A magnetic storm in early 2022 made the famous "Iron Man" Musk in the United States a little sour.
On February 3, SpaceX, the leader of commercial spaceflight, had just launched 49 Starlink satellites under the instructions of their CEO Musk, when it was swept away by a sudden magnetic storm.
On February 4, 40 of the 49 stars, having lived their glory for only one day, fell.
Musk once said in an interview that StarLink will consist of 42,000 satellites and cost about $30 billion, not including post-maintenance and replacement costs.
In this way, a satellite can be nearly $1 million cheaper.
A magnetic storm, harvesting a full $40 million from SpaceX at once, is heart-wrenching.
However, for the ambitious Musk, this pain is nothing.
Even the 42,000 stars of the all star chains will have a service life of only 7 years. After a cycle, all of them are replaced, so that an average of 6,000 are launched every year.
Based on the calculation of 60 launches at a time, 100 launches are required per year, an average of one time in three and a half days.
But at present, SpaceX's launch frequency is only once every two weeks, and it can barely launch more than a thousand stars a year.
At this rate, it would take 42 years to launch 42,000 satellites, almost the life cycle of six satellites. In this way, the "Starlink" plan will be a "black hole" that will never end.
However, according to Musk, the "Starlink" plan will be the most profitable project in his hands. Because as long as it wins 5% of the global communications market share, StarLink's annual revenue can exceed $50 billion, which is exactly 17 times the revenue of SpaceX's entire company in 2019.
Compared with its new energy vehicles, starship programs and commercial space projects, the "Starlink" plan is definitely the "Golden Bull business" in SpaceX's future business matrix.
Therefore, this "black hole" is more like a gold-sucking storm eye in Musk's eyes.
However, from a business point of view, the "StarLink" program is not like a quick-to-make deal.
Starlink, which is already flashing in space, currently provides network services mainly to North American and European countries.
Users in these countries first need to purchase a terminal receiver worth $499 and then pay a base fee of $99 per month.
But that terminal receiver costs $2,500, and it takes about two years to recover that cost.
In the United States, a home broadband network built from a ground base station costs about $80 per month.
In contrast, the cost performance of "StarLink" network services is really not too high. It is not so simple to get the pursuit of ordinary consumers.
However, this "global satellite Internet" - "Starlink", which has been repeatedly emphasized by Musk and mainly applied to civilian scenarios, has received great attention from the US government and military from the beginning of its birth.
Various official orders, military support, and huge equity financing have allowed the "Starlink" plan to travel all the way through the "black hole".
What is the real intent of the StarLink project? Is there a hidden military purpose? Or is it to leapfrog 5G? What kind of relationship does Musk have with the U.S. Department of Defense?
Let's take a look at what is hidden behind the "StarLink"?
A continuation of "Star Wars"
42,000 stars, covered by a network of three giant satellites, covering orbits of 340 kilometers, 550 kilometers and 1150 kilometers from the ground, will form a huge "constellation" around the Earth.
This is reminiscent of the famous "Star Wars Program" during the Cold War.
In March 1983, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced at the White House that he would launch a program to "eliminate the strategic nuclear missile threat."
The plan, which was aimed at suppressing the Cold War rival of the Soviet Union at the time, was described by then-Senator Edward Kennedy as "the reckless 'Star Wars' program."
With the dissipation of the smoke of the Cold War, "Star Wars" seems to have become the best theme of film and television dramas, and has gradually entered history.
However, the United States, which has a strong sense of space privilege, attaches great importance to the future, and the appropriate arrival of the "Starlink" program has quickly activated their restless hearts, and the "New Star Wars Program" is about to begin.
In fact, since its birth, the "Starlink" project has hidden the GENES of the US military.
Some of their launch sites are housed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in the United States; their technical validation tests are included in the Confidential Interconnection Program for satellites and Air Force fighters.
The US media claimed that in the future, "StarLink" will replace GPS and become the best choice for the next generation of the US military to "reliable navigation and timing".
Some test results show that the positioning accuracy of the "Starlink" satellite is within 1 meter, the signal strength is more than 10 times that of GPS, and the anti-interference ability is extremely strong.
