SpaceX FCC Application for over 4000 Internet Satellites

http://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/reports/swr031b.hts?q_set=V_SITE_ANTENNA_FREQ.file_numberC/File+Number/%3D/SATLOA2016111500118&prepare=&column=V_SITE_ANTENNA_FREQ.file_numberC/File+Number

by paulsutter • 10 years ago

508 206 10 years ago

licensing.fcc.gov

deegles• 10 years ago

Would a hand-held size device be able to connect to these satellites? I'm imagining a mass-manufactured device like a Peek[0] that could be distributed in countries with heavy censorship...

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek_(mobile_Internet_device)

wanderingjew• 10 years ago

The receivers/Earth stations will be phased array antennas; basically an antenna 'grid'. They won't fit in your pocket, but they will fit on top of your car.

Keep in mind, this system is designed to give the Internet to everyone. The antennas will be small enough to conceal. Since the signals go up instead of across a border, censorship is not an issue.

viraptor• 10 years ago

Since the signals go up instead of across a border, censorship is not an issue.

That's very short-sighted. The connection terminates somewhere, so the whole path is either (you)-(satellite)-(local ground station)-(ISP in your country) or (you)-(satellite)-(another satellite)-(remote ground station)-(ISP in another country)

Censorship then can happen at:

- the satellite (unlikely, they probably just want to forward packets with minimal power/time use)

- ground stations (great firewall of china style)

- ISP (standard, existing filtering)

- any nation that wants to just shut down the access rather than censor it (wide band, high power noise, send straight to the satellites to kill all communication)

Also, the use of the equipment should be pretty easy to detect if you can afford a few plane trips (maybe even just vans), so nations that don't like the idea can just knock on your door and have a chat about it with you.

schiffern10• 10 years ago

They won't fit in your pocket, but they will fit on top of your car.

I think I can glimpse what Musk long-term vision is for "connected cars..."

Satellite is pretty much perfect. One provider works globally (vs dozens of mobile proviers), coverage is near 100% everywhere, and mass broadcast signals (like firmware updates and SDC neural connectomes) can be cached locally on the satellite, conserving uplink bandwidth.

indolering• 10 years ago

Jamming of satellite signals in the middle east has gotten pretty bad. You have to lease spectrum and the country from which you are leasing it has control of that spectrum.

Furthermore, nation-state censorship only has to make reaching censored services more difficult for the average person. They specifically throttle home internet connections but leave businesses alone.

shaklee33• 10 years ago

You need to get landing rights in all countries you plan to operate your frequency bands in. They cannot simply start transmitting down to any country without previous authorization.

will_hughes• 10 years ago

The last time this system was discussed they mentioned needing a pizza-sized dish.

walrus0116• 10 years ago

I will be really surprised if, due to the laws of physics and the gain required to achieve reasonably dense modulation/code rates, the antenna is smaller than 18 inches... Maybe like the size of an extra-large pizza box, phased array aimed upwards.

mikeyouse2• 10 years ago

The discussion on r/spacex:

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/5d9724/spacex_has_f...

Interesting note from the Organization section where it shows that Elon's trust owns 54% of outstanding SpaceX shares and over 70% of the voting shares.

toomuchtodo2• 10 years ago

Interesting for sure, but not unexpected. You would not entrust your life's work to your shareholders without having overwhelming control.

kctess52• 10 years ago

Unless I'm mistaken, many founders do give up control to their share holders.

int_handler2• 10 years ago

Does SpaceX have any concerns about the Kessler Syndrome [0] or any plans to mitigate it?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

mikeyouse2• 10 years ago

Of course they do, it's a well-known problem for the satellite industry. From the technical addendum:

Each satellite in the SpaceX System is designed for a useful lifetime of five to seven years. SpaceX intends to dispose of satellites through atmospheric reentry at end of life. As suggested by the Commission,50 SpaceX intends to comply with Section 4.6 and 4.7 of NASA Technical Standard 8719.14A with respect to this reentry process. In particular, SpaceX anticipates that its satellites will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere within approximately one year after completion of their mission – much sooner than the international standard of 25 years. After the mission is complete, the spacecraft (regardless of operational altitude) will be moved to a 1,075 km circular orbit in its operational inclination, then gradually lower perigee until the propellant is exhausted, achieving a perigee of at most 300 km. After all propellant is consumed, the spacecraft will be reoriented to maximize the vehicle’s total cross-sectional area, a configuration also stable in the direction of aerodynamic drag. Finally, the spacecraft will begin to passivate itself by de-spinning reaction wheels and drawing batteries down to a safe level and powering down. Over the following months, the denser atmosphere will gradually lower the satellite’s perigee until its eventual atmospheric demise.

http://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=1...

int_handler2• 10 years ago

Interesting. Thanks!

