Elon Musk, the CEO and CTO of SpaceX has released his plans for the upcoming year. He officially requested for permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch a 4,000 group of satellites into orbit that aims to provide internet for all the people down below.
Musk’s space company wants to put 4,000 satellites into space as they believe it would beam high speed Internet signals to all the people in Earth. Musk wants to rebuild the Internet in space and allow people to have access to fast and cheap internet even in places with usually bad connections or no connections at all. The company aims to produce connections that could be more reliable and reach regions that don’t count with this privilege.
Dreaming of Internet from the space
The entrepreneur CEO from SpaceX is working with an idea that has been taking the heads of prominent business magnates for years. Most of the past cases of those who tried to carry out this adventure ended with many obstacles that Musk is working to avoid.
Bill Gates was one of the interested business man in pursuing this innovative idea which cost him $9 billion dollars before he realized that his plan was not going to be successful. At least, Musk has an advantage, because he has his own spacecraft already. In addition, Elon said that his swarm of satellites will be more efficient and inexpensive.
Success or not
If everything goes as planned and Muks’ permission is granted, the spacecrafts will be heading into space in January next year, and the Internet services would be working within 5 years. SpaceX company can be transformed into the massive provider of Internet around the globe. They will also cover a huge amount of new customers that are currently in places where there’s no Internet. Musk has an ambitious goal, and he has already step forward into the next phase of the plan.
All of the 4,000 satellites would be deployed from one of the company’s spacecraft – the Falcon 9 – when that happens, the satellites would connect to Earth stations at three West Coast facilities. They first want to test if the technology they are currently proposing works effectively, without fluctuation.
Furthermore, one of the possibles obstacles raised by Musk may be that the customers they are targeting for the service are the very poorest population, and live practically in abandoned regions around the world. To recover their initial cost for making the satellite network dream a reality, it will be very hard to regain.
Source: The Washington Post
How much would this cost the end user?