Coming up launches next step tabby star in our main topic. We talk about small saps stay tuned tomorrow begins right now And welcome to tomorrow season 9 episode 24 for Saturday, August 13th 2016 coming to you live from station 204 My name is Benjamin Higginbotham now before we get started with today's show I did want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who've dropped to make this specific segment to This episode happened these people who've contributed ten dollars or more and helped us enable Station 204 our brand new studio. They're the ones who made all of this happen. So thank you. Thank you Thank you to our patrons if you'd like to find out how you can help crowdfund the shows of tomorrow head on over to patreon.com Slash tmro now we're gonna have an abbreviated after dark this week But in that after dark we will be talking about the new studio space. It is fairly plain and we'll talk a little bit about that Before after dark we've got some awesome space news. We've been off the air for a good month or so So a lot has happened rather than covering all of the launches that have happened in the last month We're just gonna kind of cover the last couple. So let's go ahead and start on Friday, August 5th at 1622 coordinated universal time this particular one has a lot of b-roll in advance.  There it is rolling to the launch site. This is a long March 3b carrying the team tongue one Satellite is which is different than the team gong one, which is their space station. This is the 10th launch for China in 2016 and team tongue one is the first satellite of China's homemade Satellite mobile telecom system Basically meaning that it's gonna connect people if you're on the move instead of having to have like those giant enormous antennas You'll just have like these small radio kind of things you'd be able to have connectivity back to the China telecom system So that's actually all sped up quite a bit that footage you're looking at right now. And here is the actual launch coverage itself Absolutely beautiful. I believe right now China is the world leader for 2016 in number of launches above any other country Actually, I take it back US might actually Russia Is it Russia Russia's first right now? United States closely followed in second place and very closely followed now by China in third place But China will soon overtake us if we're not careful. Yeah, yeah, it's all like it's all well No, they will won't they because they've got a bunch of launches coming up and we Don't have that and and the American launches are slipping. So there's a good chance. They will anyhow Congrats to China for that. We they also had a long March 4 C launch That was Tuesday August 9th 2255 coordinated Universal Time that's the Galefin 3 Radar imaging satellite basically that's gonna survey oceans crops and resources As well as help for a natural disaster observers Observations it's an eight-year mission to capture high resolution of all-weather imagery of earth and the all-weather capability Basically means that they're not only gonna have Visible light cameras on board but also a radar so that they can actually look through the clouds and look through the weather To see what's going on on earth itself. This is the sixth satellite to launch in that particular series All right, Mike talk to us about next step. Oh Man, I'm super excited about this So NASA has a program called next step that they're kind of modeling after the commercial crew and commercial cargo programs in the sense That it's a private-public partnership and it's a space-act agreement instead of far contract contracting That's a kind of a big deal for that But the whole thing with this is before they had selected four companies to develop space habitats and several other companies to develop You know advanced technologies for the next generation of deep space Exploration some of those were for propulsion some of those were just for minor subsystems better life support systems But this next contract for the next step to contract that has recently come out They've chosen six companies to just pursue the space habitat work And we have several images and these are the the companies that they have selected for this They have Bigelow Aerospace that is developing their x-space idea and what that is is using their b330 to attach that to the International Space Station and then we have Boeing which is Basing their modules off of the same modules that they built previously for the International Space Station And then we have Lockheed Martin which is basing their ideas off of the multi-purpose logistics module as well as the work that they've done for The Orion capsule and all those different pressurized Functions that they can have with those and then there's also orbital ATK Which is kind of scaled back their ideas a little bit compared to the next step one Solicitations and then there are two new companies and these are the ones that I'm pretty excited about the first of those these new two Companies are Sierra Nevada which is basing their hardware off of the cargo section for their dream chaser cargo The service module of that and they're even working on inflatables in this picture here That is not a Bigelow module that they're going to be attaching that is work on their own Inflatables that they might be doing for this and then finally the one that I am most excited about is actually a Collaboration between nano racks space systems Laurel and United Launch Alliance under the name Ixiom I believe it's a pronounced Ixiom and this is incredible. This is Harder this is going back to the days when we were doing Skylab turning an upper stage Into a wet workshop or dry workshop depending on if you already did work on it previously And the concept of this study is that they could potentially turn any upper stage into a usable space habitat And right now the the focus on that is is turning a centaur stage into a usable space habitat as you can see in the picture there And obviously since United Launch Alliance is the partner on that that makes sense But here's the cool thing about this the first four companies I mentioned that previously had already had contracts They're actually going to be building working Prototypes and especially in the case of Bigelow looks like their whole X space idea of attaching one of their B 330s to the International Space Station is highly likely now that looks a lot better and The other two companies for nano racks and doing the idea of the wet workshops and is for Sierra Nevada There's is just a study the concept study and coming up with the proposal to see how they would work So there's no guarantee that either Sierra Nevada or the nano racks idea will move forward But with the prototypes that are being built by the other four companies It seems like one of these will at least be selected and it might not necessarily be for what we think this whole Program is for the purpose of being able to set space habitats to Sits lunar space and eventually to be able to go to Mars and to be able to survive that long journey So I'm really excited about this that the the the benefits of this program could go in lots of different directions And I'm really excited about that so very cool stuff And I'm looking forward to see how it progresses from here on out one interesting fact Why did I learned at the day job which I haven't mentioned anyone so you would know Space systems Lorel is actually no longer to be referred to as space systems Lorel, but only as SSL I don't know where that comes from, but they are now known only as SSL Fun little fact SSL now you know there you go. That's half the battle Jared talk to me about mysteriously dimming objects. Oh, yes mysteriously dimming objects now I actually did a space pod about this last year and Some very interesting stuff has come out about the most mysterious star in our galaxy known as k ic 8 462852 But you can also call it tabby star if you'd like way easy. Yeah, we've also called it the WTF star called the Where's the flux? Looking for the flux in the light from it But this star is very interesting. It was discovered by citizen scientists using data from the Kepler space telescope on a website Called planet hunters org and basically what you do on planet hunters org is you look at light curves? So basically you look at the light curve from a star if there's a planet there Your light curve should have a nice dip in it and then come out because as that planet moves in front of the star It causes the light to dim and then it comes back as it moves out of the star So you see a transit of an exit planet across the star Well, this star had a light curve that looked a little something like this You know and it would go down really deep and then come back up and then down really deep and then come back up And everybody was kind of like what's going on here? It's an alien rave party. Obviously. That's what it is And that's what the internet assumed and that's what a lot of people were very mad at me and my space pod for not admitting to what it was But there are some ideas for what's causing this chaotic dip in the light, which is some of them One of the main scientific Explanations for it is that there's this swarm of comets going around and we kind of have like a little artist Conception here that shows you what something like that may look like They've also said that there could be a lumpy disk of material around the star So basically you have a disk of material there like you would with a new solar system forming or maybe two planets collided at some point And one part of that disk may have more stuff in it has a higher density than the other parts of that disk Also star spots are a possible explanation for that as well It's not just the Sun that gets spots on it stars also get in that and then of course there was also the alien megastructures Dyson sphere possible explanation Because actually very weirdly some computer modeling that's been done to try to figure out what a Dyson sphere may look like Actually kind of matched up with what this light curve ended up looking like but that's probably not the the actual Explanation for it because you don't want to go too fantastical Feel like alien rave, you know like is right on that would be really cool too fantastical slash possible That would be so cool, but you know it also be like a huge disappointment If that's what ended up actually being it But some scientists have looked back at a century's worth of observation of the star on these photographic plates They've actually found that the star which I will not say its name again I'll just say tabby star has actually been slowly dimming over the past century And then if that wasn't enough for you once Kepler started looking at it in 2009 It started to dim at about point three percent of its brightness every year So we