Elon Musk is presently seekinggovernment approvalto begin testing on a project to propagate the Internet from 4,000 satellites orbiting the Earth . He exact he wants to send mellow - speed Internet to all street corner of the universe .
Theplanwould transform SpaceX from a companionship based solely on rockets and spaceflight into an Internet provider to match the the like of Comcast , Verizon , and other telecommunication companies in a universal market place thought to be deserving over$2.1 trillionannually . Musk ’s plan is to beam his Falcon 9 rocket up into space , and then deploy a fleet of satellite around the planet .
He announced his plan in the first place in the year , but it has just been released thatSpaceXhas made a formal request for permission from the United StatesFederal Communications Commission(FCC ) to start testing next year . Musk require to find out if the current antenna on his satellites would be strong enough to send the signal back down to Earth .
This is n’t the first time that a Department of Transportation - com billionaire has dabbled in cyberspace satellites , and probably wo n’t be the last either . During the 1990s , a company ground by Bill Gates aspired to do something interchangeable , but as cost spiraled out of control , the plan eventually collapsed . Even the Internet giant of Facebook has scrapped design for a $ 500 million satellite to spread the Internet to the far reaches of the earth .
But Musk is plain jolly confident that he ’ll be able to get 4,000 up and working . He claim that using lots of modest machine that are both cheap and effective will help his plans overcome old job of relying on larger satellites that are more difficult to put back if something were to go awry . And by manufacture them all at SpaceX , he hopes to keep costs down and puzzle out supply publication .
Grand as his dodge may be , and even if the FCC allot him permit to start his testing , the logistics of beaming high - speed Internet across the ball still make his hazard of pull this off passably slim . Musk himself has already conceded that getting permission to operate in countries across the domain would be “ difficult , if not unsufferable . ”
Main mental image credit : NVIDIA Corporation / Flickr CC BY - NC - ND 2.0
