
Musk files to provide Internet service from space - jes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/spacex-founder-files-with-government-to-provide-internet-service-from-space/2015/06/09/db8d8d02-0eb7-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.html
======
dankohn1
I was Director of Marketing with Teledesic, Craig McCaw and Bill Gates's
Internet-in-the-Sky from 1995 to 2000. I'm a huge fan of what Musk is doing,
with order of magnitude cheaper launch costs and satellite hardware. AMA.

~~~
grecy
How will devices on the ground communicate with the satellites? i.e. do we
still need fixed dishes, or are we looking at something new so an iPhone can
get signal right from the satellite?

~~~
dankohn1
I believe Musk is, like Teledesic, planning to use the Ka-band. That means the
smallest antenna would be the size of a large laptop (and that's only if
phased arrays become cheap enough). So, it would work for a car, plane, boat,
or house, but would be too big to use while walking.

~~~
dzhiurgis
Will it still need gyro mechanism?

There are satellite (I think Ku band) dishes for larger (~50ft) boats
nowadays. They are using gyroscope assisted motors that wouldn't suffice for
compensating rolling motion of a smaller boat.

~~~
darkmighty
The laptop-sized antenna he mentioned doesn't need a gyro because it uses
phased-array tech. Essentially you resolve signals in any direction (up to a
resolution given by number of elements and array size) by carefully combining
them with certain phase offsets such that signals from all but one direction
cancel out. This adjustment is made on the fly to track a signal with changing
direction.

~~~
dzhiurgis
I see.

Would something like pCell would be an improvement here?

~~~
darkmighty
pCell is just phased array technology.

Directionality and sectioning has been used since the beginning of cell
technology: first with cell splitting and then with cell sectoring, and
recently more aggressive splitting (smaller cells) -- it's an ongoing
evolution. The kind of tracking this has required is very easy to do: once
your signal is stronger in a competing sector for a significant amount of
time, switch sectors. The same principle can be applied to phased arrays but
the small number of sectors makes it much more tractable computationally and
in terms of hardware.

A phased array in a city environment needs to track in real time the position
of users, with enough feedback from them to make sure your prediction matches
with their position well enough, and use this information to continuously
adjust sub-nanosecond (depends on the freq/bandwidth) phase offsets to array
elements. In principle it`s even possible to do _multi-tower_ coherent
communication. Needless to say, this tech is expensive right now, and I
imagine hard to get to work reliably.

MIMO is also closely related, the difference being traditional MIMO actually
adjusts amplitudes only (non-coherent) of multiple data streams to create
channels (after a linear transformation at the receiver). This means the
signals are still ominidirectional for your wi-fi MIMO. Being non-coherent
means it's much cheaper.

------
geomark
From the article: "SpaceX would need permission from countries to operate the
service, a process that could be difficult, if not impossible."

Yep. To operate in many countries an ISP has to block access to a lot of
content. It differs greatly from country-to-country. Would they really get
involved in that? That would mean taking orders from governments all over the
world and implementing blocks per those orders. Or would they forget about
providing access in those countries? That's a large number of countries.

Added: Forgot to mention one of the biggest obstacles to getting permission in
many countries: surveillance. Beaming directly from a user to a satellite that
relays to a ground station in another country is going to bypass local
surveillance.

Another addition: Wikipedia article on internet censorship and surveillance
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveil...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_and_surveillance_by_country)
Note some of the countries listed under "Pervasive censorship or
surveillance": India, South Korea, UK and USA.

~~~
greglindahl
Note that countries have not succeeded in stopping satellite phone users
within their borders... for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan use satellite
phones extensively.

~~~
tdaltonc
Are those phone companies breaking the law when they let the call on to their
network?

~~~
greglindahl
Beats me - but I do bet that these companies don't have any business presence
in Afghanistan. And despite the Taliban being involved, which most countries
in the world (and the UN) don't like, it hasn't been stopped. Which gives you
an idea of how difficult it would be to stop ordinary people from using such a
service.

------
jes
Musk claims to want to launch 4,000 or so satellites. The Goddard Space Flight
Center indicates that there are 2,271 satellites in orbit now.

I'm wondering to what degree this would make it more likely to have a negative
feedback loop of satellite destruction in the case of a satellite being hit by
space junk.

~~~
greglindahl
The problem has to do with cross-section -- these satellites will each be
small, a few hundred kilograms each. In comparison, cubesats are 1-3 kg, and
big satellites, which are most of the existing ones, are a few tons of mass
each.

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

Also, with satellites at 1,100 km, they'll be above all the crap in LEO.

~~~
shabble
and solves the other problem of Big High internet, which is latency. At 1000km
you could have single-hop round-trips in <10ms.

~~~
shmerl
What is the orbit for current satellite ISPs?

~~~
oh_sigh
Iridium SATs are in LEO at 485 mi

~~~
greglindahl
At 2.4 kilobits, Iridium is not a major player in satellite Internet.

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ridgeguy
I'm _so_ ready for this.

