The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently gave SpaceX permission to build Starlink — Elon Musk’s version of satellite-based broadband Internet. The FCC specifically approved launching the first 4,425 of what will eventually total 11,925 satellites in orbit. To keep this license SpaceX has to launch at least 2,213 satellites within six years. The implications of this project are mind-boggling with the most important probably being that it will likely result in SpaceX crushing its space launch competitors, companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s United Launch Alliance (ULA) partnership as well as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.
Starlink is a hugely ambitious project. It isn’t the first proposed Internet-in-the-sky. Back in the 1990s a Bill Gates-backed startup called Teledesic proposed to put 840 satellites in orbit to provide 10 megabit-per-second (mbps) broadband anywhere on Earth. Despite spending hundreds of millions, Teledesic was just ahead of its time, killed by a lack of cost-effective launch services. Twenty years later there are several Teledesic-like proposals, the most significant of which may be OneWeb — variously 882 or 648 or 1972 satellites, depending who is talking, offering 50 mbps. OneWeb has raised more than $1 billion, found a launch partner in Arianespace and even broken ground on a satellite factory in Orlando, Florida.
While OneWeb is ambitious and looks like it will actually happen, Starlink kicks the whole idea up about 20 notches to one gigabit-per-second connectivity (two test satellites are already in orbit). And while OneWeb may thrive offering Internet service where there presently is none (third world countries and rural areas of first world countries) Starlink seems to want to compete head-to-head against the Verizons and Comcasts of the world.
Purely in terms of hardware in orbit, Starlink’s minimal system of 2,213 satellites weighing 400 kilograms (kg) each will total 885,200 kg or just under two million pounds while OneWeb’s maximal system of 1972 satellites at 200 kg each will weigh 394,400 kg (867,870 lbs) — just over a third as much. Clearly these projects are aiming at different customer bases.
IF Starlink is deployed, the most interesting effect will probably be on global satellite launch services rather than Internet. Right now there are just under 1300 operational satellites in orbit, yet Starlink is promising to launch at least 2,213 satellites within six years and more likely 4,425. This means launching 1-2 satellites per day.
In 2017 a total of 90 satellite launches were carried out by seven nations, which is an average of one every four days. So even the minimal Starlink system will require a massive expansion of global launch capacity, with 100 percent of that capacity coming from SpaceX, as Starlink’s owner.
SpaceX was already by far the price and volume leader in global launch services, but Starlink will kick the operation into an entirely new orbit.
Here’s the strategic part. Starlink satellites will, for the most part, be secondary payloads on Falcon 9 launches. Usually the secondary customer can’t specify the orbit they want, taking whatever the primary customer gives them, but SpaceX has a second stage rocket motor that can be restarted, powering the secondary payload to a new orbit after the primary payload has been dropped. Launching as a secondary payload means SpaceX’s launch costs will be mainly covered by the primary client. It will cost them very little to put their Starlink satellites into orbit.
But wait, there’s a lot more to this than just a cheap ride to space. SpaceX is currently the only launcher that recovers and reuses its first stage rockets, powering them back to those spectacular automated landings on ocean barges or right back to the launch pad in Florida. This, too, makes SpaceX cheaper and gives them greater total capacity.
And capacity is the real name of the game here, because launching all those Starlink satellites will require SpaceX to dramatically expand the number of launches it will make each year. Extra launches drive down costs through more efficient utilization of ground facilities and economies of scale in building more reusable rockets.
SpaceX, which already costs less than half as much as an otherwise comparable ULA launch, is about to get even cheaper.
There is a side effect, too, of this greater launch frequency: it will change the very nature of the SpaceX business, making it less of a charter service and more like an airline.
Here is the comparison to keep in mind. Using ULA as a example, that company currently launches about one Atlas V rocket per month for a price of $150-200 million per launch. SpaceX presently does about three times as many launches for about half the ULA price, with most of those first rocket stages recovered and reused. Starlink demand should again triple SpaceX’s number of launches to something like nine per month. The company will need primary payloads to cover much of that cost, so they will inevitably lower primary payload prices even further, taking business not just from ULA but from the Europeans, Russians, Chinese, Indians, Japanese — you name it.
There will be a substantial change, too, in the terms of service for throwing larger payloads into orbit. Let’s use that charter versus airline example again. Under the current system any company or agency that wants to launch a satellite generally starts spending money on launch services two years before they plan to actually have something in space. This is not all bad because it takes a long time just to build a satellite — or used to. So the current business has customers putting 80 percent down two years before their launch — a payment that begins construction of the launch vehicle that is used once then destroyed. So it’s a one-way charter at best. Against this SpaceX will be launching (and recovering!) three rockets per week no matter what. It becomes a scheduled service, like an airline. And like an airline, it may no longer be necessary to book two years in advance.
