The Fastest Internet Connection in the World: SpaceX's Starlink Project

Even if we took the shortest route possible with an optic fibre, which does not exist, this would take about 55 milliseconds, a 28% decrease in speed. The actual current return trip time for your average Joe is about 76 milliseconds, as we saw earlier. A 77% decrease in speed. This is a huge deal for the two financial markets working out of these cities, with millions of dollars being moved in fractions of a second, having a lower latency would provide a massive advantage in capitalizing on price swings.

In fact, it wouldn’t be the first time a communications company has made a massive investment to specifically serve these groups. The Hibernian Express cable is a privately owned optic cable that is currently the lowest latency connection between the NY4 data centre in Secaucus, New Jersey and the LD4 data centre in Slough, England at just 59.95 milliseconds, 39.4% slower than our best time with Starlink. The previous best time was held by the AC-1 cable at 65 milliseconds. At a cost of $300 million dollars this 5 millisecond increase in speed was justified to just connect across the Atlantic. Imagine how much these time sensitive industries will be willing to pay for a 17 millisecond increase in speed.

It becomes even more valuable when you realize that this time differential increases with increased transmission distance. New York to London is a relatively short distance, but improvements would be even more pronounced for a London to Singapore transmission, for every additional kilometre we travel the potential gains in speed increase rapidly. But SpaceX aren’t just planning on serving this super fast internet to some customers, they primarily advertise this system as a way to connect every human on this planet to the internet, and they should have plenty of bandwidth left over to serve these people.

Although the internet has been one of the fastest growing technologies in human history, by the end of 2019 more than half of the world's population will still be offline (4 billion). Users will connect to this internet using a Starlink terminal which will cost around $200 each, this will still be far outsidethe purchasing power of many third world citizens, but it’s a start and vastly cheaper than similar currently available receivers like the Kymeta version at a price of $30,000. Elon Musk says that these will be flat enough to fit onto the roof of a car and other vehicles like ships and airplanes. This will allow Starlink to compete with traditional internet providers.

It's estimated that moving the US from a 4G to a 5G wireless connection will cost around $150 billion in fiber optic cabling alone over the next 7 years, SpaceX plan to complete their entire Starlink project for as little as $10 billion. Each Starlink satellite costs around $300,000 which is already a massive cut in cost for communication satellites. SpaceX are also saving on launch costs, as they are launching on their own Falcon 9 rocket, something that no other satellite manufacturer has.

If everything goes to plan, Starlink is estimated to generate $30 billion to $50 billion in revenue each year on the back of premium stock exchange memberships, demolishing their current annual revenue of around $3 billion. And this is a vital part of Elon Musk's long-term goals. The money generated from Starlink will mean SpaceX will have vastly more funding than NASA, which could go on to fund research and development of new rockets and the technology needed to monetise lunar and Martian colonies.

For now, the project is simply connecting the world even more and potentially opening avenues for widely available internet to solve this problem. Platforms like Brilliant have taken great steps to remedy this through their high-quality interactive math and science learning. Brilliant has helped thousands of users realise their potential in math and science, and it’s stories like this why I am proud to promote Brilliant every month. They have a huge number of courses that will allow you to educate yourself. From foundational maths courses to courses tailored for you to ace the American Mathematics Competition, with others geared for computer science and physics.

Brilliant recently introduced a new feature called “Daily Challenges”, which will present with you with interesting scientific and mathematical problems to test your brain every day. If I have inspired you and you want to educate yourself, then go to brilliant.org/RealEngineering and sign up for free. And the first 500 people that go to that link will get 20% off the annual Premium subscription, so you can get full access to all their courses as well as the entire daily challenges archive.

