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

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: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: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

[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.

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.

"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. :)

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: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

[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

[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:I've supported sattelite internet

[sims 2]

Yer bot is getting closer but still not quite right.

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.