That's interesting about the satellites, thanks.

FT8's technology is brilliant but the FT8 protocol itself is crazy imho. If you're not familiar, it's an almost pure contesting mode: every contact is exchange callsigns and signal reports, done. There is NO place for any personal communication, even "hi!", in the template. This is alluded to in the hackaday thread. But there are related modes like JS8call and Olivia that are more flexible. I do think a pocket tranceiver with a pocket antenna is feasible, especially if the other end has a bigger antenna.