from Hacker News

SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

by crunchlibrarian on 11/15/18, 6:52 PM with 280 comments

• by zaroth on 11/15/18, 7:26 PM

  Too bad the public markets have given Elon such a lashing with Tesla, because I would love to buy into SpaceX.

  But then, I’m not the only one;

  “There is an unlimited amount of funding that the company could probably access globally in private markets," Hilmer said, adding that he has personally met many of "a diverse group" interested in SpaceX. Everywhere I travel around the world, investors of all types — individuals, family offices, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds or private equity — want to get into SpaceX," Hilmer said. "It's almost all investors I talk to."

  Of course at the same time I’m happy they aren’t public. The market couldn’t handle the time horizons that SpaceX operates under, nor the mission statement that drives them.

  [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/13/equidate-spacex-27-billion-v...

• by thinkcontext on 11/15/18, 8:15 PM

  The fact that SpaceX can piggyback on its own customers' launches to put these in orbit is a significant advantage over competing communication constellations.

  Depending on the cost of their satellites it might make sense to use launching them as a means of testing the upper limits of reusability of their rockets. IE, they might not want to risk a customer payload on a rocket that has made 10 launches. But if they are going to build 7,518 satellites the marginal cost is likely to be rather low so it might be worth it to push the risk threshold to stretch the number of trips per rocket. Also, it could be a good opportunity to clear out their inventory of pre-block 5 Falcon 9s.

• by elteto on 11/15/18, 8:00 PM

  This video [0] really puts into perspective what SpaceX is trying to accomplish. Incredible stuff if they pull it off!

  [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=AdKNCBrkZQ4...

• by creeble on 11/15/18, 7:39 PM

  Curious how this will pan out.

  It's a shocking contrast to be in or near a city and have broadband speeds, and then be just a few dozen miles outside one and have... literally nothing.

  I just loaned my Iridium phone to a friend who was going to the jungle, and although he was able to make the data connection work, even doing email at 2400 baud(!) proved useless. Inmarsat is faster, but vastly more expensive.

  Outside of those two, there is no global solution.

• by Rebelgecko on 11/15/18, 9:22 PM

  Is there anyone who knows more about radio stuff that can explain why they want to have both Ku and V band for users? It it just a matter of having more spectrum? Or are some bands more suited to crowded areas, like a city where there might be lots of customers sharing bandwidth? Do you need different hardware for using the different frequencies?

• by bargl on 11/15/18, 7:46 PM

  This is such a cool problem.

  We already have a ton of Geo sat which can do this kind of communication but they are super expensive and have a limited bandwidth.

  These satellites will actually have a ton of limitations in how much data they can send around and how they'll have to balance out their signals. Geo are easier to point to because, well they don't move.

  But these are going to be moving and changing all the time so you'll have to connect to multiple satellites every day. I'm spit balling here but they'll probably be overhead for 10 minutes? Think about switching your router every 10 minutes. Or you get a rainy day and your signal clarity goes down. Or you are over the equator in a band that is used strictly for GEO.

  This is going to be a super cool problem to solve. And I'm sure I don't even understand the half of it.

  Edit: Sorry example of router is pretty bad. It's more like running your phone but you have to specifically aim your antenna at each tower that you're passing while driving. The complexity is moving nature of the network and the targeting nature of the antennas. I have 0 clue if phone signals are targeted but I believe they are radial signals and more like a beacon than a laser.

  Load balancing these can be a pain as well because if you get too much signal on an antenna it can actually block all signal.

• by zjaffee on 11/15/18, 7:09 PM

  Does anyone have any context on what sort of internet speeds satellite internet has been benchmarked to provide. I can't imagine the latency being anywhere near good enough to do many of the high bandwidth things people use the internet for today.

• by Rooster61 on 11/15/18, 7:59 PM

  This scares me a bit. The idea of having LEO internet is great and all, but the idea of quadrupling the number of functioning satellites, all operating in different orbits but at a similar altitude seems incredibly dangerous to me.

  The article mentions the movie Gravity, which is a bit unrealistic as it portrays multiple large bodies in orbit all being at about the same altitude (which isn't the case in reality). That is not the case with this web of satellites. If a chain reaction of collisions does occur, it would cause a field of tiny, fast, deadly debris all orbiting on a similar orbital "plane". It would pretty much blanket the planet. Wouldn't this cause a large issue for anything attempting to reach orbit? What am I missing here?

  EDIT: A lot of replies here mentioning the fact that LEO spacecraft decay more quickly than higher orbits. Please note that not all LEO orbits are low enough to guarantee a quick decay without powered retrograde thrust. Stuff can hang up there in LEO a long, long time depending on the actual altitude.

• by LastZactionHero on 11/15/18, 7:54 PM

  According to Bloomberg, since there are currently fewer than 2,000 operating satellites, SpaceX’s new additions will dominate space.

  This number surprised me, much lower than I expected. Looked it up and I'm seeing varying numbers, but generally in the 1k-4k ballpark.

• by TenJack on 11/15/18, 7:34 PM

  Do they need more than US approval to launch satellites into international space?

• by porscheburnaby on 11/15/18, 8:45 PM

  goodbye, great firewall of china...

• by detritus on 11/15/18, 7:51 PM

  This is probably a stupid thing to ask, but: Could this setup be hacked to provide a loose form of GPS?

• by airnomad on 11/15/18, 7:49 PM

  Why do they need approval for this? It's not like Space is owned by anyone?

• by ilrwbwrkhv on 11/15/18, 7:06 PM

  i think the price should be around 35 dollars per month

• by cronix on 11/15/18, 7:23 PM

  This will probably be the first botnet in space, once some clever kid or nation state figures out how. That's a lot of firepower floating around.