Five companies are gearing up to provide high-speed global WiFi coverage from space within the next three to four years. This would be an ecological and public health nightmare.
The companies include:

SpaceX: 4,000 satellites, 750 miles high
OneWeb: 2,400 satellites (648 satellites initially), 500-590 miles high
Facebook: Satellites, drones, and lasers
Google: 200,000(?) high altitude balloons (62,500 feet) (“Project Loon”)
Outernet: Low-orbit microsatellites

Honeywell, which already has signed a memorandum of understanding to become OneWeb’s first large customer—it plans to provide high-speed WiFi on business, commercial, and military aircraft throughout the world—has posted this on its website:

“OneWeb is building a constellation of more than 600 satellites, which will provide approximately 10 terabits per second of high-speed Internet access to billions of people around the world, even in the most remote areas. Once launched, OneWeb’s constellation will be the largest telecommunications constellation in orbit, enabling more capacity with higher speed and lower latency than any satellite technology to date”.
www.honeywellnow.com/2015/03/02/in-game-changing-new-partnership-honeywell-and-oneweb-bring-high-speed-in-flight-wifi-to-billions-worldwide/

GUARDS is concerned about these projects for a number of reasons.

Ozone loss and climate change: Rocket exhaust brings aluminum oxide particles, ozone-destroying chlorine, and water vapor, a potent greenhouse gas, into the stratosphere. The aluminum oxide particles seed stratospheric clouds. Complete ozone destruction is observed in the exhaust plumes of rockets.

The New York Times (May 14, 1991, p. 4) quoted Aleksandr Dunayev of the Russian Space Agency saying “About 300 launches of the space shuttle each year would be a catastrophe and the ozone layer would be completely destroyed.”

At that time the world averaged only 12 rocket launches per year. These were thought to cause less than 0.6% depletion of the ozone layer. Research into the effects of rocket exhaust on the ozone layer has virtually ceased, but the number of launches is poised to increase astronomically.

If 12 rocket launches per year reduced the ozone by even 0.3%, then Dunayev was correct, and 300 launches in a year would destroy the ozone layer totally. To maintain a fleet of (ultimately) 4,000 or 2,400 satellites, each with an expected lifespan of five years, would involve enough yearly rocket launches to be an environmental catastrophe.

“[SpaceX’s] Space Internet venture, to which Musk hasn’t yet given a name, would be hugely ambitious. Hundreds of satellites would orbit about 750 miles above earth, much closer than traditional communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit at altitudes of up to 22,000 miles. The lower satellites would make for a speedier Internet service, with less distance for electromagnetic signals to travel.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/
articles/2015-01-17/elon-musk-and-spacex-plan-a-space-internet

SpaceX’s CEO Elon Musk wants his satellites to provide WiFi to Mars as well as Earth:

“The visionary inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk has unveiled his plan not only to launch a fleet of satellites to provide wireless internet that can be accessed anywhere on earth, but also to use the proceeds to build a city on Mars.” http://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-wants-create-global-wifi-order-fund-city-mars-300523y

Human health: Not only the ozone layer and our climate will be adversely affected, but also the well-being of all life on earth, including humans. “The human body, says Dr Gerard J. Hyland, of the University of Warwick, UK, “is an electrochemical instrument of exquisite sensitivity”, noting that, like a radio, it can be interfered with by incoming radiation. If a signal can operate a mechanical device, it can disturb every cell in the human body.

A few weeks ago, a letter was sent by 88 concerned organizations representing over a million people, to the European Economic and Social Committee, regarding the betrayal of public trust in ignoring the hazards of electromagnetic radiation. Three to five percent of the global population suffer from ElectroHypersensitivity and are running out of places where they can survive. http://www.radiationresearch.org/images/rrt_articles/EM-Radiation-Research-Trust-Letter-of-Notice-Served-on-Mr-Richard-Adams.pdf

Thus we believe that plans for global WiFi coverage are contrary to Human Rights.

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Charles Claessens
www.milieuziektes.nl

Tags:
, W-LAN, Hyland