are the internet monopolies about to
get crushed? as much as I'd never like to
speak to spectrum again, I know I'm just
going to have to wait a little bit longer.
we do have some information about the
ground terminals which is described by
Elon as the biggest hurdle to Starlink
success. the number of connected devices
is set to reach 4.3 billion by 2023, up
from around 2.7 billion back in 2018.
Starlink is a global project. SpaceX was
supposed to launch another mission
yesterday but storms rolled in and they
had to stand down. a Falcon 9 rocket was
set to take another 60 satellites up
into orbit which would have taken the
total up to 600. however, that will be
delayed. in this episode we'll tell you
everything that you need to know about
Starlink and the future of our Internet.
if you're new to this topic Starlink is
a subsidiary of parent company SpaceX.
their goal is to form a constellation of
satellites and Leo or low-earth orbit to
provide low-cost, high latency internet
service to the world. the constellation
is under development at SpaceX's
facilities in Richmond Virginia. the
first batch of satellites were launched
May 23rd 2019.
SpaceX has plans to get 12,000
satellites into space and just recently
applied for permission to launch an
additional 30,000 second-generation
satellites. the total cost of the
decade-long project to design build and
deploy the constellation was estimated
by SpaceX in May 2018 to be about 10
billion dollars. this project alone, if
successful, will result in five times
more spacecrafts in orbit then humanity
has deployed combined, as only 9,000
satellites have ever been launched. the
question now becomes can they actually
pull this off in only nine years? the FCC
is going to require that SpaceX make
launch and fund these thirty to forty
thousand satellites in the next ten
years. they're going to have to do this
while also replacing the first
generation satellites, as each satellite
has a useful life of around five years.
SpaceX only makes 120 satellites per
month, which is far too few, but then
again this is Elon Musk we're talking
about who knows more about scaling
manufacturing than anyone else on the
planet. each satellite is about the size
of a table and weighs 500 pounds.
Elon has also said that 60 satellites
represent about one terabit of data
which breaks down to about 17 gigabits
of data per satellite. the software on
these satellites is typically updated
every week. once around 800 of these bad
boys are in orbit, SpaceX has said they
plan to start offering basic Internet
service to Canada and
North America. since there are already
540 of these satellites in low Earth
orbit now this should happen sometime
later this year. you can actually go to
the Starlink website now and sign up
for service availability updates in your
area.
Elon has signified the importance of
Canada being a priority and he's not
wrong as almost 1.2 million households
don't have internet access in Canada,
which is about 12%. current satellites
like HughesNet orbit at over 22,000
miles above the earth, Starlink
satellites orbit at only 340 miles above
the earth. SpaceX has said satellites
operating at lower altitude will reduce
the risk of orbital debris and enable
Internet services with lower lag time.
this is critical for their effort to
receive some of the 16 billion dollars
in rural broadband funding the FCC will
award through an auction in October. the
FCC subsidies are from the rural digital
Opportunity Fund and aim to deploy
broadband that otherwise would be too
unprofitable for companies to provide to
millions of households. we're targeting
latency below 20 milliseconds so
somebody could play a fast response
video game at a competitive level like
that's the threshold for the latency
previously, no satellite operator has
ever qualified as a low latency
broadband service. this low Earth orbit
is really important for latency speed as
the signal has to travel much shorter
distances
you're probably wondering how much star
link internet will cost. unfortunately,
there is nothing official, but analysts
have said probably about $80 per month.
this however seems really optimistic. as
mentioned in the intro, these new ground
terminals are a major hurdle. they were
recently spotted for the first time. the
SpaceX satellites are moving pretty fast
in the sky spending just a few minutes
over any given spot on the Earth's
surface.
previous satellite internet solutions
are much higher in
orbit, including geostationary orbits
where the spacecraft's actually appear
to hover above a fixed point on the
ground. this clearly makes ground
antennas for Leo constellations much
more challenging. this is where the
electronically steered or phased array
antenna comes in. although they have come
down in price recently, they're still
expensive. we're talking between one and
two magnitudes too expensive for a
mass-market consumer product. okay you
guys, no matter how much I dislike
spectrum, I will not be paying thousands
of dollars for a comparable service like
StarLink, even though playing a role in
funding the colonization of Mars would
be really cool. SpaceX will have to find
a way to build millions of user
terminals that are more capable than
those costing between five and ten
thousand dollars today. they will however
be really easy to set up the
instructions in the box will they're
just two instructions and they can be
done in either order a pointed sky plug
in either order plug-and-play literally
but also point of sky. if you can't see the
satellites, the satellites can't see you. a lot of people are
hoping for a starlink IPO as it's the
third most valuable private company in
the world, valued recently at 36 billion
dollars. unfortunately, Elon has all but
squashed those plans, at least for now,
saying they have put zero thought toward
a starlink IPO. they're just focused on
making it work as most other satellite
internet startups are now bankrupt. but
what kind of revenue could we expect for
a company like Starlink? I mean it's real
important to just set the stage here
for leo communications constellations.
guess how many Leo constellations
didn't go bankrupt? 0 right 0 so SpaceX
is really to help make life
multiplanetary and then but the revenue
potential of launching rocket launching
satellites servicing the space station
and what not, that taps out around
3 billion dollars a year, but I think
providing broadband is is more like an
order of magnitude more than that
probably 30 billion a year. I think the
military could be a massive customer and
Starlink could change the game for our
Defense Department. how much would you
think it's worth to have a low latency,
high bandwidth worldwide communication
to every warfighting platform on the
planet in the air or on the sea? on May
20th, the army and SpaceX signed a
cooperative research and development or
CRADA. this will allow the army to use
startlink broadband to determine whether
it should be rolled out for a wider use.
the Army's current system accesses
geostationary satellites with high
latency and low capacity. the dishes that
are mounted on trailers are also not
mobile. of course, making the cost to
implement this new tech will be a major
hurdle but there is clearly a desire for
change from the Defense Department.
