The 2021 Starlink Update Is Here...

today we're talking about all things starlink elon musk is hinting that spacex will take the network out of beta testing and into global coverage sometime in october 2021 and that's going to have some very significant effects on the way that people all over the world connect with the internet this is a major leap forward for internet accessibility we're about to see a leveling of the playing field that has been leaving millions of people behind for far too long we know what tesla did to the automotive industry we're seeing right now the changes that spacex is making in the aerospace field and starlink is about to pull that same disruption trick on the internet and it's gonna be nuts okay so at this point you're probably familiar with the basics of starlink it's satellite-based broadband internet service and that basically means that the world wide web is coming via a floating box in space instead of a cable in your wall or a giant tower somewhere near you on the ground space internet is nothing new we've had this around for a while now we've just never used it very often because it has historically been pretty terrible if you've ever tried to use in-flight wi-fi in a commercial airline while the plane is over the ocean or a mountain range then you've used satellite internet and anyone who's tried this service knows that this particular kind of wi-fi connection objectively sucks so why would starlink be any better current satellite internet providers use geostationary orbit to position their satellites this is by far the easiest way to put something into space it's like a set it and forget it kind of deal the satellite will always be in the same place relative to the surface of the earth so you always know where it is and it's too high up to worry about it ever deorbiting and coming back down this orbit level puts the satellites at 22 300 miles above the equator of the earth that's pretty high this height allows them to maximize the viewing angle of each satellite from the surface but considering that we know internet connection is significantly affected by the distance between the source and receiver it's pretty obvious to anyone that 22 000 miles up is just too damn high add to the fact that there are humongous gaps between each satellite that effectively make the distance even longer and you end up with pretty internet starlink by comparison put their space boxes into low earth orbit that means they're about 340 miles above the surface significantly less high than our in-flight wi-fi satellites that reduction in distance on its own would make the service much better than anything else on the market but the low orbital height also translates into a reduced viewing angle for their ground-based receivers so that means starlink needs to have a very dense constellation of space boxes in order to maintain solid coverage as of right now starlink consists of around 1400 active satellites they've launched nearly 1800 in total and the 400 missing satellites have either failed or been decommissioned already if that sounds like a lot that's because it is a lot spacex now owns more than half of all active satellites circling our planet as this satellite coverage grows starlink will be able to deliver broadband internet to more and more people and that coverage zone is going to include a lot of people who have never had the opportunity to connect to high-speed internet at their home it's not like people are still out there trying to get on aol through a dial-up modem but a lot of rural and remote areas have never gotten past dsl which uses the telephone line for connection people on this connection system are usually stuck with something between 5 and 10 megabits per second the whole point of starlink in its beta phase is to be better than nothing so for you and i who already have good internet there is no practical reason to get this unless you just really like messing around with new technology and have some money to burn even when starlink moves out of its beta phase it will still not be any better for us than what we already have but for those people who have never known an internet connection stronger than 10 megabits this is mind-blowing starlink began beta testing with users mostly along the canada u.s border in october 2020 that's the area of the world with by far the highest concentration of satellites available and elon says that they have grown to as many as 100 000 active users as of this summer with over 500 000 signed up to get access testers pay 500 us dollars for their startup kit and then 100 bucks a month for the service it's not cheap but it is actually a pretty good deal elon has admitted that spacex are taking a pretty heavy loss on the sale of their starlink receivers at the moment as they cost over a thousand dollars just to make and in the box you get one receiver also known as dishy mcflatface also known as ufo on a stick and that comes with 100 feet of ethernet cable there is a pretty standard wi-fi router and a big chunky power brick that supplies both the dish and router via the ethernet cables the system actually uses a ton of power more than you would expect the dish and router typically pull 80 to 100 watts during regular operation which is a lot more than a regular satellite dish that runs at about 30 watts and that's because dishi is much much more than your regular satellite tv receiver that can be a downside if you're trying to run starlink in an off-grid scenario with solar panel for one dishi is actually a robot that can self-position to get the best angle for starling service you just turn him on and he sorts himself out and underneath that flat face is more like a computer than a satellite dish on the inside there are dozens of small antennas that are constantly being targeted at the most available starlink satellite as they pass by overhead and everything is being controlled by a small computer inside the dish that runs linux on a 4 core arm based chip that means dishi has basically the same brain as a smartphone the downside there being that like every computer it doesn't do great with heat the dish will thermal throttle at high temperatures and has actually been reported to shut down in ambient temperatures above 50 degrees celsius or 122 fahrenheit on the upside though the dish works great with cold weather where it can actually run hot enough to melt snow off the surface there is no heating coil built in but dishy can detect a snow