Welcome at kNews.space, I’m Lukas from Germany
and today I want to invite you on a litte
journey through near earth space.
We’ll have a brief look at Starlink: The
non geosynchronous communication system by
SpaceX.
I’ll try to illustrate how it will change
the future and show that it’s not as ludicrous
as it seems.
Let’s dive into it!
The dotted white outer rim to the sides shows
regular communication satellites in a geosynchronous
orbit.
There are roughly 500 or these currently in
orbit and most of you will know them from
satellite television.
Yep, that’s where you point your dishes
at.
The ISS orbits much more closely at 400 km,
in fact it’s so close you wouldn’t even
notice its in space at all from up here.
The red dot zips across the sky at 8 km/s
in order to not fall back to ground.
It counters gravity with its own inertia like
a giant centrifuge.
The Starlink constellation will have a very
similar orbit but there will be many many
more.
This is no coincidence because SpaceX will
launch from the same launch site in Florida
and that’s the highest inclination they
can still reach somewhat efficiently.
The first batch you can see here consists
of almost 1600 satellites distributed over
24 orbital planes with 66 satellites each
not counting on orbit spares.
These spare satellites are basically a buffer
to make sure a failing satellite can be replaced
quickly.
This first constellation will operate from
an altitude of 550 km and will be able to
communicate with itself and the ground using
microwaves similar to your smartphones.
But don’t get too excited about that.
550 km is not in reach of any regular smartphone
so you will not be able to browse the web
like that, at least not in regular fashion
but we’ll discuss that later.
The plan is to use dishes on terminals which
can track the satellites by simply following
them.
This will change and modernize over time as
SpaceX usually does.
They will iterate on the design of these satellites
and terminals starting with the most basic
of hardware evolving them into whatever proves
the best over time.
They have actually launched two test articles
to space already as a secondary payload.
Tintin A and B named after the belgian comic’s
character Tintin or “TinTin” (french pronunciation).
They work for in the order of 15 minutes day
as they fly by the US with high bandwidth
and 25 ms of latency.
Speaking of latency, this used to be the issue
with satellite communication as it was for
the the most part using those geosynchronous
orbits far out.
The speed of light is 300.000 km/s so in order
for a signal to bounce back and forth twice
for a ping-pong or ping test, it would travel
at least 140.000 km or roughly half a second.
That’s a big delay which is fine for one
directional streaming but incredibly painful
for anything else, especially online gaming.
But wait a second, one directional streaming?
Yep, I would argue what many don’t count
with when it comes to Skylink is streaming.
You could in theory use regular cellular internet
to ask for data and then use Starnet to provide
it in even the most remote of areas directly
onto a mobile device.
However, that’s just my speculation and
it really depends on whether the signal strength
is strong enough to be picked up with an antenna
that fits inside a smartphone.
But I can imagine companies could sell pocket
dishes with receivers only which don’t require
special radio licenses.
Anyhow, important to note is SpaceX could
bring satellite television to smartphones
no matter where you are.
I used to think Starlink was completely supplementary
to the existing market as ground based 5G
systems will offer higher speeds and a quicker
latency, but as it turns out they could really
threaten those valuable satellite television
companies that ironically fund SpaceX today
by launching satellites with them.
But that of course depends on whether SpaceX
will make use of it or not.
In the end there is enough streaming you can
do online which will probably exploit most
of the bandwidth already.
What SpaceX could also do is to mount GPS
transmitters to offer positioning services.
Thinking about it again that could turn into
a problem though since no government had direct
control over it so bad actors could abuse
it to guide missiles.
Regular GPS can be turned on and off or even
manipulated to send missles back to where
they were coming from.
The whole globe is tracked via infrared sensors
from space so any device that exhausts a lot
of heat is immediately picked up by the military
which is vital not only to defend attacks
but also to prevent people from even attempting
it.
I guess SpaceX won’t offer positioning services
at least without governmental control over
it or only with very low precision to tell
in which country you are but not on which
grassholm your sitting.
So what remains is the internet which is of
course the most important communication infrastructure
nowadays.
It will as mentioned offer high bandwidth
in the gigabit range per user but with a comparatively
okay latency of round about 10 ms to local
servers or and this is the main advantage
30 to 60 ms all across the globe.
Yep, it will even beat a direct optical fiber
connection because signals in these fibers
travel at only 60-70% of the speed of light.
The longer the distance the higher the advantage
of such a space based system.
30 - 60 ms is not great for online shooters
but totally fine for most other games and
of course calls.
But I didn’t came up with that one by myself.
There is a great video by I think a professor
called Mark Handley.
He wrote a software to simulate the constellation’s
links and latency of the system pretty much
proving the point.
I highly recommend to watch it!
I have never really thought about satellites
being faster than a direct optical fiber link
across the ocean.
