Written by Yuan Xie.
Original debut Blue Letter Project.
The number of characters is about 5000
Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, can now not only control the speech of Twitter users, but even prevent the cadres of the United States from speaking casually.
In a February 2023 interview, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blink, in a television interview about the use of Starlink in Eastern Europe, had no choice but to say, "Well, I can't share anything from the conversation other than admitting that I had a conversation with Musk." ”
In the summer of 2023, when the liaison ** of the U.S. Department of Defense received a request for an interview with a magazine reporter about "Starlink", the response was "Elon must be notified of the interview request, and he approved it before we can talk to you." The attitude is humble, not at all like Party A who has just signed a large purchase order.
Since the first batch of "Starlink" satellites were launched in May 2019, in three or four years, SpaceX has become the first spacecraft entity on Earth, not only has the number of rocket launches surpassed the official space agencies of all sovereign countries, but also the world's largest satellite communications operator. When talking about the "Starlink" satellite Internet, foreign newspapers use the words "Musk's unrivaled power in the starry sky" and "Musk's dominance of the satellite industry".
A product, ruthless to the first and Party A's only promise, how is this done?
Whoever steals is not stealing, but steals friends
Musk's journey into satellite internet is very similar to his path to AI: from hugging closely to turning against each other.
In the early 2010s, almost all tech giants realized that there were still at least 3 billion to 4 billion people in the world who did not have access to a basic level of Internet services. And not all of these three or four billion people are in poor areas with little purchasing power, and at least 70 million of them can afford the cost of ordinary Internet services. Even in the United States and Canada, nearly one-third of adults struggle to use fast enough internet because of restrictions on where they live.
For a group of people of this size, it is impossible to fully integrate fiber into the home, and if it can be done, there will be no such problem. Even now that 5G technology has become mainstream, many people have experienced no signal when they are a little away from the main city.
So, more than a decade ago, tech companies and tycoons refocused on the idea of a "wireless internet based on high-altitude satellites," a commercial failure in the past. In 2011, Google started the high-altitude balloon internet project Loon. In 2014, Greg Wheeler, a veteran of the Internet communications industry, and Musk were interested in cooperating to create a satellite Internet consisting of 700 satellites in low-earth orbit.
However, the two who were still publicly talking about cooperation in 2014 parted ways in mid-2014.
In June 2014, Musk announced that he would raise $1 billion from Google and other investors to launch satellite Internet. And through the backdoor regulatory department of Norway, the satellite constellation communication band is registered with the International Telecommunication Union. The constellation's business in the U.S. is the name of the entire project: Starlink.
At the end of the same month, Wheeler also announced that his satellite company, WorldVu, would raise $500 million from investors such as Virgin and Airbus, and would also launch a large-scale satellite Internet.
The two also publicly said that they would set up a factory and build satellites together, and the land was found, and they would do their own work in the middle of the year. In such an abrupt turn, Musk never took a stand, and Wheeler only replied in an interview in 2015 with the cliché of "paying tribute to all industry colleagues who are committed to making broadband services available worldwide".
However, some people in the industry once gave an explanation: Musk did not inform Wheeler at all before announcing that he would start and register the satellite frequency band, and he continued to talk about cooperation with others. As a result, Wheeler found that the plan that Musk took to register was his idea, and the financing object was the financier he had negotiated before, and the cooperation naturally collapsed.
Since then, Wheeler's satellite company, OneWeb (renamed WorldVu), has been a competitor to SpaceX's Starlink project. However, OneWeb can't compete with SpaceX, and after bankruptcy in March 2020, it gave the UK's leading investor portfolio. Prior to its bankruptcy, OneWeb had effectively abandoned its original vision of selling satellite Internet to users around the world, instead focusing on providing satellite Internet services to ** and corporate organizations.
Out-of-the-ordinary ideas, catch up with the course of history
The success of Starlink depends not only on the correct concept, but also on the company's development process. Without one of the two, Starlink would not be able to stand out from its competitors.
