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SpaceX Seeks Approval For Up To 1M Earth Stations for Its Satellite Service (geekwire.com)
SpaceX just filed a new earth-station license application with America's Federal Communications Commisions, seeking blanket approval "for up to a million earth stations" for customers of their Starlink satellite internet service, reports GeekWire:
Those satellites have already received clearance from the FCC, and SpaceX plans to launch the first elements of the initial 4,425-satellite constellation this year, using Falcon 9 rockets.... Eventually, SpaceX wants to build up the network to take in as many as 12,000 satellites in low Earth orbit...
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the Starlink project aims is to provide high-speed, reliable and affordable broadband data services to consumers in the U.S. and around the world, including an estimated 3.8 billion people who are underserved by existing networks. When he unveiled the project four years ago in Seattle, he said revenue from the internet service would pay for his vision of creating a city on Mars.
The application assures regulators that the earth stations will "incorporate advanced technologies to enable highly efficient use of the spectrum and enhance the customer's broadband experience."
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the Starlink project aims is to provide high-speed, reliable and affordable broadband data services to consumers in the U.S. and around the world, including an estimated 3.8 billion people who are underserved by existing networks. When he unveiled the project four years ago in Seattle, he said revenue from the internet service would pay for his vision of creating a city on Mars.
The application assures regulators that the earth stations will "incorporate advanced technologies to enable highly efficient use of the spectrum and enhance the customer's broadband experience."
Does anybody ever have any idea what the fuck he is talking about?
Shh... he's retarded, don't scare him he might go sicko mode.
If SpaceX pulls this off, it will revolutionize connectivity around the world. Many, many ISP monopolies (companies that have a stranglehold on small isolated populated areas due to buying up their telco or cable) will FINALLY have to compete. There are vast stretches of the United States with utter crap internet offerings. This is going to shake up everything from internet, to the cell phone carriers, to the "internet of things".
There are many multi-billion dollar companies that stand to lose tremendous amounts of money from this, while the general population of the world stands to gain a great deal of freedom and choice. Again, if SpaceX pulls this off, it will be one of the milestones in modern human history, and it will make SpaceX unbelievably wealthy.
Better known as 318230.
Eventually, SpaceX wants to build up the network to take in as many as 12,000 satellites in low Earth orbit...
That's fifteen times the number of satellites we currently have in low-Earth orbit. Is anyone else concerned that we may run out of satellite space? Or, alternatively, that every satellite we put up in the atmosphere has a greater likelihood of being struck by a meteor, adding to the minefield of space dust already in LEO?
Interestingly, I just watched Real Engineering's video of SpaceX's StarHopper construction just last night. And I didn't know how incredibly thin the walls of a rocket are, and that they are pressurized to retain rigidity. So, imagine the catastrophic destruction that would occur if one of our launches collided with a satellite, or a space dust minefield?
If only one company is asking for 12,000 low-Earth orbit satellites, what happens when one hundred more make the same request? What happens when Indian, Chinese, and Russian companies make the same request? While I don't know whether we'll ever see anything as bad as that one scene from Wall-E, but it feels like we're inching closer to that reality each day.
So... no?
The first ISP I might actually trust not to be an oligopolist nightmare of a company.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Fixed that for him.
Yeah, no, I have no interest in a single corporation dominating the world market on Internet access.
Because by definition, a for-profit organization will put taking from us everything and giving us nothing above all else, including human lives, rights and the survival of the planet. And for that, it will always work towards monopolization and against a free market, democracy, etc.
I won't work 8 hours a day to get a service that somebody else worked as little time as possible (e.g. <1h) a day, so he can steal the rest and build "his" "own" Mars base.
I wonder if thousands of satellites will mess up astronomy. Right now, when I take a 30 minute exposure, it is very unusual for a satellite to pass through the frame destroying the image. (Maybe a few times per thousand hours of observing.) But with thousands of satellites or potentially one day millions of satellites...
My parents live in a rural area and had a satellite internet service through Dish Network called Wild Blue. There are a few problems with satellite internet that I feel one would need to solve before making a true replacement for wired or wireless internet.
1) Weather dependent - Our satellite internet could go out if it was too cloudy, raining, snowing, any kind of a storm, or sometimes on mostly sunny days when a group of clouds just happened to pass through. Very annoying, but not truly awful.
2) Latency issues - Satellite internet typically has a half second delay as the information is beamed up and down. This makes gaming on it difficult at best. Streaming wasn't a big thing for us, so I can't really comment on that. The delay was also very annoying for just browsing web pages though.
3) Cost and data cap - It was very expensive for us, along the lines of $80+ a month for what could be considered slightly above DSL speeds with a low rolling data cap. Which was enough to browse the web and do a few other things, but still horrible for downloading large files. Windows update used to cause headaches when they would release a patch that would take up 10%+ of our monthly data cap.
4) Finding a spot - One thing to note is that Wild Blue required a space about 3-4ft from the house with a clear view of the southern sky. Which we had, but I talked to the technician and he was telling me that places like New Hampshire were impossible to use satellite internet because of this restriction.