As always, thanks for watching and thank you to all my Patreon supporters. If you would like to see more from me, the links to my Instagram, Twitter, subreddit, and Discord server are below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThis episode of Real Engineering is broughtto you by Brilliant, a problem solving websitethat teaches you to think like an engineer.On the 24th of May, SpaceX launched a Falcon9 rocket filled with 60 satellites into space.This marked the beginning of their ambitiousnew project called “Starlink” which aimsto provide high quality broadband internetto the most isolated parts of the planet,while also providing low latency connectivityto already well connected cities.SpaceX aim to make their broadband asaccessible as possible, claiming that anyonewill be able to connect to their network ifthey buy the pizza box-sized antenna whichSpaceX is developing themselves.This launch of 60 satellites, was just thefirst of many.Spacex has 12,000 satellites plannedfor launch over the next decade, dramaticallyincreasing the total amount of spacecraftaround Earth’s orbit.This will cost SpaceX billions of dollars,so they must have a good reason for doingso.Let’s see how this network will work, andhow it will compete with existing internetproviders.Back in 2015, Elon announced that SpaceX hadbegan working on a communication satellitenetwork, stating that there is a significantunmet demand for low-cost global broadbandcapabilities.Around that time, SpaceX opened a new facilityin Redmond, Washington to develop and manufacturethese new communication satellites.The initial plan was to launch two prototypesatellites into orbit by 2016 and have theinitial satellite consetllation up and runningby 2020.But the company struggled to develop a receiverthat could be easily installed by the userfor a low cost, this delayed the program andthe initial prototype satellites weren’tlaunched until 2018.After a successful launch of the two prototypes,Tintin-A and B, which allowed SpaceX to testand refine their satellite design, SpaceXkept pretty quiet about what was next forthe Starlink project, until November 2018when SpaceX received the approval from theFCC to deploy 7,500 satellites into orbit,on top of the 4,400 that were already approved.On May 24th, the first batch of productionsatellites were launched into orbit and peoplearound the world quickly started to spot thetrain of satellites moving across the nightsky.This launch is a sign of things to come, whilethis initial group of satellites are not fullyfunctional , they will be used to testthings like the earth communications systemsand the krypton thrusters which will be usedto autonomously avoid debris and de-orbitthe spacecraft once it has reached the endof its lifecycle.Let’s look at these functionalities first.We have explored how ion thrusters work inthe past, which you can watch for more detail,but essentially they use electric potentialto fire ions out of the spacecraft to providepropulsion.Xenon is ideally used, because it has a highatomic mass allowing it to provide more kickper atom, while being inert and having a highstorage density lending itself to long termstorage on a spacecraft.However SpaceX opted for krypton, as xenon’srarity makes it a far more expensive propellant.This ion thruster will initially be usedto raise the starlink satellites from theirrelease orbits at 440 km to their final orbitalheight of 550 km.They will also be used in conjunction withon board control momentum gyroscopes locatedhere, and the US Governments’ space debriscollision prediction system to allow the satellitesto adjust their orbits to dodge collisions,which we have also spoken about in more detailin a previous video.When the satellites have reached the end oftheir service life they can then use the sameattitude controls and thrusters to de-orbitthe satellite.Space X have included all the necessary hardwareto minimise space debris risk.In their Federal Communications Commissionapproval application , they claim that95% of the satellite will burn up on re-entry.With only the ion thruster internal structureand silicon carbide components, standing achance of survival.Those silicon carbide components are likelyto survive, as they are essential materialsfor the operation of lasers and thus havean extremely high melting point of 2,750°C.Which brings us to our communications abilities,the primary function of the satellite.Spacex have been tight lipped on many of thedetails of the satellite, but thanks to thatFCC filing we know that the satelliteswill contain 5 1.5 kilogram silicon carbidecomponents, which indicates that each satellitewill contain 5 individual lasers.These lasers, like our fibre optic cableshere on earth, will use light pulses to transmitinformation between satellites.Transmitting with light in space offers onemassive advantage over transmitting with lighthere on earth however.The speed of