Gwynne Shotwell on BFR Rocket, StarLink, Space Telescopes, And Global Trips.

$10 billion for SpaceX global internet satellite network and SpaceX BFR will have ten flights per day | NextBigFuture.com

SpaceX will make a massive network of literally thousands of low earth orbit satellites to provide high-bandwidth, low-cost internet connection to every square foot of planet earth. (This is at 9:38 to 10:37 in the TED talk video) Gwynne Shotwell: We actually don't chat very much about this particular project, not because we're hiding anything, but this is probably one of the most challenging if not the most challenging project we've undertaken.

From article, (SpaceX will make a massive network of literally thousands of low earth orbit satellites to provide high-bandwidth, low-cost internet connection to every square foot of planet earth. (This is at 9:38 to 10:37 in the TED talk video)

Gwynne Shotwell: We actually don’t chat very much about this particular project, not because we’re hiding anything, but this is probably one of the most challenging if not the most challenging project we’ve undertaken. No one has been successful deploying a huge constellation for internet broadband, or basically for satellite internet, and I don’t think physics is the difficulty here. I think we can come up with the right technology solution, but we need to make a business out of it, and it’ll cost the company about 10 billion dollars or more to deploy this system. And so we’re marching steadily along but we’re certainly not claiming victory yet.

There’s no question it’ll change the world.

BFR can take the satellites that we’re currently taking to orbit to many orbits. It allows for even a new class of satellites to be delivered to orbit. Basically, the width, the diameter of the fairing is eight meters, so you can think about what giant telescopes you can put in that fairing, in that cargo bay, and see really incredible things and discover incredible things in space.But then there are some residual capabilities that we have out of BFR as well.

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space travel for earthlings. I can’t wait for this residual capability. Basically, what we’re going to do is we’re going to fly BFR like an aircraft and do point-to-point travel on earth, so you can take off from New York City or Vancouver and fly halfway across the globe. You’ll be on the BFR for roughly half an hour or 40 minutes, and the longest part — yeah, it’s so awesome.

The longest part of that flight is actually the boat out and back.

The first BFR is going to have roughly a hundred passengers. And let’s talk a little bit about the business. Everyone thinks rockets are really expensive, and to a large degree they are, and how could we possibly compete with airline tickets here? But if you think about it, if I can do this trip in half an hour to an hour, I can do dozens of these a day, right? And yet, a long-haul aircraft can only make one of those flights a day. So even if my rocket was slightly more expensive and the fuel is a little bit more expensive, I can run 10x at least what they’re running in a day, and really make the revenue that I need to out of that system.

So within 10 years, an economy price ticket, or, like, a couple thousand dollars per person to fly New York to Shanghai.)

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