Starlink explained - why SpaceX needs 42,000 satellites

sponsored by surf shark VPN click on the link in the description and enter promo code undecided for 85% off and three extra months for free if you're watching this video that means you obviously have an internet connection although you may live in an area with limited providers or network speeds you still have internet accessibility which can improve everything from entertainment to work to education and to health care but 41.3% of the world doesn't have access to Internet at all and that's where SpaceX comes in with star link which is getting very close to launching their own service what is it what are the latest developments and why should you even care I'm Matt Farrell welcome to decide so as I mentioned internet access isn't ubiquitous just over 40 percent of the world doesn't have any access to the internet yet and even in areas with access it can be spotty if you're not in a more urban area places like Africa the Middle East and Asia are lagging behind areas like North America and Europe laying long cable runs into remote regions can be costly given the number of potential customers even building out wireless signals in those areas is costly which is why there are still so many low bandwidth areas in places across the United States while 96% of urban areas have access to broadband only 61% of rural areas do satellite internet service solves part of that problem because you can cover a large area with a single satellite but there's some big downsides current satellite based Internet services are using geostationary satellites that are orbiting at over 35,000 kilometers or about 22,000 miles above the surface of the earth it's that distance that creates the first major problem latency a radio signal takes about 120 milliseconds to reach a geostationary satellite with another 120 milliseconds to relay that signal back down to the ground so in theory you'd be looking at at least 240 milliseconds but in practice you often see a round-trip latency between 400 and 600 milliseconds 12 times slower than what you see on the ground and then you have the challenge of how much bandwidth a single satellite can handle at once which can affect the download and the upload speeds for everyone sharing that satellite that means your maximum upload and download speeds will be likely on the lower side and you'll have some data caps to contend with each month via set and HughesNet are two the options that you have available today and they cost between thirty and one hundred and fifty dollars a month for speeds between 12 and 100 megabits per second and via sets current throughput in their satellites is about two hundred and sixty gigabits per second which is shared by everybody using it what this means it says there's a huge opening for competition and that's where SpaceX comes in with star link since we already have satellite internet what makes Starling different it's a low Earth orbit constellation of satellites that operate around one third to one one hundredth the height of geostationary satellites as of April 22nd 2020 there are 422 satellites in the Starling constellation so far with most of them deployed at around 550 kilometres or 340 miles they're trying to launch 60 satellites per Falcon 9 flight for a total of around 4,400 satellites in phase 1 and they'll add another 7500 and phase 2 so around the year 2027 they'll have nearly 12,000 satellites deployed in three orbital shells now it's not guaranteed but SpaceX has also submitted paperwork for an additional 30,000 satellites beyond that so why so many satellites well low-earth orbit satellites being much closer to the earth means they can't be stationary they have to move faster to maintain their orbit and they will also have a smaller cone of coverage but a big benefit of being so much closer is a much lower latency for communication you'll have latencies run 25 to 35 milliseconds which makes it comparable to cable and fiber optic networks however when using lasers to communicate between satellites which star link will eventually do it gets a little physics boost light travels through a vacuum about 47 percent faster than through glass like a fiber-optic cable so even when accounting for transmitting from the planet and back the faster laser transmission speeds between the satellites will give the network latency edge compared to long stretches of fibre on earth and each satellite will be able to handle one turbot per second which is almost four times the capacity of via set that's roughly 40,000 people streaming 4k video at once while all of that sounds incredible this isn't a service that's meant to knock out terrestrial internet services is a service meant for a smaller segment of the market which is primarily areas less densely populated just this past March Elon talked about just that at the satellite 2020 conference the challenge for anything that is space-based is that the the size of the cell is gigantic you know so it's like said it's great for for very low - maybe maybe mediums sort of sparsity situations but it's not it's not good for high density situations every rule will 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 with tens of thousands of satellites being put into orbit it's going to dwarf everything that's come before at this point in our history we've only launched about 9,000 objects into space and of those a little less than six thousand are still in use today SpaceX is going to triple that number in five to seven years and if they move forward with the additional 30,000 you can probably understand why a lot of people are concerned about overcrowding and space debris if you've ever seen the movie gravity then you probably know about the Kessler syndrome it's the theory that an object colliding with another in a densely packed area of space could cause a cascade of destruction the FCC required very strict plans from SpaceX to mitigate space debris which meant achieving a higher level of deorbiting reliability than nASA uses for itself that's 90 percent of satellites reliably deorbiting with a targeted lifespan of 5 to 7 years SpaceX told the FCC that it will implement an Operations plan for the orderly deorbit of satellites nearing the end of their useful lives and a rate far faster than is required under international standards and that SpaceX satellites will deorbit by propulsively moving to a disposal orbit from which they will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere within approximately one year after completion of their mission about 95% of the salads parts will disintegrate in the Earth's atmosphere as they D orbit there's also been concerns about the impact on astronomical observations with the satellites being very visible when they're deployed and also noticeable as they're tumbling their way to their final orbit astronomers are worried about the light pollution SpaceX has been working with astronomers to address these concerns with strategies like painting sections of the newer satellites black to reduce the reflection or adjusting their orbit orientation to minimize how the satellite will catch and reflect sunlight towards the surface of the earth during their orbit and even adding a Sun Shade to the satellite to help block reflections they're calling it visor sad there's still a lot of outstanding questions about how this will ultimately impact visual and radio telescope observations but SpaceX is actively trying to address them and SpaceX isn't the only company working on low Earth orbit constellations for Internet service companies like Telus at one web and Amazon all have plans but nobody's successfully launched a business out of this Amazon is working on project kuiper which will have around 3,200 satellites but has yet to put any satellites into orbit in one web which launched 74 satellites just filed for bankruptcy in March of 2020 I mean it's real important to just set the stage here for leoch communications constellations guess how many Leo constellations didn't go bankrupt zero right 0y iridium is doing ok now but the Iridium one went bankrupt Volcom went bankrupt Globalstar bankrupt Teledesic bankrupt I'm believing it without this bunch of others that didn't get very far they also went bankrupt anyway the orion bankrupt so you're focusing on making it work first not to bankrupt there's a huge business opportunity here for the company that can get up and running first which is obviously looking like it's SpaceX in 2018 they estimated the total cost would be about 10 billion dollars which is a lofty price tag for a company that's only expected to make 3 to 5 billion dollars a year from launches by 2025 the projections for you to leave revenue from StarLink are 30 to 50 billion dollars a year by 2025 but that's a means to an end for Elon and SpaceX in a media call before the launch of the very first StarLink satellites Elon said we see this as a way for SpaceX to generate revenue that can be used to develop more and more advanced rockets and spaceships we believe we can use the revenue from StarLink to fund starship which leads right into their goal for becoming a multiplanetary species they're really two fundamental paths history is going to bifurcate along two directions one one one path is we stay on earth forever and then there will be some eventual extinction event I don't have an immediate doomsday prophecy but there's it's eventually history suggests there will be some some doomsday event well the alternative is to become a spacefaring civilization and a multi-planet species which I hope you would agree that is the right way to go yes back on earth when I got to wait too much longer to see star link in action but before I get to when star link is actually going to be available it's a good time to talk about getting a VPN for your internet whether it's terrestrial or space-based I'd like to think surf shark for sponsoring this video I always use a VPN when traveling and using free Wi-Fi and airports and hotels but I sent the only reason to use one surf shark encrypts all the data that you send over the Internet so your private data like passwords messages photos videos or whatever you're doing online stays private that means you can protect your online identity from tracking and commercial targeting that we see with so many services today with surf sharks clean web it will block ads trackers and malicious websites making it safer to use the Internet even at home one of the best parts of surf shark is that it's easy to set up on all your devices whether that's an iPhone or Android Mac or PC surf shark is the only VPN to offer one account to use with an unlimited number of devices use my code to get 85% off plus three extra months for free surf shark offers a 30-day money back guarantee so there's no risk to try it out for yourself link in the description below and thanks to surf shark and to all of you for supporting the channel now the private beta service is scheduled to start in northern US and Canada around August of 2020 with a public beta following up in November of 2020 part of the reason for the limited scope is due to where the current satellites are orbiting as more satellites join the constellation will see more areas rolled into the beta program it's going to be interesting to see how well the system performs over the next year or two and what opportunities it opens up for mobility internet access and other businesses areas that have no or poor internet availability will benefit the most from StarLink but so will areas that lack competition and if this proves out to be as low latency as promised it could be a huge moneymaker for high-frequency stock traders it's not just gamers that benefit from low latency starlings projected 25 to 35 millisecond latency is faster than anything stock traders have available today between major trading centers in the US and Europe in businesses were every millisecond counts StarLink could mean big business now if you liked this video be sure to check out my video on EB charging even if you're already familiar with the Eevee's I cover some aspects of how charging works and what it means for our electric grid and jump into the comments and let me know what you think about Starling and as always thanks so much for watching I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Undecided with Matt Ferrell

Views: 891,285

Keywords: spacex starlink, spacex starlink launch, spacex starlink satellite, spacex starlink satellite train, spacex starlink train, spacex, starlink, spacex launch, starlink broadband service, starlink elon musk, starlink launch, starlink satellite, starlink satellite train, starlink satellites spotted, starlink spacex, starlink spacex satellites, when will starlink internet be available, satellite internet, space, undecided with matt ferrell, space x, starlink internet, spacex news

Id: tuFS0zOwyBg

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020

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