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SpaceX Files FCC Application For Internet Access Network With 4,425 Satellites (geekwire.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: SpaceX has laid out further details about a 4,425-satellite communications network that's expected to provide global broadband internet access, with its Seattle-area office playing a key role in its development. The plan is explained in an application and supporting documents filed on Tuesday with the Federal Communications Commission. In the technical information that accompanied its application, SpaceX said it would start commercial broadband service with 800 satellites. That service would cover areas of the globe from 15 degrees north to 60 degrees north, and from 15 degrees south to 60 degrees south. That leaves out some portions of Alaska, which would require a temporary waiver from the FCC. Eventually, the network would grow to 4,425 satellites, transmitting in the Ku and Ka frequency bands. "Once fully deployed, the SpaceX system will pass over virtually all parts of the Earth's surface and therefore, in principle, have the ability to provide ubiquitous global service," SpaceX said. The satellites would orbit the planet at altitudes ranging from 714 to 823 miles (1,150 to 1,325 kilometers) -- well above the International Space Station, but well below geostationary satellites. SpaceX said it would follow federal guidelines to mitigate orbital debris. Each satellite would weigh 850 pounds (386 kilograms) and measure 13 by 6 by 4 feet (4 by 1.8 by 1.2 meters), plus solar arrays, SpaceX said. Operating lifetime was estimated at five to seven years per satellite.
With this move, won't SpaceX be competing with their own clients like Iridium?
... that'll be another 4425 bits of space junk. Genius idea - utterly pollute near space just so some company can make a short term profit on something thats a nice to have rather than essential infrastructure.
"SpaceX said it would follow federal guidelines to mitigate orbital debris"
And how does it plan to do that exactly? They're too high to be sent down to burn up in the atmosphere and too low to be sent off into a parking orbit.
Rural Africans etc. will install satellite tracking dishes and there'll be a half minute interruption every few minutes as satellites fly by? Or it doesn't need line of sight?
2/3rds of the satellites will always be over water and have their bandwidth utterly wasted. A significant part of the rest will be over areas where almost nobody lives, or nobody can afford to pay for internet with hard currency. Meanwhile all 400m Europeans that live in the populated 5m square kilometers have to use the same 20 to 100 satellites.
Because the satellites are not geostationary they'll need to use omnidirectional antennae which puts some hard limits on bandwidth, while a lot of people will get FTTH and 5G mobile networks in the next decade.
Iridium can get away with these shortcomings because they target the customers that doesn't care about prices. But I kind of doubt that market can support 4000 satellites
What kind of bandwidth / latency does that translate into?
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That is an enormous amount of weight to send up. Space-x is aiming for (has not achieved) $1,000 per pound. Their current cost is more realistically $4,000.
4425*850*4000=$150,450,000,000. Then add the cost to send up another 4427/7=630 satellites per year (630*850*2000(because they'll get costs way down if they can send up that much material)=$1 billion dollars per year. They need to spend 150 billion dollars initially and an ongoing 1 billion dollars per year.
In 2014 SpaceX had a "market cap" of (optimistically) 12 billion dollars. Let's assumt that 12 billion dollars have already been justified. Now rumors of an IPO have been heard, so let's assume a massive over-the-top IPO: 13 billion dollars. Then add in a billion dollars. (assuming every penny they can scrape together goes to this plan) 12+13+1=26 billion. Using realistic numbers for launch costs and hyper-optimistic numbers for funding, they're about 125 billion dollars short. And I don't see Trump signing a 125 billion dollar Space-X pork bill. If we're very optimistic about launch costs that hypothetical bill could go as low as a still-highly-unlikely 75 billion dollars.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Musk touts his green credintials with Tesla, yet then he proposes something like this. Hypocrite of the first order.
386 kilograms - 13 by 6 by 4 feet (4 by 1.8 by 1.2 meters)
Launch cost $1.79 million per satellite
or $7.93 billion per constellation which last 5-7 years.
Lets say an average cost of $50 million per satellite, which is very low, were looking at $221.3 billion.
So, let's say roughly $230 billion, just to break even over a 7 year life span would require an annual revenue generation of $32 billion. Given that most people without an internet connection would be in rural areas, or poverty striken areas, we're looking maybe $30 per month or $360 per year. So, that would require a user base of 91 million people requiring each satellite to host 20000 people.
The numbers here don't seem to make sense.
First off, it's not "in addition to", it's "instead of". Earth fiber networks don't run on fairy dust either, they also consume power. The internet is one of the biggest power consumers on Earth. That's just the way it is.
