

Elon Musk wants to bring the Internet in space - ekjeacheblog
https://ekjeacheblog.com/elon-musk-spacex-wants-bring-internet-space/

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joshontheweb
My big question is how fast can this put Comcast out of business? Because that
would be awesome.

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grondilu
> The director of SpaceX is developing a network of satellites above the Earth
> that could speed up web surfing and could provide access to isolated
> communities. And the most interesting thing about this project is that it
> will use the profits to help colonize the planet Mars.

Is there that much money to make in delivering internet to isolated
communities??

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TkTech
Nope. Many people have theorized that this is to ensure that Tesla cars and
other automated vehicles (land, sea, air or space) have access to the internet
at all times, anywhere.

~~~
greglindahl
This is an existing market called M2M [1], and interestingly enough, one of
the existing players in this worldwide is Orbcomm, which is halfway through
launching their new constellation on Falcon 9!

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_to_machine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_to_machine)

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ColinWright
I'm sure this must have been mentioned before, but one of the biggest issues
with a usable network connection of any type is latency. Given that the
satellites will be in space, hundreds of kms away, and there has to be a
return journey, how is the latency issue going to be addressed?

Mentioned in this discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8944944)
The New Space Race: One Man's Mission to Build a Galactic Internet
(businessweek.com)

Here's the actual discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8945672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8945672)

    
    
        ================================================
    

And now that I've searched, that's pretty much the _only_ discussion. Although
there may be more, here are the others I've looked at:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8599177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8599177)
Elon Musk confirms plans to provide global Internet from 100s of satellites
(rt.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8624500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8624500)
Elon Musk: SpaceX Will Launch Micro-Satellites (thenextweb.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8893525)
Elon Musk's SpaceX to launch ViaSat-2 high speed Internet satellite
(utsandiego.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8903135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8903135)
Revealed: Elon Musk's Plan to Build a Space Internet (businessweek.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8903450](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8903450)
SpaceX to build 10B global satellite Internet (geekwire.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8903658](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8903658)
Elon Musk spills details on SpaceX's $10B space Internet venture
(engadget.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904304](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904304)
Elon Musk wants to spend $10B building the Internet in space (theverge.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8904435)
Elon Musk's Plan to Build a Space Internet (businessweek.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905059)
Elon Musk wants to spend $10B building the Internet in space (theverge.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905277)
Elon Musk's Plan to Build a Space Internet (businessweek.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905474](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905474)
Elon Musk's Plan to Build a Space Internet (businessweek.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8905562)
Elon musk is going to build Internet for space (thenextweb.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8907045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8907045)
Elon Musk is trying to bring the Internet to space (cnet.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908019)
Elon Musk wants to build a new Internet from space (venturebeat.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917258)
I Told Elon Musk We Should Have Space Internet, Musk Announces It a Month
Later (adamslists.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8922038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8922038)
Elon Musk and SpaceX Plan a Space Internet (businessweek.com)

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Aqwis
The hundreds of kilometers between the Earth and the satellites must surely be
a drop in the bucket with regards to latency. After all, the distance between
Europe and the US is roughly 6000 km at the minimum, nevermind the distances
to Australia or East Asia.

I'm not entirely sure why today's satellite internet connections have such
high latencies, but it doesn't seem physically impossible to develop low-
latency satellite Internet access.

Edit: It appears nearly all of the current Internet access-providing
satellites are in geostationary orbit, which is much further away than a few
hundred kilometers, causing a great amount of latency. If Musk can
successfully find a way to use satellites in low Earth orbit to provide
Internet access instead, that will get rid of most of the latency.

~~~
yetanotheracc
> I'm not entirely sure why today's satellite internet connections have such
> high latencies

Geosynchronous orbit's radius is 42164 km. Ever tried to play FPS on an
Australian server?

~~~
Aqwis
Yeah, see my edit. I didn't realize that all the satellites providing Internet
access were in geostationary orbit until after I posted my comment.

Reading Wikipedia, it seems Internet access through LEO satellites is possible
today, but provides far slower Internet acccess speeds.

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matznerd
Elon covered all of this and more during the launch of the SpaceX Seattle
offices. He pretty much goes over the entire game plan in this video ->
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHeZHyOnsm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHeZHyOnsm4)

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BillFranklin
Surely you can send emails to the ISS? I think this is how the astronauts are
tweeting - they send the tweet via email.

Astronauts on Twitter:

[https://twitter.com/AstroSamantha](https://twitter.com/AstroSamantha)

[https://twitter.com/AstroTerry](https://twitter.com/AstroTerry)

[https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly](https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly)

[https://twitter.com/AntonAstrey](https://twitter.com/AntonAstrey)

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namlem
This could be a huge deal. What I wonder is if repressive regimes like China
will be able to block or censor the signal from internet satellites.

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Sealy
Good, because space would get boring without being able to check my emails or
see my Facebook feed.

You wouldn't even be able to send selfies.