And this initial constellation will as mentioned
only be the first and there are many more
to come.
The final low earth constellation will consist
of almost 5000 satellites on different orbits
and this is still not all.
This will more than double in the long run
as SpaceX will try to utilize a very low earth
orbits below 350 km and therefore below the
ISS.
This one is further out and will probably
not fund BFR like the rest.
Yep, this whole constellation is supposed
to fund SpaceX next gen rocket so it is not
a 20 year plan, but supposed to be finished
in just a few years from now.
How can they do it you may ask?
This more than doubles all satellites that
are in space today.
And won’t it cause crashes and debris?
Yep, it is not an easy task but each teal
sphere you can see here has actually a purpose.
It is 60 km wide and that is exactly the safe
zone around a satellite SpaceX will keep free.
Given a perfectly optimized constellation,
which mine isn’t, none of these spheres
should ever intersect with another.
That is a lot of safe zone even if one satellite
should fail.
It would take many months to drift 60 km off
course in which SpaceX could in theory rendezvous
with some kind of on orbit garbage collector
that could deorbit uncontrolled satellites.
What sets SpaceX apart from others is they
are at the source or they are the source for
that matter.
Unlike other companies that try to do the
same they can use free rockets.
Yes, their used boosters are already paid
for so they can start out by simply using
and reusing those without having to buy new
ones.
This is an incredible advantage over any competitor
which won’t be able to operate a similar
fleet at a competitive price point.
Maybe amazon with their New Glenn rocket but
that’s another video.
Now of course, satellites won’t only fail
by accident.
If you do the math 5000 satellites with a
lifespan of 5 years each means 20 satellites
failing per week on average.
They will not only have to deorbit them on
their own but will also need an insane launch
rate to maintain the whole fleet and they
can’t yet reuse their upper stage.
Building so many upper stages and satellite
will make funding BFR a real challenge.
So, and this is just my conclusion, they have
to reuse their upper stage for Skynet, I mean
Starlink.
They can’t wait for BFR because this is
meant to fund it and they can hardly fund
it by building so many satellites and upper
stages.
Of course Elon Musk himself tweeted it out
recently.
They will try to turn the upper stage in some
sort of Mini-BFR as I have already talked
about in a previous video.
Feel free to check that one out if you haven’t
or want to refresh your memory.
Now let’s assume they really do it and manage
to reuse it.
What’s with all the debris falling to ground?
20 satellites burning up a weak or a 1000
per year is insane.
According to their simulations there is a
high chance of a couple kgs of metal surviving
reentry and these pieces will re-enter and
crash into the ground somewhere.
Of course, most will do so into the ocean
but some will inevitably crash into ground.
They could harm people and cause fires.
That’s quite a long term risk to take so
I personally believe SpaceX will at least
in the long run, as their technology evolves,
have to come up with something new - again.
Reusable satellites!
Yep, mounting a small heatshield, maybe protective
housing and parachute is all it takes.
Mini Dragons so to speak.
I’m actually pretty sure they will do it.
Refueling satellites on orbit would be probably
too complex as there are so many in different
planes and they also can’t really upgrade
them like that.
But if they decide to do that the next problem
will be catching them.
That’s a 1000 satellites.
How could they possibly prevent them to fall
into the water?
First of all SpaceX is incredibly good at
aiming as they do it on their Dragon all the
time.
So I’m sure they could re-enter aim for
somewhere near the west coast.
Second, they could not use drone ships but
regular flying drones.
There is an older video linked below where
you can see how students or graduates, I’m
not sure, built software that can control
a team of drones catching a ball using a net
inflight.
That’s crazy but I think just the right
way to do it.
Mr. Steven who usually catches fairings could
harbor some car sized drones that would do
exactly that.
Catch satellites.
This could even turn into a fully autonomous
launch and catch cycle.
Drones catch the satellites, bring them to
the rocket where they gets refueled and relaunched.
Isn’t it a good idea to build a self maintaining
satellite fleet that offers communication,
possibly positioning to autonomous vehicles
all around the globe?
Hmmm wait a second… that reminds me of the
documentary.. what was its name again?
*drum noise* The Terminator.
But jokes aside, what do you think guys?
The Skynet comparison is surely a little exaggerated
but do you believe they could disrupt yet
another industry with reusable satellites
or am I nuts?
Do you have some cool ideas what Starlink
could else be used for?
Let me know and also don’t forget to watch
the videos I mentioned.
Especially the ones with the drones and the
one with the simulation.
Okay, that shall conclude this video and I
hope to see you in the next one if you like.
In the end I want to also give huge shout
out to my kNews Booster on Patreon.
These people put the k before the news.
Auf Wiedersehn and thank you for watching.
This was kNews, letting information loose.
You don’t have to take a bow, just think
about it now.