The performance of navigation and positioning, "StarLink" can be expected in the future. In terms of broadband communication, its original design intention, the performance of "StarLink" is even more eye-catching.
At present, most of the US military communication satellites are located in high orbit, with a long distance and a long delay, and there is a delay of 250 milliseconds. The "Starlink" satellite in low orbit has reduced the delay by an order of magnitude, only 25 milliseconds.
This precision delay, which is quite valuable in military applications, enables real-time communication between command bodies and weapons platforms.
The new type of operational concept proposed by the US military has long been inseparable from the "star chain" surrounding.
"Multi-domain operations", "mosaic warfare", "combat clouds", etc., are all based on the distributed and extremely fast data communication provided by "Starlink" to achieve the cohesion of "from sensors to weapons" this kind of cohesion joint combat effect.
Speaking of "sensors to weapons", in fact, the US military has long begun to lay out in this regard.
The "Starlink" program is not musk's initiative, its essence is to use near-Earth satellites as communication base stations.
As early as the 1990s, the famous Motorola company had tried this model, that is, the then famous "Iridium Project" to establish a global mobile communication system.
However, it may be that the "Iridium Plan" at that time was too advanced, and the development of terrestrial communications in the same period was too rapid, and the global mobile phone users were rapidly popularized.
As a result, the dazzling "Iridium Project" failed to form a sufficiently large user group for a while, and eventually became a short-lived meteor.
However, the U.S. military did not miss this opportunity, and they quietly carried battlefield kill sensors on the satellites of the "Iridium" constellation, and space-sensing sensors on the communication satellites of the United States and allies.
In this way, in this immature business exploration process, the US military has quietly stepped into the footsteps of military applications. They transplanted the "eyes" that spied and perceived the battlefield into space.
Today, more mature and excellent "star chains" have emerged, each of which is equipped with kryptonian ion thrusters and has a fairly flexible maneuvering ability.
It's a better platform, and the U.S. military has no reason to miss it.
In November 2019, the U.S. Defense Agency for Advanced Technology and Research announced that it would build a "bookmaker" system that uses low-orbit satellites to monitor the world.
This coincided with the launch of the first batch of 60 "Starlink" satellites into orbit for half a year.
Once the "Starlink" is equipped with sensors, robotic arms, warheads, lasers, microwaves and other equipment, satellites and space stations of other countries will face the threat of the "Starlink".
Encountering reconnaissance and surveillance, soft killing, hard destruction, etc., are all difficult to resist.
Musk with the U.S. Department of Defense
Although Musk has always emphasized that "Starlink" is mainly used in civilian scenarios, the US government and the Department of Defense can always put forward prospects and plans that can match Starlink at the right time.
In March 2018, Falcon IX tested the Starlink program — launching two starlink experimental satellites and conducting communications tests.
Just that month, Trump's idea of forming a space force was written into the National Defense Strategy report.
Just three months later, on June 18, Trump ordered the U.S. Department of Defense to immediately launch the formation of the Space Force, demanding independence from the Air Force as the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces.
The U.S. military has always been able to give SpaceX considerable support at the right time, whether it is a contract on the surface or a technical cooperation on the dark side.
In March 2019, the U.S. Air Force awarded the company a $28 million contract to conduct a military service demonstration verification of Starlink.
In November of the same year, in a low-orbit technology verification test, StarLink provided network services with a bandwidth of up to 610Mbps for the C-12 transport aircraft of the US Air Force.
In addition to the Air Force, the U.S. Army has not slowed down its cooperation with Starlink.
In May 2020, the U.S. Army and SpaceX signed a "Mutual Aid R&D Agreement" that will take three years to test the feasibility of the StarLink broadband constellation transmitting data between military networks.
In the "Project Fusion-2021" live-fire exercise, the U.S. Army went further.
They use sensors on the Starlink satellite to detect targets and transmit data to the Titan ground station for intelligent decision-making, autonomously choosing to strike weapons and destroying targets.
With the help of StarChain, they shortened the time of the complete kill chain to 20 seconds.
With such frequent and close cooperation with the U.S. military, the StarLink program makes people have to think about it. What kind of relationship does Musk have with the US Department of Defense, and what is the connection between SpaceX and the US military?