Osmium• 10 years ago

"for a useful lifetime of five to seven years"

Isn't that a relatively low lifetime for so many satellites? Doesn't that mean they'll need to make a lot of launches just to keep the fleet operational?

titzer• 10 years ago

I think Kessler syndrome is still likely to happen despite the best intentions and efforts of all players involved. a 1,000km circular orbit is very, very stable, so if something goes wrong and the satellite doesn't deorbit itself properly, it will be there a very long time. If there are on average 4000 of these at a time and only .1% of them malfunction in this way, that's still 4 per year.

jimmcslim• 10 years ago

In my opinion, the Kessler Syndrome, or a Carrington Event, are the two most underrated yet likely causes of TEOTWAWKI.

alanh• 10 years ago

The End Of The World As We Know It. (I had to google. Interestingly, my Mac’s dictionary has TEOTWAWKI as an alias for “Survivalism”.)

ddoolin• 10 years ago

For the uninitiated (incld. myelf...), "The end of the world as we know it."

arijun3• 10 years ago

Why would a Kessler cascade be so devastating? Most of our comsats and all our GPS satellites are above LEO.

walrus0116• 10 years ago

Things in very low earth orbit will re-enter on their own, if left unattended, from atmospheric drag.... At orbits of 450-600 km or less the lifetime of any satellite is very much finite. Satellites in much higher (like the MEO O3b satellites) will not re-enter due to atmosphere drag even on a 500+ year time scale.

boznz• 10 years ago

Currently paying US$60 a month for land based internet in NZ and a friend pays $160 for the crappy satellite equivelent. Several million subscribers would not be unfeasable and provide a pretty massive income stream

jazoom• 10 years ago

Add another 8 million or so from Australia

nbarbettini2• 10 years ago

Lots of folks outside the cities in America too. I've heard estimates between 10-30 million.

zymhan2• 10 years ago

So after blowing up Facebook's Internet-providing satellite, they're going after their own constellation.

I do wonder how this will affect potential customers who would launch communications satellites on SpaceX, but are worried about handing over something proprietary to a competitor.

foota• 10 years ago

I imagine this would be a pretty low concern because that would probably violate all sorts of contracts.

JshWright2• 10 years ago

Facebook didn't own the satellite, they were simply planning to lease a few of the transponders.

zymhan2• 10 years ago

This is true, but I wanted my comment to be short and pithy :P

arijun3• 10 years ago

I don't know how concerned these companies are about industrial espionage. I would definitely buy that they were wary of funding a competitor.

kylecordes• 10 years ago

They have conclusively demonstrated that relying on a small number of satellites in the small number of launches concentrates too much risk. Unfortunately the demonstrated this accidentally blowing up a satellite.

In the long run though, success at scale with a system like this relies on the typically guaranteed losses. A certain percentage of rockets will fail, a certain percentage of satellites will fail, a robust system will be designed to accommodate this.

(Of course, and this is probably the topic of a totally different thread, the tolerance for this must change dramatically when there are people in there.)

nraynaud3• 10 years ago

there is still the issue of space junk, more satellites, more launches, more mishaps, more junk. And now you have more junk to create more mishaps.

I'm not saying I want more concentration, I'm just saying that the path to de-centralisation is not that clear cut (at there is a threshold were we have to talk about CO2 emissions).

BWStearns7• 10 years ago

As long as spacex is the cheapest taxi then they will have customers. No one sending something precious into orbit is lacking in the legal department. On top of that I think it's fair to say that spacex and Musk have a fairly "good guy" reputation as far as ip goes.

AdamTReineke• 10 years ago

Not a new competitive risk as this has been Musk's plan for at least two years now. http://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-internet...

paulsutter• 10 years ago

I wonder if a distributed model would work for telephone service in Southeast Asia (which still has lots of 2G in rural areas), if individuals could offer hotspots / base stations with uplinks to these satellites.

Edit: change Uber-like to distributed. Side comment, lots of Uber drivers buy cars. Uber even helps finance cars.