It is going to be near impossible to compete with such a SpaceX system if you can’t match SpaceX scale — a scale that will be driven primarily by Starlink (that is internal) demand.
The FCC is very unlikely to approve another constellation on the scale of Starlink, so for the next six years SpaceX will be protected from big competitors.
ULA will stay in business for national security payloads and some NASA business, but I can’t imagine their commercial business will survive. Blue Origin may get some business launching larger payloads with the huge New Glenn rocket they have in development, but unless Bezos comes up with his own demand generator like Starlink, it’s unlikely he can keep pace
ULA will become an afterthought kept around by NASA and DoD mainly to avoid total dependence on SpaceX. How does Blue Origin find a place in this new landscape? SpaceX will need them to avoid anti-trust.
IF it works (and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t) this one project turns SpaceX from a charter company into a scheduled carrier — the ONLY scheduled carrier. With three reusable launches per week they’ll undercut everyone else on both price AND service.
Keep this in mind: all Starlink has to do is break-even and maybe not even that because it will also be financing the SpaceX expansion.
This could be the endgame for traditional launch companies and with the FCC’s recent action, that endgame may have already begun.
The most minor effect of such a remarkable launch cadence will be that no visit to Florida will be complete without watching a rocket launch: gone will be the days of people burning their entire annual vacation allowance only watch a series of holds and scrubs.
So what you’re saying is that regular space launches — akin to air travel today — is likely to become a reality before you address the Mineserver issue, let alone before any ever actually gets one?
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Wow. What amazing times we live in.
SpaceX may have won, but you know who really lost? Your backers on Kickstarter.
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(Other answers that would have been acceptable are your integrity, your readers/fans, the kids who didn’t get a Mineserver under the tree back in 2015 when you wrote “If we had cases we could start shipping tomorrow.”)
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Seems to me, pretty much everyone lost.
SpaceX can’t piggyback on _every_ launch they do. The orbital inclinations for the Starlink constellation vary from 53 to 81 degrees. (see http://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=1158350 ). High inclination launches can generally only be done from Vandenberg, and not Florida or their under construction site in Texas. That limits the savings quite a bit.
Out of the total 52 SpaceX launches of Falcon9/Heavy so far, I count only 9 that have occurred from Vandenberg.
Thanks Bob. A fascinating read! You’re back on form! More analyses like this please!
@Scott: I wonder if the people of SpaceX have thought of launching from this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey_%28launch_platform%29
Out in the Pacific they can use any launch inclination, right? No populations nearby.
Personally, I can’t wait. I live off the back roads of Colorado (where we don’t even get AM radio) and right now I’m dependent on (agonizingly) slow satellite internet. If I get 1 mbps, it’s a good day.
I have to wonder, with that many launches, what’s the environmental impact from the burnt rocket fuel? The byproducts of the fuel combustion seem to be quite toxic. I can imagine the ppm in the atmosphere skyrocketing (pun, sorry) with so many launches.
Here’s hoping that SpaceX is already considering the environmental issues they will likely need to address in the near future.
I’ve never seen anything about SpaceX considering any off-shore launches, and at the moment, I believe SeaLaunch is still out of business. Nonetheless, SpaceX is going to have to significantly increase their launch cadence to get StarLink operational in time. Who knows what they might come up with?
Have you read Tren Griffin on space-based telecom? He used to work at Teledesic, and I don’t think he thinks much of Musk’s chances.
I can hardly wait for it!!
Cable and cell companies will have more competition. Internet repression will be much harder. People in remote parts of the world will have fast access to the internet. What’s not to love here?
What is the possibility that Musk manages to capture the entire internet? I’m sure Starlink will be fast and redundantly connected to land systems for access to the old internet. Eventually the providers like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and Google will all want to be directly connected to Starlink to delivering their content. How dangerous is this to backbone companies? How much of the internet traffic will move to the sky? Is it possible this will remake the internet?
Would be nice if Musk would add some kind of net neutrality to the system.
Existing providers better hope Starlink has reception problems!
Xfinity is toast is six years. I can’t wait.
And how does this benefit Americans and America?
Does it raise wages for the middle class?
Does it stop h1b ?
At least when government did it the county and Americans benefited
Government used to do things in the national interest
Now that individuals can lower wages with h1b, they can do whatever they like even if it has few benefits
And how does this benefit Americans and America?
