back to article Airbus to build 900 mini-satellites for OneWeb's orbital internet system

Global internet provider wannabe OneWeb has announced a deal with Airbus Defence and Space to build 900 small satellites aimed at providing more 10 terabits per second of new communications capacity to the whole world. OneWeb was set up by former Googler Greg Wyler to bring satellite internet to the globe, and the venture has …

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    1. Martin Budden Silver badge

      Re: Um

      That might be why the article says "sub-orbital" ;-)

      (unless there's been a ninja edit in the article and it didn't say that when you posted)

  2. Martin Budden Silver badge

    Calling ISRO!

    I wonder if India can help? For that number of satellites I'm sure it would be worth their while developing a bespoke launch vehicle, and they have proved they can get things into space at a great price.

  3. Dave 32
    Pint

    Putting them WHERE?

    Getting them into orbit is only the first part of the problem, and probably the smallest part. Putting them in the correct orbits after they're up, and then keeping them there, is going to be a MAJOR problem. If they get clumped up, well, the system isn't going to work. If they are all in LEO equatorial orbits (or, any other single plane orbit), well, it isn't going to work. For them to work, they're going to have to be spaced out into dozens, if not hundreds of orbital planes, and the satellites in each of those orbital planes is going to have to stay in the correct position with regards to the other satellites in that plane. Trying to do all of that, especially when there's a major solar flare/storm, and the upper atmosphere jumps up much higher than normal, orbital decay is going to be a real concern. Handling precession, gravitational anomalies, and a whole host of other issues involving orbital mechanics, will result in people pulling their hair out. Oh, yeah, and keeping the hackers out of the system is not going to be trivial, either.

    Dave

    1. et tu, brute?

      Re: Putting them WHERE?

      Was also wondering, with a swarm of satellites like this (and possibly 2 with the SpaceX/Google project), isn't it going to be more and more difficult to launch other vehicles and avoid all these pieces of tin on the way up? Are we going to lock ourselves down on this rock because we have caused too much litter to safely launch anything else?

      Need a simple question icon...

      1. phuzz Silver badge

        Re: Putting them WHERE?

        We'd have to launch a lot more than 1000 satellites before they started getting in the way, you see, Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. {with thanks to DNA}.

        For a less flippant answer to your question, at the altitude of 500 miles that these satellites are aiming for there is a total area of 6.4 * 10^14 square meters of space, and each one of these satellites is about one meter squared, so as you can see, we have plenty of room yet.

        (debris left behind from launches, and broken satellites is another problem however)

        1. Trigonoceps occipitalis

          Re: Putting them WHERE?

          I'm not disputing the fact that there is unlikely to be any "lock in" but space vehicles, satellites and debris are three dimensional. They take a finite time to cross a given area. Your analysis is (slightly) wrong but I don't think the conclusion would be any different.

          Any one care to have a go?

  4. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    SpaceShip2 has nothing to do with launching satellites

    Some rich joyriders can care about SpaceShipTwo. For this type of mission, the appropriate Virgin kit is WhiteKnightTwo (Flying since 2008) and LauncherOne (first launch expected in 2016). If things go according to plan and budget, WhiteKnightTwo+LauncherOne will be able to launch these satellites for about $10,000,000 each.

    The tech is not that new. Pegasus has been launching since 1990. It has scored 37 out of 42 successful launches (last 28 all successes) and should be able to launch a pair of these satellites for about $11,000,000.

    Stratolaunch are working on a similar launch system, and expect their carrier aircraft to fly in 2016, and the first air launch in 2018.

    A SpaceX Falcon9 v1.1 would be able to launch about 80 satellites at a time for around $750,000 each. If you could magically space the customers to match the satellite orbits, and the satellites last 5 years, then the launch costs would add about $150/year for a customer with a 100Mb/s connection and a 50:1 contention ratio.

    I could understand using a Pegasus to demonstrate the tech and get further investment, but a profitable system would need something priced like a Falcon. The only reason to consider LauncherOne is if you can get a really good deal for a launch on an untested vehicle. SpaceShipTwo is only relevant because it could divert R&D funds away from LauncherOne.

  5. Kharkov
    IT Angle

    Well, if a SubOrbital launcher is what you WANT...

    Why not try Lynx? True, it's not flying yet, nor likely to fly anytime soon or enter commercial service for an even longer time but if you want a suborbital launcher...

    Or alternatively, talk to Elon Musk and try to get a good deal. SpaceX would probably be willing to make a deal for a reasonable launch cost or even put a few up there as secondary payloads for free or a nominal fee.

  6. James Cane

    Easy

    They can just float them up on a giant bubble of hype.

  7. Rustident Spaceniak
    Terminator

    Putting them up there is certainly the big issue -

    Although designing and building hundreds of sats on a shoestring budget, but with quite up-to-date capabilities, is no mean feat either. Yet, there's absolutely no reason to be concerned: Richard Branson is on the board of OneWeb and is understood to have a contract in his conveniently-sized pocket for launching the satellites - on a vehicle yet to be revealed to the astonished public. And we all know that Sir Richard has never failed to deliver, don't we? Don't we really?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Remember Iridium?

