Speaker 1: The private space industry company space X, filed to register
Speaker 1: a trademark on the name Starling. What will Starling b
Speaker 1: and how is it a big deal? This is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff Daily. As I'm Jonathan Strickland. SpaceX has been working
Speaker 1: on a design for a network of satellites that could
Speaker 1: collectively provide a network circling our planet. This satellite network,
Speaker 1: also known as a constellation of satellites, would have many jobs.
Speaker 1: One of those jobs is aerial surveying. That's a fancy
Speaker 1: way of saying. The satellites will contain sensors that will
Speaker 1: allow them to gather data about the geography of the
Speaker 1: Earth and spatially relevant information. Such a network could be
Speaker 1: useful to measure ongoing changes, such as how coastlines might
Speaker 1: transform over time, him as a result of climate change
Speaker 1: or in the wake of massive storm systems. A comprehensive
Speaker 1: constellation network would allow for a truly big picture look
Speaker 1: at the status of the Earth, and could prove invaluable
Speaker 1: when developing scientific projects or government policies. These remote sensors
Speaker 1: are likely various types of cameras that can capture images
Speaker 1: through different wavelengths of light, including infra red or the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum. This alone is pretty cool tech, but the
Speaker 1: other purpose of starlink is even more interesting. That purpose
Speaker 1: is to provide global broadband access to the Internet. In
Speaker 1: other words, no matter where on Earth you might find yourself,
Speaker 1: with the proper tech, you could access the Internet. This
Speaker 1: could be transformative technology for countless regions that have limited
Speaker 1: or no Internet access due to a lack of infrastructure.
Speaker 1: It's undeniable that the Internet has changed the way the
Speaker 1: world works in a dramatic fashion. From communication to commerce.
Speaker 1: The Internet shapes the way we interact with the world.
Speaker 1: Extending that capability to every part of the Earth could
Speaker 1: provide enormous benefit, not only to the people living in
Speaker 1: remote regions, but to everyone. And satellite Internet isn't exactly new.
Speaker 1: We've been launching communication satellites into orbit for decades, but
Speaker 1: your typical Internet communication satellite flies high above the planet
Speaker 1: in geo stationary orbit. That means the satellites orbit the
Speaker 1: Earth along the equator, moving at a speed that keeps
Speaker 1: them in the same relative position in the sky over
Speaker 1: a reference point on the planet. As the Earth rotates,
Speaker 1: the satellite whizzes through space to maintain that relative position.
Speaker 1: This provides stable coverage of a particular area of the planet,
Speaker 1: but it requires going out to a very high orbit,
Speaker 1: and there's limited real estate to deal with, as an
Speaker 1: overpopulated orbit would open up the possibility of collisions. Rather
Speaker 1: than rely upon those few large and ex pensive satellites,
Speaker 1: space x is strategy is to create a whole boatload
Speaker 1: of small, relatively cheap satellites. The SpaceX network could consist
Speaker 1: of up to four thousand of these satellites orbiting closer
Speaker 1: to the Earth in low orbit. That means the satellites
Speaker 1: wouldn't maintain a relative position above a specific reference point
Speaker 1: on the Earth, but that's not necessary if you have
Speaker 1: enough devices to cover the globe. The low Earth orbit
Speaker 1: positioning also translates to savings. It's not as expensive to
Speaker 1: launch satellites into low Earth orbit. It will still cost
Speaker 1: a pretty penny. Elon Musk once estimated the cost of
Speaker 1: the network's development and deployment would hit somewhere in the
Speaker 1: ten billion dollar range and take five years to complete,
Speaker 1: but in the grand scheme of things, it's not as
Speaker 1: costly as launching a few massive satellites much further out.
Speaker 1: Yet another benefit of using low Earth orbit is the
Speaker 1: decrease in latency. Latency is the delay between when you
Speaker 1: initiate a command and when a system completes that command.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's the time it takes your computer
Speaker 1: and the Internet in general to send messages back and
Speaker 1: forth to each other. With satellite Internet latency tends to
Speaker 1: be an irritating problem, particularly with traditional communication satellites. That's
Speaker 1: because the enormous distances involved. Data can only travel as
Speaker 1: fast as the speed of light. With traditional communication satellites,
Speaker 1: the distance between users and the satellites is great enough
Speaker 1: that this becomes a noticeable lag in communication. Satellites in
Speaker 1: low Earth orbit are by definition, closer to the ground
Speaker 1: with less distance to travel, you see a decrease in latency.
Speaker 1: Whether that decrease would be low enough to truly work
Speaker 1: for real time applications without a noticeable delay, such as
Speaker 1: video conferencing, remains to be seen. As a side note,
Speaker 1: we often talk about Internet communication in terms of speed.
Speaker 1: That's a little misleading. What's more accurate is it to
Speaker 1: dicussion about data capacity. Data traveling through a ten megabit
Speaker 1: per second connection versus traveling through a one gigabit per
Speaker 1: second connection actually moves at the same speed. If all
Speaker 1: other things are equal, it's just that the gigabit per
Speaker 1: second connection allows more data to pass through in that
Speaker 1: same amount of time. Another way to think about it
Speaker 1: is if you and four of your closest friends are
Speaker 1: walking down a pathway that's only one person wide, and
Speaker 1: you're all moving at about four miles per hour toward
Speaker 1: a big open space. It's going to take a while
Speaker 1: for that last person in line to join everyone else,
Speaker 1: simply because the path's capacity only allows for single file.
Speaker 1: But if that same group we're walking down a pathway
Speaker 1: that allows you to walk ten people abreast, it would
Speaker 1: take less time for the entire group to enter the
Speaker 1: wide open area because the path's capacity for people is greater.
Speaker 1: It's not that the second group moved faster, just that
Speaker 1: the path could hold more people across. That's sort of
Speaker 1: the same thing with internets eats. But back to SpaceX,
Speaker 1: the large number of satellites also means space x's systems
Speaker 1: would have redundancy built into it. That means should one
Speaker 1: satellite fail, it wouldn't result in a catastrophic loss of service.
Speaker 1: If a geostationary satellite goes down, that's a big deal.
Speaker 1: It's very far out, much further than the International Space Station,
Speaker 1: and fixing such a problem is often not feasible, or
Speaker 1: it is extremely risky and expensive. Relying on smaller, less
Speaker 1: expensive satellites allows SpaceX to make sure coverage on the
Speaker 1: Earth isn't interrupted if a single satellite goes down, neighboring
Speaker 1: satellites can pick up the slack until SpaceX can launch
Speaker 1: a replacement or repair a misbehaving satellite. SpaceX isn't the
Speaker 1: only company looking to provide Internet coverage through satellites. It
Speaker 1: will likely be a few years before we see any
Speaker 1: of these systems become fully operational in the Star Wars
Speaker 1: sense of the phrase. Assuming everything goes smoothly in a
Speaker 1: few years, it may be possible to log into your
Speaker 1: social media accounts even if you find yourself on a
Speaker 1: deserted location. I suspect the twenty twenty reboot of Gilligan's
Speaker 1: Island will have to address this in some way. To
Speaker 1: learn more about how the Internet works, be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe to the podcast tech Stuff, a deep dive show
Speaker 1: that publishes on Wednesdays and Fridays. That's all from me
Speaker 1: for now, See you next time.