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Elon Musk's Next Mission: Internet Satellites
An anonymous reader writes: According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk is looking at a new project: smaller, cheaper satellites that can provide internet access for people all across the world. "Mr. Musk is working with Greg Wyler, a satellite-industry veteran and former Google Inc. executive, these people said. Mr. Wyler founded WorldVu Satellites Ltd., which controls a large block of radio spectrum. In talks with industry executives, Messrs. Musk and Wyler have discussed launching around 700 satellites, each weighing less than 250 pounds, the people said. That is about half the size of the smallest communications satellites now in commercial use. The satellite constellation would be 10 times the size of the largest current fleet, managed by Iridium Communications Inc. ... The smallest communications satellites now weigh under 500 pounds and cost several million dollars each. WorldVu hopes to bring the cost of manufacturing smaller models under $1 million, according to two people familiar with its plans."
Shades of Teledesic!
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic
The idea is not new, the technology is probably better, especially for efficient solid state RF transmitters, success depends on the spectrum available and the money. Do note that one of the gotchas in satellite internet access is that it is not easy to for apartment dwellers to get an adequate signal, whereas rural users should rejoice, as they usually get left out by the wireline/cable providers..
But I don't relish the possibility of something like this having a kill switch. We need an internet that nobody can interfere with, independent of the current business model, we also need the same for food, shelter, energy, and transportation, so I guess I'm barking up a tree without a paddle.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
We're going to need this to get around Hollywood's increasingly weird hash of restrictions on streamed content. Let's see now: one network we can stream TV episodes from the day after air, another network that makes us wait a week, another network with certain shows mysteriously missing, another network whose commercial always freeze and require an app restart, and all those networks that let you stream so long as your cable company is one of their three Verify Your Provider choices.
If Musk doesn't build this network, Pirate Bay will.
Soon (if not already) individuals will be able to afford their own personal spy satellites.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The 90's are calling. They want their failed ideas back. Did anyone ever tell Musk that the only reason that Iridium operates at all is because the assets were bought out of bankrupcy for pennies on the dollar? It wasn't so good for Motorola Space, which no longer exists. Still, it might be a good way for Musk to get more government subsidies.
an ill wind that blows no good
Maybe, but dropping his rather formidable name into a venture produces instant positive reception.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
High latency is right. Back around 1999 I got sick of waiting for Charter to flip the switch on broadband and got Echostar/Dish 2-way. My ping times were around 800ms for the trip to satellites 22,000 miles out. Luckily, I only had to deal with it for a year.
Cranking up a multiplayer game of Serious Sam with my son on our LAN was funny though... the games would appear on the internet, and people would try and join. Satellite wasn't conducive to multiplayer games, for sure.
I hope this works well for them, and I can buy access to the service several years from now. If the satellites pass messages directly to each other and could relay messages between two customers on the ground with the only centralized communications occurring in orbit, then it seems to me that it could be more challenging for organizations like the NSA to get in the middle of large numbers of those user communications simultaneously.
Yeah, ping is a issue. A very large one. And if this goes on ahead, its going to be the nr 1 issue. Now, it would not surprise me that the bandwidth could be good, but even then, ping is a big issue.
These will not be high latency. If you have 700 satellites more-or-less evenly distributed around the globe (say from 60S to 60N latitude) and you want a minimum of 45 degree elevation to the nearest satellite, they can be lower than 400 miles altitude, or 600 miles away. Assuming that the system will bounce signals from the satellites to a distributed network of fiber connected ground stations, latency should only be 10ms more than a pure cable transmissions.
Previous satellite internet to geosynchronous satellites are nothing like this.
I agree with other commenters that this is pretty unlikely, but SpaceX and Tesla were quite unlikely to succeed as well.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Replying to undo accidental moderation.
I'm sure these will be smaller than the Irridium satellites, but I have to wonder about satellite flare . Irridium satellites can ruin long exposure images. But there are only 66 of those. I have to wonder what 700 birds are going to do. Even at a much lower magnitude, they could show up in long exposure images very easily.
