SpaceX will launch three to seven Starlink missions in 2019.
The May 15 launch will carry dozens of satellites.
SpaceX needs at least 800 to start a commercial service.
Shotwell: Starlink launch now scheduled for May 15; will have “dozens” of satellites on board (but is not more specific). #SATShow
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) May 7, 2019
Light travels 45% faster in vacuum versus fiber optic cable. Lasers for Starlink satellites will enable fast low latency connections.
A 3-millisecond decrease in one-way communication time between the Chicago and New York areas was worth about $100 million per year. Chicago is the 17th ranked financial center. From 2013-2018 over $500 million was spent over five years on microwave connections to reduce latency between New York and Chicago.
The SpaceX Starlinks could save 30-50% of the latency time. This is because the speed of light is almost twice as fast in space as it is in a glass fiber. The value for the Starlink financial latency reduction should be even higher. Let us say it is double the New York to Chicago price. This means the premium pairing of the top 30 financial cities is worth over $80 billion per year. Other industries may pay for premium pairing but there has to be a lot of money involved and value for shaving 30 milliseconds at some time in the year.
SOURCES – Twitter, Spacenews, SpaceX
Written By Brian Wang
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
How open will Elon make it? We just lost our net neutrality in the US; nothing to keep him from cutting or throttling content he doesn’t like. The EU could force him to their standards, but he knows where the boxes are plugged in and where the billing address is.
But if he doesn’t mind making it a free for all, just shut up and take my money, especially if he can make access cheaper than our local ISPs. Who are the ‘those in power’, BTW.
Newer optical cables allow 99.7% speed of light in vacuum. Latency for satellite communications is dependent on the satellite altitudes. eg for 300km altitude, latency is 1ms for each leg, straight up and down.
Just read an article of Spread Networks, LLC launching a low latency fiber between NY and Chicago with round trip latency of 13.33 milliseconds. The latency of Starlink is 25-35 milliseconds. Doesn’t seem like low latency trading is the target market. Or if it is, it’s already beat by a competitor.
Yes, in the start they will mostly be used for cell towers or wifi hubs.
However if your only option now is mobile networks its an option.
You need an antenna, however you could put the antenna inside an shielded box open on the top, probably some more features on the top but now you can only detect it by plane or satellite.
This is only relevant if use of starlink is illegal. in the UK vpn is perfectly legal.
Its probably some places vpn is illegal, North Korea is an obvious one. Here starlink is likely to be outlawed to.
For military / intelligence use GEO let you use an much more focused beam, iridum also win here as satellites are easier to focus on flying higher.
But yes starlink will open up internet a lot. More so as you can probably mask the subscription easier.
You should rather read “Goodbye, Robinson Crusoe” by John Varley.
Going to like the author, if you give him a try.
Funny how one’s bank balance looks exactly the same whether one engage in “profiting by wringing out inefficiencies in the real world” or “profiting by any means”
I doubt very much if any of the money effectively stolen from average investors by the high frequency traders would end up helping grow the investments of anyone outside the 0.001%, let along some mountain climber.
The securities regulators should have stomped HARD on the high frequency trading theft scheme when it was first being developed. As far as I can see, those folks’ activities have negative social value. However, it was the “right” people doing the stealing, so they got away with it, and it is so firmly established now that it probably cannot be eliminated by anything short of the equivalent of the French Rein of Terror.
Low latency trading is a thing and has been profitable for years now. Saying that, I doubt that is how StarLink will monetized itself. I think it make money by providing hi-speed internet world wide especially where there is a demand but limited supply.
It’s reported that a phased array transceiver will be necessary for uninterrupted service. While these are currently absurdly expensive, mass production will greatly reduce the price. Spokesmen for spacex says they need to get the price down to about $300. Here’s a link to a reddit thread discussing the subject.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/8qd2yq/phased_array_antenna_market_and_prices/
http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/transactionfee.html
This will do nothing to thwart the censors of Twit-it or Farcebook.
Sure, but this is how capitalism works. Someone makes a billion off of moving data by satellite in 2021 and by 2025 someone else is livestreaming their ascent of Everest from their iPhone using the technology financed to make a profit. That mountain climber paid for his ascent of Everest from the money his investments made, which grew faster because of the data moving by satellite.
The recent FCC filings suggest that this batch will include satellites that will demonstrate commanded end-of-life maneuvers and proper destruction. Which means they will purposely destroy at least one of these to show they can provide proper stewardship of the fleet. Unfortunately that’s active demise though, so doesn’t really give any sense of what sort of passive accelerated deorbit technologies (if present).
I suppose it would, provided you could get the hardware you need to connect.
Nothing more satisfying than stomping the hell out of some trash-talking,13-year-old Brazilian or Korean brats. Go get ’em, Gramps. 🙂
When they promised me the wonders of high speed internet, I didn’t realise the main driver was so Gordon Gecko’s spiritual descendants could make another few billion. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to enforce an automatic lag time on all stock bids ?
You’ll still need a transceiver able to talk to a satellite. How small and cheap are these? Small and cheap enough for the average household to get one?
And it’ll be broadcasting enough energy for detectors to pick them up. Police states like England would be able to drive around with detectors and locate the antisocial evil people who are using uncensored internet (and hence, by law, can be considered pronographers and national socialists.)
Or to put it another way, which countries do NOT do so?
Which countries?
Would the Starlink system help to get around the barriers that many countries use to block the free flow of information? There are those nations that block news and information that would are not approved by those in power. I am hoping that this might be a way around the censrs.
Given what I’m hearing about the vulnerability of undersea cables to attack and/or compromise, it’s probably not a terrible idea to have a reasonably high-bandwidth backbone available that doesn’t depend on those cables.
If the stowed length of the satellites is 1.33 m (FCC docs say that they’re 4 m deployed, so 1.33 makes sense if they’re 1/3 body and 2/3 antennae, one on each side), they can fit up to 43 in the current fairing. But I get about 30 to the 550x550x53 orbit if they want to keep the F9 reusable.
More important that that, I will have less lag in my online games! 🙂 At 72 years old it will help make me a better killer.
Automated trading programs; the first algorithm to spot the trend makes the most money. You can’t process until you get the input, so speed up the input. 30 milliseconds is a big potential efficiency gain to them.
But yeah, if it finances a new space race that allows me to return to earth in a rocket that lands, under power, on it’s tail – as God and Robert A Heinlein intended – all the better.
It needs to be said that, if a few milliseconds make such a difference in financial transactions, there’s something wrong with the way the financial system is working. That’s not profiting by wringing out inefficiencies in the real world.
Still, if that can finance the new space age, go for it.