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Elon Musk's Proposed Internet-by-Satellite System Could Link With Mars Colonies
MojoKid writes You have to hand it to Elon Musk, who has occasionally been referred to as a real life "Tony Stark." The man helped to co-found PayPal and Tesla Motors. Musk also helms SpaceX, which just recently made its fifth successful trip the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver supplies via the Dragon capsule. The secondary mission of the latest ISS launch resulted in the "successful failure" of the Falcon 9 rocket, which Musk described as a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (RUD) event. In addition to his Hyperloop transit side project, Musk is eyeing a space-based Internet network that would be comprised of hundred of micro satellites orbiting roughly 750 miles above Earth. The so-called "Space Internet" would provide faster data speeds than traditional communications satellites that have a geosynchronous orbit of roughly 22,000 miles. Musk hopes that the service will eventually grow to become "a giant global Internet service provider," reaching over three billion people who are currently either without Internet service or only have access to low-speed connections. And this wouldn't be a Musk venture without reaching for some overly ambitious goal. The satellite network would truly become a "Space Internet" platform, as it would form the basis for a direct communications link between Earth and Mars. It's the coming thing.
People get confused between because the current satellite data providers (like HughesNet) are in geosynchronous orbit, which does suffer latency issues
Iridium is a LEO system that does not currently provided data services, and which has a relatively sparse constellation which requires a wide visible horizon to use
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Yeah, I'm a bit worried about what this means for SpaceX, having worked for Boeing when they were trying to push for more communications satellites to help fill up their launch schedules.
A lot of these services (Iridium, or even Metricom Ricochet) might be considered business failures but technological successes. The networks still operate and serve their primary customers (I believe the Ricochet is used by law enforcement)... it's just the shell companies that tried to sell excess bandwidth to the public that failed financially.
Huh actually, the wikipedia page for Iridium mentions that SpaceX is launching the Iridium NEXT satellites this year to be more data-focsed than voice-focused: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... :P
Not sure if this SpaceX constellation is being launched to augment this, or if it's just a business ploy to negotiate more favorable prices with their customer by pretending to go into competition with them