Terribledactyl• 10 years ago

I don't see the connection to Uber's model, unless you mean Franchise, but I doubt people already have the satellite-wifi transponder like drivers already had cars.

obi1kenobi• 10 years ago

fcc.gov seems unresponsive, here's a Google webcache link to the HTML application: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3lStj71...

smegel• 10 years ago

Maybe they should start with a reliable launch system.

pjscott• 10 years ago

If they'll be launching thousands of satellites, I expect the marginal cost of replacing one launch to be lower than what most satellite makers could manage. And then, reliability has a cost of its own.

Have you calculated the optimum?

BWStearns7• 10 years ago

So from the Reddit discussion it seems like 200 launches is about a fair guess for the total deployment of this system. It seems like a perfect way to derisk the notion of reusable launch systems while providing a native-to-SpaceX revenue stream (orbital internet provision).

Assuming that they can achieve the success rates they've been aiming for, demonstrating lowered risk and cost through their own deployments will provide about the best advertisement you could possibly imagine. Waiting for organic outside demand to fill the launch roster to the same point would take time that Musk clearly does not want to waste. It seems to be a Keynesian approach to the slightly Chicken/Egg problem of commercial space.

wmf2• 10 years ago

Isn't the launch roster way beyond full already? http://www.spacex.com/missions

BWStearns7• 10 years ago

I don't mean that it's full from a financial perspective, but full in an argument-ending "this is the way of the future" sense.

Edit: There are ≈80 missions listed on the link there, 200 launches for their own missions would provide ample opportunity to derisk their customers by reusing launch vehicles beyond their currently marketable mileage and proving their safety (I can imagine that one would want some pretty steep discounts for a rocket that's been used 5 times given current success rates).

ENGNR• 10 years ago

Seems like a great mission profile to build a reliability track record before taking human cargo too.

Consistent small profit launches, then as the accident %'s decrease design an ultra low risk human module and start space tourism for real

clarkmoody• 10 years ago

Keynesian approach

Please explain.

BWStearns7• 10 years ago

Spacex would essentially subsidize their own market by making this constellation since it would reduce their own cost per launch vehicle if they used veteran vessels to get their satellites to orbit. It's basically the same idea as a country going into debt to generate demand.

Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

LAMike• 10 years ago

Coming soon: Elon Prime

Pay 40k a year and get unlimited SpaceX Internet, a Tesla w/ free charging, and a complimentary flight/weekend stay at Solar City Space Hotel.

Who's in?

pplante• 10 years ago

Heck that's quite a deal on an MS or MX 100D lease.

kctess52• 10 years ago

And of course after that, Prime Plus which includes a lease on solar panels and home batteries.

solipsism• 10 years ago

Is there some kind of music service?

daeken• 10 years ago

Honestly, I don't think I'd blink an eye at signing up for that. Space hotel trip alone is worth that!

In fact, that makes me seriously think about the ITS for earth orbit activities. Add a nice big docking port to connect it to a space station, and you've got yourself a relatively cheap reusable vehicle to fly a whole mess of people into LEO.

the_duke• 10 years ago

Virgin Galactic is charging 250k for their "some minutes in weightlessness" ride...

zeristor• 10 years ago

I'm waiting for: Optimus Prime

SamUK96• 10 years ago

Something erks me about how that all sounds VERY Facebook/Google -ish?

One organisation that provides our transportation, internet (which itself is gaming, information, communication, business, etc.), energy, and basically every facet of our lives. Google and Facebook are already trying to get closer to that...

dx0344• 10 years ago

Yep, we're back with conglomerates as we had them until a few decades ago. But I don't think this will last long. In a decade or so people will realize that specialized business earn more money and will force them to split up.

samstave2• 10 years ago

pay 40k per year to shop at the company store.

These are stepping stones to the future, they are not the future.

jbpetersen• 10 years ago

Any idea what amount of bandwidth they'll have put together?

sidcool• 10 years ago

My guess is nothing less than 1 Giga bit per second.

schiffern10• 10 years ago

My bet is that the "pizza box" phased array rooftop antenna will evolve into a complete base-station. We know it has a multi-element RF front-end feeding in to massively parallel software defined radio (SDR). Likely available in PoE or wireless variants (solar+batteries+wifi; imagine the MIMO with 100 antenna elements!).