Satellite Internet is not a new concept, since the Internet, there are companies trying to use satellites to spread network signals: anyway, it is all radio communication, ** hit, can the network not be connected?Isn't the Internet based on ** signals?
The three companies that started the satellite Internet with such a belief: Iridium, Global Star, and Teledecic, went bankrupt together in the bursting wave of the dot-com economic bubble at the turn of the century. Iridium and Global Star had better luck and continued to do satellite communications business after being liquidated and acquired. Teledesik didn't even have a foothold on this, and the only Ka-band experimental satellite that was put into the sky in 1998 fell into the atmosphere in 2000 and was destroyed.
Why did these pioneers all fail and Musk succeeded?Because the concept of satellite networks based on technology selection is very different.
Until the beginning of the 2010s, almost all communication satellites were located at a distance of 360,000 km in geosynchronous orbit. Due to technical limitations, the higher the orbit is to support the flight, the more cumbersome the satellites will be, and communication satellites that are the size of buses and weigh more than 5 tons abound.
With such a large load, the number of satellites that make up the constellation and the number of rocket launches used must naturally be saved, so it is best to be placed in geosynchronous orbit, and the signal of a satellite can cover a fixed area of half the earth, otherwise the cost of satellites and launches and operating costs will be so high that the most advanced institutions are unwilling to pay.
The satellite is located in this kind of orbit, although the coverage area is enough, but the signal strength and hysteresis will be so low that it is impossible to access the Internet, and even the number of people in the area who can play ** at the same time has an upper limit. A single Iridium satellite can support 1,100 simultaneous calls and an average data transmission speed of 2 per second4kb。
Of course, technological progress today is far from comparable to that of the first Iridium thirty or forty years ago. Starlink's number one competitor, Wise, now has a geosynchronous orbit satellite Internet data transmission speed of about 20 meters per second, and the delay time is within 62-594 milliseconds.
However, in terms of similar indicators, the data transmission speed of Starlink is about 67m-97m per second, which is three or four times higher than that of Weixun;The delay time is about 20-45 milliseconds, which is twenty or thirty times faster than Weixun. In the 2022 game streamer evaluation**, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA, the speed of "Starlink"** is 165 per second16M, upload speed 7 per second35m, reaching the achievement of "being able to play Overwatch smoothly in the wilderness".
According to the third-party evaluation**, Starlink is the only one among all satellite Internet companies on the market that is expected to catch up with the service speed of physical fiber optic Internet.
With such an achievement, how can Starlink do it?The recipe for success lies in a creative shift: abandoning geosynchronous orbit and working in low-earth orbit.
Starlink initially represents a full-scale constellation of satellites that will be distributed in extreme low-Earth orbit (340 km above the ground), low Earth orbit (550 km above the ground), and medium-range orbit (1,150 km above the ground). At present, the "Starlink" satellites that have obtained the registration qualifications for orbit and frequency bands are distributed in low-earth orbit.
The low-earth orbit is more than ninety times closer to the ground than the geosynchronous orbit, and the signal delay time of the "Starlink" is twenty or thirty times faster than that of its competitors. And the benefits of closer orbit are not only in terms of speed, but also in controlling costs for satellite companies.
Comparison of distances between geostationary satellites and Starlink satellites
The proximity of the Internet satellite can significantly reduce the size and weight of the Internet satellite without compromising the performance. The original satellite of Starlink weighed 227 kilograms, which is equivalent to a home sofa. The latest "Starlink" satellite, which will leave the factory in May 2022, weighs 125 tons, the length is seven meters. The Weixun 3 satellite of the same generation of Weixun company weighs 64 tons.
As soon as the satellite is lighter, the cost of manufacturing and launching can be reduced. At the end of 2019, Musk and SpaceX's chief operating officer, Gwen Shotwell, said that the manufacturing cost of a single satellite was under $500,000. The single manufacturing cost of the same generation of Weixun-2 satellite is 62.4 billion.
In other words, an Internet satellite in geosynchronous orbit can build more than 2,000 "Starlink" satellites.
