SpaceX Plans To Send the First of Its 4,425 Super-Fast Internet Satellites Into Space in 2019 (cnbc.com)

Elon Musk's SpaceX has laid out a plan to create a network of internet-providing satellites around Earth. The company hopes to start launching satellites into space in 2019, and will continue to send them in phases until 2024, when the network is expected to reach capacity. From a report:On Wednesday, Patricia Cooper, SpaceX's vice president of satellite government affairs, said later this year, the company will start testing the satellites themselves, launch one prototype before the end of the year and another during the "early months" of 2018. Following that, SpaceX will begin its satellite launch campaign in 2019. "The remaining satellites in the constellation will be launched in phases through 2024," Cooper said before the Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology. [...] SpaceX argues that the U.S. lags behind other developed nations in broadband speed and price competitiveness, while many rural areas are not serviced by traditional internet providers. The company's satellites will provide a "mesh network" in space that will be able to deliver high broadband speeds without the need for cables.

Comments

That's a lot of satellites

[colinrichardday]

That's a lot of satellites.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[fisted]

And a lot of latency.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[EndlessNameless]

Not really. I don't think 25-50 ms is that bad, and I've played online with far worse.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Guspaz]

Not really, 25-35ms round trip. Not super amazing, but not all that bad. Remember, these are LEO satellites, not GEO. The round trip distance will be roughly 1/30th that of a geostationary satellite.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Fire_Wraith]

Not as much as you would think. SpaceX is talking about having a large number of satellites much closer to the ground, which means vastly reduced latency. They're claiming it may be as low as 25ms. Specifically, they're talking about satellites that will "operat[e] in 83 orbital planes (at altitudes ranging from 1,110km to 1,325km)." Compare that to HughesNet whose satellites operate at an altitude of about 35,400km.

So while direct fiber on the ground is still going to be the best possible case, this might be close enough to be reasonably competitive in a way that existing satellite providers aren't.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[jrmcferren]

I would be more concerned with Jitter, Depending on the pricing of service and if it was portable I may consider a terminal for various portable applications and VoIP is one application that is practically a must have.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[D.McG.]

And a lot of latency.

Nope. The satellites will be at an altitude of only 1,100 km; not a geostationary orbit of 35,786 km. That's only 3% latency of typical GEO satellite internet.

On top of that, the links between satellites in the mesh will run faster in the vacuum of space than through glass fiber in underwater cables.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[fisted]

I don't think 25-50 ms rtt is bad either.
But I don't think it will actually be 25-50 ms rtt.

That said, where does the 25-50ms range come from?

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[EndlessNameless]

Apparently, they are going to use phased arrays to track the satellites, so jitter should only be a real concern once every half-hour or so when it switches satellites.

I wouldn't call it a simple problem, but each piece of the puzzle is relatively well-understood now.

Getting a fleet of satellites into orbit will be expensive, but being a launch company takes some of the sting out of that.

Still, with a fleet of 4K satellites and 5- to 7-year lifespans, they will need to replace hundreds of satellites annually. They need some serious economies of scale for this to work.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[fisted]

The much lower orbits are a good point, I hadn't thought of that.

That makes the 25-50ms figure a good deal less implausible -- but I'll believe it when I see it. There's all sorts of other potential delays - and also greater distances to span compared with surface cables.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

So while direct fiber on the ground is still going to be the best possible case

Being slightly pedantic here, but fiber vs. LEO (or even MEO in some cases) satellites depends on how much fiber you're talking about. LEO or maybe some MEO satellites can provide a lower latency from say, Singapore to London, than fiber, since light in the fiber is only 2/3 the speed of the radio to the satellites.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Kjella]

Well you probably don't want to do high end gaming on it, but my ping to /. via fiber from Norway is a stable 133 ms. GEO = 2 * 120 ms latency at lightspeed + overhead, SpaceX's orbits about 2 x 4 ms + overhead and they're aiming for 25-35 ms actual. Even if they have to bounce if off another satellite or two it should cut latency by 200+ ms compared to current satellite offerings. Basically it'd make them quite ordinary users for anything but twitch games.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Fire_Wraith]

Yes, there's a lot that goes into it. Assuming a direct fiber route from point A to point B, fiber is likely to be faster than going up to a satellite, bouncing to another satellite, and back down. As with most things though, there's a difference between theory and practice, because my data isn't taking a straight route from London to Singapore (well unless I'm using IPoAC*, but that has its own issues). Terrestrial links can hit a lot of latency going over undersea cables, for instance.


*See RFC 1193 if you're not familiar.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

probably a combination of LEO satellite altitude, the speed of light and the capability of the comms gear on the satellite

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Iridium network is LEO, but has a limited number of ground stations and must frequently hand-off between satellites before getting back to ground station and a terrestrial network

There are a lot of opportunities for more ground stations to reduce overall latency if that is the path that Space-X wants to follow... Maybe every Tesla car will also act as a ground station :)

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Dunbal]

The problem with fiber is the fiber companies who lease space on their trunks, and your local ISP who is a fucking cheapskate and tries to stick 400% capacity on the inadequate space they've leased. But since they're a monopoly, what the fuck are you going to do about it? So you never see fiber speed even though you pay fiber speed.

Hopefully this will shake things up a little more. Or maybe the US will adopt another 3rd world policy and ban satellite internet use except through the state approved and owned companies :)

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[EndlessNameless]

Satellites in geostationary orbit are about 500-600 ms, with most of that time being due to the bounce out to orbit and back.

Since these satellites are 1/30 of the distance (~1200 km vs ~35000 km), the ping time should drop significantly.

Light traveling in a vacuum (or through the atmosphere) is noticeably faster than light in a fiber optic cable. And sat-to-sat links are straight lines, whereas fiber gets laid wherever there are rights of ways---so the satellite mesh may offer superior latency for some routes.

All things considered, this really sounds doable. Replacing hundreds of satellites every year would have been an inconceivably expensive cost just a few years ago. But with cheaper launches, smaller satellites, and a potential global market... I would say that this approach makes more sense today than geostationary satellites. As long as there is enough demand to keep lifting new hardware.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[spire3661]

What im afraid of it will be TOO cheap and companies will embed a connection to it in all devices that will always expect to be connected. Right now i can pull the cable modem out and i go off the grid for everything connected to it. Imagine a future where you dont control the connection at all....

