
SpaceX Will Announce Micro-Satellites for Low Cost Internet Within Three Months - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/spacex-will-announce-micro-satellites-for-low-cost-internet-within-three-months/
======
martinald
Very interesting. The latency may be <10ms which is good enough for most
applications.

ViaSat1 has an overall capacity of 140Gbit/sec and that was launched in 2011.
I'd imagine that higher capacities are possible (though considering they are
very low weight, that may restrict the amount of beams it can push out).

However, the continual problem with satellite internet is that the satellites
have a life expectancy of 15 years or so. While 140gbit/sec+ is probably
enough now, it certainly won't be much in a few years time (when you have to
consider that the bandwidth is shared across an awful lot of potential users).

Edit: I'd also add that while the proposed market is for areas without current
internet connectivity, people do need to realise that a lot of Africa has very
good 2G/3G coverage and some areas have very good LTE coverage. The problem
historically has been backhaul capacity

a) from the towers back b) from the core network back to the internet

a) is still an issue as in Africa most if not all backhaul from the towers is
provided via microwave relay and daisy chaining them, which causes capacity
problems (most of the West has fibre or similar connecting each tower)

b) is slowly being improved with much better fibre runs around Africa.

Considering that most very basic smartphones will have LTE chipsets by the
time this system is up, it may be more cost effective to use LTE than this
system. This system is likely to require expensive ground terminals that need
to be fixed in place.

~~~
ybalkind
"people do need to realise that a lot of Africa has very good 2G/3G coverage"

This true, but the price is prohibitive. Most cell phone users in Africa are
on prepaid mobile services which charge the equivalent of 20 US cents per MB
for 2G/3G data. This is a lot of money for the average 3rd world cell phone
user.

~~~
AmirS2
Kenya has pretty good rates for prepaid data, approx 1 US cent per MB if you
buy a 500Mb bundle:

[http://www.safaricom.co.ke/personal/internet/data-
plans/prep...](http://www.safaricom.co.ke/personal/internet/data-plans/prepay-
data-bundles)

500KSH for the 500Mb bundle, current FX rate is 90KSH/USD. Even the smallest
bundle, 4Mb, is hardly more expensive per MD, at only 5 KSH (5.6 cents).

Are these prices unrepresentative of other African countries?

~~~
4ad
1c/MB is a huge price even for me in a western country. For me, it's between
$1k and $2k a month!

For Africans the cost is even higher.

~~~
eitally
You probably wouldn't use nearly as much data if the speeds were only 2G/3G.

------
throwaway_yy2Di
So, this seems to be an evolution of Greg Wyler's WorldVu Constellation,

    
    
        Musk's comment follows reports that he's looking into
        lending support to a small-satellite venture established
        with the goal of providing global Internet access. The
        venture, known as WorldVu Satellites, was founded by former
        Google executive Greg Wyler...
    

[http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-working-
satellit...](http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-working-satellite-
project-elon-musk-says-n244106)

Wikipedia details about what that was:

* Originally planned 360 satellites

* Originally estimated cost $3 billion, 2019-2020 timeframe (as of 2014)

* Low-earth orbit (LEO), 800 km / 950 km

* Ku band 12-18 GHz

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldVu_satellite_constellatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldVu_satellite_constellation)

------
virtualwhys
Anything that brings down the ridiculous fees for internet access at sea will
be a breath of fresh air for technologists that dream of living and working
away from terra firma.

As it stands the receiver equipment alone runs $10K to $15K, and then you get
whacked with a $3K+/month fee for unlimited access[0] O_o

A fleet of SpaceX sateillites should bring that price down significantly. If
so, could usher in a new wave of telecommuters that ditch high priced
apartment rentals in favor of nomadic living at sea ;-)

[0]
[http://www.groundcontrol.com/FleetBroadband_Service_Plans.ht...](http://www.groundcontrol.com/FleetBroadband_Service_Plans.htm)

~~~
api
Hmm... I wonder if his old colleague Peter Thiel is going to give seasteading
a try. :)

------
jimmcslim
A great idea, but I wonder what Elon Musk's ideas about addressing the
possibility of the Kessler syndrome; collisions between orbiting debris at an
exponential pace ultimately leading to the denial of safe orbits to humanity.

Given SpaceX this is clearly something he should be deeply concerned about,
but is he addressing it in any way, or just adding to the problem?

I'd say he is having a positive impact with his focus on reusable rocket
stages, therefore less debris in orbit... a cloud of micro-satellites (how
manueverable?) might be going in the other direction.