don't really have a good reason to explain how that can actually happen with the star Like like a little bit of brightness dipping. Okay, we can we can kind of do that But zero point three percent is a massive amount of brightness to lose per year in Star Wars Don't they suck the star into the weapon? Yeah, yeah, my husband Kylo Ren was very important to that, but unfortunately That probably isn't real, you know, just like the alien rave probably or the megastructures probably not Probably not what we're actually I'm just gonna go out on a limb here So you're not saying it's aliens, but probably I'm you know, I'm saying it's not aliens Even though I'm saying it's most likely not aliens people will be like there's still a chance Yes, exactly so an interesting thing as we're saying the most mysterious star in our galaxy has gotten even more mysterious Now that we've started studying that's actually kind of cool Yeah, and that's what I love about science is that you can you can think you've got something figured out and nature's like nope Curveball in the dirt in front of you so figure that one out Scientists actually cool thing The scientists who are studying the stars actually did a Kickstarter for a hundred thousand dollars to get more time on Telescopes to study the star and they made it they got a hundred and seven percent funded So they're gonna be doing much more detailed study of this and maybe within the next year We'll find out highlight the problem. Yeah Yeah, when we see it very like the community of tomorrow would love to see those things and possibly contribute and be a part of that Right, you know, we're cool like that Very cool. All right moving on. Yes. All right. Speaking of really cool things Yeah, the video nerd in me couldn't pass this particular story up Show the footage so yeah Here's why this is cool, so this is a very special camera it's called If the high dynamic range stereo X or high resist ex Here's why this is important and cool Rocket fire is very bright and cameras have a limitation of something called dynamic range Which is in a simplest form the difference between the brightest part of the scene and the darkest part of the scene And if the brightest part of the scene if that that distance is too great And the thing that's too bright is too different from the thing is too dark One of them has to suffer either it's the whole scene has to be too dark in order to compensate for the really bright thing Or the whole thing scene has to be too bright to compensate for the really dark thing But you can never have everything on the screen at the same time What you're looking at is everything on the screen at the same time you can actually see the plume Isn't that great? That's really cool. They do this using something called. It's high dynamic range You basically don't have a camera that can do this with one single exposure So they take multiple exposures at the same time and then they marry them back together to create this particular image The reason this is really cool on top of that is it's high frame rate because consider you have to have a single camera doing this At a really high frame rate and have to do it multiple times per frame not just per second, but multiple times per frame Yeah, it's just it's it's absolutely gorgeous NASA developed this. I'm sorry. NASA's the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi developed this what you're looking at here is the SM-2 qualification test that happened on June 28th then NASA partnered with innovative image and research corporation to develop this system and Yeah, it just it it looks absolutely stunning. This is fantastic because like I was saying with data last week when we first saw this This is sort of like the stuff that The engineers in the propulsion system people have always wanted to see but you really haven't been able to see it because you've had to Make that sacrifice. Yeah, you have to choose right more dark. You just can't have both So this is this is like I just I oh my gosh a really great example of This exact problem is any rocket launch at night as soon as the engine ignites The only thing you see is the fire from the engine You really can't see much of the rocket anymore because it's simply too dark Right, the engine is too bright and the rest of the rocket is too dark something like this might help Now, I don't know that these cameras really work live because it is a high dynamic range Probably not yeah, probably not but it's you know, maybe someday. Yeah, right? I mean do real-time. Yeah, but right now it looks like this is engineering footage This is this is stuff that people are going to go back and review and take a look at and say How does this match up with our models that we've been working on and the great thing is because it's high speed? You can actually see the gimbling of the engine itself Right so you can actually see it go through its tests and actually like you know kind of do the basic steering and whatnot I think they did some throttling on the solid motor as well So and the solid motors are just super extra bright, right? I mean those are just they're like they are they're like a miniature sun And so being able to capture that in that kind of detail and range is incredible So the video nerd in me nerdgasm doubt on that the engineer in me kind of lost it We need a lot more of that footage All right, I'm being told too many nerdgasm. So let's head head back over to space Mike. Talk to me about the HTV Okay Sorry all that stickiness made me So HTV the Japanese Space Agency or rather the the Japanese Aerospace Reachers Center, Jackson their cargo vessel the HTV Conventory has been delayed it was supposed to be launched in September and now it's going to be moved back The soonest that it will hopefully be launched is in October and the reason for this delay is because of a leaky fuel line in the service module of this cargo vessel But it has a couple unintended Benefits the the whole thing about this is that there is an extra EVA that they want to do at the space station right now to have an extra Extra vehicular activity in order to do some repair much needed repairs on the space station And the whole thing with this is with their their spacecraft The next spacecraft that was going to be coming after this or rather before this was going to be orbital atk Cygnus vehicle and they're actually still having a couple of problems with their remodeled Antares rockets So they're going to push back the Antares and Cygnus launch a little bit further into September the whole thing is they would have with the problems that they're having they would have had to have launched and Burst the Cygnus to the International Space Station and unbirthed it by September 10th in order to make way for the HTV vehicle to Launch to the station and birth by September 22nd So because of this they can they can relax a little bit and work out what they need to for the Antares rocket in the meantime The Dragon capsule that is currently docked at the at the International Space Station will be unbirthed and sent back home And the the primary cargo that the Dragon brought up there the new international docking adapter Astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins are going to be installing that onto the International Space Station very soon I believe that is on August or excuse me September 1st, and then they're going to be doing their extra EVA on September 10th And what they're going to be doing with that is they're going to be taking an old radiator that actually broke down back in 2012 that has just been waiting to be removed They already fixed the problem and replaced what they need to in order to get everything working to clean out all the ammonia in The atmospheric pressure that they have there, but the the old broken unit is still there So that needs to be removed so it can be thrown away eventually Plus they're going to check out some trust segments on the solar panels that have been vibrating recently and make sure that everything's Going okay with that they might install a new light and maybe a new camera and just do some some needed activities And all this just in time before Jeff Williams returns back to earth So very cool that even though it's a delay and we all kind of grown a little bit that Things get delayed there are some good benefits to this and a couple of more things that they're going to be able to do At the space station while they're waiting for these new cargo vehicles to come up later on so You take the good with the bad maybe they can install one of those new high dynamic range cameras while they're at it Yes, it'd be awesome. They said it was a new HD camera and didn't really go into more detail I'm gonna hold them to our promise I'm sure they'll get right on that sure they will Yes going out to the outer solar system Cassini one of my favorite missions launched in 1997 when I was one of your favorites Because it's been such a long-lasting mission and all of the images that come back from that mission are just unbelievably I just I It's such a Saturn and all of the moons around it are such a beautiful place And launched in 1997 when I was in fourth grade went into orbit in 2004 It's been operating in sat in the environment around Saturn since them and it is found fourth grade in 1997 Yes, it was okay. Yeah, what a launch It has found very steep canyons on Saturn's moon Titan and they are filled with liquid methane So Titan represents this actually represents the first direct observation of channels of liquid methane on Titan And Titan is the largest of Saturn's moons. It is the only moon to have its own atmosphere It's actually a thick enough atmosphere that if you visit it that Onto the surface of Titan all you'd need is a life support system to provide that oxygen and to scrub that carbon dioxide away and thermal protection because it's really really cold. It's like minus 175 degrees Celsius on the surface there. So very very cold But you wouldn't need a pressure suit to actually visit there And it also is the only celestial body besides Earth that we know of that has an active liquid cycle But instead of water making a water cycle like it does here on earth. It's liquid methane So you actually have like a liquid hydrocarbon cycle on Titan now these canyons. They have very steep sides They're in excess of 40 degrees and they contain liquid methane. That's up to several hundred meters deep So this was done using Cassini's radar imaging system Which allows them to look at Titan surfaces in incredible detail through that thick atmospheric haze now How did they figure out that there was liquid methane there and how deep it was well? They looked at the difference between the reception time of the radar signals from the sides and the bottoms of the Canyons and another neat thing about liquids in