Air and Space Smithsonian-October 2020 - 63-65

SPACEX
WANTS TO
WIRE THE
WORLD
CAN STARLINK OVERCOME
THE GHOSTS OF SATELLITE
CONSTELLATIONS PAST?
■ BY JON KELVEY
58 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

A A SUNNY OPTIMISM PERVADED the March 9
opening of the Satellite 2020 conference in
Washington, D.C., where one of the first sessions
was a discussion among operators of large satellite
constellations. Panelists included representatives
of OneWeb and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, who were
competing to gird the globe with satellite Internet
connectivity—and grab a share of a broadband
market valued at more than $300 billion in 2019.
“Very few people are actually happy with their
Internet service, especially in the rural areas. A lot
of people are unconnected,” said Jonathan Hofeller,
SpaceX vice president of Starlink and commercial
sales. Starlink is the name SpaceX has given to its
planned constellation of more than 12,000 small
satellites, aimed at bringing high-speed Internet
to those under- and unserved masses. SpaceX has
already launched several hundred Starlink satel-
lites, lofting 60 of the flat, stackable, 260-kilogram
(573-pound) satellite units at a time—all part of
SpaceX’s ambitions to revolutionize life both
on the ground and in the heavens. “We’re very
public that we want to move on and make life a
The 12,000-satellite Starlink network (left,
rendered by a computer scientist) could
multi-planetary species,” Hofeller said. “In order
provide Internet service to Cameroon to do that, you need a robust space economy.”
classrooms like this one. (International For a robust space economy, SpaceX will need
Telecommunications Union data placed a robust Earth economy. As Musk would tell a
Internet usage in 2018 at 23 percent of the packed convention hall later that evening, it’s really
Cameroon population, compared to 87
percent in the United States.)
Starlink he is counting on to send SpaceX to Mars,
not his launch business. “The revenue potential
of launching rockets, launching satellites, servic-
ing the [International] Space Station—it taps out
around $3 billion a year,” Musk said. “Providing
broadband is more like an order of magnitude more
than that, probably $30 billion a year.” SpaceX has
said it plans to begin beta-testing Starlink this year
and start commercial service by 2021.
Musk has built a reputation for proving doubters
wrong, but using a constellation of smallsats to
provide Internet broadband has been tried before.
In the 1990s, companies like Teledesic tried to pro-
vide Internet by satellite, only to fail spectacularly
by the early aughts. Iridium, which today provides
voice and data service with a constellation of 66
DAVIDE BONALDO/SHUTTERSTOCK
satellites, was one of the few survivors—and only

after a bankruptcy. During the panel discussion,
Iridium CEO Matt Desch described his company’s
path. “It only took about nine or 10 months from
the time of first launch [to when] the bankers were
saying, ‘I want my money back,’ ” he said. “It just
needed time—like 20 years.”
October/November 2020 AIR & SPACE 59

Starlink competitor OneWeb, meanwhile, would
file for bankruptcy just weeks after the March
conference ended.
So the big question at Satellite 2020 remains:
Can SpaceX succeed where others have failed?
WORLD-WIDE WEB
Today’s broadband Internet market is much larger
than it was when companies first tried to pene-
trate it with satellite constellations. The hunger
for bandwidth seems to know no bounds: Market
research firm Grand View Research projects the
global market to grow to more than $645 billion
by 2027. Even in the United States, there remain
pockets of low or no connectivity. The Federal
Communications Commission estimates that 19
million Americans (many in the tribal areas and
western states) lack access to high-speed Internet.
These are the customers SpaceX plans to target.
In 1997, now- Internationally, there are billions whose lives could
defunct Teledesic be greatly improved by access to the Internet,
launched a single
demonstrator
according to Jim Cashel, the author of The Great
satellite, built by Connecting: The Emergence of Global Broadband and
Orbital ATK (left). How That Changes Everything.
Inside the fairing “Even now in 2020, about half the people on the
that sat atop a Soyuz planet have never heard of the Internet,” Cashel
rocket (right), 34
OneWeb satellites
says. “It’s three billion people who generally are to Cashel, but Starlink could offer gigabyte ser-
awaited a trip to low poor and rural, most in Africa, so they generally vice virtually anywhere on the planet from orbit.
Earth orbit. The don’t have access to information, banking services, “Starlink will serve the hardest-to-serve cus-
British government government services, health care, education. And tomers that [telecommunications companies]
and Indian telecom with the Internet you can get access to all of those otherwise have trouble doing with landlines or
giant Bharti Global
are buying 90
things.” The Internet has been slow to reach those even with cell radio stations,” Musk said during
percent of the people because it’s expensive to lay fiber optic cables his conference keynote speech, acknowledging
company. and build cell towers in remote areas, according that urban settings will likely remain the province
LEFT: ORBITAL ATK; RIGHT: ARIANESPACE
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SPACEX

58 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

satellites, was one of the few survivors—and only

October/November 2020 AIR & SPACE 59

LEFT: ORBITAL ATK; RIGHT: ARIANESPACE

60 AIR & SPACE airspacemag.com

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