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If you have to ask this question then you will not understand the answer.
Have you read Tren Griffin on space-based telecom? He used to work at Teledesic, and I don’t think he thinks much of Musk’s chances.
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URL please.
The money from the rich is gotten by suppressing wages with h1b etc
Compared to a government program that creates jobs like the space race
The benefits may even be negative when you take into account these people are rich because wages and standard of living is in decline with h1b etc
The opposite was true with the space race
Big win for our very own American oligarch.
You are correct, but understate SpaceX’s launch capacity. The two test satellites you refer to were indeed secondary payload, but they have more significant advantages. They are now starting to use the latest and final version of their Falcon 9 booster, which is designed for extreme reuse. They anticipate only refurbishing them every ten launches and having a 100-launch lifespan. They are working toward soft landing of the second stage rockets and catching and reusing the nose-cone fairings as well.
This is the last generation of the Falcon 9, and they are now starting to use the next generation Falcon Heavy, The Falcon Heavy has over twice the payload capacity of the Falcon 9 and their next generation rocket, the BFR, is being designed now and will have five times the capacity of the Falcon Heavy.
For a lot more on SpaceX, OneWeb and other LEO and MEO Internet-service projects, see: http://cis471.blogspot.com/2017/12/eighteen-posts-on-low-earth-orbit.html — they have a lot more going for them than increased payloads and launch cadence.
How many times has Bob called “game over” or “endgame” for something, due to a new announcement or technology demo?
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There are certainly intriguing things that get posted here, but Bob’s actual analysis of “what this means” is almost always something you could make a good wad of cash by consistently betting against (if you’re so inclined).
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As for this story (“The space race is over and SpaceX won”) a missing detail I kept hoping to see is information about how many of the Starlink satellites SpaceX can put up in a single launch, as either secondary or primary payloads.
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Turns out the Starlink test satellites they’ve launched so far were both secondary payloads on a single launch.
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It seems clear to me that SpaceX simply won’t have the number of customers needed, especially at the orbital inclinations needed, to launch secondary payloads for more than just a small fraction of just the minimal system of Starlink 2,213 satellites they want. So they’re going to have to do a bunch of dedicated launches themselves, which thus won’t be subsidized by another customer. It wouldn’t be surprising at all if part of the intent of the Starlink plan was to help justify the development of Falcon Heavy, as well as eventually the BFR. In this regard, it should be noted that the next scheduled flight of Falcon Heavy, in June, is for a launch of “as many as 20” satellites. So if 20 Starlink satellites could fit on a single Falcon Heavy, then the minimal constellation would take about 110 Falcon Heavy launches. Over six years, that would be about three dedicated Falcon Heavy launches every two months.
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If SpaceX can double the number of launches they do for other paying customers into the orbital inclinations needed for Starlink, from Vandenberg, and each of those could carry two Starlink satellites as secondary payloads, that could count for about 20 Starlink satellite launches per year, or the equivalent of one Falcon Heavy. Over six years they’d still need to do more than 100 Starlink-dedicated Falcon Heavy launches.
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Most likely I think SpaceX is hoping to get their BFR ready in time, and Starlink launches would give it an initial commercial reason for existence. The projected capacity of the BFR is about 230% of a Falcon Heavy. So one dedicated BFR launch could deliver maybe 50 Starlink satellites to orbit. With BFRs only, then, it would take about 44 launches to put up the minimal system of Starlink 2,213 satellites. The true plan is surely to combine a mix of secondary payload launches and Starlink-dedicated Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and BFR (once it’s ready) launches.
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This whole system is in no way going to be cheap, and in reality at most a small fraction of its launch costs will be subsidized by other launch customers. SpaceX doesn’t really have much incentive to bring down launch costs to those other customers, either, because they’re going to need that money to pay for their own dedicated Starlink launches. Really, as long as they just continuously undercut ULA and Blue Origin’s prices, that’s as low as they probably go.
>”BFR, is being designed now and will have five times the capacity of the Falcon Heavy.”
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Falcon Heavy has a capacity of 63,800 kg to LEO. BFR has a projected capacity of 150,000 kg to LEO. That’s not 5x to LEO. You may be thinking of GTO capacity.
lynn April 6, 2018 at 4:23 pm – Reply
Have you read Tren Griffin on space-based telecom? He used to work at Teledesic, and I don’t think he thinks much of Musk’s chances.
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URL please.
