Sounds expensive for it to be viable (5-7 years of use) cost to users?, plus amount space junk in orbit already pose threat to the satellites already present in earth orbit.

Decay? Elon, did you invent some miracolous instantly-in-space-vacuum-decaying metal? Or do you actually plan to litter Earth's orbit even more? The major question is - where will you get money for all of that? Building THAT number of satellites and launching them (on what, btw? Your not-yet-fully-developed, almost-not-recyclable, sometimes-exploding rockets?) will be atrociously pricy and with a laughable lifespan of 5 years will never be cost-effective, unless you wish to flush all your wealth into this without any profit ever (or at least for another hundred years).

He just run kerbal dekessler after too much junk accumulates there. DUH!

Gotta love that 36,000 km (60 miles) latency...

Gotta love that 36,000 km (60 miles) latency...

This, reliability, ease of use and most of all latency (laws of physics) come to play. Then again, if a place doesn't have access to the Internet, then his idea is obviously better... Better invent a network with quantum entanglement etc based hubs around the world - no latency 🙂 and no need to send something up there.

no no no..they will implement laser and nukes into them for global domination... besides all that space-junk..and if it falls to earth he must clean it up.

Sounds expensive for it to be viable (5-7 years of use) cost to users?, plus amount space junk in orbit already pose threat to the satellites already present in earth orbit.

i concur

Sounds expensive for it to be viable (5-7 years of use) cost to users?, plus amount space junk in orbit already pose threat to the satellites already present in earth orbit.

Estimate is about $5B for the full deployment with F9. $1B for the satellites, $4B for the launches. Obviously that doesn't factor in potential lost rockets.

Decay? Elon, did you invent some miracolous instantly-in-space-vacuum-decaying metal? Or do you actually plan to litter Earth's orbit even more? The major question is - where will you get money for all of that? Building THAT number of satellites and launching them (on what, btw? Your not-yet-fully-developed, almost-not-recyclable, sometimes-exploding rockets?) will be atrociously pricy and with a laughable lifespan of 5 years will never be cost-effective, unless you wish to flush all your wealth into this without any profit ever (or at least for another hundred years).

You deorbit them at the end of life cycle

Gotta love that 36,000 km (60 miles) latency...

Delay is 30ms, which is significantly better than Iridium's 400ms+

the amount of space debris inculding satellites in orbit around he earth is hazard and they want to ad 4000 to it to make the death trap more complete.

Gotta love that 36,000 km (60 miles) latency...

how does 36000 km become 60 miles? and better yet where do you get 36000km when the article states 1150 km to 1275 km, which would be quad-quadrupled for latency? According to my math, the best possible ping would be 15.32ms (lets call it 20ms due to variance) to 16.96ms (lets call it 21ms due to variance) I'm not sure how that constitutes high latency your 36000 is based off of your typical satellite internet, this is not that if you had read the article, you'd even have read that all, their claim for ms ping is on there as well which pretty much matches my math "The system’s use of low-Earth orbits will allow it to target latencies of approximately 25-35 ms" Honestly if this were not exceedingly expensive, this would be the future. I have used satellite internet, and it was the most stable internet i have ever had, the only problem with it was its cap and latency. If this didn't have a horrid cap, and it was priced correctly, i don't know why i would use cable or DSL

Yeah, right...prices of satelites are in hundreds of milions USD, launching a satelite is another few dosens of milions and he wants to lauch 800 of those. Plus as many have mentioned, there is terrible latency present and the entire connection will be extremely unreliable, due to the atmospheric changes that happen all the time. Oh and to think that we have already huge coverage via mobile phone operators, that especially in undeveloped countries, provide internet through their network, as those countries don't have money to bury wires or fibers into the ground.

This, reliability, ease of use and most of all latency (laws of physics) come to play. Then again, if a place doesn't have access to the Internet, then his idea is obviously better... Better invent a network with quantum entanglement etc based hubs around the world - no latency 🙂 and no need to send something up there.

According to the article, they are targeting ~35msec for latency. That is quite a bit better than typical Sat like Wildblue or HughesNet which is over 500msec best case.

I have lived in or near areas where satellite internet is the only option aside from dial up (even now in 2016). This would be a monumental upgrade over HughesNet provided they didn't have a nearly unusable cap limit.

Yeah, right...prices of satelites are in hundreds of milions USD, launching a satelite is another few dosens of milions and he wants to lauch 800 of those. Plus as many have mentioned, there is terrible latency present and the entire connection will be extremely unreliable, due to the atmospheric changes that happen all the time. Oh and to think that we have already huge coverage via mobile phone operators, that especially in undeveloped countries, provide internet through their network, as those countries don't have money to bury wires or fibers into the ground.

Satellite internet was quite probably my most stable internet i have ever had. The idea that it's unstable isn't really valid. Granted, if you live in thunderstorm severe areas, that could be a problem, but most other weather isn't really a problem anymore As to cost, it really depends on how they do it. For instance, they can put multiple satellites on one rocket As well, these satellites are much smaller then what most satellites are, which provide 2 possible benefits. More can fit on the rocket, and costs per satellite are probably much lower For an example of size These are supposed to be around 850lb, which is extremely small ViaSat-1, which powers excede satellite internet launched in 2011 weighs 14,860lb ViaSat-2 should be around the same weight EchoStar XVII, which provides Hughesnets satellite internet launched in 2012 weighs in at 13,400 lb These satellites offer a longer duration and much higher bandwidth for a single satellite, but are much more expensive to make and launch and must but in high orbit The satellites talked about here are discussed in such large quantities because they are massively smaller, low orbit, lower bandwidth, and therefore much lower costs to build and launch per satellite. For low orbit, which is essential for ping, multiple satellites are a must because of how often they move, you'd likely never be connected to just one satellite, which increases reliability. Personally, i'd be extremely interested in something like this, depending on the cost.