This star is going to the moon

Chapter 223: Imitating a drone array light show, can satellite arrays project movies in space?
Angel Has Fallen was actually released in North America in August, but as a low-budget R-rated film, it was only released in mainland China at the end of the year.

This film is the third installment in the "Fallen" series, following "Olympus Has Fallen" and "London Has Fallen".

"Low budget" is relative. The budget for "Angel Has Fallen" was $4 million, far lower than the $7 million budget for "Olympus Has Fallen" and the $6 million budget for "London Has Fallen".

It's even lower than those blockbusters that easily cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The plot of "Angel Has Fallen" is similar to the previous two films, both featuring the protagonist single-handedly saving the president.

The reason Lu Yun remembered it was because it corresponded to certain situations later on.

Also because the attack on the president in the film was carried out by a "swarm of drones".

The most memorable scene is when terrorists drive out a car with dozens of tubes neatly arranged on it. Then, with a series of rapid "bangs," a swarm of black suicide drones rushes out like a bee.

Although the president had elite bodyguards, this time the attackers were no ordinary terrorists. The sky was filled with self-destructing drones that bombed anyone they saw, causing numerous bodyguards to be thrown into disarray and almost completely wiped out.

In the end, only the protagonist and the seriously injured commander remained.

The protagonist is framed by the villain as the mastermind behind a terrorist attack.

Fortunately, the protagonist is indeed the protagonist, and he eventually defeated the villain single-handedly.

Of course, the villains are none other than the vice president who wants to replace the president, and the military company he controls.

But that's not the best part of the movie; the best part is outside the movie itself.

It's like those terrifying "swarm drones" in the movies. The Americans aren't the best at using them; the Chinese are the best!

(Image from the internet: The land-air collaborative fixed-wing UAV swarm system of the China Electric Power Research Institute, with the UAV mother vehicle on the Mengshi chassis)

In fact, the most difficult part of this drone swarm is not the design and manufacturing of the drones, but the intelligent grouping and communication support.

After all, communication bandwidth is limited. The real challenge is how to fit as many drones as possible into a limited communication area, make them coordinate with each other, and ensure smooth and uninterrupted communication.

Fortunately, the Chinese are experts in this field and possess many core technologies.

Unfortunately, the Chinese are peace-loving and don't bomb everywhere like the Americans, so they only used it for civilian drone shows.

In the past, large-scale events were mostly fireworks displays, but those things are quite polluting to the environment, and the smoke can linger for a long time if there is no wind.

Switching to drone shows is not only more environmentally friendly, but also allows for more creative and innovative performances.

Forming dragons, phoenixes, flowers, and buildings using drone arrays is nothing special; larger scenes could be projected directly into the air like movies.

Lu Yun even considered some kind of ruthless and defiant act.

A large swarm of drones can form an array in the air and then change lights to mimic a screen showing a movie.

If you were to create an array of satellites equipped with high-energy lights in Earth orbit, could you project movies in space by changing the lights?

If this satellite array is large enough, could people on the ground see space movies with the naked eye?

In fact, this is indeed an incredibly difficult task, but what's even more incredible is that it can actually be accomplished!
Looking back, the second launch of the "Wanhu" rocket carried a set of very interesting "ladybug satellites".

Its main star is the 100-kilogram "Ladybug No. 10", and the other two to seven are -kilogram nanosatellites.

The main satellite functions the same as the "Yilu Fangfei" satellite launched by Lu Yun, which can display photos and take pictures with Earth or space.

It also has six other auxiliary satellites equipped with high-powered clusters of light that use Morse code principles to express different meanings through long and short flashes. These flashes are visible to the naked eye and can be clearly captured by high-performance mobile phones, SLR cameras, and satellite trackers. Viewing the images allows for accurate identification of the Morse code content transmitted from the satellites to the ground.

(Image from the internet: Flashes of varying lengths taken with a camera can be deciphered as Morse code.)
On April 2nd this year, "Autism Awareness Day," this satellite group collaborated with the Beijing Planetarium to perform a public service flash.

On the 23rd, Navy Day, a ladybug satellite flashed to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the People's Navy. The topic of "sending Morse code to celebrate the Navy's birthday" even made it into the top five of Weibo's trending topics.

In fact, the human eye can see the International Space Station and Tiangong Space Station, but what we see are just points of light, no different from stars, and we wouldn't recognize them.

Looking further into the future, or into science fiction, the idea of ​​"showing movies in space" becomes the "the whole universe twinkling for you" concept from The Three-Body Problem.

The two-dimensional unfolding of the "Sophon" forms a "giant screen" surrounding Earth's orbit. The flickering fluctuations that Wang Miao and his team saw at the radar station were the flickering of the "giant screen" observed by three satellites that were far apart, not the actual universe.

Therefore, the plan to "show movies in space" is feasible, but the number of satellites needed to form a satellite array that is visible to the naked eye on the ground and has a relatively good resolution would be too large and too expensive.

If there are few satellites, then the world will have to watch a digital countdown from space.

If there were more, we could create a billboard that everyone in the world could see when they looked up.

So there is still some business opportunity.

Just like how many businesses now sponsor commercial rockets and print advertisements on them, this is also a way to recoup the costs of space exploration.

If we can leverage these business opportunities to nurture the project, launch more satellites, and eventually build a satellite array that can actually project movies, the probability isn't zero.

I'm actually quite excited about it.

"Hmm, maybe we can try it when the manufacturing cost of satellites is lower later."

Lu Yun was pondering this matter when a sudden inspiration struck him.

"The Space Race!"

“Currently, human space programs are deeply intertwined with politics. In the last space race, the Russians and Americans engaged in many politically motivated projects that were economically unprofitable, but they still did them.”

"If this space race continues to escalate to a fever pitch, I'll tell the higher-ups I have a project that will allow people all over the world to see a red flag floating in space with the naked eye whenever they look up, then..."

"Tsk tsk~"

I imagine some anthropomorphic creatures jumping up and down with "happiness"...

Lu Yun decided to add this project to his "space wish list".

It should be placed after "Filming a movie in space" and "Filming a movie on the moon".

Yes, that's in the "film and television" aspect; there are other aspects of space aspirations as well.

Having finally acquired a cheat code in this life, Lu Yun is determined to make the most of both his "old wish" from the previous life and his "new wish" in this life!
The vast universe is his eternal dream!
Similarly, as the last day of 2019, many people were summarizing and envisioning the coming year.

After taking all the information into consideration, the top agents of those celebrities happily exclaimed, "Next year, next year will be a great year for you to challenge for the top spot on the celebrity rankings!"

The newly emerging top stars are eager to try their luck, while the old top stars are already rolling their eyes and pursing their lips.

Top influencer: "Please, you said the same thing last year, saying that various celebrity lists weren't going to include Rowoon anymore, but look what happened, they included more information about Rowoon than anyone else!"

Agent: "This time is different!"

(End of this chapter)