storm and will just run at a hotter operating temperature to keep itself clear again though power consumption might be an issue it looks like in snow clearing mode starlink can draw as much as 175 watts of power which is more than a big lcd television the biggest downside to starlink as it stands right now is connectivity when it's working at its best the system can hit over 150 megabits per second of download speed but to get that best case scenario consistently you need to position the dish in an area that has a 100 unobstructed view of the sky there can even be a tree branch in the way your cell phone can pull internet through a concrete wall starlink can't connect to a satellite through leaves i don't understand why that is i'm sure someone in the comments section will educate me though at least i hope so if you live on a farm that's no worries in a neighborhood with trees it can be a problem some of the time if you're trying to get starlink to a cabin in the woods it's probably not going to work so great the angle of view necessary is becoming more forgiving as the satellite network grows but it's still going to be a while before this system will consistently work in any location for that to happen there would need to always be at least one satellite directly above your location and in addition to that starlink is still relying on ground-based towers to complete the connection for now service relies on a system of ground stations called gateways these stations are positioned around the world and exchange signals with the starlink satellites tapping them into existing fiber optic infrastructure so a user's home antenna connects to a starlink satellite as it passes overhead which in turn links them to the nearest gateway as a result in addition to their own antenna users need to have a ground station within roughly 500 miles of their location in order to get service luckily every issue that has come up so far is only going to be a temporary problem spacex has everything planned out to take starlink from better than nothing to a world-class internet service i want to thank cometier for partnering with the tesla space for today's video i enjoy having a cup of coffee to kick off the work day and for years i've had the same routine without much change but cometier is something completely new that i have never seen before cometier offers delicious pour over quality coffee that's convenient brewed 10 times stronger and delivered in frozen recyclable aluminum 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and our sponsors helps us deliver the best quality of content to all of you so thanks to commenteer for sponsoring today's video and all of you for supporting the channel and let's get back to the video the amazing thing about starlink is that we are in the very early days of the project right now this is more like a proof of concept than an actual finished product to get starlink up to the performance that spacex intends they will need to grow the constellation out to 12 000 satellites that's the number they currently have approved by the fcc but even that is not the end game yet because spacex submitted for approval of 30 000 additional starling satellites on top of that the gen 2 satellites are going to be the real game changer thanks to freaking laser beams which does feel more appropriate for our good friend dr evil but nonetheless the starlink laser system is an upgraded method for communication from satellite to satellite this will eliminate the need for a ground-based tower to be anywhere near the starlink receiver because the signal can be sent between satellites from around the world the laser communication means that the signal will be traveling at the speed of light which in the vacuum of space is 300 000 kilometers per second or 186 000 miles this gives starlink a massive advantage over fiber optic signals because when light moves through glass it slows down by around 30 percent in addition the signal moves a shorter distance through space because there is never going to be a fiber optic cable that runs perfectly straight from one global location to another in a recent letter to beat testers spacex wrote once the space lasers are fully deployed starlink will be one of the fastest options available to transfer data around the world can we get a thumbs up on the video for space lasers come on and as elon musk has pointed out this entirely space-based network eliminates completely the need for a local downlink and that means that access to the internet can no longer be controlled on the ground meaning that governments will no longer be able to control what parts of the internet can be accessed within their nations now sure there are ways to get around this already you can use a vpn but your internet signal is still being routed through a ground-based network controlled by an authoritarian government and that's not great as elon has said once starlink comes into play the most these will be able to do is shake their fist at the sky it's very cyberpunk and i'm all here for it the starlink launch on september 13th was the first to deliver these laser-equipped satellites into orbit with 51 of them being deployed by a falcon 9 rocket the new satellites aren't necessarily intended to replace the existing ones as they are for the purpose of enhancing the network for now by the way if you're enjoying the content about satellites and lasers and spaceships then i want to give you a quick plug for our sister channel the space race over on the space race we cover everything related to the new age of space exploration from new rocket technology to plans for colonizing the moon and mars it's still a new channel that we are trying to grow and we really love making the videos over there and it would mean a lot to us if you check out the space race and let us know what you think there's a link down below in the description okay let's shift gears and talk about a different kind of speed because if spacex is going to reach 40 000 satellites in orbit or even 12 000 satellites anytime soon then they are going to need to pick up the pace at 60 deployments on average for each falcon 9 rocket that would be 500 launches to deliver 30 000 starlinks for some perspective in its 11 year history there have been 127 falcon 9 launch missions use of this rocket has greatly accelerated as the years have rolled on but even still 500 rocket launches is a whole lot and that's why spacex has a better plan enter the starship this