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, these are LEO satellites

That puts them in the neighborhood of 100 light years from earth. The internet won't be quite as fast as you thought.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[DrXym]

Theoretically a mesh of leo satellites could also route packets far faster in a lot of cases than if the packet went up and came back down and through a bunch of backbones. Could even cache stuff similar to some CDN services.

In practice it could also suck badly. Have to wait and see. Price is important too.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Faraday cage.. or tinfoil hat my friend.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[spire3661]

You gonna faraday cage your wall sized TV?

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Immerman]

Almost certainly you'll need a special transceiver to communicate with the satellites - low power wireless communications at a distance of 60+ miles is not so simple. That's why DirectTV, etc come with those parabolic pizza-pan dishes to focus the signal onto the antenna. Without that large, bidirectional signal "amplifier" you'll need considerably more sophisticated electronics, assuming the signal can be detected over the background noise at all.

Though... satellite phones are getting increasingly compact, so perhaps the technology isn't so far away to do it cheaply.

Of course you could always just snip the antenna if you wanted to be off the grid - though I wouldn't put it past manufacturers to require working connection even for things that have no non-surveillance need for it. They're already falling all over themselves to integrate surveillance into pretty much every net-connected device made. They'd lose some customers who can't get a signal where they want the device, but the surveillance of everyone else is probably more profitable.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[John.Banister]

I believe they're using the word "pizza box" to describe the size and shape of the antenna at the customer end.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Rei]

Indeed. It's a phased-array antenna. It'll look like a flat sheet of individual printed mini-antennas. Switching satellites will be basically instant. With phased array you can even allocate varying fractions of a single dish to multiple satellites at once.

And as was noted, latency will be low, as this is a LEO constellation, not GEO. LEO isn't actually very high up. In many cases latency will be lower than with ground networks - fewer hops, no getting routed through particularly out-of-the-way locations, etc.

This is a big gamble on SpaceX's part, but while very difficult, there's no fundamental barriers. If they succeed, the revenue potential is almost unthinkably large - they could become the entire planet's ISP. It would be very difficult for ground-based networks to compete, due to all of the fibre you'd have to lay, versus how little SpaceX's launch costs per satellite are. SpaceX might have competition, however - Blue Origin appears to be pursuing the exact same sort of plan as well. Honestly, I'd just be ignoring Blue Origin (don't care much for the way they approach most things), if not for how wealthy the guy backing the company is and how much in love with the project he seems to be.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[grahamsz]

It makes great sense from a business perspective. I suspect the internet operations side will be a subsidiary that's either public or jointly held with google. That subsidiary will then be singularly responsible for the lions share of the global launch market. It'll generate billions in business for SpaceX without compromising the private ownership that allows Musk to pursue Mars.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Rei]

And the big thing for SpaceX, is that by ensuring a continuous market for large numbers of launches, they can ensure economies of scale for launches as well. Which gets launch costs even lower.

I couldn't possibly wish them more luck in succeeding with this project.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[grahamsz]

The distances are unlikely to be significantly greater. You'll be higher up, but the links at a higher level are going to be straight lines, and not fibers that follow rights of way and the curvature of the earth. Then consider that light is about 50% faster in a vacuum.

For long distance intercontinental routes it's entirely possible that this will be faster end-to-end.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Immerman]

I also wouldn't put it past him to be planning to refuel the satellites in orbit - it would be a wonderful, highly scalable testing ground for autonomous orbital refueling systems, a potentially incredibly lucrative market when you consider that station-keeping fuel is usually the limiting factor on a satellite's useful life. Especially since he would be his own first, and probably largest, customer. And, from there he might even be considering using the refueling craft as a "tugboat" to haul satellites back to a reentry-capable vehicle for refurbishment as well.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[jon3k]

The quoted figure is actually 25-35 ms:

SpaceX expects its own latencies to be between 25 and 35ms, similar to the latencies measured for wired Internet services. Current satellite ISPs have latencies of 600ms or more, according to FCC measurements.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[sims 2]

I'm still hoping that eventually all cellphones will be able to do sattelite communication in an emergency but it doesn't appear that anyone is interested in it.

Re: That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is not the fiber but all of the routes that terminate it in between. In 2002 I was reaching SFO from SOF and back in about 110mswith 6 hops only. The same is now about 210ms with close to 30 hops. The Loral/Orion Cyberstar satellite provided SFO to NYC and back in 230ms steady with next hop.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[bigpat]

If they can reduce costs sufficiently and get some additional uses out of the rockets that have flown multiple times, then this could be a brilliant way to create value while further demonstrating how many times their rockets can fly.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[sims 2]

When I was using Anik F2 for internet years ago my average ping was about 570ms The ADSL2+ line at work now averages somewhere around 40ms.

As for demand what kind of caps are going to be on this new service? Is it finally going to be something decent like 1TB?

If It offers a decent speed say 50Mbps with a 1TB or higher cap and would still work even if it's raining here or in new york i'd even switch from the LTE connection I have now.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Immerman]

Even if you could lay fiber in a "straight" (great circle) line, London to Singapore is still ~11,000 km as the crow flies. That's too far to have a line of sight between overhead satellites - they'd need to be about 3,300km up for that, but assuming the relayed signal roughly follows a great circle, you're talking about a relayed satelite signal distance of roughly 1,200km*2 + 11,000km*((1.2+6.4)/6.4) = 15,500km. Factor in the fiber signal speed being only 2/3 that of a free space signal, and a "top priority" satellite signal could make the trip in (15,500 / (11,000 * 3/2)) = 94% of the time needed for "straight line" fiber. Within the margin of error of the calculations.

And London to Singapore is only just over 1/4 of the way around the world - anything more distant, Like say between pretty much any two points in the US and Eurasia, will have decidedly less transmission lag via satellite. Electronics overhead may of course devour those gains, but then you're not going to find any direct-line fiber options either.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[John.Banister]

I don't know about them being the entire planet's ISP. I reckon China would shoot down any satellite providing uncensored internet access to Chinese citizens. Other governments might also object to a setup that gives the citizens in their cities more reason to object to the state owned telecommunications service providing similar service at greater expense to rural customers, arguing instead that rural customers should get SpaceX vouchers rather than communications infrastructure.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Immerman]

Between nearby locations that will indeed be an issue - you've got an extra ~2,400 km vertical component, and about 19% greater "horizontal" distance than a perfectly straight (great circle) point-to-point surface cable. But light speed is also a lot faster through air/vacuum - fiber is supposedly about 2/3 the speed, and copper is... well, laughable in comparison, really. So, assuming you've got a perfectly straight fiber link the break-even point for lag is about 1/4 of the way around the planet, ignoring delays within the nodes of each path.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Immerman]

Of course ground stations are only relevant when communicating with someone not also connecting via MuskNet...

