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Elon Musk plans to build a space internet

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G

GK86

Homeland Security Fail
Edit- A bit of an update:

From the NYT (behind paywell, "Google Nears $1 Billion Investment in SpaceX"):

Google Inc. is close to investing roughly $1 billion in Space Exploration Technologies Corp. to support its nascent efforts to deliver Internet access via satellites, according to a person familiar with the matter.
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Link.

Because he doesn't have enough going on, Elon Musk—he of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, SolarCity, and the Hyperloop—is launching another project. Musk wants to build a second Internet in space and one day use it to connect people on Mars to the Web.

Musk is tonight hosting a SpaceX event in Seattle, where the company is opening a new office. The talk will mostly be about SpaceX’s plans for hiring aerospace and software engineers in the Pacific Northwest to boost the company’s rocket-building efforts. But he'll also use the talk to announce his newest idea, which would launch a vast network of communication satellites to orbit earth. The network would do two things: speed up the general flow of data on the Internet and deliver high-speed, low-cost Internet services to the three billion-plus people who still have poor access to the Web. “Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek ahead of the announcement.

The Space Internet venture, to which Musk hasn’t yet given a name, would be hugely ambitious. Hundreds of satellites would orbit about 750 miles above earth, much closer than traditional communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit at altitudes of up to 22,000 miles. The lower satellites would make for a speedier Internet service, with less distance for electromagnetic signals to travel. The lag in current satellite systems makes applications such as Skype, online gaming, and other cloud-based services tough to use. Musk’s service would, in theory, rival fiber optic cables on land while also making the Internet available to remote and poor regions that don’t have access.

In Musk’s vision, Internet data packets going from, say, Los Angeles to Johannesburg would no longer have to go through dozens of routers and terrestrial networks. Instead, the packets would go to space, bouncing from satellite to satellite until they reach the one nearest their destination, then return to an antenna on earth. “The speed of light is 40 percent faster in the vacuum of space than it is for fiber,” Musk says. “The long-term potential is to be the primary means of long-distance Internet traffic and to serve people in sparsely populated areas.”

This project, he says, will be based in the Seattle office. (Musk has yet to determine the location of the satellite factory.) The office will start with about 60 people and may grow to 1,000 within three to four years. The employees will also work on SpaceX’s Falcon rockets, Dragon capsules, and additional vehicles to carry various supplies (and soon, people) into space. “We want the best engineers that either live in Seattle or that want to move to the Seattle area and work on electronics, software, structures, and power systems,” Musk says. “We want top engineering talent of all kinds.”

...

Musk describes his system as “a giant global Internet service provider” for anyone. But he wants to go even bigger than that: He sees it as the basis for a system that will stretch all the way to Mars, where he plans to set up a colony in the coming decades. “It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well,” he says. “I think this needs to be done, and I don’t see anyone else doing it.”

“We see it as a long-term revenue source for SpaceX to be able to fund a city on Mars.”
The backers of OneWeb, including Virgin chief Richard Branson, contend that Musk doesn't have the rights to spectrum he’ll need to create such a network. “I don’t think Elon can do a competing thing,” Branson says. “Greg has the rights, and there isn’t space for another network—like there physically is not enough space. If Elon wants to get into this area, the logical thing for him would be to tie up with us, and if I were a betting man, I would say the chances of us working together rather than separately would be much higher.”

SpaceX will need to be careful with its ambitions: Satellite makers have a choice as to whose rockets carry their machines. According to Musk, SpaceX will focus on making satellites for itself for the time being, rather than competing with its customers, although that may change over time. “I think we would consider building satellites for ourselves and for other people,” he says. “We’ll start by building ones that address the specific application that we are working on, and then we will be more than happy to sell to other people.”

Musk said it will take many, many years to have his Internet service up and running. “People should not expect this to be active sooner than five years,” he said. And it’ll be expensive: Around $10 billion to build, he says. “But we see it as a long-term revenue source for SpaceX to be able to fund a city on Mars.”
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A

Angelus Errare

Banned
Can't wait for the inevitable "Elon Musk plans to make a Dyson Sphere"...and he actually does it in our lifetime because it's Elon Musk!

A dyson sphere will never be made in our lifetime, go back to reading scifi books.
 
V

v1lla21

Member
Just when you think Elon can't 1-up himself, he does it. I wonder what Musk dreams consist of. He's a really cool dude.
 
