Name: Why Starlink Is Crucial To SpaceX’s Success
Uploaded: 2021-05-16T12:53:45.000Z
Duration: 19 min 16 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

In the most remote parts of the U.S., reliable internet is still hard to come by.

Forty two million Americans still don't have access to broadband.

And when we first got here, we had zero cell service.

We tried to put boosters anywhere we could.

So we really needed some good, reliable internet.

Mike Lorden and his fiancee, Liz Racer, are one of more than 10,000 customers using Starlink, SpaceX's ambitious project to build an

interconnected network of thousands of satellites to provide high-speed broadband internet across the globe.

They've been using Starlink's service for about six months now and are documenting their experience of living in a homestead on YouTube.

There are some times when the Starlink does drop out.

It seems to be just like short little blips, you know, a couple seconds here and there.

The only time that you really, really notice it is if you're like live streaming or if you're using the Wi-Fi calling option.

Other than that, you know, if you're just surfing the web or something, it seems to be very fast.

So far for what it is, it's a real good connection, you know, considering our circumstances.

Starlink is still in beta and currently serves select customers in the northern U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and New Zealand.

Experts estimate that there are around 70 million households worldwide that are good candidates for satellite-based consumer broadband and

Amid a global pandemic that's kept employees from going to offices and children from schools, the need for universal broadband

If the service expands to its intended global customer base, Starlink could be key to SpaceX's success and Elon

I think it's fair to say that the majority of SpaceX's valuation today is tied to the Starlink business model.

Generally speaking, the global launch industry is about a $5 billion/year industry.

SpaceX, in previous discussions has talked about a $30 billion/year opportunity in the Starlink business, looking

The basis of Starlink's internet service involves three components: a satellite dish, ground stations and the satellites

themselves. The service is meant for customers like Lorden and Racer, who live in a sparsely populated area that's not being served by

Given the high cost of laying cable or fiber, which can be as much as $20,000/kilometer, terrestrial service providers tend

to focus on urban and suburban areas where there's high density.

It simply does not make economic sense to reach out to consumers in low-density areas.

The only option we really considered was we had a local internet company that wanted to come in.

They would have had to erect a tower on the top of our mountain.

They maybe could have given us five megs a second and it would have been about the same monthly price as the Starlink service.

We have other friends that are in similar situations as us, and they have, you know, those other satellite internet

providers and a lot of them are data capped.

Starlink customers pay $499 for the hardware needed to connect to the network and an additional $99/month for the service.

Currently, there are no data usage caps or contracts.

So far, SpaceX has launched over 1,000 satellites into orbit, but the company plans to deploy 4,425 satellites by 202

4. By the time that SpaceX is done building out its global Starlink satellite system, known as a constellation, the company will have launched

And although not yet approved by the FCC, SpaceX has requested permission to launch an additional 30,000 satellites, which would bring their total

Unlike traditional internet satellites, which are as big as a school bus and orbit at around 36,000 kilometers above Earth's surface,

Starlink's satellites are much smaller, and closer, at about 550 kilometers above Earth's surface.

But the satellites' closer placement means they can see less of the Earth at any given point in time, which is why SpaceX needs so many.

On the flip side, SpaceX claims that this closer orbit allows the system to have a lower signal delay, known as latency.

Latency is important for things like video streaming and gaming.

Lorden says speeds vary according to factors like weather.

But on average, he's been getting speeds of about 75 megabits per second for downloads and around 12 megabits per second for uploads.

In a filing to the FCC, SpaceX said that Starlink's service is, quote, meeting and exceeding speeds of 100 megabits per second for downloads and

Musk has said that he expects the service will double in speed by the end of the year.

To do this, the company is developing a technology known as intersatellite links.

The basic premise is that you have an optical sensor, which is effectively a laser, that points from

one satellite and connects to the optical sensor on another satellite and creates this, you know, unseen

That's this stable connection, almost like a wire.

And if you you have a stable connection, you can drastically increase the speed because you're now moving

signal from one satellite to the other at the speed of light rather than the speed of whatever is on the ground.

Another benefit is reducing the amount of infrastructure needed.

Given Starlink's current architecture, we estimate that they will need more than 100 ground stations in the U.S..

If, however, they move to the laser communications on the satellites, they can greatly reduce the number of ground stations

needed, as well as the complexity of the overall system on a global basis.

On the consumer side, Lorden says that working with the technology was simple.

SpaceX does not currently provide an installation service, so users are on their own for the most part.

They ship and deliver a big ol' box to your door and inside that box, it's really not that many items.

It would be the Starlink dish itself, the router, the power supply and the little tripod mount to set the dish on.

Starlink actually has an app that you can download on the phone and it walks you through everything.

Literally, just plug this thing into the wall and put the dish where the app tells you to put the dish.

Starlink's dish comes equipped with a built-in heating element, which keeps it free of snow and ice.

It's also motorized, allowing the dish to automatically orient itself to stay aligned with the satellites overhead.

But making its equipment user friendly has not come cheap for SpaceX.

The biggest challenge that SpaceX is facing with Starlink is also one of the big unknowns about the actual equipment

cost itself. People aren't sure exactly how much either SpaceX is paying for, or paying to build its antennas.

There's been a lot of speculation that it's a thousand dollars a unit, two thousand dollars a unit.

If they're, you know, selling these kits for $499/kit and it costs them  $2,000 to make, they're running huge losses to

begin with. And they have to get a lot of people on board to make up for that in the long term by charging for service.

Spacex has been tremendously successful in their launch business, dominating the industry in just 10 years.

However, the launch industry, global launch industry is not a large enough market to subsidize Elon

Musk's dream of building a colony on Mars.

The key to Musk's vision for colonizing Mars is Starship.

The massive rocket is meant to be fully reusable and capable of launching up to 110 tons of cargo at once.

Though SpaceX has not revealed how much it spent on the Starship program, in the past, Musk has estimated that it would cost the company about $5

The decision to move into Starlink gives the company a market adjacency that's significantly larger in size and

has the potential to generate the types of revenues and profits that would be needed for that Mars colony.

Earlier this year, a SpaceX job posting revealed that the company is planning to build a factory in Austin, Texas, to manufacture its Starlink

kits. But although Starlink is initially targeting the consumer market, experts say there's a lot of room for the service to expand.

The intended markets for Starlink measure in the tens of billions of dollars, ranging from consumers, to enterprises and

mobility applications, including vessels at sea and aircraft in flight.

Starlink's initial focus on consumers is a byproduct of the way that the satellites are launched and the coverage that they