Thought I would put together some numbers to help clear up the bad math problems we had last Thursday :)

The estimate of 1.6 million miles is not the correct distance the broadcast signal travels. I'm not sure where exactly that calculation came from but I think it was intended to be made based on 20 satellites x 22,236 miles x 2 directions (uplink and downlink) + an extra uplink and downlink from KC to Dallas = 993,912 miles.

But that's not right either.

Looking at Daystar's website, they use 9 broadcast satellites in geostationary orbit, an orbit which keeps them above a fixed point on the earth's surface. This is accomplished by sending them to an altitude of roughly 22,236 miles above mean sea level. That's 1/19th the distance to the moon.

But it gets more complicated. Because all the satellites are in geostationary orbit, there is no way for Dallas to have line of site to any of the satellites on the other side of the planet (only the ones above our hemisphere). However, they can send their signal to the other side of the earth via terrestrial means before uplinking to the broadcasting satellite. The distance around the earth at its equator is 24901 miles, so for instance the terrestrial signal would travel roughly half that distance to get to Asia before up-linking to ASIASAT5.

At this point its all conjecture, as we don't know how many terrestrial paths around the globe the signal travels to get to all the satellites. A very rough calculation though (assuming a very conservative one half of a terrestrial trip around the earth) would be:

22236 mi up-link from KC (in 1/4 of a second)
22236 mi down-link to Dallas (in 1/4 of a second)
12450 mi to the other side of the earth
117888 mi up-link to 8 satellites (22236 mil up-link x 8 satellites in 1/4 of a second)
117888 mi down-link from 8 satellites (22236 mil down-link x 8 satellites in 1/4 of a second)
-----------------
TOTAL 352,698 miles (in approximately 1 second)

Note that the time estimate doesn't account for delay due to signal processing, or the terrestrial trip around the earth, just a 1/4 second delay per satellite "hop".

That's far shorter than the 1.6 million estimate, but its still 100,000 miles further than the distance from earth to the moon at the furthest point of its orbit (252,088 miles).

All this to broadcast revival to nearly every country in the world, and in mere seconds!

On a side note, our revival service up-link from Kansas City currently takes just over 4 hours and 20 minutes to reach the planet Pluto, and around 15 hours 30 minutes get to the Voyager 1 spacecraft at its present position. Sometime in November, 2012, our very first live revival service on Daystar (from November, 2008) will reach the nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri.

I hope I've restored confidence in my math skills :)

Thanks for reading!
Steve Brendtro