SDR is quite interesting because it can track moving satellites, and do simultaneous multipath reconstruction of multiple terrestrial broadcast signals -- digital tlevision, FM/AM/satellite radio, shortwave, etc. No antenna pointing needed, as it's all done in software. After demodulating the carrier the video and audio content is streamed on a local web page available to computers/phones/tablets on the LAN. Existing TVs can be supported via an HDMI or analog (VGA/composite/3.5mm) stick w an RF remote.

Optional (or one-time software unlock?) on-board storage for multimedia time-shifting and distributed CDN caching (reducing bandwidth and latency by keeping commonly served duplicate files like js libraries locally). Having a local server also lets them do fun things in the future like transparent LZMA compression, optional ad/telemetry/malware blocking, data pre-caching, smart shared HTTP caching, etc.

The inclusion of on-board storage allows data to be sloshed around to best utilize the terrestrial spectrum (broadcast content) and satellite spectrum (multicast content). It's much like Tesla batteries allow energy to be sloshed around to best utilize distributed solar and the utility grid.

With proper RF front-end design, support for the diversity of global broadcast standards can added through OTA software updates via satellite. This simplifies hardware into a single "world" model with regional software variants.

Easy install, especially with the wireless version (mount on pole, erect, securely fasten, done). Broadcast signal reach and convenience (any device or TV) that beats the pants off of any OTA antenna out there. Convenient access to terrestrial broadcast content w time-shifting takes some of the load from streaming services, so it's a strategic move and not just a "gee wiz" feature they got cheap because of SDR.

At $200-300 for the equipment and $50/mo for internet, with a good multimedia time shifting UI, SpaceX would cream every rural data provider out there.

Anyway, just the idle dreams of an internet user living in a rural satellite "data desert"...

walrus0116• 10 years ago

I've worked with phased array flat panel antennas used for geostationary Ku and Ka band two way satellite access.

Phased array flat panel antennas cannot be purely software steered sufficiently to track a low earth orbit satellite from horizon to horizon. It's not good enough to just put a flat panel phased array facing straight up, you won't have enough gain aimed in the direction where the satellite actually is at any given moment. Assuming a CPE device that measures 1.5'x1.5' to 2'x2' in size, it will still need a motorized azimuth and elevation stepper motor system (or equivalent) to track a LEO satellite.

If you're trying to do multi-Mbps data to/from a satellite in bands >10GHz (and probably >18GHz), the path loss through the atmosphere and RF parameters mean that you want as much gain as possible... This is why the most economical solutions for high capacity two way satellite through geostationary transponder capacity involve 1.8 to 3.0 meter size dish antennas. Gain is important. Gain and enough signal over noise ratio that you can do higher order QAMs and not spend half your bitrate on FEC.

You could, I suppose, if the antenna system was cheap enough and large enough build a non moving, cone or pyramid shaped antenna covered in phase array segments that could maintain a high bandwidth connection in the >10GHz bands to a moving LEO satellite. But it would be pretty large.

edit: for those who are curious and want to see an example of a parabolic (steered) use for moving satellite comms:

https://www.google.com/search?q=melco+antenna+mitsubishi&ie=...

http://proceedings.kaconf.org/papers/2015/bsw_4.pdf

there is also an israeli company which is a competitor to mitsubishi in this space. and a few others.

if you watch the weekly FCC filings for new satellite equipment licenses, there's a lot of MELCO antennas flying around on top of mid and large sized jet aircraft.

manicdee• 10 years ago

They will not be tracking any one satellite across the sky, only those of the 4000 best suited to that particular site at that particular time.

patrickyeon• 10 years ago

I hope you don't mind, but I'm interested in talking to you about satellite comms and antennas specifically. You don't have any contact info listed in your profile, but if you'd like to talk you can either hit my personal address listed in my profile, or my planet.com one where my username is patrick.

schiffern10• 10 years ago

Thanks, great comment.

Mark my words, SpaceX is quietly working toward nothing less than a revolution in global data infrastructure, just as Tesla is working to accelerate a revolution in global energy infrastructure. Sneaking in some software, onboard storage, putting them on all Tesla cars, mesh networking the terrestrial base stations with MIMO links, etc.

Cars suddenly become a global peer-to-peer mesh sneakernet. It would be fun if Tesla distributed data via "pulses" between passing cars... (signed high resolution maps? deep learning connectomes? the latest Netflix original series? :D)

Phased array flat panel antennas cannot be purely software steered sufficiently to track a low earth orbit satellite from horizon to horizon.