~~~
imanaccount247
I'm under the impression that they are not in a stable orbit, so they won't
become a problem.

~~~
vishbar
This may be a silly question, but when it's said that these are not in a
"stable orbit", what is the mechanism of decay? I'd imagine if they were in an
elliptical orbit, they'd simply continue that way forever in a "perfect"
system. I'd imagine tidal forces would be too weak and the satellites too
small for them to have any effect.

Are they passing through the atmosphere and experiencing atmospheric drag?

~~~
aba_sababa
Yep. Solar wind also contributes. It's possible to set the solar panels to be
orthogonal to these forces which can induce maximum drag.

------
tmmm
Serious question, are satellites allowed to be above other countries, like
Russia, China etc.?

~~~
kashkhan
yes. space is free for all above 100km.

It's like international waters beyond 20NM.

No you can't shoot. Shooting is an act of war, just like sinking a ship in the
mid atlantic.

~~~
tmmm
Can you shoot other satellites (above 100km) without any repercussions then
(with your own satellite above 100km)?

Or, what would happen if I sent my own satellite, and it hit Elon's by
accident?

I am asking these questions, because I am not sure big countries would be very
happy if their people's internet requests went through USA's company.

~~~
bad_alloc
Property rights still apply in space: Any vehicle you launch is yours and you
can be held accountable for damage you do to somebody else's vehicle. Proving
that somebody killed your satellite on purpose should be pretty difficult
though.

~~~
atmosx
I don't think it works like that. If one of Elon's Satellites get hit
(intentionally or not) by a Russian/Chinese missile/satellite... I don't think
SpaceX has any _realistic_ way to enforce rights.

But I don't see why they would wanna do that. I don't know how these things
works but it seems like there's enough space in _space_ for all the satellites
SpaceX would wanna launch.

~~~
demallien
You're talking about a company that makes tricked out ICBMs. I suspect that
SpaceX could handle a tit-for-tat exchange with any space power. The only real
limit would be budgetary, but I'm pretty sure the U.S. government could find a
way to funnel funds. Of course, none if this would ever happen in the real
world, I just wanted to point out that SpaceX is making some if the bigger
rockets flying today, and they far from helpless.

~~~
snsr
This may be slightly pedantic, but Space-X's launch vehicles are not ICBMs.

~~~
demallien
Yes, it _is_ being pedantic ;). You may also have noted that nobody "tricks
out" ICBMs (the aftermarket parts available for ICBMs is rather limited...),
and may have concluded that the original post was simply taking a few
liberties with the language...

~~~
dandelany
> nobody "tricks out" ICBMs

Russia does :)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepr-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnepr-1)

------
mapt
These would be placed in a relatively high LEO of 800 & 950km, 20 satellites
per plane on 18 orbital planes (likely 18 launches, but a remote possibility
is using a bunch of fuel over multiple maneuvers to do 9 or 6).

Orbital lifetimes to Earth decay according to altitude are highly variable,
especially with the form factor of the satellite and its mass & profile
against the remnant atmosphere, but for typical satellites very, very roughly:

150km minutes to hours

300km days to weeks

450km months to years

600km years to decades

750km decades to centuries

900km centuries to millennia

35,786km (GSO) effectively unlimited

Something this high would indeed pose an addition to the Kessler threat by
virtue of remaining up there for many doublings of debris density; And
redressing that would not be so difficult, in actuality. Chemical deorbit, ion
deorbit, electromagnetic tether deorbit, and sail deorbit are all
possibilities; The last does not even require orientation control. All that's
needed is some incentive for them to implement controlled deorbitting.

------
ljd
I'm hoping it's low earth orbit, which is a significant reduction in latency
versus geosynchronous satellites.

~~~
throwaway_yy2Di
It's supposed to be a constellation of ~700 satellites, that definitely
suggests low orbit.

(Rationale: With high orbits like GEO, a single satellite covers half the
planet, so there's no obvious reason to have hundreds of them. But LEO is
_much_ nicer for many reasons (latency, launch cost). If you _could_ cover the
whole planet from LEO, that'd be the logical choice; and planning ~700
satellites at once suggests that's the aim).