is an entirely new kind of super heavy launch vehicle that spacex have invented and are currently preparing for an orbital test flight if it manages to get into space without exploding starship will be by far the biggest and most powerful rocket system ever developed and will be capable of a massive 100 metric ton cargo capacity with this spacex believes they can deploy 400 starling satellites in one launch and not only is starship deploying starlink in higher volume because this is an actual spaceship that can fly and maneuver through space starship can deploy satellites much more precisely so they won't have to move as far under their own thrust to reach the final destination in orbit the plan is for starship to deploy shell layers of starlinks that are stacked vertically in orbit the lowest shell will hang out at just 340 kilometers up and the highest shell will be at 614 kilometers like we said how soon we reach this step all depends on how soon starship is ready for action best case scenario could be just another year from now the starship is scheduled to fly to the moon in 2024 as part of nasa's project artemis and elon wants these things flying to mars by 2026 either way we are just a few years away from having a whole shitload more satellites in orbit around the earth than we do right now is that safe how do we avoid a kessler syndrome event where all of these space boxes just smash into each other until we end up with nothing but a massive cloud of broken junk orbiting the earth obviously we don't want that to happen and spacex especially doesn't want that to happen because it would be very bad for business so to help calm everyone down spacex has released a full presentation of the starlink collision avoidance system the first section details their precautions against starlink on starlink collisions which is pretty easy they just assign each satellite its own slot in orbit and each slot is positioned so that it can't possibly collide with any other slot each starlink maintains its slot with position keeping burns from the onboard ion thruster but if anything unexpected comes up then starlink can also use that thruster for active collision avoidance which is right now mostly used against space debris the plan for starlink on debris collision avoidance involves using data from the 18th space control squadron who perform radar tracking of all space debris spacex uses an automated system that ingests data from the radar tracking to evaluate risks and plan avoidance maneuvers without human input there are still people monitoring the system in case something unexpected comes up but for the most part starlink already knows where the debris is and will get out of the way automatically the third section they cover is called starlink on other operator which is obviously the last thing we want to see happen spacex wrote to the fcc when a maneuverable starlink satellite sees a conjunction with another satellite without intervention starling satellites will assume maneuver responsibility if another operator prefers to maneuver instead starling satellites can be commanded to remain ballistic for the span of the conjunction event the company noted that due to the lack of industry standard automated maneuver responsibility arbitrage methods startling satellites currently default to taking maneuver responsibility for conjunction events with other operators finally there are the measures that starlink is taking to make sure that their own satellites do not become dead hunks of junk orbiting the earth for decades on end at the beginning of each deployment the starlink is released at a very low altitude about 270 kilometers up only after passing a health check can the satellite rise to its orbital slot around 550 kilometers up if the satellite does not pass the health check then the orbital drag at 270 kilometers will quickly pull it down into the atmosphere where friction will incinerate the entire thing the starlink is specifically designed to fully disassemble on re-entry and pose zero risk of damage or injury to anything on earth even if a starlink makes it into the orbital slot and then dies completely the orbit is still low enough that drag will pull it down in about five years and then of course spacex always has the option to manually decommission a starlink by using the ion thruster to push it out of orbit and into the atmosphere to burn up so that's where starlink is at going into the final quarter of 2021 it's really important to remember that we are just in the very early stages of a long game here even when starlink does come online for the entire world it will be running at a very small fraction of its full potential we'll have maybe 2 000 satellites out of a total constellation of 30 or 40 000 and reaching that final product is going to be years down the road but let us know what you think in the comment section below how hyped are you for satellite space laser internet or is this all just an overhyped scheme that will crowd space up with a bunch of junk it is undeniably a polarizing issue for more tesla news delivered straight to your inbox make sure to subscribe to our tesla space newsletter we keep you up to date on all things elon musk tesla spacex neuralink and boring company in one quick and fun to read package link in the description to sign up it's the teslaspace.com and make sure to drag our emails over into your primary inbox so we don't get lost in the promotions tab also don't forget to check out our new space race channel and subscribe over there for even more space exploration content as always if you want to continue to learn about everything regarding tesla spacex and elon musk we've got two more video options for you on the screen to check out don't forget to give this video a thumbs up today if you liked it and subscribe to our channel for weekly content just like this

Channel: The Tesla Space

Views: 112,705

Keywords: tesla, starlink, starlink internet, starlink satellites, starlink satellite deployment, starlink satellite launch, starlink satellite internet, starlink speed test, starlink launch, starlink setup, starlink review, starlink setup kit, starlink beta, starlink beta test, starlink internet review, starlink usa, starlink test speed, starlink 2021, starlink news, starlink update, starlink news 2021, starlink news 2021and updates, starlink 2021 update, starlink 2021 news

Id: AC20mbwwEkY

Length: 21min 59sec (1319 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021