I’m guessing this is it.
https://25iq.com/2016/07/23/a-dozen-things-i-learned-being-involved-in-one-of-the-most-ambitious-startups-ever-conceived-teledesic/
BFR is supposed to have a reusable second stage. Musk claims this means it will cost less per launch than a Falcon 9. If that turns out to be true, then the satellite launches will cost a whole lot less.
Bezos can still capture the suborbital freight market — and given Amazon’s vertical integration and expansion, he just might pull it off.
However, he’s not likely to pull it off by 2020:
http://ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=Sorb&uid=97
SpaceX is doing great – they can undercut their opposition on price by a factor of two while still making big profits, and any competition is years away from developing a similar capability (and only Blue Origin seems to really be trying.) A normal company would use this success to make a huge fortune for shareholders, but SpaceX instead is spending on the BFR, which will cost multiple billions, perhaps into the tens of billions. But now, on top of BFR we now have a plan for over 2000 sizable satellites. The cost of this will be staggering. This is a project which actually has the capability of bankrupting SpaceX if things go wrong.
It seems to me very likely that Starlink and SpaceX will at some point split. Starlink will need to raise funds, and Musk won’t be willing to take SpaceX public, because he wants it to go to Mars, which is a very dubious commercial proposition.
On the competition side, it is easy to imagine a break-up of SpaceX (voluntary or court forced by anti-trust) into a rocket construction company and one or more rocket launching companies, just like airliner manufacturers are distinct from airlines.
Thanks for all your responses. Yes, the Starlink launches will be mainly polar and there aren’t many of those and the ones that have happened have come from Vandenburg. But I’m not sure it really changes my point.
First let’s understand what’s a primary payload. We tend to think of it as a huge communications or spy satellite, but it can just as easily be a dozen or more (possibly MANY more) smaller satellites in polar orbits. Nearly all of the Earth observation cubesat startups (and there are a lot of those) require polar orbits in multiple planes. So it is easy to see how a mix of Satlinks and other polar satellites could fit together, sharing these planes.
Yes, most polar launches have been from Vandenburg, but do they have to be?
Someone asked how many Starlink satellites could fill a single Falcon 9 and the number is about 25 if the plan is to recycle the first stage. 4,425/25=177 launches if solely dedicated to Starlink payloads.
And SpaceX might well choose to go all-Starlink, if they can raise the money to do so. If their cost per launch is $40 million (remember this is not only wholesale, it is SpaceX selling to itself so we’re taking out any profit margins) then 177 launches will require raising $7 billion not including building the satellites, which might be another $3 billion or so. So for $10 billion, which is an Uber or a WeWork, Starlink wouldn’t have to accept other loads.
Except they WOULD take other loads because that’s the business SpaceX is in. And it would still be just as disruptive as I have described in the column. These minor details don’t change much of anything. Capacity still goes up and prices still come down to the detriment of SpaceX competitors.
When actual numbers come out the hyperbole of the original post starts to be revealed.
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>”Starlink satellites will, for the most part, be secondary payloads on Falcon 9 launches. … Launching as a secondary payload means SpaceX’s launch costs will be mainly covered by the primary client. It will cost them very little to put their Starlink satellites into orbit.”
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Yeah, not so much, since there just aren’t nearly as many customers who want polar orbits as SpaceX would need to piggyback their Starlink satellites on as secondary payloads. It doesn’t matter whether they’re launched from Vandenberg or not.
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>”The company will need primary payloads to cover much of that cost, so they will inevitably lower primary payload prices even further”
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First the primary payloads are going to subsidize the Starlink satellite launches, but now the Starlink satellite launches are going to subsidize the primary payloads? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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>”Starlink demand should again triple SpaceX’s number of launches to something like nine per month.”
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Really? For a minimal system of 2,213 Starlink satellites within six years (the minimum FCC license condition): With 25 on a dedicated Falcon 9 that’d be 89 launches, which is just one every three and a half weeks. Even at double that for the full 4,425 satellite constellation that’s still only adding 2 Falcon 9 launches per month to SpaceX’s existing schedule.
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If payload capacity scales linearly, one Falcon Heavy at 230% payload capacity of a Falcon 9 to LEO would be able to launch about 57 Starlink satellites. For the minimal system that would mean 39 Falcon Heavy launches, or one every 8 weeks for six years. That’s only adding half a launch per month to their existing schedule. Or just one more per month for the full 4,425 satellite constellation.
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(I won’t even bother bringing up BFR again, this time.)
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>”SpaceX will be launching (and recovering!) three rockets per week no matter what. It becomes a scheduled service, like an airline.”