~~~
danielweber
An architecture that requires more launches is directly in SpaceX's interests.

------
netcan
Question: Assuming the UN, an individual state or private donors want to
support economic development in underdeveloped states with poor
infrastructure, would funding free or very cheap internet access be useful?

One of the problems with badly run, weak and/or underfunded governments is
lack of infrastructure. Mobile access arrived before rads, sewage or mains
electricity in places because of the easier infrastructure that depends less
on these things.

Is this that kind of a thing?

~~~
gloverkcn
Yes, free/very cheap internet access would be very useful.

One of the keys to economic development is access to credit/micro-finance.
It's often not economical for banks to have a branch nearby so basic financial
services are lacking. Sometimes the government provides something rudimentary
(the post office in India is also a bank of sorts).

A lot of the cell towers don't support data in these regions so even if there
is phone service there's no internet, or if there is it is prohibitively
expensive. Internet could drive the cost down of a regional branch/or enable a
stripe for the masses kind of thing (where the shops could get some low cost
internet device that also acts as a card swiper and/or credit card)

This would also enable a lot of education possibilities which is also limited
due to limited resources and poor internet options. Children could attend more
advanced schooling in classrooms where the teacher is there via telepresence
(Cisco is/was working on something like this)

Adding to that simple doctors visits. A doctor supporting one region could see
more patients from all over more quickly identifying issues before they get
out of hand.

Typed on iPad.

~~~
DanBC
> One of the keys to economic development is access to credit/micro-finance.

[http://www.irinnews.org/report/95067/development-
microfinanc...](http://www.irinnews.org/report/95067/development-microfinance-
possibilities-and-limitations)

> "[There is] no clear evidence that microfinance has any positive or negative
> impacts," said Maren Duvendack, ODI [Overseas Development Institute] fellow
> and author of a recent systematic review of microfinance, while David
> Roodman, of the Centre for Global Development, added: "I [wouldn't] say
> microfinance doesn't work, I would say it does not systematically reduce
> poverty. We do not have credible academic evidence that microcredit on
> average lifts people out of poverty... We [also] do not have evidence that
> microfinance is systematically making people worse off."

------
mark_l_watson
I suppose with enough satellites and efficient routing the latency would be
OK.

In the 1980s things were different. I was using servers scattered around the
world and the latency was a second or two because of multiple hops from the
ground to a few high altitude satellites.

Very low cost Internet is a good thing, especially if it is combined with self
imposed net neutrality, which I would bet that this team would respect.

------
mpg33
Could a nation state jam these? Or in other words...could a person in a
country who's internet is censored get unfiltered access via these satellites?

------
pvnick
All these new internet options are quickly chipping away at the ISP oligopoly.
Tell me again why we need a ham-handed federal approach to net neutrality?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How can satellites compete? They have exactly one 'cable' for everybody - over
the air. That doesn't scale; its already not enough. This will be some niche
market for backups or secure link or something; it sure won't be streaming
Netflix for hundreds of millions of people. Maybe for hundreds of people.

~~~
pvnick
Add satellites to a quickly growing list of unforeseen options that includes
google fiber, municipal broadband, etc. and collectively they will soon be
enough to make slow/fast lanes a suicidal proposition for major ISPs. The
whole raison d'etre for net neutrality is D.O.A. and trying to shove through a
bloated set of internet regulations tainted by the corporate lobbying process
that defines American politics is unnecessarily and likely damaging to
openness and freedom.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But they don't really add much. The bandwidth is infinitesimal, compared to
your neighborhood cable in a medium-sized city. And they're godawful
expensive. What's the point?

~~~
pvnick
The point is that the upward trajectory of internet-providing innovations is
steep, and only getting steeper, which makes federal ISP regulations
unnecessary and harmful to the prospects of small innovative competitors.

~~~
clavalle
Which small innovative competitors are being hampered?

------
Yadi
This is kind of game changing for internet access in developing countries!

I'm originally in Iraq and when $#it hits the fan, the government turns of
Internet! Now Imagine if one of these babies could talk to a V-Sat and
broadcast even when there was no local Internet!

There are just so many great uses for these Micro-Satellites.

