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SpaceX Successfully Launches Falcon 9 Carrying Starlink Demo Satellites (techcrunch.com)
SpaceX has successfully launched a Falcon 9 from SLC-4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base today, its first launch since its successful Falcon Heavy test earlier this month. The launch took off early Wednesday morning, after being rescheduled a couple of times from an initial target of this past weekend. From a report: The launch was primarily designed to bring the PAZ satellite to orbit (which was deployed as planned into a low Earth, sun-synchronous polar orbit), a satellite for a Spanish customer that's designed to provide geocommunications and radar imaging for both government and private commercial customers. This launch had a secondary purpose, however, and one that might ultimately be more important to SpaceX's long-term goals. SpaceX packed two demonstration micro satellites for its planned internet broadband service (which Elon Musk confided via tweet it will call 'Starlink'). These will perform tests required before it's certified to operate the service, which it hopes to use to generate revenue by signing up subscribers to its internet service, which will hopefully be globe-spanning once complete.
SpaceX and Musk continue to push the boundaries of human exploration. With the launch of BFR we will soon have Mars in our grasp.
Still wondering why the uber-geek who sent a car beyond Mars orbit with "DON'T PANIC!" on the dashboard didn't name his satellite swarm "Skynet" instead. Somebody else must already have the trademark.
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This launch was also the first launch of the new fairing https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2018/02/spacex-falcon-9-paz-launch-starlink-demo-new-fairing/. The fairing is the two halves of the nose-cone which protect the payload from wind when the payload is going up in the atmosphere (as well as helping keep the overall rocket have less drag). Once the rocket hits the upper atmosphere (generally about the same time or shortly after 2nd stage cut off, depending on the specific rocket), the fairing breaks off since it is extra, unnecessarily mass at that point. SpaceX has been very interested in recovering the fairings and the upgraded fairing is both slightly larger (which is good because volume limitations are an issue for the Falcon 9 and even more so for the Falcon Heavy), and is also aimed at trying to make fairing recovery possible. If they can get fairing recovery and reuse to work then SpaceX will have another way of reducing the cost of launches since the fairings cost a few million to manufacture. The fact that this fairing was used without any apparent major glitches is very promising.
PAZ is a radar satellite for both governments and commercial contractors. Note that satellites like PAZ help level the playing field for small governments that can't afford their own radar satellites. Making sure that everyone has access to this sort of thing actually has a stabilizing effect: If a government can see where a potentially hostile power's military resources are they will be less worried about a surprise attack or needing to launch a preemptive attack of their own. By the same token, if the potentially hostile power has a good view of their military, a surprise attack is less likely to achieve surprise and so make them less tempting. Giving everyone basic access to this makes for a more peaceful planet.
From the article you linked: the fairing costs $6m? Really?
You are aware that economies of scale are rather limited here right? It's not at all shocking that something like that would cost $6m in the sort of volume SpaceX deals in. Plus they aren't an "inert chuck of metal". Per SpaceX it is composite structure consisting of a 2.5 cm (1 in.) thick aluminum honeycomb core surrounded by carbon fiber face sheet plies (see section 4.3.7). It will require a huge oven for the carbon fiber which you can be sure is expensive and a lot of fancy tooling.
It has to be light, designed to take quite a lot of pressure, shock, and vibration, and deal with temperatures, and it has to separate reliably. These are hard to make and expensive. In some cases the mission requires a custom fairing.
Their sats will not be in geosync orbit so your entire premise is null and void.
But you knew that, didn't you?
I found another article that has a link showing Mr Steven (the catcher boat) and the fairing (which Mr. Steven missed this time, but the fairing, er, faired quite well landing in the ocean).
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All Estes rockets are orbital class. Where do you think all the lost rockets end up?
I think they go where my socks go so they really are Behind The Dryer class rockets.
Common for SpaceX, yes...
Most communications satellites are located in the Geostationary Orbit (GSO) at an altitude of approximately 35,786 km above the equator. At this height the satellites go around the earth in a west to east direction at the same angular speed at the earth's rotation, so they appear to be almost fixed in the sky to an observer on the ground.
If you are located on the equator and are communicating with a satellite directly overhead then the total distance, single hop (up and down) is nearly 72,000 km so the time delay is 240 ms
If you were to communicate with another similarly located site, the total distance is nearly 84,000 km so the end to end delay is almost 280 mS, which is a little over quarter of a second.
They're putting them up a lot, lot lower than that, some only 200 km up. Pings expecting to be 25-35ms, which isn't out of ordinary for normal broadband latency. A speedtest on my fast connection just now put my latency at 51ms (with ~120 Mbps up/down).
SpaceX's constellation will be orbiting 35 times closer than GEO, at ~1,100 kilometers. So... "Pings of 7-8 ms minimum" is slightly more accurate.
As satellites near the end of their life they'll carefully lower these orbits down to less than 300km before de-orbiting them. Their documentation does not indicate if they'll continue active communications during that period. My guess is they won't because of the shorter orbital period, but I could be wrong.
If I were a last-mile monopoly Telco I would be slightly concerned. Mr. Musk's companies have a delightful habit of redefining the impossible.