Home Internet SpaceX’s prototype internet satellites are good enough for gaming, Elon Musk says

SpaceX’s prototype internet satellites are good enough for gaming, Elon Musk says

by Yolando B. Adams

It’s been 3 months since SpaceX launched the primary prototype satellites for its Starlink broadband net community, and there’s been treasured little information about what they’re up to. Until today.

Responding to a follower’s Twitter inquiry, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk assessed how the twin satellites, dubbed Tintin A and B, are doing:

Elon Musk

@elonmusk
Replying to @nitantbhartia and three others
Pretty accurate. TinTin A & B are the hyperlinks to ground w phased array at high bandwidth and low latency (25 ms). Good sufficient to play rapid reaction video games.

12:37 AM – May 27, 2018
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G C

Image result for SpaceX’s prototype internet satellites are good enough for gaming, Elon Musk says
@SmileSimplify
Replying to @elonmusk and four others
Will TinTin A & B be the handiest demo units Starlink deploys earlier than the start of complete ?production & deployment? Or will there be some extra? Do you’ve got an (aspirational) timeline for when Starlink would start industrial carrier?

3:33 AM – May 27, 2018
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Elon Musk

@elonmusk
Replying to @SmileSimplify and 4 others
I Will do some other rev before the very last layout

5:49 AM – May 27, 2018
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The “quite precise” evaluation sounds like quite excellent information for the SpaceX satellite development team that’s primarily based in Redmond, Wash. The satellites are geared up with flat phased-array antennas, which might be designed to stay in contact with a sequence of floor stations as they fly in low Earth orbit.

Based on filings with the Federal Communications Commission, floor stations have been located in spots including SpaceX’s centers in Redmond and Brewster, Wash.; on the organization’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.; at rocket take a look at facilities in Texas; and at Tesla’s manufacturing unit in Fremont, Calif.

Satellite net is not anything new of the route. But within the past, such offerings had been furnished through geostationary satellite networks, which have a substantive lag time within the neighborhood of loads of milliseconds. That makes a sizeable distinction for actual-time, two-way communique.

As Musk notes, Starlink’s 25-millisecond latency would make playing video games thru satellite tv for pc internet lots much less laggy. But the main benefit might be to provide low-cost broadband to get admission to regions of the world that can’t get it right now due to a loss of on-the-ground infrastructure.

Starlink satellites

SpaceX’s Tintin satellites serve as prototypes for the Starlink constellation. (SpaceX via YouTube)
If SpaceX can capture that marketplace, broadband services may want to make contributions tens of billions to the agency’s bottom line annually — offering the coins to fund Musk’s objectives of sending scads of settlers to Mars and making humanity a multiplanet species.

Trademark filings suggest that the satellites could offer Earth-imaging and far-flung sensing in addition to telecommunications.

In an interview that aired this week on CNBC, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, stated the Starlink constellation should be quite a hit, “assuming we get the physics proper in addition to the commercial enterprise right.”

Musk’s high-quality remarks are quick on detail due to absolute confidence in Twitter’s character limits. However, they suggest that no showstoppers have been encountered at the physics side of the equation.

Image result for SpaceX’s prototype internet satellites are good enough for gaming, Elon Musk says

When it involves the business case, SpaceX may want to face a powerful phalanx of telecom competitors — inclusive of the low-Earth-orbit constellations being deliberate by way of such ventures as OneWeb and Telesat; SES’ O3b medium-Earth-orbit constellation; and ViaSat’s geostationary-primarily based broadband community.

Just multiple months ago, a startup called Astranis entered the fray with plans to place small-scale broadband satellites into geostationary orbit, one satellite tv for pc at a time.

SpaceX’s plans call to launch hundreds of satellites and take off commercial providers sometime in the following few years. Other ventures could put up hundreds of more satellites — elevating the stakes for policymakers who already see the want to upgrade the sector’s space site visitors management system.

So whilst will the satellite rush begin in earnest? Stay tuned for the next tweet.

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GeekWire aerospace and science editor Alan Boyle is an award-triumphing technological know-how writer and veteran space reporter. Formerly of NBCNews.Com, he is the author of “The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference.” Follow him via CosmicLog.Com, on Twitter @b0yle, and Facebook and Google+.
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