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Three things prevent that from happening
1. Different frequency
2. Needs more capable antenna
3. Licensing/Money

The first two are subject to changes in technology, the last may be unsurmountable

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

I would only plan on using satellite comms if I have clear horizon. They have not proven successful in large cities (at least at street level, a roof mounted antenna may do better) or canyons/valleys

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

That was my initial thought too. But after clicking on the link to the article we find that the highest altitude will be 1325KM above the earth...which comes out to ~4.4 ms of 'speed of light' latency one way, or ~9 both ways. Provided the hardware doesn't add significant lag/latency in processing the bits it would seem that a latency in the 40 to 50 ms may be reasonably doable which is on-par with ground based physical lines of any reasonable distance.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Ping half way around the world.

Though so!

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends...

Basically, satellite comms are much more expensive than landline.
If it is cheaper to drop it to a landline, then they will use the landline, even if both endpoints are using satellite

That is how Iridium is set up, even though it is not in the data business

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Areyoukiddingme]

And as was noted, latency will be low, as this is a LEO constellation, not GEO. LEO isn't actually very high up. In many cases latency will be lower than with ground networks - fewer hops, no getting routed through particularly out-of-the-way locations, etc.

Yes and no. While the first couple of hops are quite straightforward, most of the Internet, and especially all the big server farms, is still connected to the major fiber backbones, and therefore still subject to the vagaries of whatever whacky peering agreements the MBAs can dream up. No longer being subjected to the wankeries of routing Comcast indulges in will certainly help, but the other end isn't exactly pristine.

If they succeed, the revenue potential is almost unthinkably large - they could become the entire planet's ISP.

Also yes and no. Sure they potentially have a global reach, but securing spectrum licenses in 250 jurisdictions will take longer than actually launching the constellation (given the SpaceX launch tempo). More to the point, while phased array antennas are indeed a little bit magical, they're still subject to bandwidth limitations. There's only so many bytes per second that can be crammed into the spectrum they're using, and I suspect that number is considerably less than the number of bytes per second currently being shoved around the world at any given time.

Don't get me wrong. I'll gleefully subscribe to SpaceX Internet if the numbers work out, but I was a good deal more excited about Google Fiber (and oh boy was that misplaced) than I am about SpaceX satellite internet service. Fiber throughput is upgradeable simply by replacing the transceivers, and has a much much higher bandwidth limit than any chunk of spectrum SpaceX is likely to get their hands on.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Ranbot]

They need some serious economies of scale for this to work.

Musk specifically mentioned rural US, but they could probably service other countries too, like nearby Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, maybe Central America.

And once the satellites are in orbit, why couldn't they offer the service to the entire world (similar to how GPS is world-wide)? Seems like 7.5 billion potential customers could probably make that economy of scale work. Maybe my understanding of communication satellites is flawed?

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Areyoukiddingme]

And the big thing for SpaceX, is that by ensuring a continuous market for large numbers of launches, they can ensure economies of scale for launches as well. Which gets launch costs even lower.

There's a hidden benefit as well. Tesla cars currently have cellular antennas and Tesla has to pay cell phone companies to enable the over-the-air updates so highly touted for their vehicles. Once the SpaceX constellation is in orbit, Tesla vehicles can start using it instead (with a service call for existing vehicles and a hardware revision for new ones), and Elon Musk's two biggest companies become very cozy. Either the Tesla company gets a really great price break on vehicle connectivity, or SpaceX starts enjoying a mass market revenue stream, depending entirely on which direction Elon Musk wants to funnel money.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[budgenator]

Of course you could always just snip the antenna if you wanted to be off the grid - though I wouldn't put it past manufacturers to require working connection even for things that have no non-surveillance need for it.

Like Tesla?

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Immerman]

Maybe so. But the iridium network contains only 66 satellites, with extremely limited and long-range inter-satellite communications. Musk is proposing something very different, it would be foolish to make any assumptions about similarities between the two.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't confuse the latency of satellites in the Clarke belt that currently provide "satellite internet" with those in low earth orbit which are much closer to the ground.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[ScentCone]

Well, sure. As long as you don't need connectivity while in even the second-to-top level of a parking garage. Or in a parking lot under some trees. Or when it's snowing.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[joh]

SpaceX doesn't want to become an ISP. In China they would just sell their service to local ISPs to replace cables with satellite links. Think airplanes against railways. You can sell airplanes without having to run them and it's still cheaper for the customer than putting tracks down to every town.

It's actually a quite good idea and the fact that many people out there don't understand it doesn't matter because they won't have to buy it anyway (others will buy it and resell the service to them in much easier to understand terms).

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine most of the payload can be downloaded while the car is outside and/or in motion, taking advantage of the satellite connection. Repeaters might come into play in urban areas, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a backup cellular connection just in case.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Immerman]

Do Teslas actually *require* a working link? I would think that would be a major problem for a whole lot of people who don't get a good signal in their garage, not to mention anyone who parks in an underground parking garage.

Though I suppose a looser "need a link at least every N miles" requirement would be more workable.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Rei]

Yes and no. While the first couple of hops are quite straightforward, most of the Internet, and especially all the big server farms, is still connected to the major fiber backbones, and therefore still subject to the vagaries of whatever whacky peering agreements the MBAs can dream up. No longer being subjected to the wankeries of routing Comcast indulges in will certainly help, but the other end isn't exactly pristine.

We're not talking about server farms, we're talking about connections for every home and business at up to 1Gbps. People can have whatever they want on the ground, but ultimately, to get to end users it's going to go through the constellation.

Also yes and no. Sure they potentially have a global reach, but securing spectrum licenses in 250 jurisdictions will take longer than actually launching the constellation (given the SpaceX launch tempo).

Yes, countries will have the option to not take up "100% net connectivity for your citizens at fiber speeds and low cost". For some reason, I don't think there's going to be many countries refusing that.

