Musk launches 42,000 satellites to replace 5G? Not only is it not possible, it can also be a disaster for the earth

Elon Musk is a very ambitious and charismatic entrepreneur, and he can be regarded as a scientist. After all, people are doing things in space all day long.

Launching rockets, building starships, colonizing Mars are All Musk's work, but also building electric cars, brain-computer interaction, artificial intelligence development, it can be said that the head of SpaceX is the real-life version of Tony Stark.

In 2015, he proposed to build a global satellite communication network to provide low-cost and stable network services for people around the world.

This makes people feel that they are replacing the optical fibers installed on the ground, underground, and on the seabed, as well as the communication base stations that are spread all over the world. At that time, we only need to connect to the satellites in the sky to achieve efficient network services.

Such an ambitious plan seems to be bragging, but the charm of Musk is that the bulls he once bragged about have been put into practice, and they have basically come true.

The communications satellite is no exception, with the Falcon 9 rocket carrying 60 satellites in Space in May 2019, sending each satellite weighing only 260 kilograms into a 300-kilometer orbit, which will then gradually climb to a 550-kilometer low-Earth orbit via built-in engines.

That's why, for a period of time just after launch, humans can see these satellites lined up in a row across the night sky, which is enough to see that these satellites have a very strong ability to reflect sunlight.

These satellites mainly rely on solar panels to obtain energy, solar panels have a high albedo, and the satellites themselves will also be in order to prevent direct sunlight from absorbing too much heat, usually wearing gold or silver armor, these satellites themselves are also very high albedo.

After the first launch, the program was officially named "Starlink Project" and expanded the number of satellites to 12,000, with the plan to deploy 1,584 satellites in a 550-kilometer-high orbit first.

So far, in June 2020, the Starlink program has launched a total of 9 times, and nearly 600 satellites have been sent to low Earth orbit, and this plan will continue in the future;

And Musk seems to be not satisfied with 12,000 satellites, but also added a plan of 30,000, the future musk's starlink plan alone, will launch 42,000 satellites, which is like an astronomical number.

The program will provide network services to North America and Canada next year.

Musk sees this as a major innovation that will change the way we live and the way we see the world.

As a melon eater, the masses can only admire the cow after watching it! I also have to admire that Musk is the only one who can realize all kinds of wild ideas.

However, in addition to admiration, people will worry about whether the 5G we just led is about to be subverted. To be replaced? It feels like people are providing network services in heaven.

In fact, Musk's Starlink plan not only can not replace 5G, nor can it be compared with 5G, or even the convenience of 4G.

Why is that? So why is Musk still willing to burn money to do this?

First of all, Musk's starlink is not to let our mobile phones, computers, planes and other electronic terminals directly connect to the satellite Internet, because the band used by the satellite to transmit the signal is inconsistent with the signal band accepted by the electronic terminal we use.

If you want to use satellite Internet access, you need to use additional receiving equipment to receive and convert signals to use it. Like this thing in the picture below.

We can't always take this with us when we go out.

That can be used at home, but the high-frequency millimeter wave penetration ability used by satellites is very weak, so if you want to use it at home, you need to install this antenna outside the house, which is not a bit back to the feeling of the antenna pot of the year.

And the most important thing is that 42,000 satellites can not bring the needs of global users, and now there are more than 10 million 4G base stations and 5G base stations in the world, and this coverage is still unable to meet the needs of everyone;

Musk's 42,000 satellites can not drive the demand for global users to access the Internet, if the number of users is too large, it can be stuck to explode.

Therefore, Musk's StarLink plan is not open to everyone, he wants to limit the number of users, and does not want to replace the optical fiber on the ground, as well as tens of millions of communication base stations. Instead, it wants to supplement the dead end of ground base station communication.

For example, in some remote areas, such as alpine mountains, oceans, and primeval forests, it is impossible to build base stations, so this is where Starlink is used.

There are also high-altitude communications, such as the stratosphere of the Earth, which are the dead ends of base stations, and star chains have an absolute advantage in these places. It can be used as a civil aviation or as a military, which is very important for the military.

Musk also has corresponding cooperation with the US military. It seems to be high-level civilian network communication, but in fact, the pace of globalization in the United States is intensifying, and the US military can use network communication that is one step faster wherever it goes, so the money is broad and has very great interests.

And more importantly, the orbit outside the Earth is limited and is a very precious non-renewable resource, although the orbital resources are shared by all countries in the world;

But the orbit beyond the Earth has always been a first-come, first-served basis, and Musk's 42,000 satellites have lifted off, which is actually a reasonable plunder of orbital resources;

People now occupy favorable orbits, so if you want to launch your own communication satellites, you need to find another way.

What worries astronomers around the world is that so many satellites have taken off may be a threat to the earth, and even trapping humans on the earth in the future, or making it impossible for humans to make astronomical observations on the ground, so astronomers have been opposing Musk's star chain plan.

It should be known that since the launch of satellites in the 1960s, the total number of satellites launched in the world is only more than 4,000, and Musk alone is like launching 40,000 satellites, which has directly increased by 10 times.

In the past, we used to say that sky garbage was a threat to future humans going out of the earth, so Musk's fly-like launch of satellites would lead to a significant increase in the risk of expansion of satellites in extra-Earth orbit.

For example, in September 2019, the Starlink 44 satellite almost collided with some ESA meteorological satellites, and finally avoided the accident through emergency orbit change.

If the collision is like a bullet, the tiny high-speed debris that forms is unpredictable to puncture everywhere outside the Earth's space. will pose a threat to all spacecraft outside of Earth;

If a spacecraft is hit, it will be directly damaged and more debris will form, and in the long run, the outer layer of the earth will become a garbage dump.

Such a planet would trap human beings to death, and our end would be to wait for extinction.

Therefore, scientists believe that when we have not yet thought of solving the problem of space junk quickly and efficiently, we should not launch a large number of satellites aggressively.

Launching a satellite is a good time, but the consequences can be serious.

In addition to space junk, astronomers have a headache with light pollution.

The extraterrestrial space of the earth is integrated into the following picture, which looks very technological, but the albedo of these things is too high.

These satellites affect the observation of the night sky by ground-based optical telescopes, which is a nightmare for astronomers.

Although these satellites are generally invisible to the naked eye and do not look as bright as the stars in the sky, astronomers need to observe more than just stars and galaxies that are relatively close to us;

We also need to observe the situation of the early universe, which requires us to see distant stars with very weak light, so astronomers often use optical telescopes to expose the sky for hours to collect photons in the dark night sky.

If there are satellites everywhere outside the Earth, then these satellites will destroy long exposures, so that the night sky we see is as follows.

The lines of this line are left by satellites crossing the sky, which makes the picture lose some detail. If there were more satellites, then astronomers would be unemployed. There is no way to watch the sky at all.

You might think that we could launch telescopes into the outer sky like Hubble, circumventing not only the effects of satellites, but also the effects of Earth's atmosphere.

But the cost of launching a telescope into outer space is too high, and it is quite difficult to maintain, and the cost is huge, so the ground observatory is still the main force for sky viewing.

And the frequency of these satellites will also affect radio astronomy, bringing more background noise to radio telescopes.

Therefore, Musk's Starlink plan is still quite a problem. All parties also hope that Musk's team can have more communication with scientists and astronomers to find a solution.

If, by the time the next 42,000 satellites take off, it would be a disaster for astronomers and a threat to security beyond Earth's orbit.