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Mmmm… nope.
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>”IF it works (and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t)”
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That’s pretty much the one-line summary of every over-credulous post on this blog for years and years and years. (“Foil hard drives!” “Cheap electric planes!” “Bob’s very own moon shot!” and on and on)
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Bob, one of these days you really ought to go back through your blog and grade yourself on your exhortations about amazing new innovations that will upend multiple industries and Change the Face of Life on Earth as We Know It. Since one of the few tech bloggers who grades yourself on your own tech predictions for the previous year, it should be a familiar exercise.
Lun Esex: I got those ratios from figure 9 at http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/making_life_multiplanetary-2017.pdf. Wikipedia gives the numbers you quote. I suspect the slide is screwed up — the Y-axis is labeled “tons.” Both Elon and I were careless :-).
Clarke’s First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Cringely previously hyped the revolutionary nature of Tesla’s automation that will move the assembly line at 1m/s, saying the single factory can produce ten million cars per year. Actual production is maybe 2000/week now, with heavy use of manual labor and flaws that have to fixed up elsewhere. Even asking for cult volunteers to help them meet their numbers.
Now he is telling us Elon is revolutionizing space launches and the internet.
why not call up virgin galactic and take a passenger vehicle up with you to finance the launch? there’s already a car up there as a tourist attraction 🙂
And obviously they will never improve nor learn how to do better because.. well reasons. No engineering project ever started out slowly and got faster.
@David M: They’re burning RP-1, it’s not bad (cleaner than gasoline, nothing like the nasty hydrazine aboard Tiangong-1). At 25 satellites per launch, it would take 89 dedicated launches to get the minimum constellation and 177 to launch their full allotment. I figure about 370 metric tons of CO2 per launch, based on 518400 kg of LOX + RP-1. This works out to 101 metric tons of carbon (crosscheck: kerosene capacity 155.8 metric tons, kerosene is ~86% carbon by weight = 134 metric tons of carbon… not that close, but pick one and go with it). For comparison the average american uses 21.5 metric tons of CO2 (5.86 metric tons of carbon). So not nothing, but actually pretty small.
Lun Esex et al:
I’d like to follow up on the number of Starlink satellites possible per launch.
The fully-expendable payloads to LEOresp of the Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and BFR are 22,800, 63,800 and 150,000 kg respectively. How much would that be cut if they carried the extra fuel to recover all the rockets? How much would be cut by the weight of the release mechanisms?
Also, how many satellites would be cut by geometric volume constraints?
latency issues
Starlink is a subject that interest me a lot. Although I have a lot of experience in space systems and launches, my knowledge of communications is limited. Especially on antennas and their required sizes. Based on this background, I have the following comments/questions on your article:
Comments:
I don’t believe that Starlink will launch as secondary payloads on Falcon Vehicles for the operational phase. Even at Falcon’s advertised cost of ~$50 Million/Launch, I estimate that a total of 64 launches are required for the initial deployment. This assumes 25 Satellites per launch per launch plane. For a given launch, the satellites must be in the same plane because of the propellant cost of moving between planes. You might get more than 25/launch but I was being conservative. This is only a launch cost of $3.2 billion for a system that may generate as much as $10-30 Billion of revenue a year. Yes ground stations and satellites add a lot cost also. Reusing the first stage and SpaceX only charging marginal cost for it’s own satellites and the $3.2 drops even further. The Final deployment would be another $5.7 billion in launch cost.
Not being a communication expert, I am assuming that the Satellites work as glorified cell towers because of the >200 ground gateway stations. The more satellites and the more total broadband capability. Is this a correct assumption?
The antenna is the key to me. The only web description I can find is that it is the size of a pizza box. This seems large for LEO. I know it is a phase array, but can you approximate the size? This is key to me. Location, size, and placement. I would switch my home internet in a heart beat if they can half the price as long as the installation is not too disruptive. However if you could ever come up with an antenna that fits into a Cell phone, now that is disruptive.
How will deployment of 5G affect the business case for this system. Again, I am not a communication expert, but it seems to me that the cellular system can also replace my land line. With the speed of 5G, why do I need cellular and land internet. I know the Cellular companies must go along with allowing this on an unlimited plan, but they must be thinking this. However, what is the total band width capability of a fully deployed 5G network. Can it support everyone in the country watching their 4K Netflix content every night?
There is plenty of room for more systems as long as the frequency assignments allow it. I believe Apple has hire some satellite experts for what ever reason. Satellite internet could be very disruptive to a company like Apple. They must be evaluating the potential of these systems.
