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Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, briefly discussed the ambitious program of its space flight company, Starlink, at Tesla's annual meeting of shareholders. He explained how, according to him, the constellation of satellites could only accommodate 3 to 5% of the world's population.
On May 23, SpaceX successfully launched 60 Starlink "v0.9" satellites – weighing up to 18.5 tonnes – to LEO, an unprecedented first step in the ambition of the history of commercial satellites. Delivered in an orbit of about 450 km, all vessels except 60 have managed to power their ionic electric propulsion and 55 have already mounted their orbit about 500 km. As far as a partial technology / prototype demonstration mission is concerned, the performance record of Starlink v0.9 is extremely impressive and suggests a quick and relatively simple optimization of the design (up to "v1.0"). ) before the start of a real mass production.
In general, Musk was more than willing to recognize some of the potential limitations of a low-Earth-orbit (LEO) broadband satellite constellation at the Tesla shareholders' meeting in 2019. Notably, he bluntly noted that Starlink is do not designed to serve areas of high population density and will focus primarily on low to medium density populations. Triggered by an investor's question about whether to integrate Starlink into future Tesla cars, Musk reiterated that StarX's first-generation Starlink user terminals (ie, ground-based antennas) will have almost the size of an "average pizza".
Although the size of the pizzas is not exactly ISO certified, Starlink's user antennas are likely to be about 30 to 36 cm wide and square in shape. With the use of what Musk considers to be the most advanced network antennas in the world, neither the Starlink satellite antennas nor the user terminals will have to physically move to maintain a strong signal. However, as Musk points out, an antenna the size of an average pizza box would remain like a sore thumb on the typically all-glass roof of Tesla's consumer cars, although integrated Starlink antennas might prove useful on Tesla Sowing.
Specific commentary by Elon Musk indicated that Starlink – at least in its current iteration – should never serve more than "3 to 5%" of the Earth (population: ~ 7.8 billion), most or all of of its users being locally located in areas of low to medium population density. This generally confirms the technical suspicions that Starlink (and other constellations such as OneWeb and Telesat) is not really capable of providing the internet to its users. everyone in itself.
For SpaceX, each Starlink satellite – according to official statements, the top 60 satellites represent more than one terabit of bandwidth – probably offers a bandwidth of around 17-20 gigabits per second. In simpler terms, this means that a Starlink satellite can theoretically support up to 4,000 users who simultaneously stream YouTube videos at 1080p / 30 frames per second, a figure that seems impressive but conceals the considerable number of city dwellers. It is important to note that each Starlink satellite located approximately 550 km away will likely have a service radius of several thousand, or even tens of thousands of square kilometers.
Even though the United States is unusually large and scattered compared to most other countries, one square kilometer of New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Seattle or dozens of other cities could effortlessly saturate the bandwidth of a Starlink satellite. Even the smallest cities could easily use most, if not all, of ~ 20 Gbps at peak times. In short, Starlink is going to be extremely limited bandwidth. Even if SpaceX can double or triple the bandwidth of each satellite and have 10 to 100 more satellites and can provide the Internet at any time, it is hard to imagine that Starlink already to serve each who is in his area of coverage.
In addition, this means that Starlink's Internet customers are likely to be subject to relatively strict bandwidth limitations and peak-hour limitations. Fortunately, these limitations will be entirely attributable to technical imperatives, in stark contrast to greedy, arbitrary carriers and ISPs to which Americans are almost universally accustomed. In the worst case, Starlink's already connected US customers would benefit from almost the same quality of service as at their usual price. However, they could rest assured that their money would go to SpaceX instead of filling the pockets of shareholders and leaders who are robbers of barbarians who manage US ISPs.
In the end, the estimates provided above are exceptionally conservative and generally assume the worst case scenarios. SpaceX could very well exceed expectations and develop unique and innovative ways to effectively use its available bandwidth, while striving relentlessly to improve its technology and increase the capacity of new satellites. In general, the comments of the CEO, Elon Musk, are an excellent temperament for the hype surrounding Starlink. SpaceX is not going to break back at Comcast or Time Warner initially, but there is no reason to believe that day will ever come.
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