A few months ago a friend of mine from Fore Systems told me about the 'ACTS' project. NASA and Ohio-State and quite a few others were doing research into the Gigabit Satelite Network.

Anybody heard anything about this?

The Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) provides for the development and flight test of high-risk, advanced communications satellite technology. http://kronos.lerc.nasa.gov/acts/acts.html