Righto. SpaceX plans to steer the beam down to 40° from the horizon. This also minimized path losses.

Drawing from the SpaceX filing: http://i.imgur.com/7zOZ7kr.png

All Ku-band downlink spot beams on each SpaceX satellite are independently steerable over the full field of view of the Earth. However, user terminals at the customers’ premises communicate only with satellites at an elevation angle of at least 40 degrees. Consequently, as shown in Figure A.3.1-1 below, each satellite operating at an altitude of 1,150 km will provide service only up to 40.46 degrees away from boresight (nadir), covering an area of about 3.5 million square kilometers (1,060 km radius)

source: Figure A.3.1-1 on pp6 of the FCC technical information document, currently 404, via /u/SkywayCheerios

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/5d9724/spacex_has_f...

https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=...

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Alicen...

loourr• 10 years ago

Wouldn't it not need to? Presumably if there are 4000 satellites it wouldn't need to look from horizon to horizon, just approximately up.

tbabb2• 10 years ago

Those gains would make sense for geostationary satellites, but SpaceX is planning on putting its fleet into LEO, at just a few hundred km. Would you expect the same for that altitude?

Also with 4000 satellites, you probably wouldn't have to track one all the way to the horizon.

jerich• 10 years ago

Ahh, memory lane. LEO satellite internet is one of the subjects that bring me out of lurking.

My first job out of school in 1998 was writing test plans for the antenna pointing and tracking for the Teledesic CPE at Motorola. If I remember right, the initial plan was to have dual steerable dishes inside a pair of radomes—like a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. There was a vague future plan for phased-array antennas, but at the time it wasn't realistic to talk about getting them on roofs at a reasonable price point.

The bigger challenge was the optical intersatellite links; routing traffic between LEO satellites using lasers. The lasers had to track satellites in adjacent planes of the constellation that were traveling in the opposite direction.

It's interesting to see the same general idea for the large constellation come up every few years. If we had actually started building it in 1998, it would've been on a second or maybe even third generation by now.

I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't given it a try with their billions sitting around. 4K FaceTime, or even just downloading movies or apps instantly would be a selling point for their other hardware.

dzhiurgis• 10 years ago

I was thinking about CDN caching too! Imagine this

jasonwatkinspdx5• 10 years ago

SDR is quite interesting because it can track moving satellites, and do simultaneous multipath reconstruction of multiple terrestrial broadcast signals -- digital tlevision, FM/AM/satellite radio, shortwave, etc. No antenna pointing needed, as it's all done in software.

Don't conflate SDR, phased arrays, and MIMO. They're separate things. The latter two can be implemented vi a variety of hardware. State of the art radars tend to use a lot of FPGA's for aperture synthesis, not SDR.

SDR also isn't quite the panacea you're presenting. You can't just slap some magic processor in something and then gain access to huge swaths of spectrum. Even highly advanced UWB phased array apertures are limited to around 10:1 bandwidth. Getting up to and past 1 gigasamples per second is difficult even using the prior mentioned pile of very expensive FPGAs.

You won't be able to pull in everything from ~100mhz signals to 18ghz signals all in one $300 pizza box on your roof. The spacex device will be much more narrowly targeted.

beachstartup• 10 years ago

protip: buy rural real estate in good locations before this goes live.

namlem• 10 years ago

Between this, self-driving Teslas, and Tesla solar panels and battery storage, absolutely.

dboreham• 10 years ago

That real estate already has coverage by Verizon, AT&T and probably a couple of WISPs.

Source: I live in such a place.

itissid• 10 years ago

The PSLV launched 20 satellites in one shot and that vehicle is 15M $ per launch. The double digit million cost of SpaceX's reusable rocket isn't much cheaper than that.

Does someone know what orbit these are being launched into and how heavy they are?

greglindahl4• 10 years ago

You can find launch capacities on Wikipedia. PSLV has a smaller payload and smaller price than F9.

