Elon Musk's next venture...

arkmundi

arkmundi

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http://www.smnweekly.com/elon-musks...internet-network-to-fund-mars-missions/10636/
SpaceX, the commercial spaceflight company founded by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, says it will create a network of satellites around the earth to provide high-speed Internet to the masses.

The new plan, which would call for the placement of some 4,000 satellites in an orbit around 750 miles above the planet, would do more than to just provide low cost, high-speed Internet worldwide and to places where traditional broadband can’t or won’t reach. In fact, Musk says that the profits from the project will feed right into SpaceX’s Martian missions to build a permanent city on the Red Planet some day in the future.
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Never ceases to amaze me what our good Mr Musk is going to attempt next.
 
You have to give him credit for going for ambitious plans. He also appears to employ talented engineers and then actually listens to them.
 
Well, giving him credit is really what's it all about. I mean money or credit or capital or whatever. He wants to make a success of Tesla and the gigawatt factory, me thinks. And since those ventures are not-yet-profitable and under-capitalized, he's looking to drum up some new business. So what's to capture the world's attention and the heart's and souls of those with his next infusion of funds? I like the guy, his vision and finesse in attracting the talent. But he has to make something that can make money, as in real solvency. On Earth, not Mars.
 
I wonder what this will mean?

750 miles indicates very low latency internet perhaps 15 to 20 milliseconds round trip.

Avoiding geostationary satellites creates problems. You probably need far more satellites and more powerful signals than going the high altitude, high latency route.

I think Musk wants to increase demand for more SpaceX launches. If they can get the first stage fully re-usable that will probably shave at least 50 per cent off their costs - all in.

Then the bigger questions such as will there be some intermediary between the satellite and your router/receiver/transmitter? Does that cut out government spying? Does such a system mean that nations will be more vulnerable to Middle East-funded terrorists?
 
Joseph C. said:
Then the bigger questions such as will there be some intermediary between the satellite and your router/receiver/transmitter? Does that cut out government spying? Does such a system mean that nations will be more vulnerable to Middle East-funded terrorists?
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I fear my government more than I fear terrorists.
 
Yes, Gogo but the US political system is one of the most dysfunctional in the world. It seems purposefully designed that way.

http://www.thejournal.ie/googe-spacex-investment-1891877-Jan2015/

Google is betting $1bn that together with SpaceX they’ll beam the internet from orbit

The two are planning a new internet satellite development.

31 minutes ago 772 Views 3 Comments Share Tweet4 Email1
Elon Musk, Tesla Chairman and SpaceX CEO. Elon Musk, Tesla Chairman and SpaceX CEO.
Image: AP/Press Association Images
GOOGLE IS CLOSE to investing $1 billion in SpaceX according to numerous reports.
The potential deal was first reported by The Information who say it is seen as a step towards developing satellites that would beam low-cost internet to billions around the world.
The Wall Street Journal says the investment would value the Elon Musk owned SpaceX at $10 billion.
Musk has spoken before about the idea of launching a satellite network to provide internet access. He told Bloomberg Businessweek that the plan would do two things, speed up the general flow of internet data and provide low-cost access to the billions with no connectivity.
Google has also been building up its space credentials. The internet giant recently paid €930 million to lease a historic Navy air base in San Francisco for use in projects involving aviation, space exploration and robotics.
They’ve also acquired several smaller firms that are working on satellite technology and robotics.
SpaceX has become one of the foremost players in the commercial space-flight arena, resupplying the International Space Station on numerous occasions with Nasa currently without its own reusable craft.
SpaceX most recent successful ISS restocking mission saw the company trial a new launch method that would see its rocket boosters landing before being reused. Rocket boosters used in launches are usually jettisoned into the sea and are not reusable.
SpaceX almost pulled it of with the below video showing how the rocket booster reached the floating barge off Florida but broke apart on landing
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What's the future of the Internet? A really good question a lot of people are pondering. Me thinks that Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin have a rivalry going on, since the days he was the PayPal man. Google is still working on their Loon project. Elon probably started thinking about a competitive approach the day he first heard about it. Low flying satellites launched by your own SpaceX company or even lower flying balloons? Or maybe Jeff Bezos wants to launch a huge fleet of drones delivering beer, pizza and everything else and those drones are equipped with wireless transmitters for the Internet. I'm sure that NSA guys are sh*tting themselves about the possibility of lost control.
 
arkmundi said:
What's the future of the Internet? A really good question a lot of people are pondering. Me thinks that Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin have a rivalry going on, since the days he was the PayPal man. Google is still working on their Loon project. Elon probably started thinking about a competitive approach the day he first heard about it. Low flying satellites launched by your own SpaceX company or even lower flying balloons? Or maybe Jeff Bezos wants to launch a huge fleet of drones delivering beer, pizza and everything else and those drones are equipped with wireless transmitters for the Internet. I'm sure that NSA guys are sh*tting themselves about the possibility of lost control.
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I've no idea. I think Google's one billion dollar offering to SpaceX means they have already conceded that Loon won't work.

As for the NSA I think they have one or two further tricks up their sleeves rather than just tapping into cables. I hear that they have backdoors into all types of hardware, including Intel. There are strong rumours that they may be clandestinely involved in setting backdoors into public encryption keys too. On another forum there was an Australian setting up a secure email service and the NSA came sniffing around as they don't like not been in control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG

Obviously, they would still prefer to keep their hands on the raw data.
 
Well the NSA claims they can break any encryption, past present or future, so what's the point of that? Google recently provided what they say is secure encryption for Gmail, but WTF? I don't do anything they'd want to know about, so my "security" is to simply be mister nice guy.

But who owns the Internet? I mean who really owns it and not our imaginary version of it. I have a more legitimate claim for inventing the Internet than Al Gore does :lol: Because I actually provided coding, testing and advisory feedback in the early days before there was an Internet. I was on the third-out node from MIT when the Internet was only two short splines.

Do I "own" it? You betcha. As does everybody who has contributed to it in any way, including some simple HTML on a web site somewhere. Its all in the public domain and open-sourced and the non-governmental bodies like Apache and W3C and many others are the ones whose governance I trust and will abide. Even Google.

But the NSA? No way. Though government funding is important - but that's our tax dollars at work. It gives them no jurisdiction and their radical hack-job should be viewed as over-reach, intrusion and illegal (thank you Mister Snowden). The FCC & net-neutrality are playing out this year. President Obama has put himself on the right side of history, so I respect him for that. Its all a good test of We The People. Can we get the feds out of the pie please?
 
Obama is a mixed bag at best. Far too right wing to restore any sense of normality. Although obviously not far-right like the Republicans.

There is only so much you can do with a dysfunctional political system that needs to be scrapped and re-built from scratch but he should have used more executive orders. Of all the working healthcare models to introduce - his option was the worst - a right wing solution to a centrist problem. It's only now that he starting to finally raise taxes on the wealthy. But then again America was founded on the principle of tax evasion. :mrgreen:

On the internet front I wouldn't be championing him at all. How many cyber warfare attacks has he unleashed? The NSA have gone into overdrive at his behest. He is a large part of the problem and net neutrality will never be big enough to outweigh the damage he caused.

It doesn't matter anyway. Unless America adopts a first-world political system on the very rare occasion they get a decent president it will be quickly undone by the next crony. If you don't have proportional representation and referendums you might as well be in a single-party state.
 
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