S.H.A.R.P. 

Would a satellite dish the size of a cereal bowl intrigue you?

A recently revealed development -- from Toronto offers that possibility in the not-too-distant future. Cable companies will not be thrilled.

It's called S.H.A.R.P. (Stationery High Altitude Relay Platform). A small prototype has already been successfully test-flown and worked fine. Now a further advance.

SHARP is a very lightweight airplane -- that carries no fuel, has no solar panels and operates at an altitude of 70,000 feet. That's about twice the height of normal jetliners, still higher than the Concorde flies and avoids the jet stream flow. It can theoretically stay up for ever but plans call for it to be returned periodically for updated improvements.

At only 14 miles up a reflected video signal might travel less distance vertically than your local TV station transmission moves horizontally, and with better clarity. It will have more power than present satellite signals coming from the Clarke Belt 22,300 miles out in space. On-board transponders will handle multi-frequency video as well as data and phone. The latter without that annoying quartersecond delay in present satellite conversations.

Developed by Ottawa researcher George Jull, it is the joint work of a team from the Univ. of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, headed by James DeLaurier, who designed the test planes used so far, and an Ottawa group led by John Martin from the federal Department of Communications staff, who refined the power system - an invisible extension cord!

Their larger second-generation model, resembling a nuclear submarine, has also been built and tested. This one is called ISIS. Phase three would be a commercially operated full-sized version. That unit would still only weigh 1,000 kilograms but be as wide as a Boeing 727.

When I pointed this out recently at the Communications Forum in Chicago held by Channels Magazine and Columbia College, big shots from Group W (Westinghouse) and other cable companies reacted with total silence. In a rapidly changing environment specialization can make a business rapidly obsolete.

How does that invisible extension cord work, you ask? Energy will be continually beamed to a "rectennae" on the bottom of the remotecontrolled aircraft. This will feed an electric motor aboard the craft from an earth-bound micro-wave uplink. This is believed to be the first such successful transfer of energy, in this fashion, to an aircraft from anywhere in the world.

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