. More to the point, while phased array antennas are indeed a little bit magical, they're still subject to bandwidth limitations. There's only so many bytes per second that can be crammed into the spectrum they're using, and I suspect that number is considerably less than the number of bytes per second currently being shoved around the world at any given time.

You're not broadcasting the same data across the entire region that a satellite covers; each narrow beam to each end user is steered (via phased array, on the satellite end) to their specific location. Now of course the beam isn't some perfectly collimated signal, but it doesn't need to be; there's dozens of channels on the satellite.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Guspaz]

> Still, with a fleet of 4K satellites and 5- to 7-year lifespans, they will need to replace hundreds of satellites annually. They need some serious economies of scale for this to work.

They're pretty small satellites (I don't remember the exact dimensions, but it was something vaguely like a cubic meter), so they're going to be putting quite a few of them on each rocket. If they replace 600 a year, that could potentially be doable with nothing more than monthly launches using maybe 3-4 new rockets a year.

Somebody on /r/spacex did a mockup showing 40 satellites on a reasonably sized dispenser and there was still quite a lot of room left in the fairing. Mass will be the question: for RTLS on a 40-satellite launch, assuming the dispenser is 10% of the payload mass, you've got 225 kg per satellite to play with.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Guspaz]

> Yes and no. While the first couple of hops are quite straightforward, most of the Internet, and especially all the big server farms, is still connected to the major fiber backbones, and therefore still subject to the vagaries of whatever whacky peering agreements the MBAs can dream up. No longer being subjected to the wankeries of routing Comcast indulges in will certainly help, but the other end isn't exactly pristine.

SpaceX intends to do as much of the backhaul in space as possible, meaning they can still avoid many of the routing shenanigans by putting uplinks at major peering points. Not all, but many.

The bandwidth limitations are, as you said, the sticking point. Musk has already said that they're not going to be able to replace Comcast in a big city, as the bandwidth density would simply be too high. That said, there are a rather lot of people outside of downtown cores who have poor broadband options and are below the threshold of customer densities where congestion would be an issue. HughesNet has a million subscribers on their GEO service in the US alone, despite their high prices and even higher latency. Xplornet has an even bigger market share, with a quarter million subscribers in Canada (roughly one percent of the population). SpaceX's constellation, if it were to happen, would probably capture just about every single residential satellite broadband customer in the world (at least where SpaceX gets spectrum licenses), since they'd likely end up being moderately cheaper and enormously faster.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're underestimating how small the satellites are...

They're supposed to be in the smallsat class (between 220 - 1100lbs each) So given a single falcon heavy launch can lift 140,660 lb to LEO, that means somewhere between 127 and 639 satellites per launch - so for the full constellation that should be able to get away with between 7 and 34 launches for the whole constellation (I'm betting toward the lower end on weight - so under 15 launches is very feasible) Once the initial constellation is up, 1 or 2 maintenance launches a year should be more than sufficient.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[John.Banister]

So, in the USA, they could just sell their service to Comcast, who will bid very strongly for it, so they don't have competition messing with their pricing structure.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Guspaz]

Refueling the satellites doesn't make sense, since their 5-7 year lifespan is based on technological obsolescence rather than the limitations of the fuel supply for their electric propulsion. They're planning to de-orbit a few hundred satellites a year and replace them with newer and faster ones. Refurbishment doesn't make sense either, as the cost of the satellites is likely to be pretty small in comparison to the cost of launch.

Re: That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

LESS latency as a backbone actually, by half.

Re: That's a lot of satellites

[Type44Q]

I suspect your knowledge of orbital mechanics is virtually nonexistent..

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[budgenator]

Hell between GPS, AI Autopilot, and a real-time satellite datalink to enable remote driving, a stolen car could fingerprint and iris scan the thief, then drive itself to the police station and only unlock the doors when the Officer is ready to make the arrest.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, no way. You want to consume as little power as possible in space and all that power consumed creates heat - then there's the problem of volume/weight/radiation. Doing compute (even routing decisions) consumes a LOT of power and produces a LOT of heat.....not what you want to do in space (ever put your hand behind a decent sized L2/L3 switch/router? The heat generated can be seriously impressive). Putting cache (SSDs) in space is more volume and weight to take to orbit for very little benefit....plus it's MUCH more prone to failure due to radiation. Overall, bad idea.

Re:That's a lot of satellites

[DrXym]

Internet routing in space is already a thing. A mesh is just an extension of that concept. Any mesh system has way more problems than just routing.

Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had a dollar for every one of these hairbrained schemes (with round-trip times larger than your mother) I'd be as rich as Elon

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[slazzy]

To be fair though, launching them into space is the hard part, and they already own the rockets...

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

Ping times are around 25 ms, idiot. Orbits matter.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not hard, but expensive. And I'm not personally real thrilled with more garbage being put up there for something completely unnecessary. I look forward when one fails causing two of them hit and creating a cascade effect blocking us from launching anything at all for several decades while we wait for it to all fall out of orbit.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Moheeheeko]

And I'm not personally real thrilled with more garbage being put up there for something completely unnecessary.

clearly you've never lived in a mountain community that has to rely on satellite communications.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[chispito]

If I had a dollar for every one of these hairbrained schemes (with round-trip times larger than your mother) I'd be as rich as Elon

Almost as dumb as those hairbrained reusable launch vehicle schemes.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[chispito]

Maybe not hard, but expensive. And I'm not personally real thrilled with more garbage being put up there for something completely unnecessary. I look forward when one fails causing two of them hit and creating a cascade effect blocking us from launching anything at all for several decades while we wait for it to all fall out of orbit.

That would require two satellites to fail, in exactly the wrong way. Otherwise, you could simply move the second one until the failed satellite's orbit decays and it burns up.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[balbeir]

Well at least he still has hair to generate these ideas with. Jeff Bezos on the other hand ...

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

It's harebrained, thank you.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "harebrained". And these reusable launch vehicles, is he launching 4000 of them at the same time, launching some as others land, all day long?

That's the difference.

