Musk shakes up SpaceX in race to make satellite launch window: sources
reuters.com
reuters.com
Think about the great firewall of China. It's dead after this. Having a cell provider and home internet provider. Gone. Poor bandwidth anywhere on Earth - a thing of the past. This is important and huge.
Buy rural property that is undeveloped. In 10 years time you'll be able to power it with solar and battery arrays and connect it with these satellites. A self driving carriage will deliver whatever goods you need the same day. Water is a well away and a septic tank isn't difficult to build.
If this system is to be operable in China, an agreement must be reached. That might mean a firewall for all people in China, all Chinese citizens everywhere, or both.
Operating without permission from China would generate a complaint to the USA. The USA is obligated to enforce international RF restrictions on satellites operated by US companies.
there are already a number of countries in the world where men with guns will come and take your rooftop equipment if you try to operate an unauthorized two-way, small satellite link to the outside world. Uzbekistan for example, go take a small cheap 1.2 meter ku band VSAT terminal there, and operate it...
China is also a perfect example. I could totally go out right now and spend monthly recurring transponder kHz lease money to get a small to medium amount of two way capacity on Russian geostationary satellites that have ku band spot beams covering parts of China, and set up a two way link to a teleport in Germany.
But I give the chances of being able to operate a 1.2 to 1.8m size small VSAT in Xinjiang province for more than a week or two, very low odds. Whoever does this is going to end up in a prison or reeducation camp.
Right; I think people are visualising this like a sort of Thuraya iPhone, which it very much will not be, because physics.
I mean Thuraya is amazing if you in the middle of the ocean, but no one under 40 has ever used a modem at that speed before...
And its EIRP to Tx to a satellite >300km away at bitrates of 0.5 Mbps or better will be easy to find with portable spectrum analyzers hooked up to directional horn antennas.
Some people can be alone, but most of us actually enjoy the company of friends and family.
The reason I think it becomes more popular is that people won't feel so remote any longer with modern conveniences and communications. The big no-no for many people today who choose city or suburban life is that they can't easily communicate with the rest of the world, don't have easy access to consumer products and certainly don't have modern things we take for granted. This changes very soon I think.
So it's not even that most or a majority of people would do this but I think there's a lot of people relatively speaking that would choose this if they had these modern accommodations which are simply impossible right now.
Or maybe China just keeps really, really close tabs on what goes in and out of the country, and having a receiver is immediate grounds for re-education.
I have also read many people that SpaceX tech is ahead of everybody else in a number of areas. Not to mention that they can launch way cheaper then everybody else.
There were claims that they had propulsion problems and that might be true but we don't really know.
They have the propulsion system in-house and I think I have also read that they are doing the ground terminals themselves.
As for buying rural land, I couldn't agree more. Looking towards the future, I do think that we will need to greatly increase the quality of our septic systems. Currently in my county, if your soil does not drain quickly, you need a UV sterilizing bed, which puts the cost at a new system around 20-30k.
Wish it was that simple. Maybe when there is a big enough community (then it would get expensive isn't it). I once wished for that but after getting married the priorities change 1) kids schooling 2) ours and kids social life 3) medical emergencies 4) window shopping and cheese burgers dammit :) I think we the average folks are enslaved
> A self driving carriage will deliver whatever goods you need the same day.
Rural areas are going to be the last places for full driverless, surely? Badly paved or gravel roads with zero markings? Higher chance of animals in the road? Poor metadata or lack of postal codes?
They are also mostly de-populating, because people want a ton of other things from the modern life, which a small community cannot sustain.
Certainly not for everyone in every possible situation but there's a lot of people that would choose today if they didn't have to give up communications, electricity and other modern conveniences.
We won't see a flight like we did to the suburbs but I do think we'll see a renewed interest in rural living with all the modern tools of urban and suburban life. When "things" are virtual and physical things are easily shipped, it becomes real as disillusioned people try and reconnect with something more real - but not too real and rugged. ;)
I mean this is really cool, but as more and more network access is available that can circumvent my own network control, the more I worry about the privacy implications. And while cellular antennas exist now, that network seems too expensive for mass adoption in every IoT device.
I've heard reports of the test satellites achieving 25 ms, but haven't found a source yet.
The reason of course is that these satellites are in low earth orbit, so only a few 100 km away, rather than geostationary orbit like most internet satellites that are at 35 000 km away
26ms lower from new York to London (total 50ms).
Past instances of this sort of speedup have shown that this is worth billions to high frequency traders...