light is not constant in everymaterial, in fact, light travels 47% slowerin glass than in a vacuum.This offers starlink one huge advantage thatwill likely be it’s primary money maker.It provides the potential of lower latencyinformation over long distance, in simplerterms let’s imagine this as a race betweendata packets.A user in London wants the new adjusted priceof a stock on the NASDAQ from the New Yorkstock exchange.If this information were use a typical route,let’s say through the AC-2 cable ,which has a return journey of about 12,800kilometres to make through our glass fibreoptic cable.In a vacuum light travels at a speed of 299,792,458meters per second .The speed of travel in glass depends on therefractive index and the refractive indexdepends on wavelength, but we will take thereduction as 1.47 times slower than the speedof light in a vacuum .This means the data packet will take roughly0.063 seconds to make the round trip, andthus has a latency of 0.063 seconds, or 62.7milliseconds.With the additional steps that add to thislatency like the conversion of light signalsto electrical signals on either end of theoptical cable, traffic queues, and the transferto our final computer terminal, this totaltime comes out at about 76 milliseconds.Figuring out the latency for Starlink is alot more difficult, as we have no real worldmeasurements to go by, but we can make someeducated guesses with the help of Mark Handley,a communications professor in University CollegeLondon.The first source of latency for Starlink willbe during the up and down link process, wherewe need to transfer our information to andfrom earth.We know this will be done with phase arrayantenna, which are radio antenna that cancontrol the direction of their transmissionwithout moving parts, instead they use destructiveand constructive interference to controlthe direction of the radio wave.Each satellite has a cone beam with a 81 degreerange of view.With an orbit of 550 kilometres each satellitecan cover a circular area with a radius of500 kilometre.At SpaceX’s originally planned orbit thiscoverage had a radius of 1060 kilometres.Lowering the altitude of a satellite decreasesthe area it can cover, but also decreasesthe latency.This is particularly noticeable for typicalcommunications satellites operating in geostationaryorbit at an altitude of about 36,000 kilometres.The time it takes data to travel up to thesatellite and back down travelling at thespeed of light is around 240 milliseconds369% slower than our subsea cable.However, since Starlink is intending to operateat a much lower altitude, the up and downlink theoretical latency could be as low as3.6 ms.This is why SpaceX needs so many satellitesin their constellation in order to provideworldwide coverage.Each individual starlink satellite has fourphased array antenna located here, here, hereand here.This directional beam was an essential partof SpaceX’s FCC approval application ,as thousands of satellites broadcasting undirectedradio waves would cause significant amountsof interference with other communication methods.Once that data is received by one starlinksatellite, it can begin to transmit that informationbetween satellites using lasers.Each time we hop from satellites there willbe a small delay as the laser light is convertedto an electric signal and back again, butit is too miniscule to consider.Things get tricky here with using lasers,as we need to accurately hit the receiveron neighbouring satellites to transmit thatdata.Let’s look at SpaceX’s proposed constellationto see how this will work.Space X’s first phase of 1584 satelliteswill occupy 24 orbital planes, with 66 satellitesin each plane inclined at 53 degrees.That will look something like this.Communication between neighbouring satellitesin the same orbital plane is relatively simple,as these satellites will remain in relativelystable positions in relation to each other.This gives us a solid line of communicationalong a single orbital plane, but in manycases a single orbital plane will not connecttwo locations, so we need to be able transferinformation between these planes too.This requires precise tracking, as the satellitestravelling in neighbouring orbital planesare travelling incredibly quickly and willcome in and out of view.This means the starlink satellite will needto switch to a new satellite in the network.This can take time, the best figure I couldfind is about a minute for the EuropeanSpace Agency’s Data Relay Satellite System,which is a currently operating geostationaryinternet constellation designed to serve europeanimaging satellites, and other time criticalapplications.Such as serving emergency forces in remoteareas, like those fighting forest fires.Starlink may be faster, but it won’t beinstantaneous, and thus it has 5 optical communicationsystems on board to maintain a steady connectionto 4 satellites at all times.If we now use this system, transmitting