Re: Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

Radio relay is just fine and much better

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

Satellite communications are all good and well but adding another 4000+ satellites with all growing orbiting junkyard along with all the current satellites already in service could cause some problems. Just navigating though all the clutter to venture past Earth's orbit without being holed. Just one little screw traveling at orbital velocity can do a credible amount of damage. But if they do getting the satellites orbited and slotted in the network I would not get rid of the planet based network transmission grids. One good size solar flare could raise havoc with any satellite that isn't hardened like the military and intelligence satellites are. And even the hardened platforms engineered to shrug off EMP burst can be compromised by the particles shot out into space during a solar flare event.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Sir Holo]

Maybe not hard, but expensive. And I'm not personally real thrilled with more garbage being put up there for something completely unnecessary. I look forward when one fails causing two of them hit and creating a cascade effect blocking us from launching anything at all for several decades while we wait for it to all fall out of orbit.

Don't worry. Anything that gets bumped or fails at an orbit of 1200 km will fall back to Earth in short order. There is significant drag in LEO.

You are thinking about space junk at GEO or a LaGrange point. Those places are very far away, and far less populated due to the exponentially increased cost of getting something there. 30x high doesn't mean 30x more expensive for a launch-to-orbit. It's far higher because you have to bring all of your fuel with you. There's a standard equation, but I forget the name for it right now...

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Immerman]

Cascading reactions are unlikely to be a major issue - even with 4000+ satellites we're talking about maybe car-sized objects separated by hundreds of miles, and it's all but impossible for a satellite to "accidentally" move any significant distance in it's orbit without *lots* of warning. Station-keeping thrusters typically amount to pushing a car around with a bottle rocket. You'll have days of warning before it drifts anywhere near you, plenty of time to fire your own bottle-rocket in response to push yourself well clear of it's path.

About the only time you need to worry about cascade reactions at all is if something actually blows up - in which case the debris field can rapidly become too widely dispersed to dodge effectively, especially the smaller bits which are unlikely to do major damage, but may knock off additional small bits from whatever they hit.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Immerman]

If they were all several hundred miles apart, as the satellites will be, I doubt there would be any problems. Despite the fact that the rockets are all accelerating powerfully, while the satellites all sit basically "stationary" in their orbits.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[haruchai]

Well at least he still has hair to generate these ideas with.
Jeff Bezos on the other hand ...

Elon has (very convincing) hairplugs. Here's a photo of him & Peter Thiel in their PayPal days
https://ibb.co/fWYfY5

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[joh]

1200 km is not really Low Earth Orbit anymore. There is very little drag there, this is stable for hundreds or thousands of years.

SpaceX wants to lower the orbit of satellites that are near the end of their service life, so that they decay within a year or so, but failing satellites will stay up there for a very long time. With such huge numbers of satellites they WILL have duds and they WILL have to care for this one way or another.

Re:Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Guspaz]

LEO is 0 to 2000 kilometers, beyond which it's MEO. You're right that these things won't be de-orbiting due to drag, although it's not like failed satellites won't be in a predictable location. If it does become a problem, they could always work on a vehicle for doing cleanup.

Re: Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cheaper for spacex than anyone else on the planet to launch multiple sats at once to LEO. The sats are under 400kg each and their f9 rocket can launch a dozen or more at once. Don't bet against Elon.

Re: Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

They will NOT be stationary orbits, LEO sats are not stationary.

Re: Oh boy, another "satellite internet" scheme

[Immerman]

In their orbits, they pretty much are. The orbit is inherently rotating at umpteen miles per minute, but everything in that orbit is keeping pace. Put a hundred satellites in the same orbit, and they will all remain stationary with respect to each other, just as rocks embedded in the treads of a tire remain stationary with respect to each other, despite the wheel spinning at a substantial speed. Satellites are a bit more mobile in their orbits than those rocks in the treads, but only a bit - like ants wandering around the wheel. The ants may collide, but their collisions will all be at ant speeds, no matter how fast the wheel is spinning.

Collisions between different satellites in different orbits is of course a very different matter, but generally speaking the various orbits orbits in a constellation are chosen so that something will have to go *very* wrong for a satellite to intersect a different orbit - and even if it does, the speeds that would make a collision catastrophic also make it unlikely - it will only intersect the foreign orbit for a fraction of a second. And even then, it will only a problem if a foreign satellite happens to be passing through that same tiny part of it's orbit at that same moment.

alleviate the challenges

[fisted]

This will alleviate the challenges such as digging trenches, laying down fiber and dealing with property rights issues

...and replace those challenges^Westablished practices with much more interesting challenges, like, wireless mesh networks, unreachable satellites, space debris, etc.

Re:alleviate the challenges

[Immerman]

My understanding was that mesh networks are largely a solved problem, just one without much economic incentive outside places where traditional infrastructure is essentially nonexistent.

First thoughts

[Baron_Yam]

I like the idea of more or less global Internet access. I mean, once I've paid Musk's fee... is he going to care if I talk to his satellites from Australia instead of Canada? No matter where I go, if I have power and a dish I should be able to get access.

On the other hand... if the NSA doesn't have a tap on this, I'll be very much surprised. And that bothers me on an ideological level even if it is unlikely to have an immediate and significant effect on me.

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they're using the same frequency range that Teledesic once secured planet-wide (no small feat)

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

of course they'll tap this.. not in the sky (well, *maybe* not in the sky)... but at the uplinks for sure.

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see multiple uplinks distributed across the globe.

Re:First thoughts

[fisted]

In a satellite mesh network, every ground station is an uplink.

Re:First thoughts

[jfdavis668]

Now those people who are allergic to Wifi will have no where to hide.

Re:First thoughts

[mspohr]

Hard to tap this since there will be many (? hundreds) of downlink points scattered all over the world. Not saying that it couldn't be done but it's a non-trivial problem.

Re:First thoughts

[Baron_Yam]

Ugh. I haven't personally had satellite Internet ever, and have only dealt with it second hand once, a long time ago.

I forgot about the standard of 'satellite direct for downlink, land line plus central transmitter for uplink'.

So much for global mobility if that's what Musk is talking about here. I need direct two-way communication between my base station and a satellite before I care about this system. Perhaps I'm asking too much for a consumer-grade ground transmitter to get a signal to a LEO satellite?

Re:First thoughts

[Baron_Yam]

Easy to tap, if you run your tap onboard the satellites...

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter where I go, if I have power and a dish I should be able to get access.

.

Where do you point the dish? These satellites are constantly moving. A dish isn't going to work.

Re:First thoughts

[Immerman]

It might be, but then again satellite phones are a thing, so the basic technology required is well proven.

Re:First thoughts

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use the internet, you are tapped already.

Re:First thoughts

[haruchai]

Now those people who are allergic to Wifi will have no where to hide.

