Starlink

Surprisingly there have has been not much fanfare after SpaceX received the U.S. FCC permission for Starlink. Chances are you are not aware of this development either, as the media have not picked it up.

But in my opinion this is one of the biggest development in global communications recently (or may be ever?).

Starlink is a satellite - based Internet. But it is unlike anything we have seen so far. It will consist of 12 thousand communication satellites. This is an incredible number, considering we currently have about 1/10th of that in orbit IN TOTAL (including military, Russian, Chinese etc). And now a private company plans to launch 10x of what the humanity has done ever since.

Starlink is also probably the only system of that scale that gets a permission. It is extremely unlikely that another company gets approval for another set of 10 thousand+ satellites.

I am not sure when the Starlink idea was born, but it can easily be that the whole existence of SpaceX is because of this very project and everything the company has been doing so far is to achieve the economy to make Starlink happen. Launching one satellite a day it would take 32 years to complete the 12-thousand constellation. Elon probably wants that to be completed in 8 years or so, so that means 4 satellites a day on average.

Starlink is not only the game changer in communications. Because of the size of the project it has profound consequences on the space race itself. With that kind of contract, SpaceX will be ways ahead of any of their competitors. It may very well be that the space race has just ended and SpaceX won...