    That was a multi-satellite cluster (planned 77, launched 66 I think) that lost about $5B from Motorola, etc, because the revenue from it was nothing like enough to cover the costs as by time it was launched. By then most people (at least, those with significant money) were already covered well enough by mobile networks.

    It is only going now as the US military bought it from bankruptcy as a bargain and it helps them with world-wide coverage where user revenue is not a concern.

    1. cray74

      Re: Remember Iridium?

      "That was a multi-satellite cluster (planned 77, launched 66 I think) that lost about $5B from Motorola, etc, because the revenue from it was nothing like enough to cover the costs as by time it was launched.

      Sure, but Motorola well and truly amorously assaulted the pooch with its business plan and consumer hardware. The phones were larger, shorter-lived, and had poor indoor reception even by the standards of the time. As you noted, cell phones were already delivering most of the utility of Iridium phones except for users stuck in Antarctica. The plans and phones were very expensive for modest performance and some potential customers have cited poor sales handling.

      http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9902/24/iridium.idg/

      Is OneWeb making the same mistakes? There's been a lot of examples of failed constellations for investors to learn from.

      "It is only going now as the US military bought it from bankruptcy as a bargain and it helps them with world-wide coverage where user revenue is not a concern."

      And wasn't that the deal of the century? $35 million to acquire a satellite constellation and related businesses worth $6 billion.

      Since then, Iridium is staggering along. It has orbited a total of 95 satellites, has 72 operational (including 6 on-orbit spares), and is planning to volley a replacement set of 66 IridiumNEXT satellites beginning this year (7 SpaceX launches acquired for $490-ish million). Its revenue seems healthy for its expenses and only 23% of its revenue is from government subscribers.

      1. BristolBachelor Gold badge

        Re: Remember Iridium?

        I also heard that they had big problems getting permission in each country to use the particular frequency band they had. By the time they had negotiated enough rights, the cellular networks had rolled out and there was less need for Iridium. Also the data access is still only at the same speed that I had with a Nokia 9000 over 15 years ago, so their unique selling points are very weak.

        I assume (hope) that oneweb will know all this, and have a better handle on things.

  9. Mage Silver badge
    Boffin

    Three to Seven other competitors

    Iridium (slow & expensive)

    Inmarsat (slow & expensive)

    Thuraya (slow & expensive) Only really North Africa, parts of Europe and Middle East. But handsets are Modems and GSM phones too.

    WildBlue / KaSat and similar Ka band Geostationary. Highest speed & capacity, but still less capacity than ONE rural exchange or Cable street cabinet!

    Older Ku Band Geostationary.

    O3b Medium Earth Orbit, lower latency and high Capacity http://www.o3bnetworks.com/

    The Google / Musk proposed satellite system on LEO.

    The capacity of this sounds good till :

    Divide by 1000 for realistic capacity per satellite

    Divide by 10 or more for speed in rain (they always quote perfect conditions)

    Divide by more than 1000 for speed per user.

    So capacity per user is likely 1/10,000,000 th of quoted system capacity.

    Likely the pathetic capacity of Ka Sat (one of highest in world for a single bird) is very much higher per user. A single user gets about 1/100,000 th of Ka Sat capacity in normal conditions.

    1. BristolBachelor Gold badge

      Re: Three to Seven other competitors

      I think that this system is supposed to fit in between the mobile handsets and KaSat. What I have seen suggests that you don't need a fixed dish and license to be a user, in fact a number of the antennas will be mobile on vehicles, etc. This is a major plus - using something like KaSat on a mobile basis seems to be very difficult.

      Also I don't think O3b really competes with this, since you need 2 dishes, each of which is tracking a bird across the sky, one after another. For backhall or village ISP, O3b could be useful, but for a single user (especially with little space for dishes, or mobile use) I don't think so.

      As far as capacity is concerned, if your options are this or dial-up, or you want access when infrastructure is down, and in a mobile context, then it could work. We'll only know when it flies, or crashes and burns.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Idiocy - IMHO

    Seems to be a good way to ensure Kessler Syndrome problems in the near future. As has been noted above, getting that many sattelites into suitable orbits is decidedly non-trivial, and keeping them there is another non-trivial job, and when, as inevitably WILL happen one or more of them get hit by high-speed orbital junk.. it doesn't bear thinking about. Using high-altitude drones (maybe at least partially solar-powered, to eke out endurance?) seems a better solution to me - cheaper, safer, easier to maintain, no chance of increasing the amount of orbital junk..

  11. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    IT Angle

    A note on Iridium

    Which this system will be compared with.

    They guy who built the Iridium satellites came from Apple.

    His approach was the nearest thing ever seen in satellite mfg to an actual production line (for both the bus and the payload).

    Brought next sat mfg to months, not years.

    But that still leaves getting them to orbit.

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