radar is that they'll actually make a little glint So if you send a signal to them some of that signal will go all the way through the liquid to the bottom and come back up But a little bit of that signal will actually reflect off of the surface of that liquid so they looked at that glint and they did they basically looked at the Time that the signals were received from the sides the bottoms and the glint of the liquid methane And they were able to figure out how deep these methane channels were so this actually helps us prove That there is some some sort of either long-term what I would call liquid hydrocarbon cycle going on on the surface Is that what you were talking about? Yeah, there's no nobody's really come up with like an official name for this this cycle Or that the erosion on Titan via liquid hydrocarbons occurs much faster than predicted So they're gonna have a couple more flybys of Titan where they're gonna be able to examine this But very interesting that this that this happens here And just you know Unbelievable that this is just within our own solar system this sort of alien world with its owns with its own oceans and Rivered but not of water but of liquid methane and now we know that there's actual channels of liquid methane that flow Along Titan and we've seen them and that they're actually there Adrian C wants to know if it also rains methane It does rain methane on Titan. Like I said, it's literally a liquid hydrocarbon cycle So that you know, you'll have liquid hydrocarbon that evaporates into the clouds But then rains back down and goes through those channels down into these oceans or these lakes or these very small like ponds of liquid hydrocarbons It's just it's beautiful. It's amazing. It smells terrible would smell terrible. You gotta leave your helmet on Yeah, you definitely would cool thing liquid hydrocarbons when they rain the raindrops move Unbelievably slow they fall at maybe a couple centimeters per second So you really actually sort of run between The rain on Titan if you wanted to if you went there, so that would be awesome Yeah, now I kind of want to see that yeah, but I really need to leave my suit There you go, all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back We're gonna be talking about small sats. So stay tuned We'll be right back and welcome back to tomorrow now before we get into our main topic I did want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow who've done to make this specific segment to this episode I happen these are the patreon premier members. These people have contributed ten dollars or more to this specific episode We have also got our tomorrow producers These are people who've contributed five dollars or more to this specific episode and those two different reward levels Have of course different things that you get for each one if you'd like to find out what those things are head on over to patreon.com slash tmro and again a Tremendous shout out to our patrons you our patrons are citizens of tomorrow are the ones who have enabled us to get this space to actually Expand and enhance the show. Yeah, I know it looks bad. I realize it looks like we're shooting against the beige wall Yeah, to be fair though that we kept the thermostat out of the shot barely Barely all I need to do is pan a little bit more left and you'll see the thermostat But you guys have enabled this and you're gonna see us build up this space over the course of the remainder of the year And I hope you enjoy what you see I hope you like what's what happens here in front of you and like I said, we'll talk more about that in after All right, let's go ahead and get started with our main topic which is small sat launchers. Well, I'm sorry small Sats in general not the launchers You know we're kind of going back and forth as to what we should talk about there was this small sat conference That just occurred and you know, I put it out in the in the patreon Premier member room because they've got their own little chat room. They we all talk to each other on and Said hey, is this something of interest and the general consensus that came back was I Yes, it's interesting because I don't understand the value of small sats or maybe there was kind of a who cares sort of thing So You know, we've got different companies that are working feverishly to building these low-cost small sat launchers You've got virgin galactic with launcher one. You've got firefly space systems They just recently did some engine tests that looked amazing. Yeah, and you've got rocket labs with their that's the electron rocket, right? Something like that Just to name a few right so you got all these companies working towards it But why are you look at a Falcon 9? You look at an Atlas 5 you look at a Delta 4 even the Long March series the the aria on 5 all those other rockets They're designed to carry big huge massive payloads and that's what we think of when we think of space systems So who care? Why does small sats matter? So if it's alright space make I'll start with you Why should people care? What are small sats and why should people care about? Well, I mean the definition for small sats is a kind of kind of wide I mean it can be anything from you know a tiny little Cube sat or even a pico sat to something that is a little bit bigger You're like the size of your microwave or something like that And I think the thing that is important with this is that technology is getting smaller I mean we've all known that for a long time. That's pretty obvious in today's world But we can do so much with smaller satellites that have just as much if not way more capability than a lot of the satellites that we've put up in the past and Especially with cube sats They're a little bit more focused with that you might be able to do a small communications network with them Or you might be able to do earth observation with them or a one dedicated science experiment or a few a few if you're clever enough to get things in there and You can have you can do a lot with these small satellites, especially if you're putting up more than one of them and There's lots of opportunities with these things and I feel like the opportunities are Becoming a lot more available to the people who are building these I mean when I first heard about cube sats a couple of years ago, and you know buy your own kit for $15,000 I wanted to do that But then you know pay for your own rocket launch for 20 million plus and that pretty much killed the idea for me But it's becoming a lot cheaper I mean I've raved about how United Launch Alliance offers free rides every once in a while on Their launches and for other launches SpaceX is going to be doing a launch with I believe it's called Sherpa I believe that's how you pronounce it. It's pretty much a hosted payload adapter that would be able to carry Dozens of small satellites, you know from from just small cube sats to the microwave or even, you know almost for refrigerator size small sats and With that you can be able to launch a lot of these things so you have all of these companies and Small startups who are making all these smaller rockets that would be dedicated rockets for small satellites But a lot of the big guy the big companies are competing by being able to launch multiple small satellites at once So I feel like there's a lot more opportunity now than there was just a couple of years ago And as technology continues to get smaller and become more powerful We'll be able to do just more and more and more and more with this stuff and even with cube sats I mean there's companies serious companies like aerojet rocket-dyne who are coming out with unique Propulsion systems for cube sats and even advanced earth departure stages so that you could have them ride on on a launch So that would be a secondary payload on say a communication satellite and although it might start off in the same orbit or Transfer orbit rather it would have its own small chemical stage to be able to go to whatever Destination it needs to and you can and I mean the bigger it is the bigger Chemical stages you can bring along with it But I mean as things continue to get smaller the more and more that we can do with it and just it just blows my mind how how the technology continues to grow and Grow microly in a sense That's even a word but it is now space Mike you make up words all the time What are some of the things we can do with these small sats like today, right? I mean there was the light sail project that went up not that long ago kind of testing new propulsion, but You know what are some real life examples of things that we can do with a small set right now that people should care about Either weather data. All right, boom. That's something that affects everybody But why not just use a regular weather satellite? Well, what's the advantage of a small set of a regular satellite for weather data? Well, because a lot of weather data Most of the weather data that we get isn't even from satellite data A lot of the weather data that we get is from the the radar Doppler towers in your local area Most of it isn't even the satellite data So if we had a good enough satellite network and maybe there would be multiple companies doing this You know if you had a really good, you know Dedicated satellite weather observation system that would be giving you the most accurate data that you possibly could You know that we would be able to plan better and just be able to do things better in my opinion You what are some of the cool things? Yeah, I was gonna say some on the propulsion side There's lots of stuff that you could do with solar sails and NASA's really gotten into the idea of using solar Sails as the main propulsion system for these small satellites that they're going to launch Like on exploration mission one the first flight of the space launch system They're going to be firing off multiple secondary payloads for CubeSats There's a couple carry Just like the world supply of CubeSats Yeah, they're gonna carry amazing Yeah, they're gonna carry one of one of Two of them are my favorites of the CubeSats that have been proposed so far of the three that are my favorites I know I just said two favorites three favorites. There's one called lunar flashlight Which is a six-unit CubeSat that's going to use a solar sail It's going to actually put itself into a polar orbit around the moon using its solar sail And then once it flies over these areas of what we call eternal darkness So those spots in the solar the solar the southern pole of the moon Where they're permanently shadowed They are going to actually angle the solar sail so that the light will reflect off of the sail and down Into those permanently shadowed areas and they're going to have infrared sensors on board That will allow them to read the spectrum of the light coming back and figure out what