A new 650 satellite constelation

[Kryten]

Having had previous involvement in satellite communications (Ham and otherwise), I understand quite well, thank you.

Is it as much involvement as you've had with Navy free energy magnet machines?

[LordFerret]

Is it as much involvement as you've had with Navy free energy magnet machines?

Cite for me once where I mentioned 'free energy'.

[Scotius]

I'm worried about something else. At such a low altitude (circa 150 km) those satellites will have rather short lifespan. They will either require substantial amount of fuel for station-keeping, or periodic replacement - both options won't be cheap.

[Kryten]

Cite for me once where I mentioned 'free energy'.

You didn't mention those exact words, but you still came up with something that blatantly breaks conservation of energy. The two terms are synonymous.

[Camacha]

You didn't mention those exact words, but you still came up with something that blatantly breaks conservation of energy. The two terms are synonymous.

I think this is where you quote the post you mean - or let it go. I prefer the latter, as the discussion then has little to do with the one now. Let us discuss things based on the validity of arguments, not on previous validity of arguments.

[Kryten]

I can't directly quote from locked threads, but this is pretty equivocal;

A 24-volt battery was used to cause the snap-back to get the thing spinning, and as long as there was liquid nitrogen in the bath - it would run... generating current to power itself, and then some.

And this bears directly on the validity of these arguments. He's trying to argue from experience, when he's been shown to be willing to make up and keep defending blatantly fictional 'experiences'.

[LordFerret]

I'm worried about something else. At such a low altitude (circa 150 km) those satellites will have rather short lifespan. They will either require substantial amount of fuel for station-keeping, or periodic replacement - both options won't be cheap.

From the description given of the 'micro satellites' given on the OneWeb site, they'll have on-board propulsion systems - although it's not mentioned of what manner. The also mention how the micro satellites will de-orbit at the end of its 'intended service life', but no mention is made of the longevity of which. The only cost savings I can envision here, is that the satellites will be mass produced - as in robotic assembly line*. So much for that endeavor being a job creator. :/

*

"How Micro Satellites Are Made

Mass production and satellites have never been used in the same sentence. Each satellite used to be handcrafted by hundreds of engineers. Until now. OneWeb has changed things. Today, satellites can be made in the same way high quality medical and avionics equipment are."

[Camacha]

I can't directly quote from locked threads, but this is pretty equivocal;

And this bears directly on the validity of these arguments. He's trying to argue from experience, when he's been shown to be willing to make up and keep defending blatantly fictional 'experiences'.

Still, those quotes or arguments have no place in this thread, and using them to prove a point in this discussion is kind of bad form.

[Albert VDS]

Njyah, I think the poorest 1-2 billion people in the world might have other problems than just a lack of internet access.

Those same 1+ billion people you're taking about don't even have as much as a slit-trench to crap in... and they should worry about internet access??? Try food, water, and sanitation.

Note the part where it says that those 2+ billion people have reliable access to electricity.

If you are poor and have reliable electricity then you will benefit hugely from the Internet. It's more then just mindless fun.

It can be used as ways to communicate and educate, something which poor countries could greatly benefit from.

Of course it wont be directly accessible to everyone at first, I guess you have to start with schools and other places which benefit the population.

[magnemoe]

I understand that, but that is becoming more and more of a niche market. You can get decent internet pretty much everywhere in Europe and America. There are existing offerings for satellite internet, but that's a shrinking market as 3G and 4G expand. There are also niche markets like aircraft or ships, but those are small.

The areas with little internet coverage these days are mainly developing countries, which are hard to do business with. In fact, the reason people don't have access to the internet nowadays is more about affordability than a problem of coverage.

Well internet on planes and ships is one obvious marked. Second is any remote location.

3-4G don't have any quality of service guarantees, 4g is most common in populated places with lots of users so it don't help speed much, for lots of services you need an reasonable guarantee on minimum speed. People reading facebook on the phone is not an target marked here.

Norway is using some billions on an new network for the emergency services. This system might be cheaper and will also work if the senders are down and will offer high speed connection.

UAV might be another killer marked.

[Rune]

Geostationary or not, you've still got the distance to travel ... radio wave propagation still dictates that time is involved to cover the distance. That time up and back for those satellites at that altitude is 1/4 second.

GEO is about 36 times farther than this sats will ever be, which is around a thousand kilometers. If latency was 500ms due to distance in GEO, 500/36=13.8ms. Add to that that the sat-to-sat links are 20% faster due to vacuum than through ground lines, and the fact that going through sats will likely mean less nodes in the link to the desired data, and this things can actually have pretty decent latency, better even than some ground systems with a lot of nodes.

Rune. And that is basic arithmetic.

[78stonewobble]

Note the part where it says that those 2+ billion people have reliable access to electricity.

If you are poor and have reliable electricity then you will benefit hugely from the Internet. It's more then just mindless fun.

It can be used as ways to communicate and educate, something which poor countries could greatly benefit from.

Of course it wont be directly accessible to everyone at first, I guess you have to start with schools and other places which benefit the population.

Oh you are right, I thought it was referencing the poorest 2 billion, not the 2 billion in between. Still there are potential problems.

The satellites will be small and thus require more of the ground equipment. These people are poor. These people might only speak one local language and so forth, but yes... if it can help them. I'm all for it, but I still have a hard time thinking you can make giant profits of these people.

[Exoscientist]

OneWeb plans to launch 650 satellites to provide worldwide broadband connection.

If this becomes a reality, it will be by far the largest constellation in existence.

This might recatalyze the boon of space startups that arose at the beginning of this century to launch the large number of satellites that were expected to be launched then.