For these satellites, you can find a description of their orbit and a guess at their mass at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation

tyldum• 10 years ago

I work for a company that supports a lot of the satellites launched with PSLV. Most are in high inclination polar orbits. Not only is the PSLV reliable, but it is also very precise in delivery.

benjismith• 10 years ago

You gotta love the genius of a guy whose rocket company gets to practice for their Mars launch by sending up a bunch of satellites (powered by the solar panels he makes) to assemble a new worldwide wireless internet company, in order to provide ubiquitous connectivity for his autonomous car business.

castratikron• 10 years ago

Actually I think the main motivation for this is just to make money, which will then be used to fund things like a Mars mission.

walrus0116• 10 years ago

I am about 99.9% certain that these will not be powered by consumer grade Si solar cells in special panels/encapsulation. Satellites typically use triple junction GaAs cells (>30% efficient) which are rated for space:

https://www.google.com/search?q=spectrolab+gaas&ie=utf-8&oe=...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-junction_solar_cell

Spectrolab is owned by Boeing.

craigds• 10 years ago

Typically, but SpaceX has made rather a habit of ignoring expensive space-grade components in favour of consumer-grade ones they test themselves for a fraction of the cost. I guess we'll see.

3Pi• 10 years ago

It's worth noting that the SpaceX satellites only have a mission length of 5-7 years, and the Spectrolab solar panels are built to last for a typical 15 length mission (from the link you provided). Perhaps they will opt for (presumably) cheaper components given the shorter lifetime.

taneq3• 10 years ago

It costs them a lot less per kg to lift to orbit, maybe they're just throwing more panel area at the problem? They're claiming 22.8% efficiency for their earthbound panels so that's only a ~50% increase in panel weight.

TD-Linux2• 10 years ago

See this picture of the Dragon spacecraft's panels: http://www.space.com/images/i/000/017/802/i02/spacex-dragon-...

They are very clearly Sunpower C60 or similar, a high end mono-Si cell.

I am a bit skeptical about the economics too, but apparently it works for SpaceX.

Animats• 10 years ago

Henry J. Kaiser also did it all. Kaiser Steel. Kaiser Motors. Kaiser Permanente (the cement company, not the hospital company). Kaiser Shipbuilding. Kaiser Gypsum. All gone now.

toomuchtodo2• 10 years ago

While the entities might be transient, the progress they deliver is permanent.

Musk might not care if Tesla and SpaceX disappear if electric vehicle mobility and affordable transport to Mars is achieved. They are a means to an end.

delackner• 10 years ago

Well, sure, but he also made the hospital company, and that has thrived. I would think if Musk's ventures all go to plan, only SpaceX will be left at the end of it all.

Gnarl• 10 years ago

Kaiser Soze is still out there

joelwilliamson• 10 years ago

Kaiser Motors is still producing Jeeps as a division of Chrysler.

matt4077• 10 years ago

I've seen two sorts of that kind of founder: some are just excellent and create 20 businesses each of which would be impressive on its own. And profitable.

The other: vast networks of companies all dependent on each other. When any one of them gets in trouble, it all comes falling down like a house of cards. And the chance of none of them getting into trouble? (1 - 0.<failure rate>)^<# of businesses>. That gets very small, very fast.

Lesson: never ever make a decision for business <b> because you also own business <a>. Too many people going from millionaire status to personal bancrupcy, at just about the moment where they're too old to start fresh, yet too young to coast.

schiffern10• 10 years ago

Lesson: never ever make a decision for business <b> because you also own business <a>

Shouldn't the lesson be, "don't allow any singular company to become a single point of failure?"

JulianMorrison• 10 years ago

I love the way he's basically a Bond villain, but nice.

phkahler3• 10 years ago

Don't forget, they can launch on used rockets for a fraction of the cost. This will also help them to prove the reliability of those used rockets. Mass produced satellites are perfect for that.

twoodfin• 10 years ago

...in order to provide ubiquitous connectivity for his autonomous car business.

This seems like a pretty foolish way to do that. Mobile data over ground-based cellular systems is rapidly becoming a commodity, and at least in the areas of the world where Teslas will be sold, it's essentially ubiquitous. Why in the world would it be worth setting up and maintaining a massive satellite network just to cover the .001% of driver miles spent far enough away from a tower?

nojvek• 10 years ago

Single network that works anywhere in the world? Why not?

It will be a very disruptive business if he can pull it off

bmon• 10 years ago

I've looked through the reddit post and this and haven't found much discussion regarding the increase in latency that would come with such a service. Does anyone have a general idea of how much slower a round trip is when you count the transmission to the satellites and back? In some multiplayer games a difference of 100ms provides a massive advantage, making it much harder to play competitively on slower connections.

