace them steadily. Another is to establish a large, expensive satellite 22,300 miles above the Equator.
At this height, it would circle at the same speed as the earth revolves, and would thus appear to hang stationary in the sky. Established over the Atlantic, it could serve most of North and South America, and Europe, 24 hours a day. Three such satellites could serve the whole world except the Poles.
A snag
One snag is that they would be very expensive to build and launch, and a “spare” would have to be established in orbit near each one in case of failure. There would be perceptible delays because of the distance radio waves would have to travel, and this could make conversations awkward.
But America’s National Aeronautics and Space Agency is planning to test these problems with Syncom, a high-altitude “synchronous” satellite of this type, to be launched during the next year. (A low-altitude satellite similar to Telstar, Project Relay, will also be launched this summer.)
High frequencies
If communications satellites can be made reliable, they offer huge increases in transmission capacity, and very good quality. At present, only 80 simultaneous telephone conversations can be carried on through the cables linking Britain with America and Canada. An operational satellite system might immediately multiply this capacity at least 20 times. A single large high-altitude satellite might multiply telephone capacity between Europe and America 45 times.
All these satellites will use very high frequencies, which pierce straight through the ionosphere and are thus not normally vulnerable to magnetic storms, fading and blackouts. In theory, at least, excellent quality should be possible.
All this might suggest that communications satellites are a 24-carat gold mine. But there are commercial as well as technical question-marks. The main one is whether the demand for transoceanic telephones and television will increase to make full use of the huge new capacity.
Underlined
If it does not, communications satellites will be hard put to it to compete with submarine cables. This is underlined in a recent study undertaken for the space agency by William Meckling, a Rand Corporation economist.
Mr. Meckling studied two possible systems: one, a system using a large number of small low-orbit satellites, together with 13 ground stations round the world; second, a large, high-altitude “synchronous” satellite stationed over the Atlantic. He took into account costs of manufacture and launching, operating ground stations, and various degrees of reliability in both satellite and launching rocket.
In the first case, he found that if the average life of each satellite was two years, and three launches out of four were successful, $8,500 per year would have to be charged for each voice channel, assuming that all 7,800 channels available were sold.
But if use expanded only gradually to fill the capacity, the costs would be much higher. Assuming, for instance, that 1,000 channels were sold in the first year, and sales increased after this by 15 per cent. a year, the annual charge a channel would have to be $24,000—or three times as much.
More marginal
However, on these assumptions, the satellite system could still compete with cables: the annual cost of a voice channel through a 3,000-mile cable link Meckling estimates as some $27,000. But the advantage is much more marginal—and if the average life of each satellite is only one year rather than two, the chances of matching cable costs are poor at present.
However, most experts agree that it will be two years or more before really reliable estimates of the commercial prospects will become possible.
It is to be expected that costs of building and launching communications satellites will fall—but submarine cable technology is not standing still either, and cable engineers will obviously fight hard to get their costs down too.
The situation is strikingly similar to atomic power. No one doubts that it will become economic sooner or later—but estimates of the “break-even” date vary. Telstar is the beginning of what will be a long and elaborate development programme.
U.S., U.K., France OK On Satellite Telecasts
PARIS (UPI)—American, British and French representatives have agreed to attempt transatlantic telephone, telegraph, telephoto and television communication on the Telstar communications satellite, scheduled for launching July 10.
Representatives of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the British General Post Office, Bell Telephone Laboratories (which is financing the satellite) and the French General Electricity Co. agreed on the attempts to be carried out from stations at Andover and Goonhilly, England, and Pleumeur-Bodou, France.
BRITAIN and France have agreed to divide equally between them time available for communicating via the Telstar satellite. The GPO announced this in London yesterday.
A conference was held in London on Wednesday and Thursday between representatives of the British Post Office and the French Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications when questions arising in the field of space communications were discussed.
The delegates also agreed on the principle of close collaboration between their ground stations at Pleumeur-Bodou and Goonhilly. The delegates decided to inform the European Committee of Posts and Telecommunications Administration of their decisions.
NO SATELLITE “DOMINATION”
From Our Own Correspondent WASHINGTON, Friday.
Mr. Robert Kennedy, the Attorney-General, said to-day he had fought to prevent domination of the proposed commercial communications satellite system by one company or a group of large firms. He felt there was no such danger in the compromise Bill now before Congress.
The President’s brother was speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as it opened an inquiry into the foreign policy implications of the Bill. Senator Morse, Democrat, of Oregon, and the Bill’s principal opponent, is chiefly concerned with their domestic effects.