At the very least, it would bring more ISP competition to underserved /sarcasm
extremely remote areas /sarcasm like where I live - that would be Portola
Valley, CA - where the only internet provider available to most of us is
Comcast. Which all of us hate.

I live 16 light-µsec from Stanford (OK, free-space velocity for C), and my
neighbors and I have _one_ ISP to choose from.

Go, Elon!! I'd light the fuses on the launch vehicles to see this done.

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fivedogit
My first thought, here, was "Well what about the speed of light? Wouldn't that
cause satellite internet service to suck, just like it does now? And isn't
that why news correspondents are always delayed?"

But then I did the math:

Speed of light = 186 miles per millisecond. Satellites orbit at about 380
miles above earth (Source: Hubble). So it only takes ~4 ms for a round trip to
a satellite directly above?

I did not know that. Weird, wild stuff.

If someone knows specifics about why satellite communication is currently so
slow (both internet and video), I'd be interested in the EL5 version.

~~~
apkessl1
Good question. The vast majority of satellite communications today are
conducted via geostationary orbit, 35,786 km above the earth. This is the
distance at which a satellite orbiting around the equator moves with the same
velocity as the surface of the earth, keeping the satellite in a fixed
position. This is good for communicating via the ground, since you can just
set up your dish pointing in the direction of the satellite. Additionally,
such a satellite can cover a wide swath of the earth since it is so far away;
see, for example, the coverage of AsiaSat-8
([http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08...](http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/08/footprint_sat_08pop.jpg)). The disadvantage
(especially for internet) is that the round-trip time of a signal at the speed
of light is on the order of 250 ms.

As described in this article, the SpaceX constellation would be in a much
lower orbit. The advantage is a much faster ping time (say, around 10 ms). The
disadvantage is you need a large number of satellites to provide continuous
coverage for the entire earth...but that's less of a disadvantage if your
company also launches rockets.

~~~
x0054
Hmm, interesting. Well, I have Exede Satellite service as my ISP (best I can
get) and my best latency, to any server, is 800ms. The way I figure it, 35,786
km / 300 miles per ms would be 120ms up * 4 for the round trip. So that's
480ms, plus another 20ms-100ms to a google or another large server. So that's
theoretical latency of 600ms, so where are the other 200ms of latency coming
from! :(

I am wondering because I maintain some linux servers for some of my projects,
and any time I need to do something serious, I have to drive to a coffee shop
and borrow their connection. SSH over 800ms latency is frustrating, to say the
least.

~~~
roamingryan
Much of the remaining latency is likely coming from FEC and interleaving
needed for the RF links.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_error_correction#Interl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_error_correction#Interleaving)

------
ourmandave
If this were to ultimately succeed in cheap internet everywhere, it doesn't
bode well for other projects like Google's Loon.

[https://www.google.com/loon/](https://www.google.com/loon/)

Unless they can do it cheaper I suppose.

~~~
beambot
> A key employee leading Google Inc.'s efforts to beam Internet access from
> satellites has left the company and is now working closely with Space
> Exploration Technologies Corp. and its founder Elon Musk, according to
> people familiar with the matter.

> When he left, Mr. Wyler took with him the rights to certain radio spectrum
> that could be used to provide Internet access

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-satellite-executive-
greg-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-satellite-executive-greg-wyler-
leaves-company-1409708338)

~~~
Thimothy
I don't have access to the article so I don't know if it addresses my question
but... How in hell can a single employee "Take with him" the radio-electric
spectrum allocation???

~~~
BenTheElder
If you google "greg wyler" and then click the wsj link you can visit the full
article.

But as to your question, it appears that he joined google from a company he
founded that owned the rights, then left and took the rights with him and
formed a new company to control the rights again.

> When he left, Mr. Wyler took with him the rights to certain radio spectrum
> that could be used to provide Internet access, according to a person
> familiar with the matter. The person said Mr. Wyler had formed a new
> venture, WorldVu Satellites Ltd., that designs satellite systems and
> controls the rights to that spectrum.

> Brian Holz and David Bettinger, who joined Google with Mr. Wyler from O3b
> Networks Ltd., also have left Google, according to the person familiar with
> the matter. O3b is a private satellite company founded by Mr. Wyler.

------
tdaltonc
Interestingly, Facebook just announces that they are giving up on a project to
do just that.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-scraps-secret-
plan-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-scraps-secret-plan-to-
build-satellite-to-provide-internet-in-developing-
world-500-million-2015-6?op=1)

~~~
crorella
It looks like the approach was different: instead of having several thousand
of small and 'cheap' satellites, they were aiming for an expensive and big
one.

~~~
dwg
Presumably this is because of the cost of launching the satellites (obviously
quite a bit more than racking a server in a data center).

Nonetheless, if this strategy beats the latency, then I agree that it's the
right one.

------
joshontheweb
The ability to go off-grid is becoming more of a reality for me now. I'd love
to be able to get a cabin in the middle of nowhere, slap some solar panels on
top still have access to highspeed internet.

Even if you didn't want to go off-grid, this could open up a lot of developing
countries to being more viable remote-working locations. I recently spent some
time in Bali and considered moving there for awhile but ultimately couldn't
solely because the internet was too slow and unreliable.

~~~
NamTaf
Isn't the internet by very definition a grid?