Anchor• 10 years ago

The satellites are on Low Earth Orbit (LEO), so they are much closer to Earth than typical communication satellites. When the distance from ground station is 1000-1500 kilometers up, latency is not a problem. In fact, latency via satellites may be smaller than through fiber as speed of light is greater in vacuum. IIRC in fiber it is something around 0.6c, so a 40 % off from a space-based approach. Also there's probably going to be more switches along a ground-based path than along the satellite-to-satellite route.

rjmunro• 10 years ago

Also the fibre doesn't go in a straight line. Undersea, it has to route around continents and the polar ice cap, and sometimes underwater features.

JoeAltmaier4• 10 years ago

Perfect solution: communicate with neutrinos directly through the earth for a point-to-point absolute minimum latency link.

Lanzaa• 10 years ago

it could give people gigabit level access, 20 to 30ms latency, everywhere on Earth

From:

http://shitelonsays.com/transcript/spacex-seattle-2015-2015-...

Via:

https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/5d9724/spacex_has_f...

spiderfarmer• 10 years ago

Would anyone be surprised if this is (in part) responsible for the shift in focus for Google Fiber? Why would Google invest Billions for a small portion of coverage while Elon is busy building an ISP for the whole world? Elon and Larry are friends, and Elon has talked about using LEO satellites for internet access before.

schiffern10• 10 years ago

Musk says that 90% of connectivity in cities will be fiber, only 10% satellite. Fiber works great in high density areas.

mayrak• 10 years ago

Can't wait for global internet!!!!

huhtenberg• 10 years ago

... as opposed to local internet that we have now?

mbrookes• 10 years ago

What is the FCCs regulatory remit when it comes to satellites? Presumably the application only affects satellites with a US footprint, and only if broadcasting on regulated frequencies?

mountaineer22• 10 years ago

So, would this be consumer-facing internet, or would SpaceX be subletting capacity on their network for various providers to offer "space internet"?

This has been mentioned before in the context of municipalities building/maintaining fiber infrastructure and subletting to ISPs.

kauegimenes• 10 years ago

Where is the satellite quantity for this application? I cant find it.

grecy2• 10 years ago

I'm still not sure why they are doing this - I'm in West Africa now, have been through some very poor countries, and every single one has blazing fast 3G connectivity, even in the remote mountain towns.

I'm tethered to 3G, and for all purposes it's as fast as cellular internet I've used anywhere in the world.

It is a little more expensive than most locals really can afford, although they are all checking facebook multiple times per day.....

So I really don't understand this idea of "bring internet to the 3rd world" they have it already.

JoeAltmaier4• 10 years ago

I've said for years, you want fast internet you need to be a rice farmer in China. Because they leapfrogged the copper infrastructure that my local phone company is still depreciating down.

jbob2000• 10 years ago

I'm sure there's a term for this, but people in the West have this idea that everyone not in the West is a dirty savage living in a mud hut.

Also, you aren't a real rich person until you've "helped the Africa".

grecy2• 10 years ago

people in the West have this idea that everyone not in the West is a dirty savage living in a mud hut.

Yes, very much. Now I've been moving around for 5 months my eyes are very much open to the reality.

People also thought I would be murdered on day 1, when in fact I have met many, many kind kind friendly people who have welcomed me into their home.

The culture of the West really does teach it's pupils they are the best, and everyone else is crap. The Media further enhances this idea.

I loved when I met a guy in a rural, poor part of Gambia - he said "Oh yeah, my brother lives in Australia. I was there for a few years. I came back here, I like it more".

Africa is not the hell-hole people think it is.

vinay427• 10 years ago

I should add that the coverage in the parts of rural India I was in last year was far better than rural coverage in the US, surely due in part to population density but it's clear cost is the major hurdle left.

jccooper• 10 years ago

The SpaceX network is said to be mostly for upstream connections, rather than consumer devices. They want to replace fiber, not cell towers. That's useful just about everywhere.

gthtjtkt• 10 years ago

The plural of anecdote is not "evidence". 4 billion people still lack internet access, and this would drastically increase speeds even for those who already have access to broadband.

