My father opted to move out into the boonies of Virginia while I attended college. He desired to get out of the city setting as the birds left the nest. When I visit him, its a nice break to catchup and it also provides me an opportunity to get off of the grid from today’s connected world thanks to the internet. You see, my father lives out in the sticks; his nearest neighbor is a few cornfields down the single lane country road that dots the numerous Virginian peninsulas in and around the Chesapeake Bay. The local utilities haven’t built out the infrastructure out of town for high-speed internet availability, so my father is dependent upon a hodge-podge of slow and expensive satellite internet providers that are more or less operating at 2G speeds when necessary with annoying data caps or cell-phone network mobile hotspots with data caps/throttling so I use the opportunity to just set the devices on airplane mode and relax.
There are millions of Americans and populations around the world that live in relatable rural settings disconnected from the modern advances of high-speed internet and the dense troves of information that is quickly accessible to anyone with a smart phone in their pocket. For these populaces, internet is a luxury. The cost and work required to lay fiber, dig up utility lines, or establish a cell tower makes the recoup of costs via subscriptions/data plans/service fees un-economical for rural areas to access the internet as easily as those living in urban areas and their surrounding suburbs.
This is where Elon Musk enters the picture with Starlink; an initiative to provide low-cost internet to remote locations both within the United States and abroad.
“Think of Starlink as filling the gaps between 5G and fiber. We’re really getting to the part of the world that are the hardest to reach.”
Elon Musk
Starlink is a SpaceX venture, utilizing its Falcon 9 two-stage launch vehicle, to place a constellation of thousands of small satellites into low Earth orbit that will communicate with designated ground transceivers in targeted geographic areas to provide high-speed internet with low latency to customers who find themselves in similar connectivity dark zones like my father.
The first satellites were launched in 2018 with more than 1,500 satellites in orbit today comprising the current constellation. The end goal is over 42,000 satellites by 2027.
The system is currently in beta mode providing data speeds in the 50-150 Mb/s range with a latency in the 20-40 ms range. Compared to traditional satellite internet companies with data speeds of 25-100 Mb/s at 638 ms latency, Starlink provides an easy order of magnitude improvement to traditional satellite internet companies’ offerings.
If you were not already aware, satellite internet is not a new idea or concept. Satellite internet companies provide internet via space but drastically differently. The traditional satellite internet companies launch geo-stationary satellites (which means they remain in the same position relative to their customer base) as the earth is constantly revolving. Their Achilles heel is that they get bogged down by the sheer area of coverage they provide, whilst also being really really far away. The distance, size, and geo-stationary nature of these satellites makes their use prohibitively expensive and service speeds leaving much to be desired.
What is Starlink doing differently?
Starlink, by utilizing SpaceX’s recyclable Falcon 9 launch vehicles, is launching 60 satellites per Falcon 9 at a rate far greater than any other satellite delivery provider and due to the sheer volume of satellites, has placed them into lower Earth orbit than traditional geo-stationary satellites offering similar services.
By saturating the skies with this mesh-type network, they’re allowing each satellite to share the load vice only having single digit quantities to carry the burden of the world’s network traffic.
Space Lasers
With SpaceX’s most recent launch on 13 Sep 2021, 51 of the newest satellites entering Starlink’s constellation are equipped with laser cross-link technology, essentially space lasers. These laser inter-satellite links allows each satellite to create an independent data connection to another satellite in orbit, vice a terrestrial ground station on Earth.
This optical light-based communications method allows for an extremely high bandwidth ceiling for Starlink’s network. The speed of light travels faster in the vacuum of space than over fiber optical cables laid on Earth (which comprise the vast majority of trans-oceanic data lines as well as urban infrastructure). By allowing a satellite to offload or direct traffic to another satellite within the constellation (especially ones with less network traffic or in an optimal location to transmit back to Earth), vice a ground station on Earth, SpaceX gains a trifecta of benefits:
- Decrease in network latency, by reducing the number of hops data would need to make
- Reduction of construction and building costs of necessary terrestrial ground stations
- Expansion of coverage areas, by not having to rely upon additional ground stations
These benefits would make Starlink one of the fastest options available to transfer data
around the world – a true game changer in the pathing of the world’s network traffic.
Military Applications
In 2018, SpaceX won a $28 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to test and assess Starlink satellites by connecting their broadband internet to military platforms.
Under the U.S. Air Force’s program called Global Lightning, SpaceX is being looked at amongst other defense contractors to allow the Air Force to piggyback on private industry satellite internet capabilities across the five domains: land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Starlink terminals have been fixed to the cockpit of C-12J Huron aircraft and Air Force Special Operations Command AC-130 aircraft with additional tests conducted on KC-135 airborne refueling aircraft with positive results.
In tests so far, encrypted internet from space has demonstrated significantly higher internet connections and data-transfer rates than what Air Force aircraft currently receive. The Starlink network provided connectivity of 610 megabits per-second, equivalent to a gigabyte every ~13 seconds, providing faster access to live video, weather, and additional data streams while in flight.
The military’s application extends beyond aerial aircraft as well, as maritime & ground assets could tap into the coverage areas provided by Starlink given the mesh-networks’ range and coverage areas whilst also providing network redundancy given the high density of satellites in low Earth orbit in the event of a service denial attack.
“SpaceX designed Starlink to connect end users with low-latency, high-bandwidth broadband services by providing continual coverage around the world using a network of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit.”
Elon Musk
Back Home
Needless to say, my father has signed up for the Starlink Beta program, requiring $499 for an antenna and router. SpaceX is actually taking a loss on the initial equipment suite to allow for testing and for consumers to have access to competitive internet rates. Their construction costs have been reported to be ~$1,500 for the motorized satellite antennae dish and only requires clear line of sight to the skies in the regions they currently service. Monthly service comes to $99/month and Elon has stated that SpaceX may spin-off Starlink into its own company once revenues have been stabilized with a forthcoming Initial Public Offering for shareholders.
It appears it will only be getting more and more difficult to truly disconnect from today’s inter-connected world as the density of Starlink’s satellites increases…