Doing my own math. You could fit ~141 in a Falcon Heavy to LEO. They don't say how many are actually planned, or even whether they plan to use Falcoln 9 or Heavy. Taking into account the higher altitude and practical considerations, let's say 60 satellites per flight on Heavies. So that's about 75 flights. Per FH flight, RP1 mass is ~400 tonnes and LOX mass ~935 tonnes. LOX is cheap and low energy to produce, so let's focus on the RP1. Total that's 30k tonnes of RP1. Which is 1,4TJ, or about 380 MWh higher heat value, which is 100-200MWh electricity generation potential. I didn't find how much energy Chicago consumes per year, but a reference on MIT's School of Engineering states that NYC consumes 60 TWh electricity per year. So I think you're way off in your estimate.
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
how do you solve the logistical problem of replacing 10 satellites all in completely different positions around the earth in one launch?
You don't. The way Iridium handles it is having some of the satellites in orbit allocated as spares and not in active service. They have 66 active birds plus six spares. The spares run in a different orbit which circles the earth faster than the active constellation but can still easily transfer to the correct orbit, minimizing fuel needs for activating one in exchange for a longer time spent waiting for the orbits to sync up properly for the transfer.
Basically you set things up like a large "cloud" host where there's enough spare capacity that individual device failures just aren't really a priority and you can replace the failed hardware in bulk every so often rather than having to do something one-off immediately.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
7 year max lifespan, times 365 days a year, is 2555 days of maximum lifespan.
So for 4400 satellites, how exactly are they going to maintain a launch rate capable of sustaining this? This would inevitably require maintenance launches 2 or 3 times per week.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
Such an endeavour would shake up China’s censorship of the internet (or anyone else for that matter). There’s a strong potential here for Internet 2.0 — as independent of terrestrial WAN, while "Free" in the sense that might operate independent from the regulations of any one country.
SpaceX or not, the number of satellites in orbit is going to significantly increase. Today's satellites are far lighter and more capable than before, demand is higher than ever before, and launch prices are falling across the board. Also, it's critical to note that LEO satellites like this are generally much smaller and cheaper to launch than GEO satellites.
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
I dunno- I went with 4425 satellites x 386 kg/satellite x 1150km = ~2TJ, no? Sure, for NYC I'm missing a factor of 100,000, but I'm also assuming no rocket weight, fuel weight, wind resistance, and, for that matter, ideal thrust. Are you sure I'm that far off?
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She actually said: "You can actually see Russia from Land here in Alaska."
Video below.
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We in fact desperately need an orbital based internet to break the earth bound telecommunication firms. Expect Cable companies to lobby heavily against this.
Each satellite should have a system to retrieve it to earth. By that, I mean a small system that would be deployed upon failure to push the satellite down to lower earth orbit until it plunges and burns up in atmosphere. This should in fact be a requirement of EVERY satellite.
Which is perfectly true: Diomede_Islands, for one. They're only a couple of miles apart.
"Operating lifetime was estimated at five to seven years per satellite."
Doesn't that seem like a really sort span of time to have to send something into space? That means in like any given year you could be replacing 20% of your satellites? I guess perhaps with the idea that technology would be advancing so a 30 year old satellite might not really support current technology... Anyway still seems a bit crazy...
2TJ is 556 MWh.
4425*386*1150000*9,81/1.000.000.000.000 is 0.2TJ anyway, if you're just looking at altitude (which is a terrible way to approach orbital vehicle energy analysis)
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
Tesla uses internet to update and monitor their vehicles.
This would give Tesla access around the globe to perform those updates to any Tesla, no matter WHERE in the world it is.
And they would no longer have to pay telecoms fees to use their cellular systems.
Teslas
This will enable them to do remote updates, monitoring, etc all over the globe and no longer have to pay telecoms for access to their 4G cellular networks.
22 million subscribers @$60/month or $720/year for lowest tier of internet.
$14,400,000,000/year in revenue.
100+ million broadband users in the U.S.
220+ million cell phone users in the U.S.
Let's theorize a $50/month fee for internet and cell service. That's
$600/year. Let's say these combine to 200 million users.
That's $10,000,000,000 ($10 billion/year)
What if Space X incorporates these so called satellites into EVERY rocket launch. Think about it. They send up a rocket, it is launched, encloses a commercial payload. A cap is opened up, it is released. Done.
Wait, we just sent up a cap, and an enclosure. Could we modify our cap to double as a signal dish. Can our enclosure double as solar panels. Can we turn every rocket into an internet providing satellite?
I thought satellite Internet was one of the worst options available? Most expensive, least performance?
For what? Telecom industry is a 2e12$ business(yearly) globally. If one company can provide 1Gbps internet anywhere in the world, maybe tag TV on it, potentially even stuff the capability into cellphones.... mon-dieu, that could be the global monopoly to beat East India Company out of the history books. Are they actually capable of doing it, I don't know, but if they did, well they sky is the limit as far as potential goes.