fromNew York to London and back, with the shortestpath possible, using the speed of light ina vacuum as our transfer speed, we can achievea latency as low as 43 milliseconds.Even if we took the shortest route possiblewith an optic fibre, which does not exist,this would take about 55 milliseconds, a 28%decrease in speed.The actual current return trip time for youraverage Joe is about 76 milliseconds, as wesaw earlier.A 77% decrease in speed.This is a huge deal for the two financialmarkets working out of these cities, withmillions of dollars being moved in fractionsof a second, having a lower latency wouldprovide a massive advantage in capitalizingon price swings.In fact, it wouldn’t be the first time acommunications company has made a massiveinvestment to specifically serve these groups.The Hibernian Express cable is a privatelyowned optic cable that is currently the lowestlatency connection between the NY4 data centrein Secaucus, New Jersey and the LD4 data centrein Slough, England at just 59.95 milliseconds,39.4% slower than our best time with Starlink.The previous best time was held by theAC-1 cable at 65 milliseconds.At a cost of 300 million dollars this 5 millisecondincrease in speed was justified to just connectacross the Atlantic.Imagine how much these time sensitive industrieswill be willing to pay for a 17 millisecondincrease in speed.It becomes even more valuable when you realisethis time differential increases with increasedtransmission distance.New York to London is a relatively short distance.The improvements would be even more pronouncedfor a London to Singapore transmission, forevery additional kilometre we travel the potentialgains in speed increase rapidly .But SpaceX aren’t just planning onserving this super fast internet to some customers,they primarily advertise this system as away to connect every human on this planetto the internet, and they should have plentyof bandwidth left over to serve these people.Although the internet has been one of thefastest growing technologies in human history,by the end of 2019 more than half of the world'spopulation will still be offline (4 billion).Users will connect to this internet usinga Starlink terminal which will cost around$200 each, this will still be far outsidethe purchasing power of many third world citizens,but it’s a start and vastly cheaper thensimilar currently available receivers likethe Kymeta version at a price of $30,000.Elon Musk says that these will be flat enoughto fit onto the roof of a car and other vehicleslike ships and airplanes.This will allow Starlink to compete with traditionalinternet providers.It’s estimated that moving the US from a4G to a 5G wireless connection will cost around$150 billion in fiber optic cabling aloneover the next 7 years, SpaceX plan tocomplete their entire Stralink project foras little as $10 billion.Each Starlink satellite cost around $300,000which is already a massive cut in cost forcommunication satellites.SpaceX are also saving on launch costs, asthey are launching on their own Falcon 9 rocket,something that no other satellite manufacturerhas.If everything goes to plan, Starlink is estimatedto generate $30 billion to $50 billion inrevenue each year on the back of premium stockexchange memberships , demolishing theircurrent annual revenue of around $3 billion.And this is a vital part of Elon Musk's longterm goals.The money generated from Starlink will meanSpaceX will have vastly more funding thanNASA.Which could go on to fund research and developmentof new rockets and the technology needed tomonetise lunar and martian colonies.For now the project is simply connecting theworld even more and potentially opening avenuesWidely available internet will help solvethis problem, and platforms like Brillianthave taken great steps to remedy this throughtheir high quality interactive math and sciencelearning.Brilliant has helped thousands of users realizetheir potential in math and science, and it’sstories like this why I am proud to promoteBrilliant every month.They have a huge number of courses that willallow you to educate yourself.From foundational maths courses to coursestaylored for you to ace the American MathematicsCompetition, with others geared for computerscience and physics.Brilliant recently introduced a new feature,called “Daily Challenges”, which willpresent with you with interesting scientificand mathematical problems to test your brainevery day.If I have inspired you and you want to educateyourself, then go to brilliant.org/RealEngineeringand sign up for free.And the first 500 peoplethat go to that link will get 20% off theannual Premium subscription, so you can getfull access to all their courses as well asthe entire daily challenges archive.As always, thanks for watching and thank youto all my Patreon supporters.If you would like to see more from me thelinks to my instagram, twitter, subredditand discord server are below.\n"