I love the Tesla, it is currently the only car i wish to own, more than any Supercar.

And now Broadband internet from Space

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2016/11/21/spacex-satellite-broadband/1

Could be the plot to Kingsman unfolding before our very eyes.

Certainly a lot of sh*t from movies coming true, i wonder when Skynet will open. 

A friend living in a valley with very poor reception is now using a satellite via Norwegian company for both phone (his old lanline number) and internet works great sofar.

The problem isn't launching these, it's going to be keeping them up. LEO sats tend to run through a tiny bit of atmosphere and that slows them down, resulting in spectacular re-entry lights.

Second issue is that the military tend to use this area for their spy sats, they won't be happy with Musk cluttering the Near Earth Orbits with sats.

Contention may be an issue too, if too many people subscribe the data rates will drop.

apparently each satellite will only stay up there for about 7 years   (because being that low they'll have to bring them down before they 'fall' back down)

if they need to replace them every 7 years, that's just over 12 per week they'll have to keep launching to replace ones coming down :-o


I wonder how many they can fit on each rocket

and/or maybe they have a plan to have something to go up and keep pushing them up higher ?

or something else ?

Which is precisely why nobody has actually done this already.

Elon Musk may have some ideas but in almost every case someone else has thought of it before.

Ion propulsion might be used to keep the sats up but that adds to cost and size. He's a visionary, and others have to make them practical.