Reddit post that includes includes links to the academic paper that latency number is coming from, and lots of other useful information: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/9sy4q7/starli...
And that's point-to-point from an HFT viewpoint, whereas of course in most situations fiber will not be even close to taking a direct route between locations. Even if photonic-bandgap fiber got deployed for transoceanic or continental backbone links Starlink could still of competitive practical latencies if the satellites are orbiting low enough and impose a low enough overhead.
Most of what Musk is doing (if it works) will strip tens of billions (trillions?) of dollars from very, very established industries.
Telco (Starlink), Auto (Tesla), Oil (Tesla), Transport (Boring), Power/oil/gas (SolarCity).
There are extremely rich and powerful interests that have no interest in him doing that, and you can bet they don't want the media telling the world what's going on.
SpaceX needs this to succeed to increase revenue, based on a wsj story from last year. The launches, while fascinating to watch and a huge technical achievement, won't pay the bills forever.
The fundamental requirements were things like: at least X dB main lobe gain, electrically steerable to any point within a the cone 60 degrees off of azimuth, total physical size less than .5 m^2, operates at Y.YY GHz with resonant bandwidth of Z.ZZ GHz, etc... The design my team went with was an array of microstrip antennas with a network of phase shifters to electrically steer the signal via beamforming. It's actually quite amazing what you can do if you just get the right shape of metal to vibrate at the frequencies you pump into it. Antenna design is a wonderful confluence of mathematics, design and black magic.
This is literally a "has never been done before" satellite communications challenge. The only thing comparable for LEO based services is the Iridium architecture, which is designed around a very different use case and data rate (about 3600 bps, for the first gen stuff).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_Communications#History
Initial investment ~$6B, sold to US gov't for $25m. Here's hoping Spacex has better luck.
The original 1998-2000 marketing materials for Iridium are ridiculous, like a traveling executive is going to take a gargantuan expensive satellite phone with them when traveling internationally, rather than relying on GSM roaming agreements.
I spent a year at the South Pole, where Iridium was, practically speaking, our only link to the outside world for most of the day. The higher bandwidth satellites are only available part of the day, either due to their orbit putting them below the horizon (Iridium uses polar orbits, unlike most communications satellites), or them being booked by other users. As you say, it's priceless for the occasional problem where help is needed from experts up North. Nominally, the station also has 24/7 text email through Iridium, and a couple voice lines, which is mostly a good thing for people's sanity.
Shortwave radio could address some of those uses, and there is a one there too, but it would be a rather different experience without something like Iridium.
the existing starlink test satellites are in highly inclined orbits, so if there were a great deal more of them, this would also be a possible solution.
If they can't do it economically and with enough gain, SNR and low noise factor using phased array (questionable), the rooftop CPE is going to have to look like an identical pair of motorized, two axis tracking 50cm compact cassegrain dishes, each with its own BUC+SSPA and Rx RF chain. Basically miniaturized o3b. Again not cheap.
How do you get to that?
The will mass produce these themselves seems highly unlikely that they would be so expensive.
Current phased array two way satellite stuff that is small, and intended for geostationary purposes, is manufactured in such small quantities that it is hard to compare.
Not exactly the same bands as ka radar.
"eventually you have to decide its time to shoot the engineers and ship the product"
"Within hours of landing, Musk had fired at least seven members of the program’s senior management team at the Redmond, Washington, office, the culmination of disagreements over the pace at which the team was developing and testing its Starlink satellites"
Their progress is slower than musk wanted, and of that of the competitors telesat and oneweb from what's public. He was firing because the project isn't going well.
Anyway, I'm in a town with google fiber, but can't get more than a 30Mbit uplink on spectrum (which is actually faster than AT&T) because the only places in town with competition are the areas already served by google fiber.
It won't take much to kill these lumbering giants that refuse to invest in their infrastructure. Particularly given the ill will most people feel towards them.
It's also unlikely to directly compete with wired ISPs in cities, as the bandwidth required for everyone to have a terminal would be high. But it could enable unwired 5G stations as micro-ISPs, which would be a similar effect.
What it will kill are rural or undeveloped area ISPs (such as they are) and provide high threat to undersea cables and cross-country fiber.
Disclaimer: Never been a customer. Started my own ISP's instead.
SpaceX certainly hopes this gives them an advantage, and it probably does, though eventually someone is bound to copy them if they prove successful. Blue Origin is already well on their way to a Falcon 9-alike.
Launch is also only part of the cost of a satellite constellation.