Ambition knows no bounds. And the best example for this is the apparently never tiring Elon Musk- who has been the spearhead for successful technologies like SpaceX, Tesla Motors, SolarCity and Hyperloop- and he isn’t done yet.
He is now concocting plans to build satellite network high above Earth that would boost Internet speeds and bring access to previously unchartered locations and approximately three billion people. And he’ll use the profits to help colonize Mars. That, is ambition at its finest.
At a SpaceX event in Seattle on Friday, he told reporters that this venture will cost $10 billion and 5 years to score success. And to speed up the internet, his designs include launching and using a fleet of satellites, beginning with the build and launch of roughly 4,000 of them orbiting in geosynchronous orbit about 750 miles above earth to do the job. Lower heights mean less distance for electromagnetic waves to travel.
Musk believes that his designs will pave the way for an Internet that will be fast, cheap and globally available- and will not be’impeded’ by terrestrial wires. And he has a simple scientific fact to back it up- Speed of light is 40% faster in vacuum compared to optical fibers. Data travelling in packets will not have to travel through innumerable routers to get to, say, Mumbai from Washington.
Instead, the packets would go to space, bouncing from satellite to satellite until they reach the one nearest their destination, then return to an antenna on earth. Specs on how exactly was this project going to get the cash flowing in were not discussed, however the satellites would possibly be sold after the network was established. The project plans will have their bases in the Seattle headquarters. People working on this, will in the meantime, also work on SpaceX’s Falcon rockets, Dragon capsules and additional crafts that will carry supplies and, eventually, people.
Musk says
We want the best engineers that either live in Seattle or that want to move to the Seattle area and work on electronics, software, structures, and power systems, We want top engineering talent of all kinds.
Oh, man. Every engineers’ nirvana, right here.Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date.
Not stopping there, his well know determination to see Mars colonized by mid 2020s – he wants the connectivity to extend to Mars. He said:
