
With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019 - jseliger
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-will-launch-thousands-of-broadband-satellites/
======
modeless
Shorter summary of SpaceX's Senate testimony
[https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6c08b6c2...](https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6c08b6c2-fe74-4500-ae1d-a801f53fd279/655C5CBED75A50881172C1E9069D91E6.testimony-
patricia-cooper---broadband-infrastructure-hearing.pdf):

Initially, the SpaceX system will consist of 4,425 satellites operating in 83
orbital planes (at altitudes ranging from 1,110 km to 1,325 km). SpaceX has
proposed an additional constellation of 7,500 satellites operating even closer
to Earth.

For the end consumer, SpaceX user terminals—essentially, a relatively small
flat panel, roughly the size of a laptop—will use phased array technologies to
allow for highly directive, steered antenna beams that track the system’s low-
Earth orbit satellites. In space, the satellites will communicate with each
other using optical inter-satellite links, in effect creating a “mesh network”
flying overhead that will enable seamless network management and continuity of
service.

Later this year, SpaceX will begin the process of testing the satellites
themselves, launching one prototype before the end of the year and another
during the early months of 2018. Following successful demonstration of the
technology, SpaceX intends to begin the operational satellite launch campaign
in 2019. The remaining satellites in the constellation will be launched in
phases through 2024, when the system will reach full capacity.

~~~
shaklee3
Where do you see anything about the antenna size? All I've seen is that this
will be for Enterprise customers, and the antenna will be very large.

By the way, a very small phased array will be very low gain, thus using more
capacity on their satellite for the same speeds. Unless they've invented a new
type of antenna...

~~~
modeless
It's a verbatim quote from the link in my post.

------
mabbo
It's been said before, but what people need to understand is that the goal of
this service isn't to make money- it's to balance demand.

SpaceX can plan to launch be 30% more launches than their actual customers
need. All those extra rockets are used for internet satellites. If there's an
accident (boom) or a sudden need for more rockets, the internet satellites get
delayed, and the paying customer gets a rocket.

If customers are finicky about using re-flown rockets, that's fine, the
internal customer doesn't care. If a customer backs out for any reason, the
internal customer takes their place.

Rocket production gets a smooth flow going, which improves production
efficiency.

~~~
namlem
Musk himself has stated the goal is to make money to help pay for colonizing
Mars.

~~~
rsync
"Musk himself has stated the goal is to make money to help pay for colonizing
Mars."

Which I continue to misunderstand ...

You can go to Mars ... you can have an outpost on Mars ... you can have
scientists and tourists and so on go back and forth to Mars - all very
positive and exciting.

But you _can 't live on Mars_ for an extended period because the gravity is
1/3 of earths.

Your teeth will decay. Your bones will weaken (even with hours per day of
resistance work, which will be mandatory). Your heart will weaken. Your organs
will malfunction. You will get cancer from a weakened immune system. Red blood
production goes down.

Your body is built for and tightly coupled to Earths gravity. I fail to see
how one could actually live on Mars without sacrificing 30 or more years of
lifespan.

~~~
avmich
> But you can't live on Mars for an extended period because the gravity is 1/3
> of earths.

Can't you rather cheaply create a centrifuge where you'll sleep - and may be
even work indoors - which will maintain 1G? Centrifuge big enough so no
significant side forces would occur?

~~~
ASalazarMX
This is my question as well. We do that at fairs for fun, a spinning habitat
seems very feasible.

~~~
seanp2k2
Feasible for a few billion people, eventually? This concept has been explored
in many sci-fi shows, with the usual solution being to make a big ring and
spin it in space.

~~~
avmich
We can solve problems incrementally - we often do, and space access history is
a good example for that.

------
bmcusick
This is good news for the USA, but it's GREAT news for countries where the
government regularly cuts off and controls the Internet for political
purposes. If receivers can be as small as a personal laptop, expect a thriving
black market in them in places like Iran and Egypt.

Such receivers can also act as backhaul for mesh networks, providing access to
un-censored information in times of turmoil and peace alike.

~~~
viraptor
I'd say it's more of problematic than great news for places with state
controlled study. But it has potential.

Where it's Great news is places which already can use only satellite internet,
but have very poor experience. Rural Australia for example. Having low local
(or even global) latency would be amazing.

~~~
nojvek
I'm pretty sure NSA will want a backdoor in the system. If it can do what they
say it can do, they are basically the new pipes of the Internet. It's too good
for NSA and our current US govt to leave untouched.

~~~
jacobush
Say hello to ultra-fine real-time triangulation of your position. Of course
privacy protected with the same care and zeal that protects your Tesla.

~~~
viraptor
It's not going to be better than GPS/GLONAS. If there is a specific location
component in the ground stations, it will be known pretty soon. Otherwise, the
location will be very weather dependent.

If you have a phone with you, you're likely providing a better location to
Google/Apple right now.

~~~
jacobush
Of course. But they will be another cell phone like actor, only global.

------
Blinks-
"SpaceX has also proposed an additional 7,500 satellites operating even closer
to the ground, saying that this will boost capacity and reduce latency in
heavily populated areas."

This should be interesting, depending on how this is regulated on the legal
side it could result in the major ISP's updating our infrastructure, of course
nothing has stopped them from agreeing to update infrastructure then running
off with our tax money in the past. Not to mention they will probably use
legal means to hamstring this if possible. Hopefully this spurs competition in
areas with stagnating ISP's and increases availability of low latency
connections in sparsely populated areas.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Not to mention they will probably use legal means to hamstring this if
> possible._

I wonder how this could work. It's not like, e.g., Milwaukee has any legal
oversight over LEO.

~~~
extrapickles
One possibility is passing laws/regulations about how many sats can be in a
orbital plane or single launch, as they will want to launch dozens, if not the
full 53 they want to put in a plane, with a single booster to reduce costs.

They could also get some silly RF regulations passed that make it not feasible
economically.

~~~
kuschku
Then the operator of the constellation would just shift to using Arianespace
as launch provider (which is equally expensive at the moment).

------
akgerber
My aunt's town in rural Western Massachusetts still only has broadband in the
library plus scanty LTE service and current terrible satellite— how and
whether to wire the town with broadband is driving the first contested
election in decades.

This could make a major difference for that type of rural town.

~~~
mobilefriendly
Same situation for our mid-Atlantic home. There's a ton of pent up demand for
this service in all of the rural and semi-rural pockets of the U.S. We have
been very poorly served by Congress, state, and local government.

~~~
ams6110
> We have been very poorly served by Congress, state, and local government

I live in a semi-rural area. I chose to live there. Why should everyone else
pay to give me top-tier internet access?

If high-speed internet access is important to me, I need to move to a
neighborhood that has that amenity

~~~
alasdair_
>I live in a semi-rural area. I chose to live there. Why should everyone else
pay to give me top-tier internet access?

One could as why everyone else should have to pay to give you postal service
at the same price as someone in, say, NYC when the cost of provision is much
higher.

The reason the person above you mentioned government is that it's likely that
government owns the streets that any net access would run through as well as
having countless other regulations that would need to be followed.

------
IndexicalDemon
It's a cool system. There's a slight disadvantage that the satellite-to-ground
link is at 10-15 GHz for users, so it will go down in a heavy rainstorm, and
some fraction of the time due to other atmospheric effects. Should be
reasonably reliable but far from fiber, and it will be interesting to see what
uptime they guarantee. Assuming this all ever actually happens.

~~~
alkonaut
I assume the sensitity to weather etc depends on the type of equipment you
have? Couldn't a community use a huge high power and high sensitivity common
receiver/transmitter station, that provides fiber to 10-1000 households? The
community station could also provide some kind of limited bandwidth fallback
such as DSL or LTE that just ensures peoples fiber lines limp along when the
satellites can't be reached (so their juice machines don't stop working...).

~~~
rhino369
The cost of fiber is mostly the cost of hooking up homes. Once you have that,
the cost of running a connection to a telecom is cheap comparatively.

~~~
alkonaut
I think that's true in places like (large parts of) the US where the "last
mile problem" exists. However for lots of rural Africa, China, Australia there
surely must also exist a "first 1000miles problem".

------
candiodari
Interesting. What would this be able to do ? Current wireless speeds, even
with state of the art technology, is going to be something like 10Gbit.
That'll have to be shared by an entire city at least (correction: about 2
satellites per state on average. Less for New York), and of course there won't
be any CDNs or HTTP caches "upstairs" so to speak. So 1 bit in = 1 bit back
out.

Even at 4425 satellites that means, let's see. The earth is 500 million km2,
and they don't need the same density everywhere, so some optimizations may be
possible, so let's say 5000 satellites. That means 100,000 km2 per satellite.
That means one satellite per decent sized country, only about 100 for the
entire US. This is not geostationary orbit, so they'll have to aim for evenly
spaced satellites.

Let's say they fix their satellites and do 10x what is currently possible, so
that means 100Gbit/satellite. Current internet traffic into and out of the
Netherlands is 50 times that (granted, more and denser cities than portugal,
but the Netherlands would have to share one SpaceX satellite with Belgium and
parts of the UK).

They would only be able to provide about 1/10,000,000th of a Satellite to a
cellphone in the US, and if they have 100 Gbit/satellite, that's not even
1kbit on average. Even 10x or 100x that capacity wouldn't change much.
Doubling or tripling the number of satellites won't fix this, we'd need
between hundreds of thousands and to millions of satellites.

This will either need to be rather expensive (certainly as much as your
cellphone, probably more, as this seems to indicate the system can only
support 100x less users than the mobile network in the US, and even less in
smaller dense countries or cities like the Netherlands or New York). Even at
state of the art technologies, bandwidth limits are going to be tight. Like
any satellite service, I can't see this work at city densities, or for
mobiles.

~~~
onion2k
The benefit of a satellite network is ubiquitous connectivity regardless of
where you are, not speed.

------
oceanswave
Seven years. US Broadband providers have seven years to take us over the
coals, practice full bore capitalism with our data and generally run
oligilistic practices until their time even begins to run out

~~~
PopsiclePete
I'll believe it when I see it. They managed to somehow stop Google Fiber, they
might be able to stop SpaceX as well.

~~~
greglindahl
"They" didn't stop satellite Internet, in fact there's a Federal law that
requires that everyone facilitate small dish installations.

------
jseliger
This may help explain why Verizon is cutting FiOS prices and increasing
speeds: [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/04/veriz...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/04/verizon-bungles-launch-of-70-gigabit-plan-which-costs-more-
than-70)

~~~
Klathmon
Well, they are cutting options.

The price for 50/50mbps is staying the same in my area, however they have
dropped the 75/75, 100/100, 150/150, and 300/300 options entirely and now
offer 50/50 or 1000/1000 (which is actually 940/880 which is around the limits
of "normal" ethernet).

And while they advertise $69.99 on the site, clicking through to "more info"
shows it as $79.99 and calling in to ask about it they are telling me it will
be $89.99 for the first year, then $99.99 for the next year with a 2 year
contract as a new customer only. And when I told them I am already a verizon
customer, they had to re-run it and found that it will actually be $119.99 for
the first year, $129.99 for the second year on a 2 year contract.

And that's before I even get the bill which in my experience with verizon is
often 10% larger than the quoted price with internet only (and when I had
phone+internet+tv it was almost double the quoted price after taxes, fees,
expired discounts, required equipment rentals, and other bullshit).

~~~
smilekzs
Isn't this bait and switch?

~~~
Klathmon
I don't know, but I know it's taught me to literally never believe a word of
anything they say in terms of price, and to literally never sign a contract of
any kind with them ever because they can't guarantee what the first bill will
be (they can only give estimates), and by the time it actually comes you are
already locked in for the 2 years.

------
devrandomguy
It would be super cool if amateur cubesats could interface with this network.
I've always wanted to run a server on orbit, where energy is free and
regulations are limited to RF spectrum issues.

------
fpgaminer
I was curious about the financials of this project. Here's my back of the
napkin:

According to ([https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-set-up-and-
la...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-set-up-and-launch-a-
communications-satellite)) it costs ~$80-$100 million per satellite to build,
launch, and run. So that's ~$354-$443 billion for all the satellites. Let's
call it $443.

Now, I pay ~$60/m for internet. That's $720/yr. If they want to recoup costs
after 10 years, it'll take ~61.5 million subscribers.

For the U.S. alone, that'll probably never happen. But worldwide? Maybe.
Though worldwide the price per subscribe will be less, often times
substantially less.

On the other hand, SpaceX will have lots of operational discounts because its
their own rockets, and they already have all the supply channels for building
space tech. And maybe they aren't looking to payback in 10 years for this
initial run; maybe they only want to break even so payback in 15 is good
enough.

Just some numbers for thought.

P.S. Businesses unlucky enough to be in "rural" areas, aka most commercial
business parks outside of tech cities, are in the unfortunate position of
paying the local telephone company/AT&T/TimeWarner thousands per month for
roughly dial-up speeds. SpaceX could charge the same but offer broadband
speeds and get a nice chunk of business, methinks.

~~~
mrinterweb
I doubt that the per/satellite cost would be anywhere close to $80-100
million. I remember hearing that the plan was for these satellites to have
significantly less mass than other satellites and therefore, one orbital
launch could deliver many satellites. With these satellites orbiting ~30-34x
closer to Earth, the satellites would need to have significantly less mass if
they were going to not have their orbital distance not degrade too quickly. I
don't know what the expected lifespan of these satellites will be, but I
assume they will eventually burn up in the atmosphere.

~~~
wolfram74
Saying their mass needs to be lower to reduce orbit degradation is the
opposite of true. Assuming two spheres of equal size, their drag and thus
change in momentum will be the same at the same altitude. But if one sphere
was made of lead and the other made of styrofoam, the styrofoam one will
decelerate much faster than the lead one. So: lighter satellite of the same
shape means shorter life span. But drag dies down roughly exponentially in
altitude, so if they're at 1000 km, rather than 100km, that's not a super big
factor.

~~~
davrosthedalek
Well, they would probably have the same density, so they would be smaller.
However, you are still right, as drag scales with r^2 but mass with r^3.

------
mattcoles
Do we have space in orbit for this? This is a lot of satellites and I also
don't get how the latency can be so much lower than current satellite ISPs?

~~~
noonespecial
1) Space is huge. This is a little like asking if there's enough space left in
earths oceans to float a few thousand pingpong balls.

2) Present internet satellites are all in mostly geostationary orbits that are
much further away then the proposed leo's. Realistically the ones we have now
introduce a whopping 650ms. This will be a huge improvement.

~~~
alkonaut
> This is a little like asking if there's enough space left in earths oceans
> to float a few thousand pingpong balls.

I'd be pretty nervous about throing 10k pingpong balls into the atlantic IF
the collision of two pingpong balls was disastrous :)

Obviously these satellites will be carefully placed NOT to collied - but the
effect of a collision is pretty bad. The problem is that any one of them might
collide with some tiny piece of junk, turning it 1000 pieces of junk (which is
now 1000x more likely to collide with something, and impossible to control).
These satellites won't tip the scales, but it's a nightmare scenario that
comes ever closer with every satellite launched.

~~~
path411
Remember that space is 3d. Not only do you have the surface area of the entire
earth + the area from where LEO starts. You can then stack layers on top of
that.

------
dboreham
Ugh. Are they really talking about Latency, or are the numbers they cite
actually RTT? And are the numbers the loop latency, or end-to-end latency to
some destination on the public network such as 8.8.8.8?

For comparison my CableCo connection in the left-middle of America achieves a
loop RTT of about 10ms (5ms Latency), and an RTT to 8.8.8.8 of 25ms (12.5ms
Latency).

~~~
Retric
1,110km ~= 4ms each way so 8ms from ground to satellite to ground but that
only get you to the internet and you need to do that again on the way back so
16ms is the minimum latency possible. However, ~25ms round trips seems
possible especially if they have enough ground stations near major
interchanges.