What is the geo political aspects of this? For a country like Iran, N. Korea, and China, locating gateways along it’s border would give many citizens access to unfiltered information.
IPV6 or successors would be mandatory then ? Finally IPv4 becomes obsolete. I wonder how much the spooks will slow services down with the mandatory snooping ? This would be the 2nd or 3rd attempt at orbital network on large scale. If so, given the much better hardware for launch and LEO satellites since the 1990s, the concepts time may have come, assuming some kind of WW3 does not start in in a year or so. The worlds militaries would be the main initial customers.
With that many satellites up, it would also be very difficult to break first world countries remote control or spy satellites with sat killers. The problem with space junk would also get much worse unless something can be done to hurry up de-orbiting of LEO junk. Perhaps large self-sealing liquid filled balloons in east to west and south – north orbits ?
[…] submitted by /u/speckz [link] […]
[…] Elon Musk knows that for SpaceX to dominate, scale is everything — Read on http://www.cringely.com/2018/04/06/the-space-race-is-over-and-spacex-won/ […]
Re:”Snarkus April 9, 2018 at 3:51 am Perhaps large self-sealing liquid filled balloons in east to west and south – north orbits ?” Wouldn’t that increase the space junk?
It would be interesting to compare notionally NZ based newcomer “Rocket Lab”‘s cost per kg to orbit. In January this year they went from “another dreaming startup promising low cost access to space”, to a company which demonstrated it’s ability to achieve multi-satellite deployment on their second ever attempt at orbit. *IF* their cost projections are achieved they may yet add some spice to the ‘race’. A certain degree of difference in scale is so far evident :-).
Peripheral issues:
The network seems likely to be immensely at risk from EMP attack or even hardware attack. LEO altitudes make serious beamed EMP a potential threat by attackers with enough resources and willpower. If altercations ever escalate to nuclear exchanges at some future time then accidental EMP damage is a prospect – but liable to affect a relatively small portion of the total constellation per burst. An intentional LEO burst with a device ‘optimised’ for both radiation and radionucleotides that target satellite electronics could perhaps be extremely ‘productive’. Starfish Prime (July 1962, 1.4 MT, 400 kn altitude) disabled one third of all then active communication satellites – a few nearly instantly and the rest over a period of months. Much has been learned about rad-hard device suited to the space environment, but no doubt the emp / radiation products merchants have been attempting to maintain the ‘arms race’.
2. A US “Standard Missile” has been demonstrated capable of destroying an LEO satellite. A low capability device inserted in a counter orbit seems liable to be able over time to destroy all satellites in that plane. Few have this capability. The NZ Rocket Lab launchers with LiIon powered propellant pumps has demonstrated that the “cost and ease of entry” is lower than has traditionally believed to be the case.
Russell McMahon: “It would be interesting to compare notionally NZ based newcomer “Rocket Lab”‘s cost per kg to orbit.”
Here is a video doing exactly that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0STPK3g9c8&t=1s
The short version: A Falcon 9 launch costs about 10 times an Electron launch, but has about 100 times the payload, so SpaceX wins cost per kg by a factor of 10.
If this is ever accomplished, and it sounds pretty ambitious; would this mean internet for the entire world?
I’m thinking along the lines of countries where the internet is heavily locked down and censored. If the these satellites provide internet anywhere, and they allow access in these countries, it could lead to take down of countries through uprisings – of course that’s ambitious thinking, but …
And on a less world shifting forefront, would this mean we could get this internet service on our phones as well as on our home networks, ending the need for paying for the internet multiple times? Now that would be a game changer for our pocketbooks and the providers (looking at you Verizon).
Imagine the movie Gravity, but with 12,000 satellites in orbit. It probably wouldn’t take much for a hostile actor to knock out this whole system.
And if it does work, and everybody uses it, won’t this make the NSA’s job a lot easier? Except for the massive data center they’ll need to monitor everything everybody does.
@Charles: Thanks for the figures, that’s good news. I’d hate to see them hamstrung because of environmental impacts.
@Ronc: What happens to water vapour in space ? Blown away by solar wind even in a minimum.
Since we’re speculating on the future, consider this: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html. I’ve heard Lockheed Martin has largely pulled out of ULA, leaving Boeing as the majority partner. Could it be that they see a Lockheed Martin launcher – based on compact fusion technology? If that happens, chemical rockets will be so “yesterday.”
As others have noted – you fail to calculate SpaceX’s launch capacity correctly.
