Andrew Sarangan wrote:

Most of the times I am writing proposals or evaluating other peoples
proposals, so I don't know ahead of time what resources I might need.
I may need to pull an article from a journal, or search for a piece of
information on a government database. Besides, I don't like the idea
of syncing everything that is on my server to a laptop because of the
security risk. On an aircraft that costs hundreds of millions, surely
there must be a way to link to the internet via some satellite link.
If Southwest offered internet access, I would happily take their bench
seats over private suites in a luxury airline that did not offer data
service.

Singapore Airlines used to have the Boeing Connexion service for
broadband internet. Fees were something like $30 for unlimited access on
the flight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connexion_by_Boeing

As noted in the above link, Boeing decided to shut down the commercial
service about a year ago, since they couldn't attract enough customers.

As far as the problem of having to bring a laptop, an alternative for
many people will be the use of a U3 enabled USB drive, which carries the
software and data you want. A traveler would use the computer system
provided by the airline, and not have to carry a laptop.

http://www.u3.com/

The U3 drive doesn't leave anything on the host computer, so there is a
limited security risk.