SpaceX has also talked to the army about
starship and the Air Force is using
StarLink to test encrypted Internet
services for military planes. starship
will be able to take 400 satellites into
orbit at a time, roughly six times the
amount as a falcon 9. let me be clear
here,
StarLink is not 5g. most people are more
than fine with 4G to stream videos, send
texts, to FaceTime. anywhere that I have
lived I've been able to get 100 megabits
per second download speeds, which is
plenty sufficient and most activities
required between 5 and 20 megabits per
second download speeds. so in my opinion
5g is really just marketing Wankery.
(Thank You Steven) that these companies
are using to make most people think that dont
know anything about internet speeds that
they need to pay for 5g when in reality
they're just fine with 4G. so once again
StarLink will not actually be using 5g
satellites, they're two different things.
Elon has said Starlink will be able to
provide download speeds of up to 1,000
megabits per second. the Air Force
program known as Global Lightning
started testing with SpaceX in early
2018 and used starlink's first to test
satellites to beam 2 terminals fixed to
ac-12 military transport plane in flight
demonstrating internet speeds of 610
megabits per second. that's fast enough
to download a movie in under one minute.
however, if you're now getting excited
about having high-speed Wi-Fi on a boat
in the woods or on the road this year, we
need to slow down, not so fast.
5g is great for high-density situations,
but it's actually not great for the the
countryside. you know for rural areas
it's it's not it's not great you need
you need range. I think we will effectively
serve the, I don't know, three or four
percent hardest to reach customers for
telcos or people who simply have no
connectivity right now. or the
connectivity is really bad so I think it
will be actually helpful and take a
significant load off the traditional
telcos. but don't worry, SpaceX does have
plans to have global coverage within the
next few years. the main issue is just
the densely populated areas which comes
down to cell limitations. it's not good
for high-density situations, so we'll have
some small number of customers in LA but
we can't do a lot of customers in LA
because the bandwidth per cell is simply
not high enough. these satellites need
direct vision to the ground where they
will interact with antennas. this is
different than competitors in the space,
that have mostly failed, that send signal
directly from the satellites to your
device.
SpaceX on the other hand just got a key
government license last week. federal
filings revealed the Federal
Communications Commission or FCC
authorized SpaceX to start rolling out 1
million ground
antennas that will be connected to the
Starlink constellation. the license
explained that each ground antenna is
about 19 inches across, roughly the size
of a pizza box. these antennas will have
motors on a stick to pivot and aim the
right direction to receive the signal.
this project has become really
controversial in the past few months. the
Astronomy community as well as many
other people, are worried the night sky
will be significantly changed and the
constellation will prevent astronomical
discoveries. the first few hundred
satellites that they have in orbit are
certainly noticeable to the eye in the
night sky and when you think about
having 42,000 of them up there, you can
begin to understand society's concern.
StarLink is so prominent from Earth due
to the angle of the satellites. the solar
panels bounce light from the Sun to the
earth. of course SpaceX is working on
solutions. Elon has said they'll be
changing the alignment of the panel's to
help minimize this. additionally, on their
last launch they sent one satellite up
with visorsat. visorsat is basically
like a Sun Visor on your car windshield
to reduce the brightness, keeping
sunlight from reflecting. their next
scheduled launch will have all
fifty-seven satellites fitted with the
visorsat. Elon said quote, our objectives
generally are to make the satellites
invisible to the naked eye within a week
and to minimize the impact on astronomy
especially so that we do not saturate
Observatory detectors and inhibit
Discovery's. end quote. so I know the main
concern with the satellites is them
crashing into each other and then
causing space debris and then crashing
here on earth, which no one wants. these
satellites will have roughly a five year
useful life. after they complete their
mission the satellites will come back to
earth and disintegrate upon re-entering
the Earth's atmosphere to help support a
clean space environment. so no they won't
be randomly just crashing into Earth.
these satellites also have autonomous
collision avoidance systems Krypton
thrusters. these help to avoid crashes
with anything up there and to assist in
De-orbiting the satellites. you have to
keep in mind, I know
a lot of people are excited for Starlink
to have internet on places like a boat
or an RV, but both of these applications
entail movement and with these ground
antennas having their own motors they're
set to be stationary so it's yet to be
determined how those motors will
function with external motion of a boat
or an RV. it will take a few years before
SpaceX can achieve economies of scale.
there's plenty of work to do to make
antennas affordable, which is an
ambitious undertaking. StarLink may
initially be too expensive without
subsidizing terminal costs. there will
most likely be network congestion issues
that need ironed out. there will be gaps
in coverage without ground terminals for
some time. the ground antennas may not be
suitable for use in motion at first.
you'll always need a line of sight to
the sky as buildings and trees will be a
problem. if you can't see the satellites,
they can't see you. all of this to say
StarLink is a super exciting project
that will undoubtedly change the
Internet as we know it sometime over the
next decade. we may not be able to kick
spectrum to the curb just yet, but I feel
like it'll be well worth the wait. thank
you for sticking with us, if you have
stuck with us for this long, and if you
don't hate us, and you kind of like us, you
can support us on patreon for only $3 a
month. and I know this summer we're gonna
be having more exclusive patreon content
and yeah so see you guys in the next
video