It is an option for people living in rural areas and it can be a good one when nothing else is available. My parents moved off of satellite when Verizon brought out their wireless internet for residential homes and were happier with the new service. If those issues outlined above can be solved then it might be a better option than some others, but I don't hold out the highest hope for some of them.
Just my experience and thoughts on the subject.
this could ruin our view of the night sky. As it stands satellites are an occasional curiosity. If we more than double the number in LEO it could begin to be a major distraction for amateur and professional astronomers.
As in: Somebody who can't see the pattern of being deluded, falling for it, and being disappointed yet again, even if his life depended on it.
If you believe a for-profit corporation isn't striving for monopolism and preventing a free market, you must have had your brain reset just this morning.
(Analogous to believing everything would change with Obama or Trump.)
Earth stations sound suspiciously like cell sites. What's the satellite part? Backhaul?
With 1e6 cell sites can't you just do mesh networks? CONUS is only 3e6 square miles.
It will cause the loss of stable terrestrial infrastructure, and put it up in space where China, Russia, or USA can destroy it for everybody.
Essential communication doesn't belong in space.
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
Mystery Red of the Great American Eclipse
It has blood on it!
ABCNews: Eclipse makes pendulum wander
Sound of Silence
A) It seems wildly unnecessary.
B) Who is/how are you going to track MILLIONS of objects constantly and perfectly?
C) What a sky mess you will have created, for future generations to deal with.
D) More cancer from the sky (I know most don't believe this, that doesn't mean it's incorrect).
E) Someone here already mentioned disturbing space viewing from the ground.
F) It would make deploying other, useful satellites more difficult, no?
G) Radio interference would increase, no?
H) If SpaceX goes out of business, someone else will have to pay for/deal with the failed venture.
I) Wouldn't the quantity make hacking more difficult to manage?
J) What happens when technology makes a huge leap forward 2 years from now, obsoleting these millions of objects?
K) What if newcomer "SpaceY" wants to do the same next year; do you tell them they can't?
L) Won't these dramatically increase the chance of collisions of other satellites?
Musk's reality distortion field is impressive as ever...
Not one person questioned how it's possible, let alone ethical, to fund the colonization of an entire planet with ISP fee's.
I mean- Who thinks- 'Gee, wish my internet was more expensive, so I could help a billionaire take over another planet.'
Satellite is by far the most expensive and POLLUTING form of internet. Those HUGE PLUMES OF SMOKE coming out the bottom on take off- that's 10,000x more pollution then an average individual would create in their lifetime.
This asshole want's to do that HOW MANY TIMES???
What gives him the right? It's perhaps a perfect example of SOCIALIZED COST; PRIVATIZED GAIN.
That nifty thing the rockets do- coming back down to land- that's extra pollution for purely the sake of profit margin.
Why the fuck are people ok with this?
Seriously- Emissions equipment on vehicles seriously harms, economy, reliability, and durability of our engines- but that's ok, because it's for everyone's benefit that we ALL pollute less... ...and then there's this billionaire jackass and his sociopathic mega-corp that gets to pollute all they want...and no one bats an eye when they do because they've been so successful at 'greenwashing' their public image.
jeabus f'ning crisco you people are stupid.
What happens when a large coronal mass ejection hits those million satellites? According to space.com, if the huge 2012 CME had hit the earth:
There would have been three waves of damage associated with the extreme solar storm. First, X-rays and ultraviolet radiation from the solar flare would have produced radio blackouts and GPS navigation errors. The second part would have seen satellites fried by energetic particles like electrons and protons, which arrived only minutes to hours later. ...
SpaceX might have a million dead satellites, which SpaceX has to either bring down manually, or leave up as space junk. I hope those satellites will be shielded.
have no solution for the last mile problem and are only creating a network in competition to the ones that current ISPs -- who do deliver the last mile -- provide currently. Clearly they think they can do this cheaper than stringing all that fiber on Earth, but individuals will still be getting their internet from one of the established ISPs, at that ISPs monopolistic rates. Corporations may buy into an earth station installation, but it sounds like they are not dealing with individuals at all. Don't expect another radio chip in your phone.
As someone who works on boats at sea, the prospect of having personal broadband at work is a dream come true. However, considering that they're steel boats (so the decks will reflect the signal), what is needed is a way to use a single antenna on the top of the vessel to connect with multiple customers inside the vessel. Employers aren't going to want to pay for very much data for employees, and as an employee, I'd rather pay for my own, so as not to be restricted by what my employer might allocate. I expect that the equivalent of a Wilson cellular booster wouldn't be ideal, as frequency used by the satellite wouldn't necessarily be ideal for use indoors. What would be ideal is something that translated the satellite signal to and from wifi and allowed customers to individually log on to their SpaceX reseller account via a smartphone app. In fact, it might be a good idea for any Starlink earth station to look like a hotspot from the consumer side.