Besides, what's with the desperate attempt to slander this endeavor as some kind of misguided moral grandstanding? As far as I can tell, they're not doing this just to bring internet to 3rd world countries, they're doing it to bring better internet to the entire world.

monocasa2• 10 years ago

Are those 4 billion people not in range of a cell tower, or are they simply too poor to own or rent a downlink device, be it phone, dongle, or what have you?

atourgates• 10 years ago

Even in America there are still pretty big blank spaces on the map.

I live 5-miles outside of a town in Idaho with a state university, and a population of about 30,000 people. Between my house and town, I lose service for 80% of the drive. If I drive from here to the next major population center, I'll only have internet on the state highway for about 40% of the drive. If I make the same drive on back roads, I'll have internet for less than 10% of the drive.

The situation is much the same in much of the rural West.

poorman• 10 years ago

3G becomes saturated quickly as the number of devices on the network increases. I would suspect West Africa would have much less saturation than say New York City.

JoeAltmaier4• 10 years ago

Makes me think: by the time we get to Mars, Mars will have Internet (and GPS etc).

planteen5• 10 years ago

I'm late to this thread and very disappointed in the HN crowd that nobody has mentioned any of these things.

OneWeb is trying to do the same thing and already has rights to the spectrum from the ITU. They are using Arianespace to launch and Airbus build their spacecraft. It's possible this whole application is a ploy to disrupt Arianespace since SpaceX is upset about not getting a massive launch contract.

http://spacenews.com/one-year-after-kickoff-oneweb-says-its-...

Commercial satellite constellations do not have a great track record. Iridium and GlobalStar tried to do phone networks and both went bankrupt. GlobalStar was backed by Qualcomm and Iridium by Motorola. Though they both have complete, functioning constellations. Look at GSAT and IRDM to see how well they are doing post bankruptcy.

Teledesic tried to do the same thing in the 90s and was backed by Bill Gates. It didn't go anywhere.

heymijo• 10 years ago

Tren Griffin, the 4th employee at Teledesic, has a good write up of it with lessons learned. May be able to see if anything has changed that may make these new efforts work where others failed.

https://25iq.com/2016/07/23/a-dozen-things-i-learned-being-i...

planteen5• 10 years ago

Thanks for that. That was an excellent post. As someone who has worked in the space industry, this quote is so true: "They [big aerospace contractors] liked the idea of PhDs assembling massive satellites in clean rooms out of custom parts since it created a barrier to entry."

everlost• 10 years ago

"You probably have heard the story about the chicken being involved in breakfast because she laid an egg but that the pig was committed to breakfast since he supplied the bacon. Investors are like the chicken, but startup up employees are like the pig." I liked this quote... perfect way to describe the startup-investor relationship.

airbreather• 10 years ago

Also Australian (Israeli) company Sky and Space (ASX:SAS) is launching 3 nanosats in May as proof of concept and have a tie in with Virgin.

Gruselbauer2• 10 years ago

Am on satellite internet. When it works, it's kinda okay. 25mbps down are possible and sometimes achieved. On a Friday evening though, the shared medium hits hard. Last week an 'aptitude update' took an entire business day.

So, yeah, I'm gonna assume people who're by every definition smarter than me aren't going to try this kind of 'meh' technology for their own Google Fiber like plans. Ground based RF networks make a lot more sense imho.

bosdev• 10 years ago

The SpaceX plan puts the satellites in low earth orbit, much closer than the geosynchronous satellites you can connect to now. That lowers latency into the 25-30ms range. There will also be many more of them, and presumably they are being built with the understanding they will need to support the bandwidth requirements of the Netflix-era of internet usage.

Gruselbauer2• 10 years ago

Thanks for clearing that up. Latency is another of these things currently, pings below 800ms are a rarity for me. Very noticeable and pretty annoying.

I'm not presuming I know better than a bunch of SpaceX engineers.

hash-set• 10 years ago

The problem with satellite Internet is the uplink and downlink speeds.

mandeepj• 10 years ago

SpaceX might target phone business also besides internet

likeInThatBook• 10 years ago

Musk's 4.4k strong array of communications satellites in LEO becomes a weapon (think Lex Luthor) if you can point the full transmit power of a bunch of them at a single point (think MIMO).

How much microwave energy do you need to put on a watermelon to make it pop?

ksec• 10 years ago

This got me to think if it is possible to create a super giant Wireless Network, With Satellites, and Microwave tower on ground as well as Whitespace Super WiFi / LTE mesh network.

SpaceX FCC Application for over 4000 Internet Satellites

Related Stories