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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.
Of course, the idea that satellite Internet could replace land based connections is silly, as the idea that satellites in LEO could beam data to Mars.
The real thing about cheap satellite Internet is censorship.
In an fantasy world, a transmitter should be cheap, small and unlocalisable from ground.
In the real world, some goverment would kill people for merely possessing an antenna.
And hundreds of microsatellites is more space junk, making even more dangerous orbital tourism.
It really depends on how many sats SpaceX can jam into one launch and how much of their capacity is already committed to other contracts
Teledesic was dependent on other companies for launch, the one demo sat they put up was using Orbital's Pegasus
Wherever You Go, There You Are
I'd wager there's more demand for Internet access in Africa now than 20 years ago, or in other places remote or deprived of infrastructure. The cost back then of getting a 486SX computer (or in 1997, a Pentium laptop), satellite transmission equipment, a way to power and maintain them would have been fantastical if you consider the market might be people without access to sanitation.
Teledesic: Launched on Pegasus rockets which cost your firstborn child. SpaceX: Launched on Falcon rockets which are cheaper than the Russians and Chinese even without reuse. Teledescic: 90s computer and communications tech (this was the era where playing the original Doom game took a high end computer and nerds envied those with ISDN connections). SpaceX: 10 iterations of Moore's Law later. Teledescic: Communcation sats have to be large objects with heavy hydrazine thrusters for stationkeeping. SpaceX: Much smaller satellites available (all the way down to cubesats), with a wide variety of ion thrusters for stationkeeping available.
Yeah, totally the same situation.
Goddard and sci-fi: vaccuum tube. Hyperloop: tube full of thin air. Goddard and sci-fi: maglev. Hyperloop: ground-effect aerofoils. Compressor on each craft. Goddard and sci-fi: massive trains holding huge numbers of passengers. Hyperloop: small computer-timed trains to spread out the load on the track and thus reduce construction costs. Goddard and sci-fi: Trains implausibly deep underground. Hyperloop: built like a monorail. Goddard and sci-fi: tubes take the shortest route to their destination. Hyperloop: Trains go primarily over already-built and permitted infrastructure to reduce right of way and environmental costs / challenges.
Yeah, totally the same situation.
Tesla - Okay, they're quite nice but electric cars aren't exactly a new idea
Aww, you didn't give me an example to compare it to! Let's just go with the EV-1, since that was probably the most modern commercially-produced EV before Tesla EV-1, range 60 miles (older version) to 100 miles (newer version). Tesla Roadster, range 230 miles, and Model S, up to 300. EV-1, 0-60=8 seconds. Tesla Roadster and Model S Performance, 4 seconds. EV-1 production: about 1100. Tesla: produces that many cars in *1 1/2 weeks*. EV-1: Loved by owners but panned by critics. Tesla Model S: not only loved by owners but has been getting some of the highest ratings for any kind of car period.
Your "analogies" are akin to saying "So what if he won the Indy 500 - I raced my go-cart down the street the other day and beat a soap-box racer!"
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
Dude, we're in 2015. It's not surprising Musk's tech has some improvements over the older stuff. You're telling me the Tesla is better than twenty year old electric car models? Am sure it is, but its still an electric car and is being presented in the media as something super-innovative. His satellite plan will have better electronics & be cheaper to launch than in the 90s? Very good, still all about launching micro-sats to provide broadband, though.
Seems like these days we dust out the older innovations, improve them slightly then boast about how clever we are. Improved versions are great. Original, they are not.
What next? Improved VR goggles but using modern computer graphics and solid state sensors to improve response times?
Or perhaps digital watches with inbuilt computing functions, kind of like the ones we had in the 80s, but 'smarter'?
Maybe someone will even take the idea of a rocket plane like the X-15 and make a modern version that can take tourists on trips to low-Earth orbit?
SpaceX need something to launch to generate the economies of scale required in the launch market to really slash launch costs (i.e by mass-producing reusable rockets and flying them a lot). This isn't a bad one, and it could be much cheaper than previous attempts.