Thrust SSC - Sponsors

Hughes Network Systems and Hughes Olivetti Telecom

The Internet Link to the Desert

Most people are familiar with satellite TV, and have probably used satellite at some time when making a long-distance phone call. Data connections are also carried very effectively by satellite, as the Thrust SSC Team is doing for bringing the car telemetry data from the desert track back to the various UK design groups.

Hub Antenna
(Hub Antenna. Photo courtesy Hughes Network Systems)

Hughes Network Systems have provided a connection via its VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) network operating through a hub in Hatfield, Herts, and the EUTELSAT II F4 satellite, in geostationary orbit at longitude 7E. The 24-hour orbit has a radius of 42,000km, which means that the satellite is doing 11,000 km/hour just to keep still! Fortunately it doesn't use any fuel to keep going, save for the occasional nudge to stop it moving over one of the earth's dense spots. A typical satellite carries enough fuel to last over 7 years, generates over 3kW of electricity via solar panels, uses a flywheel spinning at 25,000 rpm to maintain attitude stability, and has backup for all systems. It takes 2 - 3 years to build and costs between $50m and $100m.

Hughes VSATs are specialised to carry packetised data between all the branches of a retail network (banking, motor vehicles, supermarkets) and their headquarters, and completely replace leased or dial-up lines. HNS' service partner, Hughes Olivetti Telecom, has networks spanning most European countries and by the end of 1996 will have some 2,000 VSATs operating to its hubs in London, Frankfurt and Milan. Apart from being price-competitive, especially compared with cross-border tariffs (but even within UK), VSAT technology gives its customers high data rates, complete uniformity of service from Moscow to Gran Canaria, and the all-important broadcast capability for business TV, product catalogues and software upgrades.

Ground Antenna
(Ground Antenna. Photo courtesy Hughes Network Systems)

The Thrust team will be fairly isolated at the test site, but need to send information in various forms back to the engineering and media staff in UK. All forms of data, whether for SSC telemetry, electronic mail, Web pages, audio clips, or still and video images, are packetised in TCP/IP, the Internet protocol, and sent from the communications vehicle over the VSAT link to Digital's HQ at Newbury. In return come the results of the telemetry analyses to allow adjustments to be made to the car. Incidentally, the VSAT is not a video uplink, and any media interests who want to send footage back to base will have to make their own arrangements!

HNS has two interesting US Web sites, http://www.hns.com and http://www.direcpc.com. DirecPC is a service broadcasting at 12Mbit/s, running digital object explorer/download packages and Turbo Internet. Subscribers use a DirecPC Access Kit (DAK) in a PC expansion slot, and with their regular modem and Internet access can receive Web pages at up to 200kbit/s! HOT will be operating DirecPC in Europe this autumn; HOTs home page is http://www.hoteu.com.

David McGovern
Systems Manager
Hughes Olivetti Telecom



About this site

Supersonic Race Update Mach 1 Club ThrustSSC Shop
Sponsored by This site best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 3
Digital msie artewisdom

© SSC Programme Ltd, 1997