Free space communications also have the advantage of a group velocity of c, rather than c / 1.5. This may not seem like much a difference, but it's enough that there is a considerable amount of research going into air-core fiber (although air-core is also promising for high power due to lower non-linearity).
I bet you could put together a software satellite simulator to test your design for significantly less than what it'd cost to launch one satellite. The math to describe an orbit isn't particularly hard -- it's basically just trig. Put a couple dozen fake birds in fake orbit, set up your fake antennas on the ground and start pushing fake packets between them. No sense in building a rocket if that tells you it's not going to work.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What I like about the projects elon does, is that they generally just take expensive existing tech and make it cheaper so the masses can benefit from it. Compare this to many companies now that simply try to carve out a monopoly position through unproductive business practices or make luxuries for rich people. I hope others follow his lead. We need more companies pushing progress rather than playing legal and accounting games.
An array of satellites will provide a very nice downlink. Now how do you do the uplink?
Current satellite internet does it two ways: one, by standard old telephone modem. I suppose you could do it by wireless phone as well, but the basic problem is the same - very low bandwidth. The other way is by a microwave transmitter - which requires professional installation, and is a highly dangerous thing to have in a consumer environment. (Jack goes on the roof to fix a loose shingle while Jill is shopping online... and hey presto, Jack and Jill aren't having kids).
This suffers from the same problems that Iridium had:
* The people in the world with money to buy this already have good Internet access.
* The system doesn't work until it's global: you need to pay for the entire system before you get customers.
Land-based networks can build out a region at a time, starting in the wealthiest areas, creating paying customers who provide the capital for the next phase of expansion. Satellite systems are egalitarian, which sounds nice but is a problem: if you need 700 satellites to cover the globe but can only afford 350, you get global coverage that only works half the time, which nobody wants to pay for. And you have to set your asking price lower than what the poorest community that can't afford cell service can pay, which is a very low limbo bar to get under, and getting lower all the time.
LEO satellites, like these are progressed to be have very, very little latency. GEO satellites are so far out that's a big problem, but the latency on these is only a couple hundred miles. Depending upon route, you can sometimes get lower coast to coast pings than terrestrial.
Focus on the launch platform, get that cheap and you own the World.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Their Falcon Heavy launcher would be able to launch more than 50 of those in one shot bring the launch cost at just under 2M per bird witch is quite cheap.
Good for movies (except bandwidth is REALLY expensive) and the ping times to space and back make ssh unusable.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I can't understand the cult of personality around this near-convicted pervert and sex offender. This guy shouldn't be given more attention.
Sex offender? I think you've confused Elon Musk with someone else.
well, we live in a ridiculous time in history where some people can actually make money shooting things into space, or providing internet to people groups that any other sane superpower would have handily enslaved for their laborious productivity (IMF is close but not nearly physically painful enough).
If anyone can do it, it'll be Musk. He does what he Musk, because, he can...for the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.
But there's no sense crying over every mistake.
You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are still alive.
I'm not even angry.
I'm being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data make a beautiful line.
And we're out of beta.
We're releasing on time.
So I'm GLaD. I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are still alive.
Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you'll find someone else to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa
THAT WAS A JOKE.
HAHA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway, this cake is great.
It's so delicious and moist.
Look at me still talking
when there's Science to do.
When I look out there, it makes me GLaD I'm not you.
I've experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are still alive.
And believe me I am still alive.
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive.
While you're dying I'll be still alive.
And when you're dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE
what?
oh, that must have been the beer...
His ideas are always lunacy/fringe. Ready to see some new ideas from more sane people.
As long as it's got IPv6 built in.
I don't understand why I still cannot get native IPv6 at home. I can tunnel it, sure, but that's a pain in the ass.
I have a /64 IPv6 block from my datacenter. Why can't I get one at home?
Idiot.
That's why these and others like it are LEO. The latency is not much different from DSL.
Learn to love Alaska
LEO vs GEO
with LEO, the ping is in the mid 100s. Kind of meh for twitch fighters but FPSes with good netcode it is doable.