The same launch of the Space X Falcon Heavy rocket could put three or four Guardian satellites, or 45-60 Starlink satellites, into orbit. The efficiency is clear at a glance.
The signal advantage of light satellites is not only close to the ground, but also flexible signal adjustment. It is more convenient for a single light satellite to maneuver in orbit, and the satellite constellation can adjust the position of the satellite in the complex terrain, so that the signal incidence angle to the ground can be adapted to the user's change. This is something that is difficult for ground-based geostationary satellites to do.
Distribution of existing Starlink satellites
Moreover, the competitive advantage of "Starlink" is that it is still part of SpaceX, and it is much easier to take a reusable rocket into orbit.
Even competitors have had to rent SpaceX rockets. Weixun gave up on other rocket services early on, leasing SpaceX's heavy Falcon rockets to put satellites. Due to grievances, OneWeb has been leasing rocket launch satellites from Russia and Europe, but in the spring of 2022, the situation changed abruptly, and more than 30 satellites were detained by Russia on the launch site ......OneWeb finally succumbed to reality and announced at the end of 2022 that it would switch to leasing SpaceX's Falcon-9 rockets to carry satellites.
One company goes public, and two companies make money
SpaceX's rocket and satellite business has so far achieved mutual benefit. Fish gang water gang fish, load gang vehicle. The global market share of satellite Internet will reach $412 billion in 2040, and SpaceX has seized the opportunity of the blue ocean.
Even if you only look at the moment, according to the estimation of the rating agency and SpaceX's own release, the revenue of "Starlink" in 2021 is 2$2.1 billion, $1.4 billion in 2022, and more than $3 billion in 2023, equivalent to 4% of SpaceX's total revenue. The revenue target for 2024 is $15 billion.
Since the launch of the first satellites in May 2019, more than 2 million users in 60 countries and regions have purchased the Starlink service. Other satellite communication companies have more than one million users, and it generally takes about ten years.
And "Starlink" is also going to involve the best business. In October 2023, SpaceX released a new webpage to advertise its upcoming "Starlink Direct to Cell" service, which plans to provide cellular connectivity via satellite to "existing LTE phones." The service will initially be limited to SMS services in 2024, followed by voice and data capabilities in 2025, along with support for IoT devices.
The webpage reads: "Direct to Cell works with existing LTE phones as long as you can see the sky. Seamless access to text, voice, and data without changing hardware, firmware, or special applications. ”
If any company is **, SMS, Internet all-inclusive, it is equivalent to sitting on the money printing machine, and it can't be grown if you want to. On November 2, 2023, Musk announced that "Starlink" has achieved cash flow breakeven. According to the promise in 2021, "Starlink" will be spun off and listed soon.
The break-even of new technology projects within four years is a great achievement, whether it is in the last era when PPT fraudulent investment has never been shipped, or in this era of monetary tightening. Moreover, if "Starlink" is successfully spun off and listed, it will have to pay its old club every time it launches a satellite on a SpaceX rocket in the future, and SpaceX's own book will be much brighter.
This achievement was achieved much earlier than expected, and when Musk made a bold statement in 2021, SpaceX COO Gwen Shotwell went back and said: the company expects that it may not be able to reach this goal by 2025.
Party B is better than Party A
The real popularity of "Starlink" comes from the sudden change in the situation in Eastern Europe since 2022. From the spring of 2022 to the present, SpaceX's performance has highlighted the extreme excellence of the product and the extreme disconnection of the boss.
On February 26, 2022, Musk responded to the public plea of Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Mykhalo Federov on social **, announcing the donation of "Starlink" ground terminals to Ukraine. On March 1, Federov tweeted a show of the arriving truck** to thank Musk.
In less than half a year since then, Starlink's products and services have withstood the literal test of firepower. Within a week of the arrival of the Starlink ground terminal, former enemy units of the Ukrainian army at the brigade level began to be used. In July 2022, the number of Starlink ground terminals activated in Ukraine reached 15-1.60,000 units, popularized to companies and platoon-level units.