Bob Clark

[Albert VDS]

Njyah, I think the poorest 1-2 billion people in the world might have other problems than just a lack of internet access.

Oh you are right, I thought it was referencing the poorest 2 billion, not the 2 billion in between. Still there are potential problems.

The satellites will be small and thus require more of the ground equipment. These people are poor. These people might only speak one local language and so forth, but yes... if it can help them. I'm all for it, but I still have a hard time thinking you can make giant profits of these people.

Development aid organizations would be a good place to start or even start one for that cause.

I can imagine things like Raspberry Pi helping with this, small and cheap and no moving parts.

Start a an initiative to collect old LCD monitors. SD cards, keyboards and mice are dirty cheap now a days.

If you help a poor country grow through all the things that Internet(via sat) has to offer then they keep it as their standard.

[RuBisCO]

So they are claiming "50 megabits per second at 30 milliseconds latency." and a network that can support "more than 10 terabits", so that is more than 200,000 us at full speed. The 30 ms part I just can't believe.

http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/06/15/oneweb-selects-airbus-to-build-900-internet-satellites/

I would imagine it would work with dragonlines: enough satellites per orbital plane to be in line of sight to each other in series such as to connect around the world, each one stationary to the next one such that an open space laser link is possible.

[SeaDog]

The 30 ms part I just can't believe.

Why? That's pretty much what it takes to bounce a signal on a LEO satellite, assuming a few ms for the computer to react. In reality, it would usually be more because you go through a few nodes on the ground as well, but still, from the ground to the satellite and back again should be something like 30 ms.

[YNM]

Latency issues: should be nonexistent, a few ms isn't really noticeable. Think of the fact that most ground cables are wires for most of their length (means slower than EM), and that additional height of (less than) a few hundred km is not very significant compared to earth's 6378 km radius.

I'm more concerned about the amount and the height itself. And lifetime (or stationkeeping & maintenance cost), if they really is going to orbit at <200 km orbits...

[justidutch]

I've been to some pretty off-the-beaten-path places in some of the countries being targeted here. And yes, there are some people who don't have a thing to their name and resort to bathing in the dirtiest rivers of all time because there is no other choice, and it breaks your heart. But it always appears to me that everyone else has a cell phone, and I mean everyone. That is a hell of a lot of potential customers in my guestimation.

[AngelLestat]

This will be usefull for everybody in the world, being rich, average or poor.

If you are poor and you have some earning besides food, your logic options are very limited... what you will get? better furnitude or cloth, a camera, a computer, a stereo, or a good bed? no... You will buy a smartphone with internet, the other possibility is drugs.

Those are the only options who can distract you from the reality, of course drugs are not a good option, but the smartphone it is.. You can access to all the world information with that.

But well I will like to know with more precision the amount of clients that oneweb or spacex constellation will be able to support.

[Nibb31]

It looks like Airbus DS is getting the contract for developing and building the OneWeb sats. 10 preproduction models will be built in Toulouse, France, and the series production will be in a purpose-built factory in the US. The figures I have are that the order is for 900 satellites for $1.4 billion. The constellation will have 700 sats and the remaining 200 are spares to replace failed birds.

One of OneWeb's investors is Richard Branson, so it seems like they plan to use LauncherOne to launch the satellites. LauncherOne is supposed to be sized to launch up to 200kg to LEO on a small expendable rocket for "under $10 million". I can't see how 700 individual launches can ever be cost-effective... The total cost of the project is estimated at $1.5 to 2 billion, and OneWeb has said that they didn't want to pay more that $400000 for each sat. Although we don't know the amount of the Airbus DS contract, I doubt they would bother for only $360 million, that's small change for them (it's the price of a single A380). If you add the cost of the ground infrastructure and setting up the commercial service, the numbers simply don't add up.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Nibb31

[Shpaget]

Although we don't know the amount of the Airbus DS contract, I doubt they would bother for only $360 million, that's small change for them (it's the price of a single A380). If you add the cost of the ground infrastructure and setting up the commercial service, the numbers simply don't add up.

Airbus has, so far in 8 years, built ~160 A380s. These sats will be built on a production line.

One A380 is three times more massive than 900 of these sats combined.

I don't understand why would Airbus build a dedicated plant for production of these, instead of renting an existing infrastructure. Once these sats start rolling off the assembly line they should be done in a month or two at the most.

The only problem I see with the financial plan is the launch cost. The budget seems a bit optimistic there.

[Kryten]

LauncherOne will almost certainly be for launch of demonstrator units and perhaps a few replacement sats.

[Nibb31]

I agree, it wouldn't make sense to expect 700 launches from Virgin, but even if they get 50 launches on SpaceX's manifest (which I doubt they will because SpaceX is a direct competitor), that's still way over their total $2 billion budget.

Edited June 17, 2015 by Nibb31

[Shpaget]

And the rest?

Falcon 9 could deliver 80+ of them in one go, but happens to be Branson's competitor.

How would that work anyway? You have 80 satellites clumped up in parking orbit, and need to push them each in its own specific orbit. Would each sat do its own burs, or would the upper stage do multiple different close orbits from which the sats would fine tune themselves?

[Nibb31]

I don't understand why would Airbus build a dedicated plant for production of these, instead of renting an existing infrastructure.

Because there is no existing production line in the world that can manufacture a production run of 900 small satellites. Existing satellite manufacturing facilities have a capacity or 1 or 2 units per year. I also don't see how you could set up such an infrastructure from scratch at a cost of only $400000 x 900 units.

I've read unofficial numbers of $1.4 billion for the Airbus DS contract, which is more realistic, but it also doesn't fit with OneWeb's claimed budget.