The last week has seen a whole bunch of headlines related to management shakeups at the other SpaceX project, internet satellite constellation Starlink.
“Is SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Project in Trouble?” asked Forbes.
“Musk shakes up SpaceX in race to make satellite launch window,” reported Reuters.
“SpaceX’s Starlink satellites ‘happy and healthy’ as Elon Musk fires managers and VP,” wrote Teslarati (a Musk-watchers website).
Let’s take a look at this recent cull on the project and focus on Starlink in a little more detail. After all, Starlink will be the largest constellation ever, with SpaceX having applied for over 12,000 orbital slots from the ITC. That’s a lot of satellites. And a lot of space debris if it goes bad.
It’s worth some column inches.
Starlink—What Is It?
Starlink is proposed to be a broadband internet satellite constellation consisting of at least 4,425 satellites, with further regulatory filings having been submitted, potentially allowing up to 12,000 satellites in total to be launched into orbit. As of February 2018, two test satellites have already been launched.
Earlier in 2018, SpaceX was granted an approval for orbital deployment and operating authority for the SpaceX NGSO Satellite System by the Federal Communications Commission (FTC).
The approval stated that it will “Authorize Space Exploration Holdings, LLC to construct, deploy, and operate a proposed non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite system comprising 4,425 satellites for the provision of fixed-satellite service (FSS) around the world.”
Those 4,425 satellites are Ka- and Ku-band sats and would orbit at about 746 miles altitude. Additional applications have been made for an additional 7518 slots in the seldom-used V-band, at an orbit of about 211 miles.
Because Starlink will be operating in this NGSO region, which is lower than the GEO of traditional comms satellites, it will have a competitive edge over competitors by having a reduced latency—thanks to it being significantly closer to Earth.
NGSO
The term NGSO (non-geostationary orbit) is fairly broad and covers orbits ranging from LEO up to MEO…basically anything within GEO that isn’t GEO itself. Hence, the clever name.
The aforementioned traditional comms satellites occupy the geostationary Earth orbit (GEO), meaning they orbit the Earth once a day, and have a static ground track. If you could see them from the Earth, they would appear as a static point in the sky, from where it can cover a wide portion of the Earth from GEO, roughly 21,750 miles away. From its fixed location, a satellite in GEO can beam whatever it wants to a large audience, or it can beam directly down to a ground station equipped with a static receiver (static, because it doesn’t have to track the satellite).
Anything closer than GEO is going to have an orbital period faster than one sidereal day, and so will appear to be moving from one side of the sky to the other (for a basic circular/low eccentricity orbit). What this means in a nutshell is that the SpaceX satellites will be moving a lot faster and will have a smaller coverage, and so they will need to compensate by having many satellites to maintain uninterrupted coverage on the ground. These satellites will communicate with each other and data will be relayed behind the scenes, beamed down from the nearest satellites above.
When operational, users of the service at any point on the Earth will be able to access the satellite network and the internet via their own personal terminal—which will apparently be the size of a pizza box, hoped to retail for less than $200. No point in giving internet to the masses if the masses can’t afford it, right?
Apparently the first two satellites in orbit are working fine, as SpaceX employees have been playing Counter Strike and streaming 4k video from the satellites.
Give Us Hundreds of Satellites Soon Or Else
Along with the approval, the FTC stipulated that SpaceX must launch half of those satellites within six years of the date of approval. So that means SpaceX must launch over 1200 satellites by 2024. This is a new requirement for the FTC who are used to dealing with smaller applications. By insisting that SpaceX delivers half of its constellation in a fixed period, it means SpaceX can’t just apply for a load of spectrum allocations and sit on them to the detriment of the competition. SpaceX asked for a waiver, and didn’t get one.
An FCC press release at the time noted that, in the preceding year, the FCC had approved requests by OneWeb, Space Norway, and Telesat to access the United States market to provide broadband services using satellite technology. These approvals are the first of their kind for a new generation of large, non-geostationary satellite orbit, fixed-satellite service systems, and the Commission continues to process other, similar requests.
As you can see, competition is heating up and deadlines are tight in this growing market. It’s no wonder things are being shaken up over at SpaceX’s Starlink office.
The Cull
According to the reports of last week, the firings happened back in June, when Musk and senior managers came to disagreements over how quickly they should be developing the satellites in order to meet the test schedule.
Musk wants quicker iteration cycles and fewer prototypes, while former (recently-fired) employees like SpaceX VP of Satellites, Rajeev Badyal, wanted further iteration before building the production flight models.
The Reuters article reports that the firings occurred within hours of Musk landing at the Starlink office in Washington. SpaceX has replied since that two of the employees left on their own accord during a longer period of a general shakeup designed to get things back on track.
Whatever the truth of the matter, a few people who disagreed with the accelerated pace of development are now no longer working at SpaceX. It would seem that a few of those employees were formerly employed at Microsoft and other such software companies, accustomed to a more traditional pace of development.
From a project management perspective, it would sure be interesting to know exactly what corners Musk wanted to cut in terms of reducing iteration cycles. Where would the risk be introduced? How would the reliability be compromised? Would it even be compromised?
Many questions.
Junk
According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), there are 4,857 satellites orbiting the Earth as of 2018, with 1,980 of those being operational. There are a lot more rocket bodies and other bits of junk floating around too.
When SpaceX has managed to deploy their 4,425-satellite constellation, it will have single-handedly doubled the amount of satellites in orbit. When it launches the second wave, that amount will practically double again. Add to that the proposed 720 (and maybe even up to 2000) coming from SpaceX’s competitor OneWeb, 117 from Telesat Canada and a few hundred from Boeing, and it’s gonna get cramped up there in the next 10 to 15 years. Or is it?
Well, yes and no. These satellites will have a certain amount of maneuverability and they will be divided over 83 orbital planes. There’s a fair amount of distance between them—it is space after all. But still, it’s nice to clean up for the future, especially as the amount of satellites in the sky is set to multiply vastly in the coming decade.
NASA currently requires 90 percent of satellites can deorbit after service, which SpaceX says they have accounted for as it plans to deorbit the satellite within a year of the end of the life of the satellite. There is currently no regulation on exactly how long a satellite should take to deorbit after its operations, but the trend for agencies and manufacturers is that they aim for 25 years as some kind of limit. Clearly the more junk that goes up, that deorbit time may wish to come down a bit. SpaceX is aiming for one year, and NASA is happy with that plan.
And?
And that’s about it. Space will get more crowded, people will get more internet anywhere in the world (which is a good thing), and microsat manufacture and launch is looking to get a whole lot cheaper, meaning even more junk, and probably a desire to reduce deorbit times a lot more as time goes on.
Musk plans to use profits from Starlink to fund BFR and the whole Mars thing, just as soon as he get can an extra 500 or 750 million bucks in leveraged loans for Starlink.
But if this simulation shows accurate, Starlink could prove very appealing to traders and banks who can benefit from low latency internet anywhere, anytime, opening its use to a much bigger and more lucrative market. Those loans likely won’t be an issue to pay off.
The cost of the Starlink project has been estimated to be around $10 billion.