“You have them running all the time, then?”
“Certainly. At several minutes of time-lag in transmission, to try and establish a beam failure of a few seconds’ duration is utter foolishness.”
“And you disperse the beam to a thousand miles wide to keep the beam centered at any variation?” Burbank shot at Channing.
“Not for any variation. Make that any normal gyration and I’ll buy it.”
“Then why don’t we disperse the beam to two or three thousand miles and do away with diversity transmission?” asked Burbank triumphantly.
“Ever heard of fading?” asked Channing with a grin. “Your signal comes and goes. Not gyration, it just gets weaker. It fails for want of something to eat, I guess, and takes off after a wandering cosmic ray. At any rate, there are many times per minute that one beam will
