In early 2015, Elon Musk announced that he would launch 12,000 communication satellites into space, weaving an airtight satellite network in Earth's low-Earth orbit to provide low-latency, high-speed Internet communication services for users around the world. The idea itself is very imaginative, quite subversive from a business point of view, and Musk gave it the sci-fi name of "Starlink", so the Starlink project caused a global sensation as soon as it was launched. Musk made a successful advertisement for his product without spending a penny, and had to say that he was a business genius, and Musk has done something similar more than once.
Objectively speaking, although the Starlink Project sounds very sci-fi and very tall, its principle is actually very simple, and it is not difficult to operate. We can think of Starlink satellites as routers and Wi-Fi signal amplifiers. The signal coverage of a router is limited, but setting up a few more signal amplifiers can expand the range of the signal, and the same is true for satellite routers. All the starlink satellites operate in specific low-Earth orbit, and 22 are connected in a string and orbit the Earth in real time, thus forming an Earth's low-Earth orbit Internet constellation.
Not long after, Musk announced that he would increase the number of Starlink satellites to 42,000. Since then, the Starlink program has been steadily advanced under the leadership of Musk, and as of now, Musk has launched more than two thousand Starlink satellites into space.
In September 2021, Rwanda, a small and unknown African country, suddenly submitted an application to the International Telecommunication Union for permission for 327,230 satellites in low Earth orbit. Rwanda has vowed that the country plans to create a huge space internet constellation, code-named "Cinnamon".
With 327,230 satellites, almost eight times musk's Starlink plan, can a Central African country with a GDP of only $11 billion support such a majestic project? What's more, Rwanda has so far only launched its only satellite in 2019 with the help of rockets from other countries.
Rwanda's attempt to challenge Musk may seem unreliable, but the traders behind it are not simple. The overall leader of the "Cinnamon" project in Rwanda is Greg Wheeler. Wheeler founded OneWeb, a global satellite telecommunications network company, in 2012 and attracted a huge investment of $1.35 billion from SoftBank Group Son. In March 2020, OneWeb filed for bankruptcy and founder Wheeler withdrew.
Greg Wheeler
Greg Wheeler had a good personal relationship with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and after withdrawing from OneWeb, Wheeler accepted an invitation from the Rwandan president to take full responsibility for the "Cinnamon" project.
In addition to the small African country of Rwanda, there are many countries and companies that have challenged Musk's Starlink program. Canada's Kepler New Company plans to launch 115,000 satellites to form a very large space network system, Bezos's Amazon plans to launch 3236 low-Earth orbit satellites, Germany's Rivada Space Network plans to launch 600 low-Earth orbit satellites, and the United States Boeing plans to launch 147 low-Earth orbit satellites...
If these "ambitious" plans are implemented smoothly, about 500,000 satellites of all kinds will be added to Earth's low Earth orbit, by which time Earth's low Earth orbit will become extremely crowded. More seriously, these satellites could also trigger the Kessler effect, which could eventually have disastrous consequences for Earth's low-Earth orbit.
In 1978, the American scientist Donald K. Kessler proposed the famous Kessler effect. The theory is that when space debris generated in Earth's low-Earth orbit reaches or exceeds the capacity limit, the number of spacecraft that fail due to debris collisions increases significantly. They collide with each other, creating more space debris, triggering a chain reaction known as "collision-level density."
Once this chain reaction occurs, the amount of space debris in Earth's low-Earth orbit will increase exponentially, and it may only take a few days or weeks to follow, and the entire orbiting satellites in Earth's low-Earth orbit will be destroyed. At that time, whether it is space networks, satellite navigation, satellite communications, weather forecasts, etc., it will be greatly affected or even unusable. The convenience of technology, as well as the civilization that has been established, will be reversed.
However, we don't need to be too pessimistic at this time, because the 500,000 satellites in the plan are still only castles in the air, and the estimate of what can actually be launched in the end is not even one-tenth of the time.
Rwanda may not have even understood the ITU rules before it hastily applied to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for spectrum and orbital resources for 327,230 satellites. The ITU stipulates that any country or entity that applies for satellite spectrum and orbit resources must complete satellite launch and signal verification within 7 years of the approval of the application, otherwise the approved application will be invalidated.
So, a country like Rwanda, which has no funds, two without technology, and no launch tools, has made such an application to itself is purely sensationalism. Of course, we can't rule out that Rwanda learned the essence of Musk's business philosophy, which is actually to make a free advertisement for itself.
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