More often than not, billionaire businessmen tend to be out of the limelight as social celebrity, even when they own the biggest social media platforms. Their opinions and perspectives are generally restricted to the business section in newspapers. But, Elon Musk is changing this trend for good or bad. He regularly posts his sentiments via Twitter and Reddit. People may be divided over his controversial viewpoints at times, but there’s no question of his impact on space travel, tech and the automobile industry.
Recently one of his subsidiary’s SpaceX was in the news for its Starlink Satellite Internet service, which went on pre-orders after a brief public beta phase and has gotten over 5 million orders. Expected to be launched in India soon, let’s dissect what Starlink and its impact on the internet revolution is.
Starlink is one of SpaceX’s capital intensive projects to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a constellation, designed to deliver high-speed internet to consumers anywhere on the planet. The constellation will consist of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), working in combination with ground transceivers. SpaceX plans to sell some of the satellites for military, scientific, or exploratory purposes.
The public announcement in 2015 was when the idea was pitched by Elon Musk, saying there’s significant unmet demand for low-cost global broadband capabilities. The first two prototype test-flight satellites were launched in February 2018. In May 2018, SpaceX expected the total cost of development and buildout of the constellation to approach US$10 billion. Nearly 12,000 satellites were planned to be deployed, with a possible later extension to 42,000 as per needs. At the time of writing this, SpaceX has launched 1,565 satellites.
They are using their Falcon 9 space shuttle, which is their latest partially reusable two-stage-to-orbit medium-lift launch vehicle and plan to use it every two weeks to launch 60 satellites per trip to reach their target for 2021 as it goes live. It currently costs $99 per month and $500 one-time upfront fee for the satellite dish and WiFi router, which can increase depending upon the shipping costs.
Satellite internet technology has been around for decades, initially restricted use by the military, government, and other secret service organisations for the internet in the remotest of the areas. It involves beaming internet data, not through cables, but via radio signals through the vacuum of space. Ground stations on the planet broadcast the signals to satellites in orbit, relaying the data back to users on Earth, received by tiny satellite dishes. The satellites themselves orbit without any fuel in space due to Earth’s gravitational pull.
SpaceX’s revolutionary idea deserves the hype because it improves traditional technology in two unique ways: First, The company wants to use low-Earth orbiting satellites that circle the planet at only around 300 miles above the surface. The shortened distance can drastically improve the internet speeds while also reducing latency. Second, the significant number of satellites planned, i.e. 40,000, will create a planet-wide network, ensuring global coverage without service dropouts.
The average speeds vary, but it delivers 80 to 150 Mbps of download speeds and up to 30 Mbps of upload speed with latency between 20 to 30 milliseconds.
The coverage, however, is limited to a few states in the USA, UK, Germany and New Zealand. But of course, with incrementing satellites, SpaceX intends to cover the whole planet.
Another question that pops up is if it works well with extreme weather conditions, like rain, snow, and heavy clouds. And the answer to it is yes, but with slower speeds and higher latency.
The major problem Starlink is going to face and why none of the major corporations were interested in investing in a satellite internet network is congestion. In simple words, the network is not made for handling high traffic and congested areas like cities and towns with high population density. Starlink themselves have not commented on this issue or the extent of their technological improvement. Still, this limit of the number of users will continue to congest the network to burden the service lowering the average bandwidth. The main focus of Starlink still lies in their goal to provide high-speed internet to rural and remote areas first, where the land-based internet transmission network is absent and, if present, the output speed is sluggish.
We are not here for predictions, but certain things will happen when Musk’s billion dollars project is launched. Let’s start with the astronomy community, who are riled up as the night-time skywatchers observing the space are afraid it will be ruined forever by the thousands of artificial satellites bombarded in space. An anti-reflective coating applied to some newer satellites in SpaceX’s Starlink constellation reduces their overall reflectivity by half. However, it is less effective at specific wavelengths – meaning that ground-based astronomical observations are still being impaired by satellites passing through the telescope’s field of view.
Next up is the environmental impact. Based on research by The Aerospace Corporation, the low Earth orbital satellites are being built from aluminium which, when disposed of organically in some years after use by Starlink, will fall down and burn up in the atmosphere. It reduces space waste but, in turn, releases aluminium oxide or alumina, which heavily contributes to climate change. And due to the sheer scale of the project, the report said, it could increase the risk of health-related harm to the human environment to an unacceptable level.
Last is space pollution, which is already a concern, and with Starlink’s mega constellation being constructed, it will be worse. Space debris is a negative externality consisting of defunct human-made objects in space—principally in Earth orbit—which no longer serve a proper function. And as no space mission has zero probability of failure, out of the thousands of satellites planned, hundreds are going to be defunct, which will just add to the space trash.
Elon Musk has big plans for India as a future market, which is quite evident with the landing of the Tesla manufacturing plant in Karnataka. So, his latest SpaceX offering, Starlink, is no different either. There are no launch details yet for the Indian subcontinent. Still, government officials have expressed their views, nudging the company to follow the telecom norms and its plans to determine if it requires both internet service provider (ISP) and VSAT (very small aperture terminal) service authorisations under unified licence (UL) regulations or just one to offer high-speed satellite internet services in the country.
The Department of Telecommunications has no objections for the company, except to comply with the rules set for others in the market. The competition will be a treat for Indian consumers as Jeff Bezos-led Amazon’s Project Kuiper and Bharti-backed OneWeb build their own networks. Coming years are crucial for the development in the telecommunication industry in India, with 5G trials and allocation beginning next year and now satellite internet, which will be the new fad.
In conclusion, no one knows what exactly the final Starlink constellation will look like and what impact it would have on the world is greatly dependent on the degree to which it can withstand regulatory efforts and market forces to make it a revolutionary futuristic solution to the internet connectivity or just space trash gone wrong. But if there’s something to learn about is the man behind it.
Elon Musk, as a businessman, is ruthless, and he already is a farsighted innovator. He can invest billions of dollars on weird products of The Boring Company, or himself become a meme on the internet, and even launch a Tesla Roadster to float in space for no particular reason, but that’s his risk-taking stupidity which forms the essence of a maniac innovator. The tech-savvy community is already very vocal on the internet, for the things they like and even more so if they dislike, so let’s see how it goes. Next time you trek to the peak of Mount Everest, you could post a selfie on Instagram from up there, and for that, kudos to Starlink.
Sources –
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
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