SpaceX Will Announce Micro-Satellites for Low Cost Internet Within Three Months
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
ViaSat1 has an overall capacity of 140Gbit/sec and that was launched in 2011. I'd imagine that higher capacities are possible (though considering they are very low weight, that may restrict the amount of beams it can push out).
However, the continual problem with satellite internet is that the satellites have a life expectancy of 15 years or so. While 140gbit/sec+ is probably enough now, it certainly won't be much in a few years time (when you have to consider that the bandwidth is shared across an awful lot of potential users).
Edit: I'd also add that while the proposed market is for areas without current internet connectivity, people do need to realise that a lot of Africa has very good 2G/3G coverage and some areas have very good LTE coverage. The problem historically has been backhaul capacity
a) from the towers back b) from the core network back to the internet
a) is still an issue as in Africa most if not all backhaul from the towers is provided via microwave relay and daisy chaining them, which causes capacity problems (most of the West has fibre or similar connecting each tower)
b) is slowly being improved with much better fibre runs around Africa.
Considering that most very basic smartphones will have LTE chipsets by the time this system is up, it may be more cost effective to use LTE than this system. This system is likely to require expensive ground terminals that need to be fixed in place.
15 year lifetime in 1000km orbit is not very likely, 5-7 year tops given propellant requirements.
for ~1000 satellites @ 100kg each that's about 2 saturn V launches so not crazy launch economics.
I guess they can do 30 sats per plane x 30 planes. That will give you the stable rings you need for backhaul.
son of teledesic may finally see the day with spacex :)
I want to move far away from people and the only real limiter is decent high speed internet so I can do my work.
Unless you have a couple Saturn V's tucked away somewhere no one knows about, it's more likely they'll be launched on SpaceX vehicles.
Assuming Falcon Heavy ever flies, and has performance characteristics similar to those listed on spacex.com, they could launch 1000ish 100kg sats in 2-3 FH launches.
It might be more likely that they'll simply fit as many as they can as secondary payloads in their normal launch schedule. Slower deployment, but effectively 'free'.
This true, but the price is prohibitive. Most cell phone users in Africa are on prepaid mobile services which charge the equivalent of 20 US cents per MB for 2G/3G data. This is a lot of money for the average 3rd world cell phone user.
EDIT: Those 30MB are only valid for 24hrs max. As soon as midnight comes, you have to pay more €1.25 to get another 30MB valid until the end of the day.
http://www.safaricom.co.ke/personal/internet/data-plans/prep...
500KSH for the 500Mb bundle, current FX rate is 90KSH/USD. Even the smallest bundle, 4Mb, is hardly more expensive per MD, at only 5 KSH (5.6 cents).
Are these prices unrepresentative of other African countries?
For Africans the cost is even higher.
I don't care if information wants to be free, but I want my bandwidth to be free :-)
Edit: more seriously is control over the bandwidth usage. I notice my phone does a lot of background work that I either don't have control over or might do but is so diffuse to control I cannot be bothered. A few tens of dollars a month is annoying but it's not making me choose between food or bandwidth as it might in other areas.
I would hope that phones like the locked down android become more widespread or some other approach (can you write an app that controls other apps bandwidth?)
(That's about 10USD)
The current rural telecom systems are basically just a 3m pole with an antenna, with a solar panel and a small satellite link, and you have to work with the chief of the village in order to get permission and to ask them to look after the small tower. It is really fast to deploy and for internet connectivity it works okay but you have to start looking at caching pages like wikipedia, and other popular sites, and there will probably be a few days delay in the web content.
Musk's comment follows reports that he's looking into
lending support to a small-satellite venture established
with the goal of providing global Internet access. The
venture, known as WorldVu Satellites, was founded by former
Google executive Greg Wyler...
Wikipedia details about what that was:
* Originally planned 360 satellites
* Originally estimated cost $3 billion, 2019-2020 timeframe (as of 2014)
* Low-earth orbit (LEO), 800 km / 950 km
* Ku band 12-18 GHz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldVu_satellite_constellatio...