~~~
razster
Hopefully so, but there may be some control by governments to still block
access. I'm sure the States are going to have rules before these V-sats can be
launched; no?

------
ghshephard
Will be interesting to see if there is an option for road warriors that won't
involve a cumbersome satellite dish.

Regarding Latency - I spend greater than 50% of my life on > 500 msec latency
connections (IPSec VPN back to California, often over Cellular) - so anything
that beats that is a win.

------
higherpurpose
I trust Musk a little more with something like this than Google or Facebook,
but I'm not sure what he'd do when he'd be confronted by the NSA, especially
when his SpaceX is so tied to government contracts.

~~~
grey-area
You can assume at this point that any significant communications network like
this has traffic recorded by at least FVEY and probably other agencies too.
They could probably intercept traffic leaving ground stations, even if the
company didn't want them to.

If that's important to you (say you're a lawyer, accountant, doctor, business,
politician, judge, journalist etc ;), you'd be better to use encryption than
worry about the network layer which you have no control over.

------
callesgg
Sweet, I have actually been looking in to getting a ingmarsat modem.

However they are so expensive that it might actually be worth waiting a few
years for a better alternative.

------
spacefight
Nice, but will they have a netflix cache on board? ;)

------
mrfusion
Probably a dumb question but will the proposed net neutrality title II changes
affect this project?

~~~
calinet6
It's a great question. Just the idea of a worldwide service brings up hundreds
of legal jurisdictions and possible issues. And the limited bandwidth of the
satellites may mean that equal service treatment may not be ideal, even if
awesomely required by law (we can hope). We'll see how it plays out.

------
nodesocket
Any idea on up/down bandwidth?

~~~
kashkhan
at any time 200 of the 700 will be above land and half of those over
desert/tundra. so basically 100 sats will serve 1 Billion people. Assuming
each can do 10Gbps that's 1Tbps divided by 1B. so average of 10kbps per
terminal. which is enough for basic web, texting, twitter and voice.

Won't be enough for netflix or torrenting.

~~~
benjamincburns
I think that's a good _lower_ bound, as it assumes no packet scheduling, and
that everyone on Earth will be attempting to consume all the bandwidth
available to them all of the time.

It also assumes that the "backhaul" between satellites wouldn't saturate under
such a load.

I'd wager that under those assumed numbers you'd more realistically be able to
expect somewhere between 100Kbps and 1Mbps.

~~~
kashkhan
the first problem is the evening peak when everyone tries to get on at the
same time and watch netflix/youtube. The second problem is the link equation
from your hemi antenna handset to the satellite 1000km away that passes by in
100s.

Yes with packet scheduling you can get higher peak bandwidth, but 1Mbps
sustained over the course of a 5 minute youtube video is going to be hard.

It's much better to target the whatsapp crowd. That facebook will pay for.

~~~
mrfusion
Would some kind of caching help with this? I guess it doesn't do much good to
cache data on a satellite? It still has to send it to each user?

------
motoboi
Does anyone know if this proposal is similar to 03b in which Google invested
this year?

Besides that, i'm becoming skeptical on Elon's announcements since hyperloop.

Maybe he is just using this old public relations trick: let some information
about a future product or project leak to the media to know how the public
respond.

~~~
clavalle
>Besides that, i'm becoming skeptical on Elon's announcements since hyperloop.

Why? He was quite clear in stating that he wouldn't actively pursue hyperloop.

------
tn13
Please note that experiments of this sort will be far more expensive and
sometimes be outlawed if government goes ahead with its plan to declare
internet as "utility"by masquerading it as "net neutrality".

Experiments like these could be more feasible if large cos like FB, Google
invest in it with greater control.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> sometimes be outlawed if government goes ahead with its plan to declare
> internet as "utility"

They're only discussing this for wired broadband so no worries there.

~~~
tomaskafka
Of course.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing)

~~~
RegW
A better explanation in "Yes, Prime Minister":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_vMKswE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_vMKswE)

... and perhaps relevant to the discussions of states tampering with other
people's satellites.