In fact, they are inextricably linked in terms of personal relationships and project cooperation. There is never a love-hate relationship in the world for no reason.
There's an important guy here, and that's Mike Griffin. This is an aerospace expert, the name of asteroid 159999, who was also the chief engineer of the Star Wars program.
As early as 2002, Musk had dragged Griffin with him to Russia to buy rockets, and they wanted to buy the fist product of the Russian space department, the "Dnieper" rocket, also known as the SS-18 "Satan" missile.
Griffin's identity was still president of in-Q-tel, a company with a strange name, a private nonprofit funded by the CIA.
Musk, who was bulging in his pocket, brought $10 million and wanted 3 Dnieper rockets. But Musk obviously underestimated the appetite of the other party, the Russians are very crisp, a piece of $8 million...
The business did not work out, but Musk's gains were not small. On the plane back home, he began to think about the profits of rockets.
Soon, the calculating Musk came up with a staggering figure — the Russians offered $8 million for a rocket that cost only $240,000 in raw materials.
With such a large profit margin, why not do it yourself!
Unable to suppress his excitement, Musk thus began his ambitious rocket-building plan...
On the other side, Griffin was not idle. Three years later, he had an important moment in his career.
On March 11, 2005, then-U.S. President George W. Bush announced the nomination of Griffin as the 11th director of NASA.
One is a top aerospace expert, the most prominent official in the U.S. space industry; the other is a genius adventurer and creator, whose acquaintances meet and naturally collide with countless sparks.
Under the impetus of Griffin, the cooperation between NASA and SpaceX has continued to deepen.
Musk's "space trajectory" is also getting closer and closer to NASA.
In 2008, SpaceX received $1.6 billion in funding from NASA's Commercial Replenishment Services program.
On December 8, 2010, the Falcon 9 rocket developed by SpaceX successfully launched the Dragon spacecraft into earth orbit and smoothly turned back, causing a sensation around the world.
The light of aerospace, which is the strength of the whole country, has thus befallen a private enterprise.
Fast forward to 2018, when Griffin, who is already deputy secretary of defense, pushed for the formation of the Space Development Agency.
The main responsibility of the Space Development Agency is to accelerate the military capacity building in space, focusing on commercial low-orbit satellites.
Naturally, SpaceX received another big package.
In October 2020, NASA awarded Space Exploration Technologies a $150 million contract to develop a military version of the Starlink satellite.
With such a dazzling aura blessing, under the strong impetus of the genius adventurer Musk, it is really difficult for the "StarLink" project to think about it.
Its core values have long shifted to the military. The new round of "Star Wars" may turn the starting clockwork to SpaceX.
"StarLink" plans with 5G
The core of the value of "StarLink" is broadband communication.
A large reason why the satellite Internet can stand out is that it is the "best reference" for current 5G communications.
This has to be reminiscent of Huawei's 5G, which was feared and suppressed by the United States some time ago.
Huawei's 5G has long been well-known around the world and has participated in the network construction of many countries. In the next era of the Internet of Everything, it has always played a strong driving force.
The application prospect of 5G is the trend of the times, and the future of smart cities, artificial intelligence, virtual space, etc. are inseparable from the support of 5G.
In theory, the peak download speed of 5G is 20Gbps, and the download speed is hundreds of M-class when actually used, and the network latency is less than 10 milliseconds.
The design peak bandwidth of a single satellite of the Starlink program is also 20 Gbps, which is consistent with 5G.
But in fact, the bandwidth of "StarLink" is far less than 5G.
Because in communications, one of the most important indicators of 5G is traffic density, which requires 100Tbps of bandwidth per square kilometer.
This indicator guarantees the transmission speed and response time of 5G. Behind it, there are a large number of base stations to support, without a sufficient number of base stations, there will not be such a fast speed.
Now compared with the "Starchain", it is relatively simple to understand, and a satellite in the "Starchain" can be regarded as a 5G base station on the ground.
According to the mainland's planning, the number of domestic 5G base stations will exceed 10 million in the future. This is only the mainland's domestic statistics, and if the scope is expanded to the world, the number will be even larger.
Moreover, the power of the communication signal will decay at a square rate with the distance transmitted. Air and other disturbances are taken into account, and even decay at a rate close to cubic.