As it stands the receiver equipment alone runs $10K to $15K, and then you get whacked with a $3K+/month fee for unlimited access[0] O_o
A fleet of SpaceX sateillites should bring that price down significantly. If so, could usher in a new wave of telecommuters that ditch high priced apartment rentals in favor of nomadic living at sea ;-)
[0] http://www.groundcontrol.com/FleetBroadband_Service_Plans.ht...
Given SpaceX this is clearly something he should be deeply concerned about, but is he addressing it in any way, or just adding to the problem?
I'd say he is having a positive impact with his focus on reusable rocket stages, therefore less debris in orbit... a cloud of micro-satellites (how manueverable?) might be going in the other direction.
Are they passing through the atmosphere and experiencing atmospheric drag?
It's like international waters beyond 20NM.
No you can't shoot. Shooting is an act of war, just like sinking a ship in the mid atlantic.
Or, what would happen if I sent my own satellite, and it hit Elon's by accident?
I am asking these questions, because I am not sure big countries would be very happy if their people's internet requests went through USA's company.
Not entirely necessary. Most nation states have enough property spread over the world that suing them can be sufficient. For example: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/feds-win-seize-ave-tower...
But I don't see why they would wanna do that. I don't know how these things works but it seems like there's enough space in space for all the satellites SpaceX would wanna launch.
Russia does :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepr-1
100km is the altitude where lies the Karman Line[0]; the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space. So technically, space IS what's above 100km ;)
Similar rules apply.
Orbital lifetimes to Earth decay according to altitude are highly variable, especially with the form factor of the satellite and its mass & profile against the remnant atmosphere, but for typical satellites very, very roughly:
150km minutes to hours
300km days to weeks
450km months to years
600km years to decades
750km decades to centuries
900km centuries to millennia
35,786km (GSO) effectively unlimited
Something this high would indeed pose an addition to the Kessler threat by virtue of remaining up there for many doublings of debris density; And redressing that would not be so difficult, in actuality. Chemical deorbit, ion deorbit, electromagnetic tether deorbit, and sail deorbit are all possibilities; The last does not even require orientation control. All that's needed is some incentive for them to implement controlled deorbitting.
(Rationale: With high orbits like GEO, a single satellite covers half the planet, so there's no obvious reason to have hundreds of them. But LEO is much nicer for many reasons (latency, launch cost). If you could cover the whole planet from LEO, that'd be the logical choice; and planning ~700 satellites at once suggests that's the aim).
Pretty sure we're looking at satellites far far smaller than 250 pounds if this is going to work.
1) Power. How much really depends on what's going to be on the ground. If your customers are going to be using twelve foot tracking dishes (they won't), you can get away with maybe a quarter watt or less. I'm not exactly sure what they'll need, but remember you're trying to communicate with something that's 100+ km away, minimum. Nobody's going to let you put up 700 plutonium RTGs, either, so that means solar cells and probably some sort of mechanical deployment system. And batteries - you still need power on the night side.
2) RF antenna(s). The more you skimp on your antenna, the more power you need. And vice versa. And you'll probably need at least two - one to point at your customers, and one to point at whatever you're using as a relay.
3) Thrust. Probably small, light thrusters and a comparatively large, heavy fuel tank. The lower your orbit, the more you need.
4) Stabilizers. Of some sort. Your antennas need to be pointed in specific directions, and your solar cells need to face the sun. So... gyros (and more electrical power). Plus more fuel, because you need to keep the gyros in their design range.
You're not going to be able to fit all this in a twenty pound satellite.
One of the problems with badly run, weak and/or underfunded governments is lack of infrastructure. Mobile access arrived before rads, sewage or mains electricity in places because of the easier infrastructure that depends less on these things.
Is this that kind of a thing?
One of the keys to economic development is access to credit/micro-finance. It's often not economical for banks to have a branch nearby so basic financial services are lacking. Sometimes the government provides something rudimentary (the post office in India is also a bank of sorts).
