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Comment by CAP_NET_ADMIN | Hacker News Reader

> Although the laser system was not directly tested with an orbiting satellite, they accomplished high-data transmission over a free-space distance of 53km (33 miles).

This is peanuts compared to under sea cables and issues you will find penetrating atmosphere and increasingly, space.

We should keep under sea cables and work on additional connections to make our networks more resilient, both to natural phenomena, equipment failures and sabotage.

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> more resilient, both to natural phenomena, equipment failures and sabotage.

I think you're understating the risks from geomagnetic storms. In comparison to satellites, fiber optic cables seem like they'd be relatively unaffected even if the equipment attached to them needs replacement.

Perhaps the ocean is protective to some degree, but beyond very short lengths undersea cables have powered repeaters that draw considerable current, and which would plausibly be destroyed if the base stations are too.

I would not say "very short lengths", because undersea cables without powered repeaters (only with optical amplifiers) are possible until a few hundred kilometer.

But you are right that transoceanic cables need powered repeaters.

Currently, you can cut internet connections to most countries with a small deep water sub. China, for example, was busy building one that can be used at 10k+ depth and has arms.

Its widely assumed China, Russia and the US have "kinetic kill" abilities on satellites in space too, its just capabilities are not as widely known. Projects Like the US/Boeing X-37 space drone etc, whose purposes still haven't really been revealed:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37

Russia has already demonstrated its satellite destroying tech:

> https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/11/16/russia-blows-up-satell...

"Kinetic kill" is arguably easier to detect and harder to deny.

I haven't said that we should only focus on sea cables, I said that we should do both so that the overall reliability and resiliency increases.

Can those be deployed "anonymously" though? Publicly destroying another nation's satellite would be an act of war. Quietly and secretly cutting an undersea cable, while being able to plausibly deflect blame, is a bit safer.

Also, India. List of anti-satellite tests: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368223169/figure/tb...

The problem is that it is fairly difficult to do it cleanly without risking precipitating Kessler syndrome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

It is basically automatic MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) out there in space.

Are solar storms an issue for LEO sats?

yeah, but having both means if one is a victim, the other keeps chugging along. a bad anchor drag take out cables? or a sub cut the wire? lasers go pew pew. weather take out lasers? cables go zoom. and in normal operating conditions, both go and increase bandwidth and speed

It's not peanuts at all, given that it's an entirely different technology. Free space optics will have different applications, of course, but those applications where fiber is currently not feasible stand to profit quite a bit from this.

I can think of all of rural America underserved with fast internet, forced to share puny fiber runs to towers retransmitting over low speed radio.

implementing the same infra, but using lasers as the backbone could speed up a large area of the country, make rolling out dense radio networks like 5g way faster and cheaper, etc.

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