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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.
A few hundred satellites at 750 miles altitude are not really that much of a problem, unless you're orbiting at the same altitude. Space is big. Even LEO is big.
I think we do need an international agreement on orbital bands. Human spaceflight OK in some bands, others reserved for cheap junk, others reserved for expensive junk, so the cheap junk doesn't take out the expensive junk or the humans.
. . . and ZMODEM, and other latency-friendly protocols. . . .
Orbits are many, valuable orbits not so much. The first few hundred kms are unusable due to atmospheric drag. Then comes LEO and the optimal solution is usually as close as possible, greater bandwidth/resolution, lower latency, shorter orbital period and more payload, less fuel. Then a lot of empty space before GEO, which is obviously quite narrow because otherwise it wouldn't be geo-synchronous and everyone who wants to receive signals need a much more expensive and complicated tracking antenna and multiple satellites to keep 24x7 coverage. True there's certain differences with frequency bands as well, but not anything like in space.
I'd rather just invest in cell phone towers (you can daisy chain these with point-to-point beams if cables are unfeasible/too expensive) and smartphones. Some 92% of the world's population is already covered by a cell phone signal, more people in India have cell phones than running water. They just don't use it for the Internet, yet. Because I really doubt the world's poor is going to have satellite reception equipment, this will be a fixed thing for schools and such. But then you'd probably do just as well using the cell phone network as the "last mile" and have a few big Internet gateways to the sky.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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
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'.
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
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.