Tinfoil hats will be the fashion of the future

Re:First thoughts

[budgenator]

I forgot about the standard of 'satellite direct for downlink, land line plus central transmitter for uplink'.

Now it's a up/down link via satellite, that's why you have to have a FAA license to install, you don't want some redneck knocking out superbowl commercials by pointing the dish at the wrong bird.

Re:First thoughts

[Guspaz]

He's going to care, because even if he may have a spectrum license in Canada, he may not in Australia, and even if he does, it may not be the same spectrum.

I've supported sattelite internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the early 2000's I supported a service that gave a good ten megabits down, but the upstream was dial-up. At some point I ate a lemon with some peanut butter. It completely changed my life, but the peanut butter had turned so I could not place it on the mantle over my fireplace. Not long after, my cat died. It was a very fine animal. I buried the poor creature in my back yard along with a bag of mini muffins. No, I did not bury them together. That would make no sense. Besides, I had a really bad case of trigonometry at the time.

Re:I've supported sattelite internet

[sims 2]

Yer bot is getting closer but still not quite right.

Re:I've supported sattelite internet

[Areyoukiddingme]

Yer bot is getting closer but still not quite right.

It's a little bit alarming, but bots now pass the Turing Test online, as long as we stipulate that they only have to be indistinguishable from a dumb human.

Re:I've supported sattelite internet

[sims 2]

Yes it is.
It seems almost coherent but it doesn't flow nor keep in line with its original subject but it was off to a good start I was going to ask about the 10mbps with dialup return until I read the rest of the comment.

For starters I looked in 2005 such a service did not exist for those speeds also afaik you can't run a 10Mbps stream with only 48kbps upload. Maybe with a custom UDP service but not standard web TCP.

so SpaceX loses the Facebook bird

[Anonymous Coward]

and now is putting up their own service birds.

Zucky gonna have his "algorithms" "unintentionally" start a hate and misinformation campaign against SpaceX real soon?

Costs

[EscapeTodayOwensboro]

Love the ambition and the timetables. Providing internet access truly a way we move the entire world into the 21st century. Correspond with me @ EscapeOwensboro.com

Re:Costs

[budgenator]

Providing internet access truly a way we move the entire world into the 21st century.

Not as much as you would think, some get dragged forward, most get dragged back. It's kind of an averaging thing.

LEO sats exist

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is getting data to/from them and 'finding' the next one as it comes into view. Re-syncing to the next sat as it comes into view is expensive. Handoff is non-trivial, and if you miss the handoff or the next sat doesn't want to talk to you because it is already saturated, bye-bye connection.

Most current LEO sats are very low bandwidth because they are small and don't have the antenna gain to move large amounts of data. More data == bigger antennas == more power == bigger sats. It isn't just 'throw a lot up and it all just works"; it's more like "throw a lot up and watch as the network doesn't perform as expected".

Re:LEO sats exist

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, tracking the satellites is one of the biggest challenges with anything other than geostationary satellites, but not quite in the way you describe. The tracking itself is relatively easy, but building a high-gain antenna capable of tracking for a reasonable price is the hard part. Mechanically steered antennas can do it (admittedly with a small delay to reposition to find the next satellite), but at prices well into the tens of thousands of dollars, often over $100k. Electronic steering can be a lot faster, but those antennas still go well over $10k.

Several antenna companies are promising cheaper versions, but at this point it's pretty questionable whether anyone will be able to create a sufficiently capable antenna to provide 10+Mbps for anything approaching a consumer price (i.e. less than $1k).

One of the biggest challenges I see for the LEO constellations is whether they'll be able to use enough capacity unless ground terminal prices get closer to consumer levels.

Re:LEO sats exist

[mspohr]

Quick... tell Elon that his scheme won't work!
I'm sure that some random person on slashdot has better information than SpaceX.

Re:LEO sats exist

[gnick]

Quick... tell Elon that his scheme won't work!

Yeah right. This is the same guy that decided that tunneling under Los Angeles is the solution to their traffic problem. He cares not for the voices of reason. That seems to work for him.

Re:LEO sats exist

[sims 2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It would be nice having so much money to not have to consider if something is practical to do.

Does he remind anyone else of cave johnson?

Re:LEO sats exist

[joh]

SpaceX wants to use phased array antennas (so no moving parts) and while these ARE expensive I guess this will change quickly as soon as you start to build them in the millions... They're actually quite suitable for cheap mass production.

And this is NOT necessarily about individual users to buy their own satellite link. It is mainly meant to replace running cables all over the place. Supplying an LTE tower with data is a much more likely scenario for that than you putting such a beast on your roof. And for that it won't be expensive compared to running cables or radio links to the middle of nowhere.

Or to use a car analogy: Many people seem to think that this is like replacing cars with flying cars. But it isn't. It is about replacing trains and railways with airplanes and airports. The railway barons hate that idea of course.

Re:LEO sats exist

[budgenator]

You would be surprised, it's not like when the term "Phase array" was classified, as when the Patriot System system was called SAM-D. We've got integrated circuits running in excess of 3Ghz that do the heavy lifting now. Things get expensive when you're doing Aegis Combat System class phase array tracking to aim your brand new rail guns, but we're talking satellites here.

Re:LEO sats exist

[Guspaz]

> Re-syncing to the next sat as it comes into view is expensive. Handoff is non-trivial, and if you miss the handoff or the next sat doesn't want to talk to you because it is already saturated, bye-bye connection.

The benefit of having 4,000+ satellites is that even with LEO there are going to be a whole bunch of satellites in view at any given time, meaning you've got a ton of time to do the handoff.

One of several planned LEO constellations

[Anonymous Coward]

Startup satellite operator OneWeb is doing something similar (and is further along) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb

Established satellite operator Telesat is also planning their own constellation - http://www.satellitetoday.com/technology/2016/04/28/telesat-shares-details-on-leo-constellation-expectations/

"Super fast"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

If anyone doubted that the average Slashdot IQ was dropping, let Exhibit A be the fact that we're told these are "super fast" rather than a bitrate or other SLA. Also:

>> The company's satellites...without the need for cables.

I thought "wireless" was understood...in space. :)

Re:"Super fast"

[Anonymous Coward]

bitrate or other SLA

fuck off with your computer crap nerd this board isnt for yuo

Re:"Super fast"

[esperto]

I prefer my satellites wired and monster cable said that with theirs the audio and video from movies I watch are much warmer and crispier!