what precisely is in there Is it just regolith from the moon? Is it is it water ice methane ice? What's the composition? How much of it is actually there cheese? you know Swiss or Lindenburg or Gouda, you know, just whatever could possibly be there another one they're doing is called near-earth asteroid scout and they Prefer to call it Nia Scout because that sounds cooler Huh does it no, I don't think so It sounds very silly But they're going to find and near-earth asteroid that it will deploy its solar sail to and rendezvous with and the cool thing About this is that if you have a small Satellite and you have a big solar sail for it They're going to be able to fly by the asteroid and then turn the solar sail and come back around and fly by again And turn the solar sail and come back around and fly by again. So it's not just, you know, they're going to fly by once like Certain missions that NASA's flown has already done. They're going to be able to fly by at multiple times So if there's something interesting they see in the first fly by and they're like, oh, we'd like to do that To see that again, but from a different angle they can you know move the solar sail and work with that Also, one of my favorite ones is an upcoming part of NASA's in-site Mars lander called Mars Cube one So back in 1999 Mars polar lander didn't land on the surface. It crashed And it had an impact event. Yeah, it did it litho-braked, but it wasn't designed to litho-brake So so it was a bit of a problem and they weren't receiving live telemetry from the vehicle or tones or anything from the vehicle For them to understand what happened to it So there's been this requirement for things that land on Mars from here on out that they have to have live Telemetry well that you know it takes a lot of coordination All effort with the assets you have on orbit with the vehicles on orbit and around Mars, or you got to have a really powerful Transmitter built in onto your spacecraft So in the case of insight they're actually launching two six unit CubeSats that all they are going to do is they are going to Fly along with insight not land on Mars But they're going to fly above where insight is insight will relay the data to them And then they will relay the data back to earth So they're basically these two telecommunication relays so that insight doesn't have to carry a big heavy Transmitter to talk to us to have it directly back It just has to be has to be able to get up to this the CubeSat And then the CubeSat has to have a big enough transmitter to relay it back to earth exactly that's interesting That's a pretty I think that's a pretty brilliant idea. Are we going to see similar things here around earth, right? You know we've got a current problem at the tomorrow studio Station 204 is Bandwidth right I mean getting bandwidth here is actually painfully hard Is this something can we use CubeSats at a fairly low altitude to get gigabit speeds? Yes, and even even cooler things if you are at the north or south pole You have a very difficult time communicating sure because you know most satellites that communicate are in geosynchronous orbit So actually if you deploy a small satellite with a solar sail you can put it in an orbit where it's geosynchronous But not in geosynchronous orbit you can actually have a geosynchronous orbit over the north pole or over the south pole There's actually these very interesting trajectories where you can put your satellite at where it's orbit will basically have it hover Within an area where you can communicate with parts on the earth that geosynchronous would otherwise have a name What's the name? It's not a polar orbit because that basically goes around. No, these are orbits You're talking about a halo orbit. They're kind of like halo orbits. I guess that would be a good way to do it They're not like the areas where the earth and the sun's gravity balances you out It's simply just using a solar sail that balance you in that specific spot And that that's very interesting to me is the idea that you could literally provide direct communications to areas on earth That you usually have a very difficult time doing that. So we can use it. I mean, I'm asking these questions Basically to start conversations about this, but it seems like Cube sats nanosats all of these smaller satellites are actually the future of Space-based communications space-based satellites and then we're moving collectively moving away from these ginormous satellites that required Dedicated 100 million dollar launches to these really tiny things that you know if it fails, that's okay I got 20 more of them. Yeah, that I'll just spin one up and move it into wherever it needs to go And in generally in we'll say I'm making this number up But like 80% of the cases they're just as good as their counterparts from a decade ago That are up in orbit, but they're way less expensive way easier to get up on orbit And you can just service them by dropping a new one in there Yeah, and a cool thing that I actually learned a couple days ago is that JPL is has an entire division Dedicated just to developing systems to take them from really big satellites to fit them into small sats and they've actually already developed a suite for timing navigation and Transmission and X band that fits into Cube sats From the work that they've done. I can totally see like Cube set kits coming around of like, hey Here's your prop kit.  You choose what you want The ultimate and modular design It's gonna be the slogan of some tomorrow the ultimate and modular design Was there anything in the chat room? I there's a bunch of stuff kind of going back and forth I know we're having a few chat room issues, right? Is there anything that they would well Kate McCoy asks Do small sats have similar de-orbit requirements as standard satellites? That's a good question because you could you have space junk problem still. Yeah, well, yeah, and go ahead like and And you have to notice the different classes, too I mean we've been using small sats pretty generally since we've been talking about this But I mean small sats are are you know the the technical definition is small sats are from a certain weight onwards And then there's pico sats and there's nano sats and and so the bigger ones They definitely do have the same requirements as a lot of the bigger ones with cube sats That's getting a little bit shaky because most of the cube sats that have been able to be put on orbit have been in a Very low earth orbit and just degrade very quickly and and reorbit or at least only a couple of years They'll be up there for now that we're starting to get into the range now that we're starting to put You know these really tiny satellites into medium earth orbit or and even aiming for high earth orbits Now things are a little bit different and even though requirements might be put out unless they have a propulsion system or a Solar sail or something that they could deorbit the spacecraft with how would they be able to comply to those demands? So it's kind of a sketchy situation with the really really the smallest of the satellite classes But a lot of the bigger ones that I would almost call industrial small sats Those definitely have the same requirements as they're much bigger counter parts Wait, so like the large small sats as opposed to the medium and small yeah, the micro i the microwave size small sats compared to the Cube set so major small sats minor small sats dwarf small sats, you know, just yeah usual Wow Yeah, it does seem like small sats are the future though. I'd love to know what you guys think the community of tomorrow I'll leave your comments. What is your favorite small sat project that you've heard of going on right now? What's the thing that you want to see small sats doing and do you think the small sats are the future as opposed to these ginormous sats? I obviously your word. It's not like either or right? It's not like you can only have small sats and you can only have large sats But it feels like the industry is trending towards smaller satellites less expensive satellites Which means they're gonna potentially be trending towards less expensive launchers smaller launchers depending of course on where It's going so yes, you know the payload will dictate the rocket and everything else so that this could actually change the industry So you know the the firefly space systems of the world the virgin galactic and the rocket labs of the world They could end up being the the launchers at launch Consistently like more than the large launchers out there. Yeah, you know someday in the not too distant future so what do you think leave your comments on YouTube on Facebook wherever you want on patreon and Speaking of comments one week. We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back comments from our last show, so stay tuned. We'll be right back We've always looked to the stars They guide us Give us comfort Help us find our way We see ourselves out there When we look up It inspires us We long for something we don't yet know We yearn to go there so we venture forth Go ahead Many think we stopped exploring But we know our journey didn't end. We've only just come with us and explore tomorrow And welcome back tomorrow now before we get to our comments from our last show I did want to give a huge shout out to all of the patrons of tomorrow We've talked to make this specific segment and this studio go these are the tomorrow premiere members They've contributed ten dollars or more to this specific episode We've also got a tomorrow producers who've contributed five dollars or more to this specific episode, but wait There's more we've got our patreon plus subscribers these people who've contributed two dollars and fifty cents or more They're also going to get access to after dark as soon as it is available online As well as our hangouts and actually they got a hangout with us talking about this studio space Before we went live and they got some of the first information on this and we've also got our patrons These are the people who've contributed between one doll I'm sorry one penny and two dollars and forty nine cents So that's right as little as one penny per episode gets your name in the show to find out all the different reward levels and Awesome things that you can get had an over at a patreon.com slash TMRO every single penny helps and it enables us to do cool things like station two zero four All right, let's go ahead and get started from comments. Yeah. Thank you We could not do this without you and I think you're gonna really like what we have in store It's gonna take us a little bit of time because we elevated The studio was always a plan right we've been talking about this for years So this isn't really surprised, but we made it happen faster than we had originally anticipated So because of that we have to move some funds around and do some wacky things But we'll talk about all that in after dark. All right Capcom comments Ready go This is right first one comes off of YouTube from pony bottle pony bottle. What was our previous show about though? Oh, yeah That's right. You weren't here. That's right. Oh, it was about the ISS 20 24 death sentence date.  