OneWeb to Begin Service by End of Year
Both
SpaceX and OneWeb have announced that they plan to begin commercial
service this year. They are both racing to convert the most beautiful
place in the world, whose unchanging vista has given a sense of peace
and belonging to millions of generations of people, animals and birds
-- the heavens -- into the world's largest garbage dump, streaking with
moving lights and the refuse of burned up and exploded satellites.
With its launches of April 28, May 4 and
May 9, 60 more satellites per launch, SpaceX now has 1,554 operating
Starlinksatellites in low orbit around the Earth. For command and
control of these satellites it has already built 61 ground stations in
the U.S., 1 in Canada , 6 in New Zealand, 9 in Australia, 2 in Germany, 2
in France, 3 in the UK, and 7 in Chile, and many more are under
construction. More than 10,000 customers are now beta testing the
satellite network, and 500,000 people worldwide have pre-ordered user
terminals. SpaceX expects to fill all their orders and begin commercial
service of high-speed Internet from space this summer. At that time,
users will still only be able to receive stationary service in a single
location. By the end of 2021, SpaceX expects to also be able to provide
mobile service anywhere in the world with user terminals that can be
mounted on ships, planes, RVs and trucks.
With its launch of 36 more satellites on April 25, OneWeb now has 182 satellites in low polar orbit. It has announced
that by June of this year, after two more launches, it will be able to
provide connectivity to the UK, Alaska, northern Europe, Greenland,
Iceland, the Arctic Seas and Canada, that it will begin commercial
service to those northern regions before the end of this year, and that
it will provide global service in 2022.
SpaceX states in its application to the FCC for approval of its mobile
user terminals that it is responding to consumer demand. It states that
by 2022 approximately 4,800 billion gigabytes of data will be exchanged
worldwide per year. "No longer are users willing to forego connectivity
while on the move," writes SpaceX.
And that is exactly the problem. People are treating data, which didn't
even exist as a commodity until the 1990s, as their God-given right.
They do not understand that "data" is not something abstract but has its
source in a finite and increasingly scarce natural world. That when you
manipulate "data" you are manipulating forests, oceans and wildlife.
People do not understand that the more data you shoot all over the
world, the quicker you scramble this planet's ecosystems until there is
nothing left of them.
Meanwhile, building and launching rockets is becoming quicker, easier
and cheaper all the time. A company called Relativity Space is now able
to produce rockets using the world's largest 3-D printer, dubbed
"Stargate." It already has contracts with Lockheed Martin, Telesat,
Iridium and other companies and plans to begin launching its disposable
rockets this fall. It advertises on its website that its rockets have "100 times fewer parts" and that it can go "from raw material to flight in 60 days."