PS: Remember, they can put these stations near anything that people want low
latency connections to.

------
ChuckMcM
Neat, TeleDesic[1] V2.0 (or is it 3.0?) :). That effort stalled when single
stage to orbit rockets became impractical due to insufficent launch demand
when Regan's StarWars program was cancelled.

With a fast turn around re-usable F9 booster (so its relaunch costs are
significantly less than launching a new one) Musk would have control over his
destiny in this case. When Iridium was being built the whole ground station
thing (up/down links into the switched telephone network) was nearly a decade
slog of permission, licenses, and regulations.

That said, if he is successful he will suck a lot of money out of wallets that
belong to some pretty big fat cats companies. And if he made every ground
station a Tor exit node it would really mess with the powers that be.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic)

~~~
mistermann
> it would really mess with the powers that be

I'm fairly surprised the US government is a-ok with all of this, or maybe
they've already sat down and had a chit chat with Mr Musk. Or, if everyone
moves to SpaceX internet service does it make no difference whatsoever to the
NSA?

~~~
BenjiWiebe
The NSA will probably monitor the lines going from SpaceX ground stations to
what ever Tier 1 ISP they are peering with.

------
protomyth
I thought the limiting factor for a satellite ISP was power on the satellite
side as much as latency?

~~~
ekimekim
I'm not an electrical or signals engineer, but IIUC the low orbits would also
help there, since shorter distances mean much less power requirements for
transmission.

------
stubish
Get it up there, and you will have Australia as a client. We have made a mess
of the national broadband network rollout, and this might be going live before
the NBN rollout is complete. Probably faster, cheaper, and with reliability
still to be seen.

------
artursapek
Oh how I wish I could buy SpaceX stock...

~~~
deegles
I'm seriously considering getting a job there someday for this this reason.
(but mostly because Mars)

~~~
artursapek
I once got a recruiting email from them, but when I looked later the guy was
in prison. He was the "Silk Road 2" guy. So now I don't have any contacts
there :(

------
slinger
Do this means that it'll be possible to play with folks from another continent
with a good latency?

~~~
Klasiaster
Not really, you still are limited to speed of light – so > ~100 ms roundtrips
for half of the globe.

~~~
slinger
Sad.. Let's hope for breakthroughs on quantum entanglement research then

~~~
jdmichal
Quantum entanglement cannot be used for classical communications:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12548175#12548733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12548175#12548733)

"Basic principle is that while measurements between both sides will be
correlated, it's not possible to tell how they are correlated until both sides
compare measurements."

[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/203831/ftl-
commu...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/203831/ftl-
communication-with-quantum-entanglement/203893#203893)

~~~
alasdair_
Let's hope for "dig a really big hole through the center of the earth"
research then?

:)

------
faragon
So Musk wants to be the Internet, too. I, for one, welcome that.

------
api
Please call it Skynet. :)

------
tehwhynot
Do the same thing on Mars. Then get self-driving space internet machines that
transfer internet from here to Mars. They always position themselves to be
between here and Mars for best RTT. Thank me later, humanity.

And yeah, I know latency would be between 6 and ~45 minutes.

~~~
c22
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet)

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-taking-
first-...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/nasa-taking-first-steps-
toward-high-speed-space-internet)

------
soheil
Compared to my connection Webpass with sub-1ms latencies this seems like ages.
But of course not the same can be said about majority of ISPs so this is a big
win.

~~~
abuani
Yeah my current options are Verizon DSL(1.5Mbps) or Comcast. During non peak
hours, I can normally hit 200Mmb download/upload, but during peak hours I'm
lucky to be able to stream a song or video without it lagging. I'm about 5
homes away from getting FIOS, and they recently started expanding in my area
after years of zero growth, so I'm hoping I can get a single competitor to
Comcast.

------
ct0
I was able to pay $20/mo for each month remaining on my contract to end
service and start a new contract as a new customer when moving form 50/50 to
150/150.