I didn't I didn't actually ask all right. I'm sorry Think how many historical even ancient buildings we have lost that we would love to have back And I'll imagine hanging in space beside the International Space Station in your spacesuit and your tour guide's voice comes on through your helmet speakers You're now looking at one of humanity's earliest and greatest achievements the ISS It is here that the technologies were developed that allowed your ancestors to colonize the planets and moons that you now call home How was de-orbiting the ISS even a thing? I Think that's summed up that entire comment. Yeah, I don't I don't think I think I think space Mike nailed that particular It is big and expensive in the way is the only thing Yeah, right.  Well, we'll just let it sit there for another hundred years You need to keep it in orbit. That's not free. Yeah, right cost money It cost cash cash money, yo So I mean the money that we put into keeping it into orbit could be money We used to building a permanent colony on the moon. So now space Mike Let me pose this question to you if you have the option of saving the International Space Station and taking the funds and Ensuring that this International Space Station Stays in orbit and doesn't get mothballed or You can mothball the space station, but you get a lunar colony Which one do you pick? I would I would mothball it for the lunar colony, but only if we could somehow make it like Illegal law that could not be changed with the administration change. It's basically it's guaranteed Right, so you're guaranteed guaranteed you either one is guaranteed. Yeah, so you Mothball it as long as it's guaranteed. It's guaranteed mothball it and go to the colony I realize this is a faux situation. Nothing in life is guaranteed You mothball mothball Yeah, it's exactly what I was gonna say was like nothing in life is guaranteed so lunar colony All right now actually all right, so now let me change it a little bit no longer guaranteed Normal politics, right? So a politician comes up and says look we got to deorbit this thing But I'm gonna take all the money at the space station. We're gonna build a lunar colony and we're gonna do it in the next 10 years space Mike Nope. No way. Jared. I propose a Cots like program, but for maintaining the space station So that it can be turned into a commercial enterprise, okay I would absolutely hand it over to a commercial company if they wanted to take it you yeah Because they sex even built back in the day They even built like a small little service module that could be attached to the the back of Zez Zezda when it ran out of fuel for station keeping I think that got mothballed and might not have ever gotten built in the first place But it was something that they were thinking about like way way back in the day like 2006 2007 maybe interesting So yeah caught doing a commercial Program for space station to keep it running and kind of yeah, that's interesting I would be you'd have to figure out the business model. They're like how are they making money? Right because the Cots program right now business model is you know, they're launched services providers, right? So there may be one there. I'm just not sure what it is. All right capcom up next All right next one comes also off of YouTube. This one is Joshua voucher boot chair Boucher Possibly I think it would be interesting to put our combined widths to use the international space station And cannibalize it to combine with bigelow pieces if they can pan out as we hope No reason to burn up the international space station completely It is about eight hundred and nine thousand pounds of hardware and resources that still work Yeah, I don't know why we would need to cannibalize it for a bigelow station though. I mean I don't see what the interesting to can cannibalize it and combine it with bigelow pieces and this isn't necessarily a new idea Sorry, josh, but there i've seen studies in the past where they sorry josh. Your idea is not original But even nasa's had this idea there've been there've been studies that have come out about Disconnecting the still usable and still working pieces that you know, aren't the oldest pieces and connecting them with newer modules And putting them in orbit around the moon or sending them off to one of the lagrange points or anywhere So that would be cool, too. I think I might even be okay with that Yeah But but in doing that the historic thing that you know is the is s today no longer exists Yeah, but it's still being used I mean parts of it are still being used. Yeah, and I find with part If we had somehow been able to save the mere space station before it burned up Planned and unscheduled Then they they even plan to disconnect pieces from the mere space station to be their mere two space stations so I mean even if The mirror didn't burn up and they did do their original plan like I'd still feel way better about that And I'd feel the same way about the iss like even if the original iss didn't exist If some of the pieces were reused for iss 2 or whatever You know the disney space station, whatever you want to call it, then I'd still be okay with that I'd be just like, all right, you know, that's great. I'm glad that we didn't spend too built You know, you know, was that was that my space bank? Was that your attempt to get me to want to keep it to call? No, no, no, no, no, that was in the chair room. Oh, I missed that. That was in the chair room. That was a good That was I I appreciate it. Yeah, it was all over. Oh, are you kidding? I missed it. No, I've been paying attention to that song and then still just like, oh my god, disney and iss So, yeah, it was all yes good. I I appreciated it and and robert bigelow even said that too trying to to sell more b3 30s Yeah, that was yeah, I saw that in the press conference and that was awkward and weird by the way It was it was this weird like maybe disney will do it and I was like, what okay. All right moving on capcom That's like a tweet shout out though.  Hashtag disney hashtag space station hashtag forever Disney vacation club space space edition Why ride space mountain when you could go to the top of the space mountain, right? I want to go on that ride Me too, right exactly. I think everyone watching this show wants to go on that ride The problem is it costs, you know Maybe a million dollars per seat. Maybe disney will buy a falcon nine and paint it like the twa rocket Oh my god, that would be so awesome. That'd be great. That would be so awesome. And then they'll put you know Oh, the legs the legs need to be read on the existing. Oh, how awesome would that be? And then then disney will just outright buy it and remove this the fake twa rocket and put a real one in at disney All right capcom Also off of youtube this one comes from reseal Rezeal I can't print outside any other way I think the cost to boost it into a significant higher amount higher So its orbit doesn't decay with these huge solar panels would be too high Even then you had to do regular course corrections because it would drift for solar winds and whatnot exposed to the van Allen belts The station would also become radioactive in the long run and keeping a giant piece of radioactive metal in orbit It's probably not the best idea get some souvenirs out You can put it in a museum on earth take some really nice pictures and deorbit the international space station I think becoming a giant shooting star is not a bad way to end such a scientific Project a big part of mankind would sit at the tv again and watch the station burn up live That would be cool and it would be in my opinion serve better to the future to space flight than letting it get Dusty in space metaphorically speaking. I think it gets moldy Remember, right? That's that's what happens as the mold starts to grow on the inside Maybe I think yeah, yeah, they have to do regular walls Yeah, I'm not making that up. I think that's actually what happens is the mold starts to grow on the yeah gross, right? Yeah nasty. Yeah nasty. Um, so um I don't necessarily disagree We are playing with high powered magnetics that could kind of potentially and I'm making this part up But I see an application where maybe you could simulate our magnetosphere and kind of create a protective Magnetic cone around the space station not today some day in the future Um, that would be nice to protect it from radiation. I was reading stories about these these super ultra Electromagnets that we were developing that are like 10 times stronger than we have now and in my mind It was like, oh, maybe that would work on like spacecraft So when we're going to mars, you know, we could protect the spacecraft because that's essentially what the magnetosphere is Right, just a giant magnetic protection orb makes all the cosmic rays go Makes all the cosmic rays go whoo Yeah, same with uh, same with the wind the solar wind and everything is welcome to tomorrow Makes all the cosmic rays go whoo most of the things that give you cancer will go whoo around it. So, so, uh, you know, we could potentially develop that by the time we're ready to de-orbit it Maybe we would have something that we could use to Make it not become super radioactive. I will say this if they're going to de-orbit it I would like to put an entire suite of instrumentation in there so that we could study how it how it breaks apart Because that would that would help us out a lot in designing spacecraft and things and a live feed from the inside That would be cool. It needs to be like in a protective pod Like made out of whatever they make the black boxes on airplanes out of that can broadcast no matter what So you can just watch it like just disintegrating that'd be neat. That'd be pretty neat. Yeah That would be cool because I mean otherwise If they do this according to plan No one should be able to see it and if you do see it then something went horribly horribly wrong and fun for your lives Wait, wait, wouldn't you see it burn up in the atmosphere? Unless you're in the middle of the pacific ocean somewhere because that's the plan Well, I mean a boat cool. I'll get a boat Oh, you want to be you wouldn't want to be there and in fact, they're probably gonna do a little bit want to be there No one is in the you know debris crashes on i mean it's a huge I don't want to be in the debris crashes out everyone I don't want to be the debris cat. I want to be close enough where I can see it though You got to be able to see it from not inside the