Re:"Super fast"

[Anonymous Coward]

The way the "powers that control/own" your government are going about killing net neutrality, if Musk plays his cards right and can really provide "super fast" connectivity, he could have an incredible competitive advantage. Also if he, with a little forethought, builds the satelites to be serviced in orbit, he could have a fairly low operating cost solution too, once thay are all in place.

Re:"Super fast"

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone doubted that the average Slashdot IQ was dropping,

No shit. Also Exhibit B in the past all here would know you can't have "fast" internet from space. There's this thing call latency. It is a long hop to that first router and back to Earth and until Musk figures out a way yo bypass the speed of light then fast Internet from space aint happening.

Ping times ove 100ms.

Great, ruin all my astrophotos

[jfdavis668]

I get enough astrophotoes of space junk now, I don't need 4,425 more objects to avoid taking pictures of.

Re:Great, ruin all my astrophotos

[Anonymous Coward]

Pentax is building Astrotracing into their Cameras now. Just train it to erase all identifiably orbiting blobs on the fly during long exposures, just like they do now for blown-out Pixels.
Except for the ISS. That's a keeper.

Also solves global warming

[Gavagai80]

Soon, once there's a few competitors doing this, we'll have enough satellites surrounding the planet that it'll cut down the incoming sunlight enough to reverse global warming.

Re:Also solves global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine you're just being sarcastic, but just in case....... Earths surface is 510,000,000,000,000 meters, roughly half of that is hit by sunlight for a total of 255,000,000,000,000 meters facing the sun. Each mini/micro satellite probably has a surface area of less than a meter, but lets say these ones require more power so they have extendable panels for a total of 5 meters. So in order to drop the solar energy from the sun by 1% would "only" require 510 Billion satellites, positioned between Earth and the sun. However due to their orbits only half would be on the right side of the planet so lets double that to 1.2 Trillion satellites to only block 1% of the sun.

NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

. if the NSA doesn't have a tap on this,

They don't need no steeekeen tap. Unless Musk got some sort of very very very very....very^n long wire connected to the satellite with 6 million bit encryption, the NSA can listen in on any damn thing they want.

I once was drunk as shit with a "security contractor" for the government. After telling me how to get an Ethernet card to sing and track its location, I was like, "Dude! WTF! It's like the fucking Stasi!! (we were trashed as all shit so, I was oblivious to sending myself to Gitmo or something).

He said, "Man, all they care about is if you're gonna over throw the government or some such nonsense." (This was before 9/11/01)

But if we consider how many leaks in government data has been in the last few years, one has to wonder just how competent these people.

Unless, the LET those leaks happen for their nefarious reasons....

Maybe, Julianne Assange is really a NSA operative. Or maybe he's not and just being played by the NSA like Snowden. Or maybe, Assange IS NSA but is being played by them.

Or maybe it's Aliens.

Re:NSA

[Nutria]

over throw the government or some such nonsense." (This was before 9/11/01)

9/11 falls under "or some such nonsense."

Re:NSA

[Immerman]

Not even in the same league. 9/11 wasn't an attempt to overthrow the government, it wast the last gasp of a tiny, dieing terrorist organization making a final bid for relevancy. And we gave them *exactly* what they wanted, in spades: relevancy. In the form of an openly aggressive foreign invader crushing local militaries, overthrowing governments, and slaughtering civilians. Nothing like an evil foreign occupation to drum up members and, more importantly, money. So much so that they were catapulted into a position as a vast international organization capable of seizing considerable power across the Middle East. Go USA!

Re:NSA

[Nutria]

I don't know whether or not is was the last gasp of a tiny, dieing terrorist organization making a final bid for relevancy, but destroying two of the tallest building in the world, in the most populous and richest city in the richest country in the world demanded violent reprisal.

In the form of an openly aggressive foreign invader crushing local militaries, overthrowing governments, and slaughtering civilians.

You're conflating Afghanistan with Iraq.

Re:NSA

[Immerman]

Sure, violent reprisal against the perpetrators, instead we used it as an excuse to attack unrelated nearby countries. As it was, it's like a small group of Canadian terrorists without government support crashed a plane into Big Ben, and the Brits responded by crushing the US military and government while slaughtering millions of our civilians. Just *slightly* ridiculous.

And for added veracity of the analogy, the Canadian government should have "discretely" been a rapaciously colonial puppet of the Brits.

>You're conflating Afghanistan with Iraq.
And why not? Conflating the "scary brown people" was the only reason there was any public support for spreading our invasion into Iraq. Or even attacking Afghanistan itself. Even the Afghanistan government, much less it's civilians, were no more responsible for the attacks than the US is for the actions of the KKK.

If you want to pin responsibility on a government, maybe the one that funded and trained Al Queda should be your focus... that would be the US, via the CIA, in case you were unaware. Those zealots were really handy for keeping the Russians from taking control of the Middle East in the 80s.

Iridium, Dysprosium, ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the name of element 4425? Quadquadbispentium?

Re:Iridium, Dysprosium, ?

[jfdavis668]

Naquadah

Tell me whether weather matters

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this like sat TV which has trouble during the weather. Rainstorm = no internet? no thanks.

Re:Tell me whether weather matters

[John.Banister]

But, wait 'till you see the special new batteries he's going to sell. They save up internet for a rainy day.

Bandwidth Limitation

[Shotgun]

I can't imagine any way that 4K satellites will be able to handle the bandwidth requirements of a significant percentage of Americans, let alone the world. Everyone can get Netflix on their cellphones, because the same frequencies can be used over and over in different locations. It is still a shared resource, though. Busy areas have to be subdivided and more towers built with lower power output iin order for everyone to get their own favorite shows. I foresee this service being limited to a small number of the wealthiest or most desperate people.

Re:Bandwidth Limitation

[Anonymous Coward]

The bandwidth will be 17-23 Gbps / satellite. If you over sold by 400% that would be a minimum of 300,900 Gbps

Assuming a cost of $10 billion and a replacement timeframe of 5 years you would be looking at yearly 6,676 / Gbps or 553 gbps / Month

If you assume then 25 MB / Person you would be able to get to roughly 12 million people.