A lot of the cell towers don't support data in these regions so even if there is phone service there's no internet, or if there is it is prohibitively expensive. Internet could drive the cost down of a regional branch/or enable a stripe for the masses kind of thing (where the shops could get some low cost internet device that also acts as a card swiper and/or credit card)
This would also enable a lot of education possibilities which is also limited due to limited resources and poor internet options. Children could attend more advanced schooling in classrooms where the teacher is there via telepresence (Cisco is/was working on something like this)
Adding to that simple doctors visits. A doctor supporting one region could see more patients from all over more quickly identifying issues before they get out of hand.
Typed on iPad.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/95067/development-microfinanc...
> "[There is] no clear evidence that microfinance has any positive or negative impacts," said Maren Duvendack, ODI [Overseas Development Institute] fellow and author of a recent systematic review of microfinance, while David Roodman, of the Centre for Global Development, added: "I [wouldn't] say microfinance doesn't work, I would say it does not systematically reduce poverty. We do not have credible academic evidence that microcredit on average lifts people out of poverty... We [also] do not have evidence that microfinance is systematically making people worse off."
In the 1980s things were different. I was using servers scattered around the world and the latency was a second or two because of multiple hops from the ground to a few high altitude satellites.
Very low cost Internet is a good thing, especially if it is combined with self imposed net neutrality, which I would bet that this team would respect.
Part of the reason the US regulated ISP's the way they did was the thought that different technologies could compete: Dialup/DSL, Cable, Power Line & Satellite. Unfortunately, internet over power line never panned out and satellite's latency and cost only make it worthwhile for a handful of people. (These are grouped by companies that control them)
So our 4 options ended up as 2 because we counted our chickens before they hatched.
I'm originally in Iraq and when $#it hits the fan, the government turns of Internet! Now Imagine if one of these babies could talk to a V-Sat and broadcast even when there was no local Internet!
There are just so many great uses for these Micro-Satellites.
Regarding Latency - I spend greater than 50% of my life on > 500 msec latency connections (IPSec VPN back to California, often over Cellular) - so anything that beats that is a win.
To avoid surveillance you need to use a secure protocol like TLS, but even then the attacker might access the server on the other end (e.g. via physical access).
If that's important to you (say you're a lawyer, accountant, doctor, business, politician, judge, journalist etc ;), you'd be better to use encryption than worry about the network layer which you have no control over.
However they are so expensive that it might actually be worth waiting a few years for a better alternative.
Won't be enough for netflix or torrenting.
It also assumes that the "backhaul" between satellites wouldn't saturate under such a load.
I'd wager that under those assumed numbers you'd more realistically be able to expect somewhere between 100Kbps and 1Mbps.
Yes with packet scheduling you can get higher peak bandwidth, but 1Mbps sustained over the course of a 5 minute youtube video is going to be hard.
It's much better to target the whatsapp crowd. That facebook will pay for.
Current consumer technology gives 300b/s to too 500 kb/s Depending on how much you want to pay.
*speeds in bytes not bits
Then you should use the correct metric prefix, kBps, not kbps. It would save you from having to give unnecessary explanations.
People really should be using only kB/s and baud.
The / means per, so it means exactly the same as the p. What's misleading about it as long as you capitalize the units correctly?
Now you want to add the confusion back. Luckily, units are standardised by international bodies, not individuals, and the industry seems to be happy with the standards and uses them. Very seldom I have seen kBps (and in the few cases where I have seen it, it was wrong anyway). kb/s, while correct, I have only seen used by mistake, or by malice (e.g. ISPs intentionally misleading customers). Luckily, most professionals agree on only using B/s and bps, and no other combination, correct or not.
Besides that, i'm becoming skeptical on Elon's announcements since hyperloop.
Maybe he is just using this old public relations trick: let some information about a future product or project leak to the media to know how the public respond.
Why? He was quite clear in stating that he wouldn't actively pursue hyperloop.
Experiments like these could be more feasible if large cos like FB, Google invest in it with greater control.
They're only discussing this for wired broadband so no worries there.
... and perhaps relevant to the discussions of states tampering with other people's satellites.
The knife that is being put into hear will not be taken out, more will follow.
In this case, if the satellite connection is more expensive, the user will pay that higher cost. The price is for the uplink, not depending on what bits flow across it.
How is that at all affected by net neutrality?