debris crash zone Shanana, genry. I call. All right cap. I don't know Next one comes from patreon This is from john bernstead Or bensted. Sorry The iss is there and as long as it is safe to use we should keep it running Case in point the opportunity rover the rover has lasted long beyond its warranty. We should do the same with the iss I'd like to see bigelow b 330 docked with the iss. Yeah, there's a price difference between running the two though It comes down to money and I know that sucks, but that's the cold harsh reality of it Excuse me, which is You know running opportunity costs radically less than running the international space station So any money that we throw at the international space station is money that we can't use somewhere else Now that is a bit of a false way to look at it Excuse me. Let me drink from this amazing mug for a moment. I'm kind of You know, I drinking from that side, I even feel quite right. Let me try drinking from this side instead This is fantastic. If only like if I could go to what like shop.tmro Yeah, if only there was a place you could purchase these that That's delightful Tastes like the future like like one day in the future tastes like one day in the future So bad it's a it's a fault It's a false statement because uh, ultimately the money we put into our space programs Whatever we choose to put into our space program So if we choose that we want to have enough money for the international space station And enough money to do things like a lunar colony or mars or whatever Then we will have enough money to do that, but we have to make that choice So, um, but right now that's not how that works. We have a Not saying that we could take money out of iss and do a lunar colony I'm simply using that as an example, but that's how it works today. That's the harsh reality of it. So there you go. All right Yeah, next cap comp next one. Uh, holy cats. How many comments? Oh, I suppose we were off for like a month. Yeah Yeah Yeah, a couple comments Next one comes off of twitter. This is from at green gym two Uh, it says here's an offer and here's an option for iss 2024 future tomorrow Use iss as transition platform to future commercial orbital factories Yeah, kind of that caught we're back to sort of that cot's idea again, right? Yeah You kind of use it as a platform for commercial space. Not a bad idea I kind of like the I I like the idea of using it as a platform for commercial space I think that would help create a whole new industry In space not not just a space industry, but an industry of people working In space, I think that would be uh, ultimately I think that should be our goal Not just a space industry, but an industry in space Okay, uh next one off of youtube comes from kim peterson. It's actually a very very exciting time for space nerds Super ditto on that benjamin on that line benjamin. I haven't been this excited about space exploration since apollo What an amazing show we're in for absolutely. I think the next decade is going to be the best in aerospace since apollo Uh, I I super excited. Yeah super duper ultra uber excited We are truly in the golden age of spaceflight. This is this is we are in the platinum age of spaceflight It's like when it's like when aviation was in the 1920s and 30s We need to just watch the leaps and bounds of all of that and just It is incredible But because of the technology that we have now and we can watch this unfold in real time Yeah being able to see this happening in real time with all these different, you know The ability to interact directly as well with some of I just emailed firefly space earlier today saying hey I want to bring you guys on the show because you're about to test your aerospike engine later this year. Yeah, how freaking cool is that? Right Hey Can I have someone on a saturday? I'm hoping they say yes because that would be nice Yeah, I mean whole new types of engines whole new types of spacecraft whole new types of rockets Whole new types of business plans. What we're doing in space is incredible right now I'm super excited. We have the show. Yeah. All right next up Next one comes off of you. Wouldn't it be terrible if I was like next up And you know, I guess I mean maybe I'm on space, but meh meh All right, I'm sorry cap com This one comes off of youtube uh from to one john Uh ty one. I don't know why I always do that. I t o on john. Yep. All right. That's the way it is now It's just I've said it every single time this person has had a comment I've always pronounced it that way and I know it's wrong every single time and I still do it anyway And I'm really sorry Ahem Everyone is stepping up their live launch coverage a game and quote This is true and I'd say it's a no small part due to spacex leading the way Great job I don't know who does it over at spacex, but uh, I just want to say that they do a fantastic job I I would have to imagine that they're devilishly handsome and uh, just very good at life in general I uh, I personally think they need better uh lenses on their tracking cameras, but that's just me. Yeah, well, I mean I'm just saying because I mean you should be able to see it for as far as you can So you can't because I mean we saw the high speed foot. Can't you see everything for as far as you can? Isn't like I mean just everything you can see as far as I can see that cameras for as far as I can That's a silly statement. You know You're working you're going into the world of philosophy Of which there is no definitive answer for anything. All right, that's fair. Finally Finally cap com. Let's close out this show. This one comes off of reddit from the black tom Um, all right, or the black tom. I don't know. Right black hit them Okay, a lot of things to do with cool things now It will be sketchy rough build it week after week launch window after launch window Colonizing mars and the new studio hoping to first land live next decade week Yeah, uh, yeah, the new studio is pretty incredible. Uh, we showed this before the show But we'll show it right now. This is this happened earlier this morning. We got our name on the door So there you go a station and that's where the station names comes from. It's the unit number So tomorrow station 204 Uh, it was really cool to have that applied to the door and make this space, you know Actually ours. Um, I will say again. We could not have done this without you our patrons. You are citizens It's it's pretty incredible. We have very large plans for tomorrow as a whole Above and beyond just space tomorrow transit tomorrow Energy energy tomorrow tech a bunch of different tomorrow shows that we do want to produce they're not happening right now We're focusing on tomorrow's space for now But it's going to be pretty incredible and it's all enabled through you As I mentioned, it's going to be a very slow build-off process because we had to take All of our slush funds all the funds that we were saving up for the new Talk show unit for skypes who get a multi skype callers all of that went into the deposits for this space So we have we have literally negative funds right now I went in my personal account went yawing But that So it's it's it's going to be cool. It's going to be awesome It's going to be worth it And it's going to take a lot of time and hopefully you guys enjoy watching us build this week after week on set Much like tomorrow has grown year after year and you've seen like our first episodes were terrible And you've seen us grow and flourish and turn into I think a quite a compelling show They were terrible They were terrible You don't see this agreeing do you? Thinking and we're still terrible No, we're less terrible. We're less terrible. We're marginally awful Just like the aerospace industry kind of had you know marginal improvements year over year But now we're kind of getting into those, you know much faster improvements I think you're going to see the same thing with tomorrow Where you're going to start seeing improvements much quicker now and you're going to see the set go in much faster And you're going to see a lot of really cool things also because we have this space I am opening it up to a live studio audience. We were talking about this before the show So if you're in the los angeles or orange county area and you want to watch us do this recording live Feel free to pop on over just you mentioned it on twitter We'll we'll get a process for that going I don't think we're going to have enough people that want to come week after week to feel like 30 people But we could we could put 20 to 30 people in this room also right away.  Yeah, uh, there is there are Four chair. No, there are five chairs in this entire Yeah, there are five chairs in the entire sweet five chairs. That's it You're looking at three of them. Yes exactly. All right. That's our show this week An abbreviated after dark is up next. Thank you so much for watching and we will see you next week


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All right, once again, good morning everyone and I'm Tomasz Wonski and I'm a product manager at RF Elements and marketing manager at the same time. And my promise for today to you is that you will learn what beam efficiency is and why do we actually think it's the most important antenna parameter in Wisp Networks as well as you will also learn about the other antenna parameters that are usually thought or known for showing the ability of an antenna to deal with noise. So let's start. So the parameters that are usually considered relevant when speaking of the ability of an antenna to mitigate the interference are front-to-back ratio, side-loop levels or Etsy masks. And these you most likely know or at least heard about and the one we at RF Elements believe is the most important one in terms of noise suppression is beam efficiency. Beam efficiency is the ratio of the main-loop energy to the total energy an antenna radiates. Now it says how much of the total signal energy is contained in the main-loop, as simple as that. So the maximum beam efficiency value is 100%, which is an ideal situation. That's really the ideal goal we desire. And the smaller the beam efficiency is, the more side-lobes an antenna has. Since antenna side-lobes are the direct cause of problems in Wisp Networks, antennas with a lot of side-lobes should be avoided at all costs, really. The higher the beam efficiency of the antenna you use is, the better for your network and the end-users of your services in the end. Beam efficiency is an antenna parameter not only to know about, but actually also factor it in when you're deciding on how to deal with the interference issues you may have in your unlicensed networks. Now here is a practical example. So this is the radiation pattern of a generic parabolic dish. And if its beam efficiency is 40%, the remaining 60% of the energy goes everywhere else. In other words, side-lobes. And because any radiation outside the main-loop is a side-loop, well obviously it must go in the side-lobes. And note that all the side-lobes are highlighted here, so beam efficiency includes all the side-lobes an antenna has. And if you want to compare two antennas in terms of side-loop performance, beam efficiency makes it extremely simple. The higher number wins. In this example, the ultra horn on the left has beam efficiency 99%, so only 1% short of perfection. A generic dish antenna on the other hand has beam efficiency 40%, so the remaining 60% of the energy it radiates is in the side-lobes. 