Talk:Telstar

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From the article: "Telstar would receive microwave signals from a ground station equipped with a helical antenna, amplify them, and rebroadcast them. During Project Echo, Telstar was able to successfully send and receive communications using light wave as a transmission medium, between Echo I and Telstar." I highly HIGHLY doubt this. Visible light (lasers) is only now beginning to be used in experimental satellite communications.--Deglr6328 21:26, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Telstar was the first to prove this was possible, that data could be transmitted in such a way. By no means was this any sort of primary communications device. Rhymeless 02:35, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I don't want to be overly skeptical but do you have a source that explains this? I couldn't find any.--Deglr6328 06:02, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
"Just as the electron tube and the transistor are needed for using the radio spectrum, so are devices required for using the optical spectrum. One such device developed recently, is the optical maser (also called laser). [..] Optical masers may make it possible to use light waves as a transmission medium, but it is obvius that similar devices are needed for reception. An ultra-sensitive solid-state maser has already been used with a passive communications sattelite, Echo I and with an active communications sattelite, Telstar. Ground-station masers are important as amplifiers. The energy from the Telstar experimental sattelite, for example, was on the order of one billionth of a watt. In project Echo the return signal was about 1/0 of a millionth of a millionth of a watt. " --Excerpt from Telstar special feature, Compton Yearbook, 1963. Rhymeless 19:18, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
OK then it used a MASER not a laser. Big difference. Masers transmit microwave radiation not visible light. I will change the article to reflect that.--Deglr6328 03:51, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I thought that an optical maser was different from a standard maser, that it was the old name for laser?? Rhymeless 04:51, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Yes optical MASER is the now antiquated term for a laser. The author in the quote you provided is merely speculating that it could be used in the future for communication but he did not seem to understand they don't work well as signal amplifiers, for instance in recievers, like masers do. Trust me :o) it was a maser that was used. --Deglr6328 21:03, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Disambig

I just created Telstar (disambiguation). Probably some of the material at the end of this article, not immediately related to the satellite, should be moved to that article. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 23:41, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Re: Please refer to

Telstar Communication Break-Through By Satellite, by Louis Solomon, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. New York. A gross simplification follows: The Telstar was a mid-ocean "tower in the sky" link needed to complete the microwave route between continents. To clarify the above discussion re: maser/laser, i will again refer you this publication. "From lip to lip the horn's mouth gapes sixty-eight feet, wide enough to scoop up the billionth-of-a-watt signal from Telstar. It funnels down to a square inch inside the cab, to the heart of the incredibly sensitive receiving equipment - the ruby maser. Maser is a shorthand was of saying Microwave Amplification by Simulated Emission of Radiation, which is a way of saying that the maser is a low-noise amplifier."

I would also refer anyone interested in primary source material re: Andover Ground Antennia: unclassified reports archived at NASA: Documentment ID 19640000976 Asscention Number 64N10885. Blackbriar2748 23:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More Information on TelStar aka IntelSat Americas

You may see/view a list of channels and the entire of line-up of IntelSat or TelStar at www.lyngsat.com. TelStar has various positions in the sky and that site will give detail information on all public/private sat/birds in the sky on how to point your DISH to receive Free To Air Channels (FTA).

[edit] Telstar's trans-Atlantic broadcasts

There's a more detailed description of Telstar's first broadcasts at British TV History. Perhaps someone could add some of that in? --85.189.119.185 13:13, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Why?=

Why is there no mention that it was destroyed by american nuclear testing in space?

Maybe we didn't know that. What's your source? Dicklyon 17:54, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
OK, I found and added some info and refs on that. Dicklyon 21:07, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] link broken, but may come back

the link to the national geographic article on telstar (nat_geo_telstar_ocr.pdf) is broken..

going to the homepage (http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/) brings up a hosting default page.. so i assume this means they're coming back and it's some kind of server issue (this page was featured on boingboing, so it might just be pulled for bandwidth, although the message doesn't specify)

if this is still broken in a few days, i suggest pulling the link.

i googled for alternate links to use, but can find no other matches for that pdf on google, either by description or filename.

i'm not a regular wikipedia person, so hopefully the discussion page is the right place to note this, as i can't actually fix the item because it might fix itself and cant find an alternate link to use in the meantime. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.152.0.81 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Sources

It would be nice if whoever wrote all this good stuff would tell us what books they got it from. Dicklyon 21:08, 1 September 2007 (UTC)