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.

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.

Accessing the Internet via a satellite connection to homes and offices on the ground is nothing new. Companies have been providing the service for years, but it has traditionally been costly and limited to computers on dry land. For Internet junkies aboard ocean liners, logging on is a bit more challenging.

One solution is TeleSea Blue, developed by Virginia-based Wheat Wireless Services. It uses satellites to provide high-speed Internet connections for oceangoing vessels or other sea-based concerns. An antenna on the vessel receives signals from satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which sit in a fixed relative position above the planet by orbiting at the same speed Earth rotates.

The satellites broadcast down to an ocean area called a "footprint," where the signal is then picked up by a server aboard a vessel accessible to anyone with Wi-Fi capability. Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, allows computers to send and receive signals without a physical connection to the Internet.

"We knew there was a need and requirement for high-speed communication and point-to-point video," said Forrest Wheat, president and CEO of Wheat International Communications, the parent company for Wheat Wireless and TeleSea.

Commercial cruise lines, factory ships and off-shore oil rigs are just some of customers that need consistent Internet telecommunications to remain connected with onshore contacts, Wheat told SPACE.com. TeleSea also targets large private vessels such as corporate yachts and freight lines. There is also a military interest too, since the satellites can also provide online access for U.S. Navy personnel at sea.

Currently the system covers the Caribbean and areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. By the end of 2004, satellite service should also be available in the waters around Hawaii, Asia, South America and the Mediterranean.

Sea-based Internet access is expensive. Monthly access and hardware costs exceed $1,000 in the first year. Less expensive -- and more limited -- versions are available in TeleSea Gold, Wheat's coastal service that enables broadband access for vessel up to 30 miles (48 kilometers) offshore, and TeleSea Marina for vessels docked in participating ports.

Commuters can also check e-mail or online news on a train.

PointShot Wireless, based in Ottawa, Canada, is in the process of testing its RailPoint system aboard commuter trains in Canada and California. The system is the first to appear in North America, though train Internet projects are underway in Europe.

"The train is great, you have the space and time to open up your notebook get connected," said PointShot president Shawn Griffin. "It's not the same as DSL at home but it's as fast as dial-up or better. The main thing is you don't need any special equipment other than Wi-Fi capability."

Like Wheat's TeleSea system, RailPoint connects a local server aboard a train car to a roof-mounted antenna that receives satellite signals from space. Trials are underway on Canada's Via Rail line between Montreal and Toronto, the ACE commuter line between Stockton and San Jose in California, and the state's Capitol Corridor line between San Jose and Sacramento.

During trials the service is free, though that may change.

"The first step is to prove it works," said Griffin. "Only after will we think of whether there will be a set fee for the service or if rail operators will include in the cost of the service."

European Space Agency (ESA) officials commissioned a study to streamline driving in England and the Continent by allowing individual vehicles to pay road tolls via a direct satellite connection.

The project builds on global positioning technology and is aimed at providing a unified approach to road tolling throughout Europe. In April, the European Union announced a proposal that would require all vehicles to pay tolls electronically with the use of a black box that would be tracked by satellites. That plan, ESA officials said, would track distance traveled, the class of road and the time of travel.

The proposal includes a deadline of 2010 for implementation.

"The idea is that you have your onboard unit with a GPS (Global Positioning System) or GNS (Global Navigation System) receiver, and then you link it to a road model," said Jonathan Guard, service division manager for Ireland's Mapflow, which is conducting the feasibility for the ESA. It should be completed their study by the end of December.

ESA officials envision a Europe-wide system that would provide automatic payment of road tolls for drivers travelling not only in their own country, but across borders as well. This means integrating existing satellite tolling systems in Germany and Switzerland and developing the intelligence required for a satellite to deduce distance-based tolls across multiple time zones.

"It's going to have a big impact," Guard said, adding that officials estimate first-year revenues of up to $2.8 billion. "So it will have serious impacts on the competitiveness of European travel, and on the periphery, mean for higher haulage costs through countries."

A new satellite tolling service in Germany alone is expected to generate 650 million euros per year, or about $758 million U.S., in additional revenue.

ESA intends to incorporate the Europe-wide tolling system into Galileo, Europe's planned satellite navigation hoped to begin operation in 2008. Galileo would consist of 30 satellites arranged in three circular orbits to create a worldwide network.

Satellites are also helping space agencies tackle the digital divide, that barrier that separates rural areas from online technology centers because of a lack of broadband infrastructure.

To counter this, the European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a project that would use a combination of satellite receivers and wireless networks to outfit some of the most remote areas of Scotland and England with high-speed broadband capabilities.

The project, Broadband Access for Rural Regeneration with DVB-RCS (BAARD), is driven by commercial needs, ESA officials say. Businesses hoping to move into more rural locations are typically hampered by a lack of broadband infrastructure.

BAARD organizers began work in June and plan to begin trials in 24 business parks across the United Kingdom, each with at least five broadband end-users. In the trials, each business park would setup a wireless local area network, or LAN, that would be connected to a broadband hub via a two-way satellite.

The hope, according to the BAARD project description, is to hammer out a smooth and seamless integration between wireless LAN and two-way satellite operations. Other goals also include keeping bandwidth manageable while still providing a flexible service.

Although BAARD's primary focus is on business needs, if it's successful it could be adapted to serve rural communities hoping to hook into the Internet. It's ground component, the wireless LAN, has a radius of just over a mile (two kilometers), so a cost-effective version would be useful in small towns or villages.

"I think we need a renewable energy initiative, and part of it should include these space solar power plants," says Martin Hoffert, a physics professor at New York University who specializes in alternative energy technology.

Space Solar Power (or SSP) could be harvested by satellites using immense solar panels, which then beam the energy to receiving stations on the ground. There are still a number of hurdles facing such systems, not the least of which is lack of funding, Hoffert said.

"The problem right now is that NASA does not have dedicated funds for this," he told SPACE.com.

John Mankins, NASA's chief technologist for space flight enterprise, said the last fully-funded SSP study by the agency concluded in 2001, although a joint study with the National Science Foundation is still underway and scheduled to wrap up soon.

Interest in SSP won't vanish soon, especially since more dedicated projects are underway in Europe and Japan, Mankins said.

Since NASA began studying SSP concepts in the 1970s, there have been drastic leaps in solar cell technology and solid-state devices -- crucial in converting voltage from the cells into a beam of energy for transmission, Mankins said. The most modern solar cells have efficiencies of up to 31 percent, meaning they convert that much of the light into energy, compared to the 10 percent of some of the earliest designs.

A space-based solar power plant would be exposed to eight times as much sunlight as on Earth, where the atmosphere and clouds can cause interference. So the more light that can be converted into energy, the more power a satellite can generate, Hoffert said.

"In certain orbits, these satellites could generate continuous solar energy, and that's an extremely valuable asset that we haven't tapped yet," Hoffert said, adding that scientific breakthroughs aren't needed to make space power plants a reality, just $100 million to $1 billion in committed funds for the project. "I think we could do this by 2015."