99% is clearly more than 40%, and that's why ultra horn is way better antenna in terms of noise suppression, in our opinion the best on the market to be honest. But to be fair, let's also have a look at the parameters you may already know. Front-to-back ratio is one of them and many manufacturers included in their data sheets, so let's have a small recap of front-to-back ratio. The conventional thinking about front-to-back ratio is that if front-to-back ratio is high, it means an antenna is good for dense collocation. So if the antennas are back-to-back and both have high front-to-back ratio, they will not interfere with each other. The reality is that high front-to-back ratio does not mean that antenna is good for dense collocation in every possible setting. It is simply a misunderstanding. It's important to really get this right, because the next time you have a conversation about front-to-back ratio, you can be sure that if anyone is saying that high front-to-back ratio means an antenna is great for collocation, you know that the person is either misinformed or simply didn't go deep enough with the topic. High front-to-back ratio means that the back-lobe is small. This is the lobe pointing in the opposite direction as the main lobe. It can also mean that the group of side-lobes around the back-lobe is small, depending on the definition or the way the front-to-back ratio was determined. The front-to-back ratio is very easy to understand. Looking at the radiation pattern of an antenna in this example, we show the pattern of a directional patch array. The front-to-back ratio is the difference between the gain of the main lobe and the gain of the back-lobe, which is pointing backwards. In practice, front-to-back ratio is often determined based on the strongest side-lobe. From a plus-minus-thirty-degree angle around the back-lobe because of possible manufacturing, assembly or material imperfections. And because of these imperfections, the back-lobe might not just be a single lobe, but can be divided and fractured into several minor lobes around that direction. Nevertheless, back-lobe is one of many side-lobes. Antennas used in the Wisp industry typically have. So if back-lobe is one out of many side-lobes, then it's probably not so important. This is the typical error in interpretation of front-to-back ratio. It doesn't say anything about all the other side-lobes. When two antennas are exactly back-to-back, which, let's be honest, is quite a rare kind of scenario, high front-to-back ratio can help to decrease the interference level the radios see. But, as I said before, typical antenna used in Wisp networks has a lot of side-lobes and the back-lobe itself can be quite complex at the same time. As soon as there are more links on a tower or in the or collocated antennas are not exactly back-to-back, you are looking at noise issues coming your way because of all the other side-lobes that these antennas have. High front-to-back ratio provides absolutely no protection in high noise environment. So for urban and suburban areas with other wireless links in the neighborhood or even on the same tower, front-to-back ratio is irrelevant. These other links may be yours or competitors. Either way, they're using very similar hardware to yours, meaning their antennas most likely also have many side-lobes that create noise, receive the noise and anything in between through the rest of the side-lobes. Another parameter I want to mention is side-lobe level. In practical life, its effect is similar to that of the front-to-back ratio. So let's have a look at the details of that. Side-lobe level is the difference between the gain of the strongest side-lobe and the main-lobe. It is more useful than front-to-back ratio because it at least points out the strongest side-lobe, which says a bit about antenna performance in high noise areas, but just a little bit really. If side-lobe level is high, the strongest side-lobe is close to having the gain of the main-lobe, making it a very poor antenna for WISP networks. The issue with side-lobe level is that it does not talk about all the side-lobes an antenna has. Again, side-lobe level is defined by the strongest side-lobe, which again is only one side-lobe out of many and defined at a single frequency as well. Since the side-lobes are changing with frequency, the noise level also changes with them. So despite you know what the strongest side-lobe is at a single frequency, it is not very useful in the bigger picture, since simply switching the channel, everything changes. Side-lobe level is therefore a very similar metric to front-to-back ratio. It tells you what the strongest side-lobe is at one frequency, but nothing about the rest of the side-lobes throughout the useful bandwidth of an antenna, which is the biggest issue with these metrics. In WISP networks all side-lobes of an antenna matter. So to sum it up, not all antenna parameters are practically useful for WISP networks. It simply depends on the context an antenna is used in. In the end, it is up to the users and actually mainly the manufacturers to responsibly look at each antenna parameter and evaluate, honestly evaluate whether it is useful in the framework of WISP networks or not. The conclusion for front-to-back ratio and side-lobe level clearly says that these two are really not so important. They tell a very limited part of the story of the side-lobes. And if you're wondering why WISP antenna manufacturers use them and show them in their data sheets and on, my guess would be it's simply a remnant of the times when these parameters were the only ones that were easy to determine and calculate without enough computational power. You may also know about the Etsy Masks, which to a degree also serve as a parameter that says how well antennas perform in terms of noise. So yeah, let's have a look at those. It is important to clarify that Etsy Masks consider two main cuts of antenna radiation pattern, the azimuth and elevation. They consider two slices of the 3D radiation pattern. So again, rather incomplete, like completely incomplete, so to say, measure from the point of view of the whole 3D radiation pattern and all the side-lobes that matter in WISP networks. Etsy Masks are observed at three frequency points. So an improvement, right? So the beginning, the middle and the end of the spectrum an antenna works in. Nevertheless, the rest of the spectrum, which is rather wide in the case of WISP networks, is not included in Etsy Masks definition. So again, not very robust measure. So how does one get to the Etsy Masks and how do they look like? Starting with the polar plot, you may know from the antenna data sheets, redrawing it and redrawing it on an XY axis or XY plot. Etsy Masks are the blue dashed line, which says that the radiation pattern should stay below the mask so that an antenna can be declared compliant with a given Etsy NOR. If the radiation pattern does not stay below the mask, the antenna is not compliant, which is the case for this example. The masks are easy to understand and to their credit, they do consider the whole 360-degree circle of a radiation pattern, but unfortunately only two cuts of the whole 3D radiation pattern at three frequency points of the whole spectrum an antenna may work in. So vast majority of the spectrum and the radiation pattern is simply not included. Which is why in terms of interference suppression in WISP networks, even these Etsy Masks are really not that much of a useful parameter. So whenever you see an antenna being compliant with a particular Etsy NOR, know that it does not really bring much added value in terms of noise suppression in WISP networks. At our development, as a company, we are convinced about doing the right thing for the customer and the industry at the same time. So we investigated the textbooks ourselves and found about beam efficiency, which is the most complete measure of side loops out there, if it's used well. And when I say the most complete, I'm not just using empty overstatements or simplifications. And by the time we're done with the following slides, I promise you will understand why. So beam efficiency is the answer to the question of side loops. So despite you might have never heard about beam efficiency before, at our development, we do what we believe is the best for the customer, even if it means bringing something not considered or established before, which might be different from what other manufacturers may be saying. Beam efficiency is a ratio of the energy in the main loop to the total energy on antenna radiates, making it a perfect and complete measure of side loops. So how is beam efficiency obtained? Beam efficiency of an antenna can be determined through a measurement in an unequally chamber, like the one in the image. The antenna is attached to a rotary stage, which rotates it into axes, and it can measure the radiation pattern of an antenna, the full 3D radiation pattern. And based on the measurement, we can calculate beam efficiency. Alternatively, if the model of an antenna is precise, or let's say an antenna is simple enough, we can use simulation software to do the same thing, obtaining the radiation pattern. And based on that, we can calculate beam efficiency. So if beam efficiency is 40%, this amounts to the power that goes into the main loop. So the remaining 60% must therefore be in the side loops. No question there. And note that all the side loops are highlighted. So beam efficiency really includes all the side loops of an antenna, not just one or a slice of the radiation pattern, but the whole package, the full 3D data, which is what makes beam efficiency a complete measure of side loops. Everything is included. And you can calculate beam efficiency for any antenna out there. Here you see the radiation pattern of a typical sector antenna. If beam efficiency is 58%, the rest of the energy, meaning the 42%, must be in the side loops. This clearly tells you why the patch array sector antennas are really not so good for unlicensed WISP networks, for the most part. 42% of the signal they radiate and receive is noise. Now WISPs use quite a wide chunk of the spectrum. But in antenna textbooks, beam efficiency is defined