Your Future: Never out of Touch

By Tariq Malik


The Internet on cruise ships and oil rigs, highway tolls paid via satellite, and electricity harvested in space. These are just some of the ways satellites will change how we live.

Astronauts aside, most people spend their lives firmly rooted on terra firma. Yet much daily life is dependent on the cornucopia of satellites in Earth orbit. Looking ahead, Space Age communication promises to expand to all corners of the globe, on land, sea and in the air.

Before long, like it or not, you'll never be out of touch.

Already, everything from phone calls abroad to the control of military forces half a world away are made possible with high-flying technology. Satellites bounce signals from sender to recipient at light-speed. Direct beaming of television and radio to urban and rural locations alike, sometimes sans commercials, are remaking conventional media. Hikers, athletes, boaters and pilots all rely on the space-based Global Positioning System to get around and mark progress.

Parents are tracking teens with new satellite-based cell phone technology.

The future of satellite communications -- including new ways to extend the Internet to every geographic nook and cranny -- is beginning to crop up in some parts of the world.

One fledgling application provides wireless Internet and media connections for passenger liners and oil rigs. Europeans are studying the feasibility of allowing motorists to pay road tolls via space; a watchful satellite would charge drivers without forcing them to slow down. Meanwhile, online access is coming to trains and pleasure boats.

And to feed this increasingly electronic world, satellites might one day harvest electricity from the Sun and beam it down to giant dishes on the surface.