Assuming GTO a single Falcon Heavy (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy) can presently send 26,700kg to GTO. At 400kg each (and rounding down) that’s 66 satellites per payload (potential – assuming they will all fit on top).
Also, for 2213 satellites in 6 years, that means 369 satellites (rounding up) per year need to be sent to orbit.
If they can get 66 satellites on a single Falcon Heavy then that’s only 6 launches per year that need to be done. Again, assuming GTO orbit.
LEO orbit would put that at 159 per Falcon Heavy, and would only require 3 Falcon Heavy launches for the same number of satellites.
Now these estimates are based on weight only. I have no clue what the dimensions of the satellites are and without that and the payload bay dimensions it’s hard to give an accurate number of how many will really fit on the Falcon Heavy. But by weight alone, the Falcon Heavy will certainly make it doable.
The BFR will supposedly be able to have a payload bay larger than the square footage of the ISS from one report; but it won’t be around until after 6 years are up – it’s just getting off the drawing board.
But yes – SpaceX has certainly won. They’ll prove it with their next Falcon Heavy launch if it goes as smoothly as the first one did – especially if they can recover the Center Core too (which they nearly did the first time).
Re: “Snarkus April 10, 2018 at 11:06 pm – Reply @Ronc: What happens to water vapour in space ? Blown away by solar wind even in a minimum.” I guess I don’t understand the concept. What are liquid filled balloons doing to the satellites? Besides, water vapor is not a liquid. Also solar wind is a term for the fact that particles from the sun, electrons and ions, emanate from it in all directions, some of which land on earth, but not with enough force to move anything.
Some of you kickstarter people might be interested in the case being pursued against Ken Whitman, notorious non-delivering crowdsourcer, and Kickstarter itself. I doubt I can get a link across here but I’ll put the full one in my name and if that still doesn’t go through you can try tenkarstavern and then a dot and then a com.
Looks like a land-grab in space. There is no way it could be profitable for the mass market.
Iridium all over again.
@Granville — Very interesting! Perhaps it’s time to start organizing something similar here. Thanks for sharing that!
@Tom — “Have you read Tren Griffin on space-based telecom? He used to work at Teledesic, and I don’t think he thinks much of Musk’s chances.”
Have *you* read Tren Griffin?
“One brilliant thing that founders like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are doing today with their involvement in space-based businesses is not creating dependencies on these traditional high cost contractors. ”
“I am optimistic these systems [from Elon and Greg Wyler] will get built and become operational.”
So what happens when Putin, Kim or Xi or any despot or well equiped blackmailer decides for *reasons* that they aren’t fans of Starlink. For probably 10’s of million investment in lasers or microwave sources and targetting systems it is probably possible to overeheat the satellites one by one as the pass over.
Bob was ahead of his time. He is, and has always been, using the youtube model for success. That means keeping people’s attention. It has nothing to do with personal integrity or with holding followers in high regard. As long as people keep commenting they are contributing to Bob’s success, just as they did when they paid his kids. What is that saying? Fool me once… ?
@Gavin Greenwalt True, that used to be Tren’s stance on Musk, but he has more recently changed his tune to a precautionary tale:
“Musk, while once thought to be the innovator this world needs, has succumbed to hubris. He acts as though the space race is over and [SpaceX] has won (ironic based on Bob’s article title here). He continues to drain the pockets of his investors on a promise that isn’t as sure a thing as he believes.”
I wouldn’t say he’s anti-Musk now in any sense of the word, but I think he’s cautious optimistic and not as pro as he once was. Only time will tell which direction that vision goes…
Do you think Starlink will only be a constellation of routers or it will eventually include orbital data centers running on solar power to improve user experience by caching content? (How cool would that be – not to mention space jobs this would create!)
Bob,
You estimated the number of satellites per Falcon 9 launch as about 25 — how did you get that figure? They have said the satellites will be around 400kg. I believe the “advertised” capacity of an expendable Falcon 9 is 22,800 kg. How much would the return fuel for reuse weigh? Do they count the mount and release mechanisms in the advertised capacity? The satellites will measure 1.1m x 0.7m x 0.7m and have two 2×8 meter solar panels. Would geometry constrain the number that would fit?
Gene Grush: The mass and antenna sizes of the two test satellites are given here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/7qnflk/paz_microsat2a_2b_launch_campaign_thread/
Assuming this, is 25 still a reasonable estimate of satellites per launch?