"Starlink" has in fact become the backbone of the current Ukrainian Internet. Many ordinary Ukrainians enjoyed network speeds that were unobtainable in peacetime during wartime: the lower limit of the speed of "Starlink" in Ukraine is 50m per second, and this figure is also the upper limit of the speed of Ukraine's own telecom operators before the war.
Despite being disparaged by propaganda, the electronic warfare units of the Russian army actually perform at a high level on the battlefield. However, the Russian army is unable to locate the enemy's "Starlink" ground terminal through the signal to destroy it, nor can it effectively interfere with the signal.
Because the ground terminal of "Starlink" is physically small, it can be driven by car batteries and is flexibleThe satellites that make up the constellation are small in size and maneuverable, and it is difficult for the radiated signal to be triangulated enough to lock on to the target, and it is also difficult to calibrate the fixed spectrum of high-power interference.
Russia has tried to stop Starlink with cyber attacks, and the same cyber attacks cut off the signal of the defense to Ukraine at the beginning of the war. However, the U.S. Department of Defense liaison at SpaceX said that Starlink's service team resolved all interference and attacks from the network. At one point, "only one line of software was changed, and the attack failed".
After the Russian electronic warfare unit hacked Ukraine's domestic artillery command software, the Ukrainian artillery seamlessly connected to the "Starlink", and the combat efficiency did not decrease but increased.
Almost all the Ukrainian soldiers interviewed said that without "Starlink", life would not go on, "the battle will definitely be lost", and "without it, it will fall into chaos like a lack of oxygen".
Unfortunately, Musk immediately gave them a taste of what it was like. In September and October 2022, Musk repeatedly blocked the "Starlink" signal around the Russian-controlled area.
According to his latest biographer, the first time was that the Russian ambassador to the United States privately frightened him in September: if any Russian military port in Crimea was attacked (and it was attacked in October), it would be the beginning of a nuclear war. The next is because Musk's psychological activities play on their own: ah, if the Ukrainians don't see good and take it, a fully mobilized Russia will start a nuclear war, and humanity will turn to ashes and ......
It's not a brain supplement. When the signal was interrupted, the forces of the former enemy of Ukraine were indeed thrown into disarray. The result of the chaos is that Federov wants to beg Musk in the online chat to restore the signal: You are old and cut the line, the new reconquistad and the infrastructure on the front line are useless, this is a matter of human life, you are always a great good person for the benefit of the world with technology, please raise your hand.
Then the synopsis of Musk's reply is basically as described above.
And the Ukrainian official had no other way than to beg for it at that time, because the "Starlink" product belonged to the donation of SpaceX, not **. He was reluctant to continue his generosity, and the beneficiary could not sue him for breach of contract.
It is no exaggeration to say that Musk's move is unprecedented. Even the miracle of a machine like AGI to achieve spiritual intelligence was imagined in Greek mythology 2,300 years ago. But since 5,700 years ago, when humans began to manufacture ordnance, let alone doing it, people all over the world have never even thought that they could do it like Musk.
To solve this dilemma, the Pentagon signed an undisclosed contract with SpaceX in June 2023 to purchase Starlink services for official use by Ukraine. At the end of September 2023, an additional contract was signed to purchase customized satellite communication services from SpaceX's newly established "Star Shield" department.
However, Musk has not stepped into the world of defense contracting and ordnance manufacturing, and he complained to the biographer in the middle of the night: "How did I get involved in this war?".Starlink was never designed for war, it was for people who don't even have access to the Internet to watch online dramas, go to school, and live all kinds of peaceful lives. ”
Starlink's Ukrainian history, which is equivalent to the product of an electric tricycle factory being used by users as armored vehicles, has turned out to be quite good. The user has reaped the actual results, the manufacturer has debugged the product, and the product has made a name, which is a classic successful marketing case that can be written into the MBA textbook. However, the maverick behavior of the manufacturer boss has made this case a negative example of procurement regulation in administrative textbooks.