back to article Intelsat to FCC: For the love of satellites, STOP ELON MUSK!

Elon Musk wants to use his commercial SpaceX rockets to put satellites into orbit that will bring broadband to the next billion, but one of SpaceX's own customers has thrown a wrench into the works. Musk's plan involves encircling the globe with a few thousand high-capacity, low-latency satellites that the Tesla Motors boss …

  1. Charles Manning

    Is Musk going for geostationary?

    Geostaionary is over 35,000 km up making a round trip of over 200 milliseconds.

    Thus for the advertised low-latency, Musk must be shooting for LEO sats or such.

    If he's going for LEO then they're nowhere near the Inmarsat's geostationary satellites.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

      If he's planning on a thousand of them they're obviously LEO. LEO satellites can easily interfere with geo satellites, if their orbit is such that they temporarily are in between the GEO satellite and an earth station receiver and they use the same frequencies, and would block signals for a split second as they pass even if using a different frequency. For signals broadcast across a whole country/continent, there would be satellites getting in the way all the time (think about a satellite TV company like Directv with 20 million dishes in the US alone)

      Obviously the LEO satellites would be licensed for a different frequency, but there's still that momentary loss of signal. That's not real a problem with all the FEC that satellite signals use, but certainly operators like Intelsat have the right to know at minimum what orbits the Musk satellites are using so when they detect that blip they'll know the cause. Until Musk gets approval to launch, however, there seems to be no pressing need for notification now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

        There's a system in place that has been operated in a gentlemanly way for the global benefit of everyone. It works - satcomms is a very successful business nowadays.

        So when you get a player who isn't playing by the rules it's a threat to the smooth cooperation between all involved in the space industry. This time it's not even China/Russia/<insert name of another country typically percieved as being belligerent>, it's an American company regulated by the US government.

        It will be interesting to see what the FCC (who haven't exactly done very well recently) do. They should give SpaceX a thick ear and tell them to stop being so immature about whatever big-dickery they think their constellational plan is. They probably won't because they haven't already done so. Which would be an embarrassment to the USA as it would be them playing silly buggers this time.

        And domestically one has to ask, if the departments of the US government are willing to cave in to corporate pressure on something so trivial and unimportant as an orbital plan and have the USA protrayed as being just a little bit more of a pariah state than at present, what the **** is the US government for?

        1. Mage Silver badge
          Devil

          Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

          FCC prior stupidity

          The Lightsquared debacle. Originally approved by FCC, should never have been and then was axed.

        2. Eddy Ito

          Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

          ... what the **** is the US government for?

          We've been asking ourselves that very question for quite some time. It seems the answer is that the lobbyists decided we needed a nanny but corporations don't.

      2. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

        "Obviously the LEO satellites would be licensed for a different frequency"

        Very likely NOT.

        There are only a few viable and allocated bands where you can get cheap COTS hardware, etc, to support this and they are all pretty full, so very likely they will be broadcasting on the same frequencies as the GEO birds but relying on (hoping?) that the directional properties of the antenna (both their own, and the GEO ground terminals) are sufficient to stop interference.

        I am pretty sure that is why Intelsat wants the details, do do their own analysis of the interference mitigation strategy to see what the impact might be. Beyond that, there is also the heavy congestion of the usual S-band TTC range to consider, and what impact trying to manage a fleet of a thousand small satellites over a couple of operators will be on other satellite's TTC.

        1. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

          The only way for such a system to be fiscally viable is to have a vast number of clients, and that implies small, pocket sized, terminals. Sort of like Iridium, not like Inmarsat.

          If they're designing a system that would need expensive and unwieldy directional antennas on the ground terminals, then that restricts the applications and the number of clients such that they might as well not bother at all.

      3. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

        DougS "...would block signals for a split second ..."

        For various reasons, that's not on the list of actual concerns.

      4. Bobcat4424

        Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

        The idea of a LEO satellite even slightly blocking a GEO satellite is silly. GEO satellites are 23,000 miles up and broadcast to the entire of the planet. Musk's satellites would be about 400 miles up. There would never be even a split second of blocking. It's kinda like saying it would also block the sun.