~~~
anamexis
By which definition? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-
grid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-grid)

~~~
NamTaf
The internet is a grid of computers to which you connect.

More than that though, conceptually "off-the-grid" means not accepting a
utility serivce from a provider but rather catering for that yourself. An
internet connection is arguably a utility, and you'd be accepting it from an
ISP. That goes against the concept, which would suggest you should maintain
your own isolated network of computers and not connect with the outside world.

~~~
Dylan16807
You wouldn't have to be isolated. You could make connections, just not ones
that depend on a centralized ISP.

But "off-the-grid" typically is talking about physical delivery over wires and
pipes, not about things like wireless internet.

------
jreimers
Replacing terrestrial broadband is great, but what happens when your internet
stops working because it is raining outside? How exactly do they plan to deal
with rain fade while operating in the Ka band?

------
x0054
I wonder how it would compare to Exede Satellite service. I have Exede, it's
the only thing available here in High Desert :( The speed is very good for
what it is, I am getting 16-20 mbps down and 3mbps up. But, the latency is a
huge issue for me. Most servers, even once in US, ping at 800ms, this makes it
such a pain to do any kind of SSH server admin!

With low orbit devices I would imagine the latency should be better, I am
guessing, but how much better.

~~~
dangrossman
> With low orbit devices I would imagine the latency should be better, I am
> guessing, but how much better.

Your satellite's 22,000 miles above the earth. If you were directly under it,
round trip latency would be 236ms.

If these satellites are 684 miles up, and you were directly under one, round
trip latency would be just 7ms.

The distance between satellites, and between the satellites and whatever
ground stations actually connect them to the 'net, will all be smaller because
of the lower orbits. Latency should be much better.

~~~
roamingryan
FEC and interleaving induced latency will likely become the dominant term for
LEOs.

~~~
dzhiurgis
What numbers are we talking?

Shorter distance + faster signal thru air can amount up to 30-50% lower
latency.

------
acd
Besides enjoying Internet globally, I see hope freeing humanity from
government censorship with Internet from satellites. This will also mean we
will have cheaper global roaming prices for cellular access as if its more
expensive with cell phone data people will just use the satellite based system
instead.

How much power can such micro satellites transmit with? How much power does
the earth based transmitter need to communicate back to the satellite in
space?

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Robin_Message
It worries me that they are launching satellites for the NSA whilst also build
something the NSA would certainly love to tap into – I mean, realistically,
the NSA are going to get their hands on the data if they want to, but giving
them extra leverage over the company is a shame.

It also saddens me they are launching satellites for the NSA full-stop, at
least until the NSA has been reined in a bit.

------
3327
PLease please please, destroy, demolish, obliterate: Comcast, verizon, At&t.

------
kirk21
Interesting plot twist.

Check this subreddit dedicated to global internet:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/globalinternet](http://www.reddit.com/r/globalinternet)

------
dikaiosune
Quite exciting. At the same time, did anyone watch Kingsman?

I worry about a big play like this in a market with ridiculously high barrier
to entry. We might find ourselves in a vulnerable position if we invite
monopoly.

------
xbmcuser
To me this is just 1 spoke of the wheel he will be providing this internet
service to google loon balloons that need base stations on the ground
currently.

------
Bud
Could he call it Skynet? Please?

------
shmerl
I hope it can boost competition. My only concern is latency.

------
savage_platypus
Great, another pipe-dream to sell to his investor fan club.

~~~
toomuchtodo
As opposed to current pipe dreams:

* gigafactory under construction

* freemont factory producing ~50K vehicles/year

* spacex successfully, repeatedly delivering payloads to orbit (and successfully demonstrating their crew escape vehicle recently)

~~~
savage_platypus
Just because something is being built with other people's money does not make
something a success. None of the companies Elon has been involved with have
ever actually generated a profit -- they have largely just taken advantage of
speculative investors and their willingness to buy into his ideas.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> None of the companies Elon has been involved with have ever actually
> generated a profit

Bullshit; there are companies he's been involved in that have turned a profit.

Zip2 made a good profit and a great exit -
[http://news.cnet.com/Compaq+buys+Zip2/2100-1023_3-221675.htm...](http://news.cnet.com/Compaq+buys+Zip2/2100-1023_3-221675.html)

X.com / Paypal generates first profits in 2002 -
[http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y02/m04/i18/s02](http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y02/m04/i18/s02)

SpaceX is profitable -
[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/spacex-
pro...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-04/spacex-profitable-
as-musk-pulls-in-nasa-contracts-google-cash)

Don't forget SolarCity is turning itself around and will likely turn a profit
in a few years ([http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/17/what-to-
loo...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/17/what-to-look-for-
when-solarcity-reports-earnings.aspx)). The same for Tesla which is expecting
to turn a profit in 2020 ([http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-wont-turn-
profitable-...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-wont-turn-profitable-
until-2020-musk-2015-01-14)).

~~~
Scoundreller
zip2 would be quite viable even today without much "re-invention".