I gave the question of the number of satellites per launch a little more thought and came up with 27 (two more than Bob). Payload volume seems to be the tightest constraint — this was my train of thought:
The satellites are expected to have a mass of 400 kg and the maximum payload of an expendable Falcon 9 is 22,800 kg. That works out to 57 satellites per launch, but there are other payload constraints. The latest, final version of the Falcon 9 is designed for re-use so it will have to carry fuel for a powered landing and the mass of the of the satellite clamp/release mechanism must also be considered.
Another constraint is that, for efficiency, the satellites in a given launch should all be in the same orbital plane. The first, LEO, satellite constellation will consist of 4,425 satellites operating in 83 orbital planes — 54 per plane.
Payload volume is a more severe constraint. The payload volume is 145 cubic meters and the two test satellites measure 1.1m x 0.7m x 0.7m and have two 2×8 meter solar panels. I don’t know how many of those “square pegs” an origami-whiz engineer can fit into round holes, but it is clearly fewer than 54, which means more than one launch per plane.
My intuition is that two launches of 27 satellites per plane would be feasible. If so, we are looking at 166 Falcon 9 launches with satellite mass of only 10,800 kg each. If the volume allowed it, they could also rideshare with other small satellites.
A Falcon Heavy can carry 55,800 kg per full-recovery launch, but it has the same volume constraint as the Falcon 9, reducing or perhaps eliminating its advantage. (It might be worth using a Falcon Heavy to launch satellites into two orbital planes, depending on the number that would fit). The payload volume of the BFR will be a game changer when it is ready to fly.
This is getting a little off-topic but:
Steve Jobs was famous for his ‘reality distortion field’, where the force of his personality meant he could make absolutely anything seem like a wonderful idea, at least while you were in his presence. (It might even be that Bob originated the ‘reality distortion field’ phrase.) Elon Musk is claimed to have a reality distortion field too. (I hypothesize that this is the only reason anyone takes hyperloop seriously.)
Jobs died before Musk made it mega-big, so we never got to see how these fields would interact. This is my thought experiment: what if Jobs and Musk had met, causing a RDF overlap?
Hypothesis 1: It can’t happen. It was the same RDF. When Jobs died, it floated around for a bit until it found a suitable new host, i.e. Musk.
Hypothesis 2: One would overpower the other. Musk (probably) would not be able to convince you of stuff while in the presence of Jobs.
Hypothesis 3: They would cancel. Neither Musk nor Jobs would be convincing while they were together.
Hypothesis 4: This is the really scary one. There would be a run-away positive feedback loop. One of them would make an off-the-cuff remark like ‘wouldn’t it be cool if door handles had a reservoir of disinfectant’. Their RDF causes the other to become enthused, which enthuses the first, and within a month self disinfecting door handles is a religion followed by 85% of the world population and the inquisition is hunting the remaining 15%.
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Maybe Musk can use MESHing algos instead of the cellular model. The WiMAX steamroller never got going, but having an internet service that you can connect to WITHOUT giving up your location, with end-to-end encryption would KILL all his competitors.
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…..and no one even talks about the radiation expansion over this globe we live/die on? I’m assuming that along with this fulfillment project for our government someone else is creating radiation eschewing clothing and especially hats, when outside.
For me I already want my home made of metal, with NO internal WiFi.
To me this sounds redolent of Supreme Population Control by the NWO.
Where are our Elites going to go? Underground, pun intended?
@Allene Avey April 21, 2018 at 8:59 am There are different types and intensities of radiation, most of which comes directly from the sun.
I don’t see why SpaceX has decided on a factory to build the BFR at the Port of Long Beach. That real estate is expensive, especially compared to the desert. Unless maybe they need water transport for it. The Odyssey Launch Platform (see Wikipedia) is apparently nearby and usable for launches. Recoveries? Needs a bigger barge.
You need acces to water for transportation/logistics/dependencies and how many top notch engineers/techs, would ever work in the dessert?
What will this do to the space debris problem?
One company will not be allowed to effectively own the internet . . . Starlink will be declared a common carrier. At least we will get back net neutrality.
i am more and more convinced that musk is crazy
so lets see: this genius wants to launch 12 thousands satellites to cover the areas not already covered by some sort of mobile internet.
maybe he didnt think about the fact that if mobile providers do not cover a certain area is because there is nothing and nobody to cover, and the chances of raising any revenue from a very rarified (if any) populace living in the middle of nowhere and without a roof over their head are close to zero?
this goes together with other silly ideas, like the solar shingles, transporting people under vacuum, and the invention of the subway…
almost forgot. electric cars
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It will tear down the great firewall of China. Repressive regimes will be unable to block content or access
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