New service — selling space on a satellite

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The emergence of this technology will make Elon Musk's company the fastest transcontinental provider in the world. The fact is that the speed of a laser beam in a fiber-optic cable is much lower than in a vacuum. When it comes to a few kilometers, the difference does not play a role. But if you need to transmit signals between continents, then every millisecond costs billions of dollars. This is important primarily for stock speculators. Whoever can first transmit information from the London Stock Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange will gain a significant advantage over their competitors.


The application filed by SpaceX with the FCC states verbatim: “…The belize number data satellites will be slightly larger and (they) will generate more power, allowing them to support enhanced capabilities now and accommodate additional payloads in the future…”

If we translate this dry official formulation into simple and understandable language, it turns out that there will be space and energy for additional equipment on Starlink Gen2 satellites. That is, SpaceX is already planning to manufacture spacecraft with the ability to install antennas, transmitters, or other third-party devices.

Elon Musk is making another revolution in the space services market. First, he reduced the cost of launching a satellite into orbit by about three times. Before that, many businesses did not even dream of their own satellite. They developed ground-based solutions. Reducing the cost from $80-100 million to about $20 million increased the market volume. Now companies are immediately thinking about orbit, they are no longer developing ground-based, but space-based solutions.

With the start of the Starlink constellation, Musk began selling not entire launches, but only space among his satellites. This further reduced the price. Now the third stage - businesses do not even need to develop their own satellite. Now they will only be able to rent space and energy on the Starlink device.