        This is just an attempt to get SpaceX to divulge trade secrets. While the idea of hundreds of satellites in LEO for communications is not new, what is unique to SpaceX is that it would launch its own satellites, most likely 4-10 at a time or as secondary to other satellites. They can do this because their upper stage is fully restartable. And if SpaceX can start recovering boosters, the price will drop to the point that SpaceX will be almost impossible for others to compete with for a couple of decades.

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

          "The idea of a LEO satellite even slightly blocking a GEO satellite is silly."

          Not even something the size of the ISS? At least that was one question which occurred to me while reading the article :-)

    2. Superelastic

      Re: Is Musk going for geostationary?

      It's Intelsat, who have a combination of LEO and GEO sats, not Inmarsat, who are exclusively GEO.

      Unless there's some shared L/Ku band issues, I imagine the potential interference will be with Intelsat's LEO fleet....is it getting crowed enough to pose a problem fitting them all up there yet?

  2. Ole Juul

    communications companies

    I expect Intelsat will say and do anything to stop this, so I wouldn't take anything they say seriously.

  3. Kharkov
    WTF?

    I call Foul!

    [Wild Speculation due to COMPLETE lack of knowledge about effects of satellites on radio transmissions]/on

    It looks to me like Intelsat are trying to remove or at least delay a future competitor. I doubt that SpaceX has 'gone firm' on the frequencies/number of satellites/orbital inclinations/separation between satellites/etc but already, Intelsat is trying to stop SpaceX from going any further until they do have those answers, thus adding... probably... several years to SpaceX's internet access going live, thus allowing Intelsat to keep getting revenue in without competition.

    While Intelsat has a right to NOT have their service blocked/interfered with, particularly by competitors, it's too soon to start throwing lawsuits around as SpaceX is still a long time away from putting their first batch of satellites up.

    [Wild speculation]/off

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: I call Foul!

      Intelsat don't want a business plan, but knowledge of the transmissions to see if they are a threat to proper operations. LEO satellites are global, so they have the potential to piss on everyone's party if done badly.

  4. John Robson Silver badge

    Confidential

    Clearly means something different in the US:

    "Intelsat isn't waiting around for SpaceX or the FCC to voluntarily release the information, either. It has simultaneously filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that would compel the FCC to release SpaceX's confidential documents."

  5. Mage Silver badge

    Intelsat is being reasonable

    No satellite licences can or should be issued without knowing Orbit(s) and Frequencies. Why should Musk be exempted from the sensible requirements that EVERY other commercial operator had to meet.

    No doubt Military is different, but they won't want to cause interference.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Intelsat is being reasonable

      I wouldn't worry too much.

      It's not as if Musk can act like Uber and just barge in and do what he wants.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Intelsat is being reasonable

      In which case, why does the FCC not make the release of such info a mandatory requirement for receiving a license? How else can the various companies involved in satellite communications work in harmony otherwise? Seems like an FCC regulation problem here.

  6. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

    Hmmm...

    "A bag of white fluffy cats and a box full of vials marked "biohazard" for a Mr. Musk?"

    "Yes?"

    "Please sign here."

  7. Nameless Faceless Computer User

    When did "Public Broadband" not become a mechanism for stealing all my credentials?

  8. Mehtasaab
    Megaphone

    No one own space.

    Intelsat should not take objection. 1, No one own space. 2, We need new technology and Musk wants to create latest technology. 3, If FCC refuse, he will try through another country. India is ready to allow him.

  9. Mehtasaab

    Also there are lot of open block in space. Some satellite companies reserve blocks and don't use it to avoid competitions.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Status 5

    The satellite UFO privacy data remains classified, however the anonymous unclassified secure shell ionosphere data-haven remains invisible to cryptanalysis. According to our favorite chameleon man, the Zen encryption keyhole remains limited to only our unique echelon despite Black knights best efforts! The interception of the chaining codes was a small speed bump, but they have been played off as, “random radio bursts” and cannot be classified until NEO 5. On the Grey boy front we continue to fuel the rumors of strife, and all of the “leaked” information remains, and only reinforces, the propaganda fodder for the perception that is within the realms of “science fiction nut jobs”. Bubba the love sponges guppy mole protocol has successfully begun transmitting global memes based on the current terran zeitgeist by region. This timing is being handled by Reflection, and pink noise. Replay redhead has shown

    1. Fatman
      Joke

      Re: Status 5

      amanfrommars

      Is that YOU???

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: Status 5

        Sounds like Lain of the Wired.

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