at a single frequency and for a single polarization. Now this is the case for most textbook parameters actually. And it makes perfect sense to always consider any antenna parameter in the whole useful bandwidth. Antenna works in not just the single frequency point. And since WISPs use their antennas in a wide frequency band, it only makes perfect sense that an antenna should perform well in the whole bandwidth in all important aspects, including beam efficiency. Which is why we decided to actually average beam efficiency over the whole useful bandwidth and on top of that for both polarizations. And the effect of this averaging is that it turns this textbook beam efficiency definition in a much more robust and reliable measure of the silo performance than the single frequency and single polarization definition. Or anything else out there really. The vast majority of antennas used for sector coverage with networks are either patch arrays or horns. And the patch arrays have many frequency dependent silo. So their beam efficiency values are somewhere on the scale of 60%, depending on the manufacturing and the design quality. The RF element horns, both symmetrical and asymmetrical, have beam efficiency between 90 and 95%. Now you can see other horns in this comparison as well. And this is to help you understand that it takes a considerable effort to design a horn antenna such that its beam efficiency is high. The stable and zero silo performance is not a given as soon as you have a horn. So be careful with that. But we do put a lot of effort into design of our antennas. Likewise with the point-to-point antennas. The patch arrays are again at the bottom of the beam efficiency performance due to the many frequency dependent silo's collecting and transmitting the noise hurting any and every wisdom network out there. And dishes are somewhat better. And generally the bigger the is, the better the beam efficiency becomes if the antenna is carefully designed and well manufactured on top of that. Now with any antenna though, the compromises accepted at the design stage unfortunately cannot be compensated by manufacturing quality since the real world results are at best approaching the results which we get from the simulation. What is interesting here though is the ultra horn. Its beam efficiency is 99%. Now let that sink in for a second. Over the whole bandwidth of operation in both polarizations, the beam efficiency of ultra horn is practically perfect. Only 1% of the RF signal goes into silo. So if you ever wonder if ultra horn was worth the extra cash compared to a dish with similar gain, you have a very clear answer here. With 99% beam efficiency, it is the best performing antenna on the market in terms of noise suppression. And the good thing is, you can use ultra horn not only for point of point but also for point of multi-point coverage. And with the option of tilting the antenna down, you can actually dynamically adjust the coverage. So it's really a very versatile tool and the best tool in terms of noise suppression. Beam efficiency tells you everything about silo performance. The higher the beam efficiency is, the better an antenna performs, period. So forget about front of a ratio, silo level or etsy masks and really focus on beam efficiency of an antenna when dealing with noise. Not only is it the most complete measure of silo, but it is also extremely robust measure of silo because of the averaging over the frequency, band and both polarizations. And a word of caution here. The average beam efficiency is our own internal standard, our development standard we set up for ourselves. So if anyone is telling you their antenna has high beam efficiency as well, ask them if it's averaged over the whole useful bandwidth and both polarizations to make sure the comparison is fair. Since it rarely happens that a wireless link is situated in a completely isolated place, the interference is present practically everywhere. The noisier the environment, the more important beam efficiency of an antenna you use becomes because the higher the beam efficiency, the better noise isolation. And recently you can also hear claims from other antenna manufacturers saying for example, well this sector patch or antenna works like horn in terms of avoiding the noise or similar statements. And to these claims, I would just ask a single question. What is the average beam efficiency of that antenna? Now if the beam efficiency of that antenna is of similar values, then I would stay quiet and say, yes, I agree. But otherwise if the beam efficiency is anything below 90%, you can be sure that they're really not the same and the claims of the manufacturers are probably more of a marketing fluff than anything else. And in the following section, I will tell you about the practical implications and consequences of using an antenna with high beam efficiency. And we can sum up the effect of high beam efficiency antennas into one statement, higher throughput. So in a sector with no other links in the area, you don't mind the siloes, but as the number of sectors grows, their siloes cause the noise floor to rise. And higher noise floor equals lower SNR the radios are working with and eventually lower throughput. The beam efficiency of patch array sectors is on the order of 60% as we saw. So the remaining 40% of the energy is in the siloes that collect and transmit interference to other links within yours but also competitors networks, obviously. So low beam efficiency equals lower throughput and consequently more unsatisfied customers and constant issues with your network and that keeps you unnecessarily busy. Low beam efficiency of these antennas works in a very similar way. It's really the same thing, but not different really. The siloes collect the noise from its surroundings and transmit it to all neighbouring links again. So whether it's a backhaul link or a distant narrow sector, the beam efficiency around 40% means low throughput in high noise areas and on top of that susceptibility of these links to anything that's happening in the surroundings, like if someone puts up a new link you instantly see the result on your network performance. Now replacing the low beam efficiency patch array sector by horn antennas with beam efficiency up to 99% the noise level in the urban and high density areas is effectively avoided because high beam efficiency means no side loops and no side loops means no interference the final effect is high throughput and network stability. Addressing the most pressing problem of WIST networks is much more straightforward. Now only one advice here use antennas with high beam efficiency. High beam efficiency equals to high throughput and that equals eventually to happy customers of your WISP and a joyful life as an internet service provider. It actually frees you it gives you the freedom and time to you can switch from running around servicing the defaulty and problematic links or talking to angry customers to actually start thinking about how can I expand my business how can I do even better and that's really something that's invaluable and the radio manufacturers are actually also trying to help with the noise naturally so the GPS synchronization ensuring that the radios in your network transmit and receive at the same time protects you from self interference but not from the side loops of the competitors and tenants beam efficiency ensures that you do not have to worry about interference at all it does not receive it so you don't need to try to deal with it in the first place so beam efficiency is a very practical antenna parameter where before the discussion about the side loops was limited to many versus little or yes versus no beam efficiency provides a number from 0 to 100% and it's super easy to compare side loop performance of antenna so now you know that front of a ratio or side loop level are parameters that are really not so important not useful in the wisp industry because they only consider one side loop or one loop out of many antenna might have so beam efficiency on the other includes all the side loops which makes it very useful metric all the side loops removes any ambiguity you can be sure that this metric is reliable always ask whether a parameter is a single frequency or wideband in wisp industry wideband is simply a must because the spectrum is shared by many and therefore wideband performance is vital and our filament addition to the beam efficiency definition is to average it over both polarization and the whole antenna bandwidth so you cannot do better than that it's really the most one can do in terms of how well or how useful this parameter can be so beam efficiency is the ultimate measure to judge antennas by in wisp industry and it is a tool in your hands eventually to make better decisions for your business so please use it and asking for it ask for it you know you're looking for doesn't have it in the data sheet to make it easy for our customers we added beam efficiency over antennas into all our data sheets we are a transparent manufacturer and want to provide our customers the information that's important and if by any chance you need to explain to someone very quickly what beam efficiency is and why it matters feel free to direct them to our inside wireless video series on our youtube channel it's these two particular episodes that do a fantastic job explaining beam efficiency within minutes and another youtube playlist we have is called Wisp Traveler where we went to different places around the world as you can see and interviewed our customers asking them what was their experience with our antennas so if you don't take it from us that our antennas are great which is natural of course you have to check or you have to first test it out or maybe lean on the experience of your peers which is why we recorded these videos and be assured these are not staged videos you can actually even contact these people personally and find out for yourself we also have an online community so we're definitely very active on facebook on the many Wisp related forums and we also have our RF elements English page and RF elements Africa, RF elements Espanol and what else I think that was in Asia we also have RF elements Asia which are the support groups where you can actually contact our salesman ask them about the availability or anything related to our products or ask a technical question anything goes really and we also have RFELab.com which is our user forum again a lot of questions have been asked already so you can search through those or simply add your own question if you have something specific something pressing that you need to answer so it's probably time to wrap up this webinar it was a pleasure to have you here and I'm looking forward to any other webinars you might be joining so have a good day and bye bye