Hughesnet best plan for rates / MB is $50 / 25 Mbps, or $2,000 / Gbps

none of this takes into account any type of data cap. Hughesnet basic plan is 10 GB/Month and their most expensive plan is $130 / month for 50GB (peak) and other 50GB (2am - 8am)

Re:Bandwidth Limitation

[sims 2]

I have a total of $170/mo I can dedicate to home internet where does that rank on the desperate scale considering I can get no wired options for that?

Total Bandwith and speed

[Anonymous Coward]

Acording to ArseTechnica https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/spacex-plans-worldwide-satellite-internet-with-low-latency-gigabit-speed/
Each satellite will have between 17 - 23Gbps. Total that would be 75Tbps - 102Tbps.

Re:Total Bandwith and speed

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Fool https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/19/spacex-wants-to-give-you-satellite-internet.aspx

The estimated cost would be $10 Billion

Re:Total Bandwith and speed

[sims 2]

A month?!

Re:Total Bandwith and speed

[Guspaz]

Seriously, I wouldn't pay more than 3 billion a month for this.

Normal people don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

Normal people don't care, and if you need dishes nobody in the developed world is going to care seeing as dishes have been banned in most highly crowded western cities..

Re:Normal people don't care

[sims 2]

Why? To enforce cable monopolies?

Re:Normal people don't care

[MrLogic17]

Wrong.
In the US, the FCC has mandated that home owners associations & landlords *must* allow dishes. I have fought an HOA, and won.
Summary: https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/...

More to the point, why do you assume that you will even need a dish? The GPS in your phone is currently receiving signals from space. Existing Iridium cell phones have no dish. It's a fair guess that the Elon network would have at least as good technology.

Re:Normal people don't care

[Guspaz]

Phased array: the receiver will look a lot like a pizza box. You'll want to put it on the roof, and people living in an urban core with good broadband options are not going to be the target customers. People living in more rural areas are, both because the customer density is going to be something the satellites can manage, and because they're likely stuck with pretty slow service to begin with.

Yea this didn't work before... Iridium take 2?

[bobbied]

But MAYBE he's got a better cost model that makes this financially viable? Iridium didn't work out too well.

I suppose his launch costs will be lower, but I have a feeling that this won't work out as cheaply as he thinks. It will be viable in places where there are no providers now, but usually those are the same places that don't have the 2 things this scheme needs... 1. People who need/want internet access and 2. People who have money to pay for it. You got to have all that to make this work out, unless running w/o profits for a decade like Tesla is OK with you.

Re:Yea this didn't work before... Iridium take 2?

[Areyoukiddingme]

I suppose his launch costs will be lower, but I have a feeling that this won't work out as cheaply as he thinks. It will be viable in places where there are no providers now, but usually those are the same places that don't have the 2 things this scheme needs... 1. People who need/want internet access and 2. People who have money to pay for it. You got to have all that to make this work out...

A surprisingly large number of people in North America have money and no decent ISP. The US is big but people still live in the wide open spaces, and Canada is even bigger. My parents are less than 30 minutes from a major metro area and can't get either cable or even crappy DSL for any price. Offer to pay for the cable run for a few miles and the local monopolies still aren't interested. So yeah, SpaceX has a market for this. A market in the millions if they can avoid Iridium's mistake in pricing.

Re:Yea this didn't work before... Iridium take 2?

[Guspaz]

Xplornet has a quarter million subscribers in Canada alone, and they're extremely expensive and extremely slow. There's a huge potential market in rural and even sparse suburban areas.

Bad news for Iridium

[nightfire-unique]

Iridium is in the process of launching its "NeXT" constellation that should provide better (1.5-8Mbit/sec) bandwidth, but doubtless at prices out of reach for most people. On the present network we're talking numbers like $1,500-$15,000/GiB, depending on committment.

If SpaceX's proposed network proves reliable and is priced for consumers, they're going to take a lot of Iridium customers...

Bad predictions here

[joh]

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

Re:Bad predictions here

[rpstrong]

This attribution has long been questioned; there just isn't any credible evidence that he said it - see Wiki's article on Thomas Watson for more info.

This is not a new Iridium

[joh]

Iridium was/is about satellite phones. This isn't. You will need a rather big phased array antenna and this is not a mobile setup.

It's about replacing the last mile (or the last 10/100/1000 miles) with satellite links. It's about getting WiFi/LTE backhaul everywhere with just a small device to buy and set up instead of digging in cables or whatever.

It's like the airplane eating railways and the airplane ate railways. Cables and everything you have set up on the ground is expensive because it's different everywhere and you have to buy real estate and do research and actually get your hands dirty. Setting up a satellite terminal is convenient and easy and it's just the same everywhere.

I mean, this does not mean that it will work out as a business, but the logic behind it is quite convincing.

Re:This is not a new Iridium

[bobbied]

My biggest complaint about this is it eats spectrum space, high data rates require very large bandwidths. I'm trying to imagine how you can do this spectrum wise and it's starting to look pretty difficult to me. Even if you think of the satellites as mini-Cell towers that move around on you, you are going to need some pretty complicated phased array things on the satellites to keep all this in any kind of reasonable amount of spectrum space and still be able to keep data flowing to any reasonable number of paying users.

Musk has surprised me before, but I think he's going to be hitting a really hard place between physics and the FCC's spectrum management rules...Maybe this works outside the USA, but I don't think he can afford the spectrum space necessary to do this here...

Re:This is not a new Iridium

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like the airplane eating railways and the airplane ate railways.

Sorry, no. The National Highway System and the tractor-trailer trucks it enabled ate the railways. But otherwise a good metaphor.

Can you say Iiduim ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you can

Re:That's a lot of satellites - and more space jun

[Anonymous Coward]

That is enough satellites to make future [satellite and other] launches quite the challenge. On the plus side, it means that the probability (No, I did not do the math) that there is a good probability of a collision with large meteors/asteroids which are on a near approach to the earth. AKA - a somewhat ablative shield.

I'm betting they use spare capacity on flights

[WoTG]

I think their costs will be a lot lower than people expect. What fraction of paid launches use 100% of max lift? Probably very few. If there's a bit of space left, especially on a Falcon Heavy, how much is the launch of their ISP satellites really costing?

Gazillions of new satellites

[Residentcur]

Starting to feel the same way about this that I do about fission power: no more until we reliably know how to clean up the old ones. Let's make one of these nets or other capture devices work and operate them for a while before adding to the clutter.