D

dekline

Member
Angelus Errare said:
Can't wait for the inevitable "Elon Musk plans to make a Dyson Sphere"...and he actually does it in our lifetime because it's Elon Musk!

A dyson sphere will never be made in our lifetime, go back to reading scifi books.
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Absolutely not. We're not even Type 1 on the Kardashev yet....
 
T

TheOMan

Tagged as I see fit
Angelus Errare said:
Can't wait for the inevitable "Elon Musk plans to make a Dyson Sphere"...and he actually does it in our lifetime because it's Elon Musk!

A dyson sphere will never be made in our lifetime, go back to reading scifi books.
Click to expand...

I'm working on it right now. I would say it depends on how old you are ;)
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Can't wait for the whiners from mars complaining about their ping.
"waaah waah, I got a seven minutes delay", sorry fuckers, you just suck. Adjust, learn to lead your target.

Angelus Errare said:
Can't wait for the inevitable "Elon Musk plans to make a Dyson Sphere"...and he actually does it in our lifetime because it's Elon Musk!

A dyson sphere will never be made in our lifetime, go back to reading scifi books.
Click to expand...
It will never happen in anyone lifetime.
It's not a stable, not to mention that you'll need more material than the total mass of Venus.

I can't imagine civilization reaching a point where it can achieve that (if such point even exists) and not be able to come up with better solutions to the problems the Dyson sphere is trying to solve.
 
F

FantasticMrFoxdie

Mumber
one day use it to connect people on Mars to the Web.
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connect people on Mars to the Web.
Click to expand...

people on Mars
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UBhMgvD.gif
 
Yoda

Yoda

Member
As always amazing passion. I'm getting a creeping feeling he may have too much on his plate though.
 
B

BocoDragon

or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I used to assume that the Internet was done with satellites already. Blew my mind when I realized it was just undersea cables n shit.
 
A

AngryMoth

Member
Didn't I read someone else is planning to do a satellite internet network too?

5 years as a base sounds kinda optomistic to me. Be then again what do I know, just seems pretty futuristic, getting internet from anywhere on the planet.
 
S

Sectorseven

Member
AngryMoth said:
Didn't I read someone else is planning to do a satellite internet network too?

5 years as a base sounds kinda optomistic to me. Be then again what do I know, just seems pretty futuristic, getting internet from anywhere on the planet.
Click to expand...

I don't know about satellites, but Google and Facebook are both working on networks that would provide internet service via drones.
 
F

FelixOrion

Poet Centuriate
AngryMoth said:
Didn't I read someone else is planning to do a satellite internet network too?

5 years as a base sounds kinda optomistic to me. Be then again what do I know, just seems pretty futuristic, getting internet from anywhere on the planet.
Click to expand...

Satelite internet already exists but it's bad.
 
M

Mr.Swag

Banned
I respect this guy so much. Most billionaires make their money off of investing (read: already being rich) but this man made his money off of execution of ideas.

This man is trying and succeeding at changing the world.
 
M

M3z_

Member
I love Elon's ambition it is inspiring. Every time I read or hear about his desires it's uplifting to know someone like him exists.
 
K

KHarvey16

Member
golem said:
What are the ping times to 750mi?
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About 8 milliseconds to send and receive a ping without accounting for latency introduced here on the ground (which would be variable, but hopefully low if a localized system is built). On current communications satellites it's like 240 milliseconds!
 
A

Angelus Errare

Banned
dekline said:
Absolutely not. We're not even Type 1 on the Kardashev yet....
Click to expand...

Correction, you humans aren't! Us Erathians have 3 Dyson sphere in our solar system alone!

Chichikov said:
It will never happen in anyone lifetime.
It's not a stable, not to mention that you'll need more material than the total mass of Venus.

I can't imagine civilization reaching a point where it can achieve that (if such point even exists) and not be able to come up with better solutions to the problems the Dyson sphere is trying to solve.
Click to expand...

Oh they're out there man, they're out there.
 
F

Flai

Member
SpaceX just announced few days ago that they will open a new office in Seattle which will focus on building and designing satellites, so this could very well happen once that gets off the ground
 
S

Slayven

Member
I am reading this scifi book and it deals with a future war on mars where the first colonist on the planet are called Muskies because he was the dude that sent them there.
 
T

Timedog

good credit (by proxy)
Is he the new Tesla?

Once Lockheed finishes their nuclear fusion power project, thats when we'll see the real Elon Musk.
 
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