SpaceX has filed to launch Gen 2 Starlink satellites once every week in 2023. If they are able to use the Super Heavy Starship they could launch 100 at a time. This would reach up to 5000 Gen 2 Starlink satellites with direct voice and text to your existing cellphone.
This would enable 80 times the capacity of the Iridium satellite phone network.
It would mean your T-mobile coverage map would be a solid color for every inch of the earth. All of the land and the oceans.
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Personally I am a strong supporter of Elon Musks goals with Mars and space in general. I will happily sign up for his internet satellite service the instant it is available in Alaska. Same for his cell phone service. It seems to me that it would be the best way to accelerate space commercialization since waiting for NASA’s government hamstrung efforts to bear fruit will be a long and likely fruitless endeavor.
80 times the capacity of Iridium is not Dominating Global Voice and Text. Why do you live in a world only made of total domination and collapse?
“It would mean your T-mobile coverage map would be a solid color for every inch of the earth. All of the land and the oceans.”
I thought that was an exaggeration, until I looked at the map. Yes, they’re putting some of those satellites into polar orbits to cover Antarctica. At this point the coverage is very spotty North of 53 degrees, but maybe by the end of 2023 they will have solid coverage over the entire globe.
https://satellitemap.space/
I suppose if the new 39a Starship launch tower is complete and SpaceX gets permission and successfully launches and lands Starship at both 39a and Starbase, they might conceivably get permission to launch once a week from both and launch 5000 Gen 2 Starlink Sats.
They’d also need to vastly increase their mass production capacity to make about 20X the capacity of Starlink Sats to make 5000 Sats each about 4X the size and 10X the capacity.
There are a whole lot of things that have to go perfect for that though. It would be huge to just achieve successful launch of Starship and deployment of gen2 Starlink at all. Catching it on the launch tower successfully would be amazing. Getting permission to launch Starship once a month from Starbase impressive.
It just takes a small number of the Gen 2 in polar orbits though to start to provide some emergency text anywhere capability since it doesn’t have to be in real time.
Launched 100 at a time, 5,000 Starlink 2would require only 50 launches. Why stop there?
Wikipedia says that, at its peak, Iridium had nearly 100 satellites. So, 5,000 Starlink 2 satellites would be 50 X that. So 80 X the capacity of Iridium seems on the low side.
The Iridium phone needed a chunky antenna for satellite communication. What would you need in a cellphone to get direct satellite communication to Starlink’s Gen2 satellites?
Gen 2 Starlink will communicate directly to regular cellphones. Although making hardware and software modifications in future phones would likely improve communication speed and reliability.
If Musk doesn’t quieten down about Ukraine then its going to become known as SpaceZ.
Funny how he did more for Ukraine in this war (keeping the communications up) than all the chickenhawks attacking him in social networks for being a “Putin appeaser”.
Surprising to see so many supposedly bleeding hearted liberals striving for seeing a nuclear exchange with Russia.
I believe they are not “striving for seeing a nuclear exchange with Russia”. I believe they are willing to have Russia use one or a few tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, which would give NATO the justification to respond with overwhelming, but only non-nuclear, force to destroy all Russian forces in Ukraine (and only in Ukraine) and perhaps the entire Russian Black Sea navy.
It seems they believe that if NATO could pull that off, Russia would not respond to such a defeat by escalating further, and I don’t know why they believe Russia would not.
People said that if I voted for Trump we were headed towards WW3.
They were right.
It’s not that hard!
So far the war is in Ukraine and only in Ukraine. It could be in Georgia or Moldova or even in Belarus but it is not.
If the Russians use a nuke it’s because they are losing. The result would be losing even faster because they would lose their assets in Ukraine. And the war would still be only in Ukraine.
What could they do to escalate? Throw another nuke in Ukraine? For what if they can’t win anymore? Attack conventionally somewhere else? For what if that would mean bringing the war finally to Russia itself? Throw directly a nuke somewhere else? For what if that would bring nuke attacks to them?
That’s the reason why they can’t use nukes. Apart of course from the sorely needed relations with China and India. It’s all show-show to scare Germans from sending their Leopards.
How about simply supplying Ukraine with the means to retaliate like-wise to any Russian nuclear strike. I believe it would stop Putin dead in his tracks. Better than waiting to see what happens after Putin goes ahead with it.
That would probably violate all nuclear nonproliferation treaties ever written. It might also make Putin arm Iran in response just to spite the West.