Therefore, the 42,000 satellites that sound incredibly shocking are equivalent to 42,000 base stations, compared with 5G, which has a huge base station coefficient, and its communication capacity is really difficult to match.
However, from another point of view, the "Starlink" plan has a great potential threat to 5G base stations. This is the bottleneck of 5G in the era of mobile Internet, or the base station.
Base station cannot be moved!
The base stations of 5G are based on fixed-point arrangements, which are very dense and require backbone network support. The "StarLink" plan only needs a signal transceiver on the ground for online download.
Signal transceivers do not need to be fixed, and can be placed in any corner of the world, whether it is Antarctica, or the Amazon jungle, or the vast ocean, the endless desert, and even any "island" without a backbone network.
At the same time, let's not forget that Musk's other adventurer program that has been fully used is the Tesla electric car, which is also a potential carrier for transceivers. It is likely to exceed the global density in the future than 5G base stations.
Therefore, for now, the "StarLink" plan and 5G can play a complementary role in many scenarios. But looking to the future, the "StarLink" plan is not like benchmarking the 5G era, but more like a weapon used by the United States to move towards 6G.
epilogue
In the field of spaceflight, orbital location and spectrum resources have long been extremely scarce natural resources. The competition of satellite Internet is a battle for space low orbit and spectrum resources.
According to the rules of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), orbit and spectrum resources are allocated primarily on a "first-come, first-served" basis, and late-declaring parties cannot adversely interfere with satellites in first-to-file countries.
There is also a specific requirement that, with the exception of satellite broadcasting services, a State may not make a claim to other States that its satellite network does not cover its territory.
So when the star-studded "star chain" comes over the continent, we really don't know what to do with it.
Fortunately, the mainland is not unaware of this, and it is also taking precautions.
There are such large-scale aerospace engineering plans as the Hongyun Project, the Hongyan Global Satellite Constellation Communication System, and the Space-Earth Integrated Information Network, and some civil aerospace companies are gradually making efforts.
Some commercial satellite companies have successively proposed their own "starlink" plans, such as Beijing Nine Days MSI Technology, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun's investment in Galaxy Aerospace and so on.
According to the official website of the International Telecommunication Union, in November 2020, the mainland submitted applications for the use of orbits and wireless frequency bands of two giant satellite constellations, including nearly 13,000 broadband communication satellites in 7 groups in phase 2.
However, it is easy to submit an application, and it is difficult to put the stars on the sky. The cost of launching a rocket should not be underestimated.
Compared to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, our rocket cost is still much higher, and the recycling efficiency is not as good as that of the Falcon.
Moreover, we also have an unavoidable shortcoming, that is, these 13,000 stars belong to different units, and the set effect between each other is still debatable.
Therefore, jumping out of the simple number of satellite scale, how to integrate resources and create an efficient and complete satellite industry chain is the key to the key.
Behind the abyss, a pair of eyes that gaze into the abyss is needed.
The more we face a strong opponent, the more we can find our own shortcomings. However, this is not a reason for us to retreat, but the driving force of our evolution.
In the near future, the ownership of space resources will be directly related to information security, space security and strategic security between countries, which will be a new battlefield that cannot be avoided.
On the other hand, we put aside political and military factors and look at the "StarLink" plan.
The "Star Wars" program was originally a product of the Cold War.
Now, after the unwilling lonely Americans began to re-bless, the "Starlink" program has brought them various conveniences, but also brought many troubles to the space environment and space ecological civilization.
Since the first artificial satellite was launched in 1957, human beings have launched nearly 10,000 artificial celestial bodies in succession.
Over time, some of the man-made objects were successfully recycled, and some were banished into space and became eternal garbage.
At present, the number of satellites still in orbit is about 2,000. SpaceX's Starlink plan directly raises the order of magnitude of satellites to 42,000, which will increase the density of existing satellites by about 20 times.
At that time, endless artificial satellites and space junk float above the earth, and near-Earth space will be a scene of "stars" flashing.
As the "star chain" satellites rise into space, a dome network quietly envelops our planet. These artificial stars shining above the earth, will sprinkle happiness, or hidden dangers...
Let time say it all!