埃隆马斯克_FCC卫星停滞只是埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）低地球轨道统治的绊脚石

埃隆马斯克

Following the successful launch of the manned Falcon rocket in May, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is leading the new corporate race to space. That success, however, may have been met with a stumbling block regarding SpaceX’s other ambitious orbital project — Starlink. Starlink, currently under construction, is a multi-billion dollar low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation composed of several hundred school lunch tray-shaped satellites. These satellites and their transceivers may be able to help close the rural-urban internet service gap by providing broadband internet services from space.

继5月载人猎鹰火箭成功发射之后，埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)的SpaceX引领了新的公司太空竞赛。 但是，关于SpaceX另一个雄心勃勃的轨道项目Starlink的绊脚石可能会取得成功。 目前正在建设中的Starlink是价值数十亿美元的低地球轨道(LEO)卫星星座，由数百个学校午餐托盘形卫星组成。 这些卫星及其收发器可以通过提供太空宽带互联网服务来帮助缩小城乡互联网服务差距。

Despite Starlink’s enormous potential to increase broadband connectivity, SpaceX has been denied an opportunity to compete in the Federal Communication Commissions’ (FCC) Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, an auction where broadband providers bid on census areas to provide broadband to 14.5 million underserved Americans, in exchange for subsidy dollars. Even with the recent FCC authorization of 4,425 satellites and Musk’s ambitious plans to “serve [those] least served,” the constellation of satellites is not yet advanced enough to meet technical requirements for those lucrative subsidies from the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. The Starlink satellites constellation is an ambitious approach to broadband internet, but the technology is not seasoned enough in the Commission’s eyes to qualify for the FCC’s auction.

尽管Starlink具有巨大的潜力，可以提高宽带连接能力，但SpaceX仍被剥夺了参加联邦通信委员会(FCC)农村数字机会基金的机会，该拍卖是宽带提​​供商竞标人口普查地区，以向1450万服务欠缺的美国人提供宽带服务。换取补贴美元。 即使最近FCC 批准了4,425颗卫星，并且马斯克制定了雄心勃勃的“服务最少”的雄心勃勃的计划，但卫星群的发展还不足以满足FCC的“农村数字机会基金”对那些有利可图的补贴的技术要求。 Starlink卫星星座是实现宽带互联网的雄心勃勃的方法，但是在委员会看来，该技术的经验不足以符合FCC的拍卖条件。

Satellite internet provides a stable connection to the web by leveraging — you guessed it — satellites. These satellites interface with various ground stations on Earth that relay data up to the satellites with radio waves, which are then broadcast back to Earn by a subscriber’s personal dish antenna. Historically, satellite internet has relied on the use of satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO), where the satellite is around 35,000 km from Earth and follows the Earth’s rotation over a specific place on the planet’s surface. The vast distance of the GEO satellites from Earth slows transmission and makes them ill-suited to provide high speed internet for modern consumers. This is where Starlink comes in. Instead of a dozen large satellites that are 35,000 km away from Earth locked to a specific location, Starlink’s constellation will be composed of hundreds of smaller low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites only 300km to 1300km from the surface. The LEO satellites can then whiz around the planet and share the responsibilities of an internet connection by hot potato-ing that connection to the closest available satellite right to the subscriber. Because high-speed internet services typically require laying fiber optic cables into the ground or erecting telephone wires, a LEO satellite constellation can leapfrog the infrastructural requirements which are costly to produce at scale in order to serve large rural areas and provide service directly to consumers. The FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, in SpaceX’s view, can help to fund the initial investment of launching satellites, move into the broadband market for an untapped consumer base, and add more legitimacy to SpaceX’s already sterling reputation.

卫星互联网通过利用(您猜对了)卫星来提供与网络的稳定连接。 这些卫星与地球上的各个地面站接口，这些地面站通过无线电波将数据中继到卫星，然后通过订户的个人天线将其广播回Earn。 从历史上看，卫星互联网一直依靠地球静止轨道(GEO)中的卫星使用，该卫星距地球约35,000公里，并跟随地球在地球表面特定位置的自转。 GEO卫星与地球的距离太远，会减慢传输速度，使它们不适用于为现代消费者提供高速互联网。 这就是Starlink进入的地方。Starlink 的星座将由数百个较小的低地球轨道(LEO)卫星组成，这些十二颗大型卫星距离地球35,000公里，这些人造卫星由距离地面仅300km到1300km的地方组成。 然后，LEO卫星可以绕地球晃动，并通过热土豆连接到与订户最近的可用卫星来分担互联网连接的责任。 由于高速互联网服务通常需要将光纤电缆铺设到地面或架设电话线，因此LEO卫星群可能会跳过基础设施需求，而基础设施需求的规模生产成本很高，以便服务于广大农村地区并直接为消费者提供服务。 SpaceX认为，FCC的“农村数字机会基金”可以帮助为发射卫星的初始投资提供资金，为尚未开发的消费者群进入宽带市场，并为SpaceX已经非常出色的声誉增加合法性。

But unfortunately for Musk and Starlink, the LEO constellation fails to meet the FCC’s latency threshold of 100ms that the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund requires for its applicants. Latency is the measurement of time in milliseconds between data transmission; the lower the latency the better. An internet connection with a latency of over 100ms that is streaming Netflix will experience frequent content buffering and diminished picture quality. Starlink, as groundbreaking as it is in its planned scale and execution, does not yet have enough satellites in orbit to provide the high speed services that its founder has promised in time for the FCC’s application deadline. Broadband industry groups have expressed their doubts about Starlink meeting the latency requirements as well. Conexon, a consulting service for rural broadband co-ops commented in a recent FCC public notice that “[e]ven if SpaceX dramatically increases the pace of its launches and deploys 10,000 satellites by the first [interim service] milestone…SpaceX will not have sufficient capacity to provide Gigabit service throughout rural America.” Similarly, the WTA, an advocate for rural broadband, expressed doubt that the new Starlink technology’s readiness by the application date is “unduly optimistic and impossible to achieve.”

但不幸的是，对Musk和Starlink而言，LEO星座无法满足FCC的延迟阈值，即农村数字机会基金对其申请人所要求的100ms。 延迟是数据传输之间的时间间隔(以毫秒为单位)； 延迟越短越好。 流式传输Netflix的延迟超过100毫秒的互联网连接将频繁出现内容缓冲，并且图像质量下降。 尽管Starlink在计划的规模和执行方面具有开创性，但目前还没有足够的卫星在轨，无法提供其创始人在FCC申请截止日期之前及时承诺的高速服务。 宽带行业团体对Starlink是否也满足延迟要求表示了怀疑。 农村宽带合作社咨询服务公司Conexon在最近的FCC公共通知中表示：“即使SpaceX大大加快了发射速度，并在第一个[临时服务]里程碑之前部署了10,000颗卫星，…SpaceX不会拥有有足够的能力在整个美国农村地区提供千兆服务。” 同样，农村宽带的倡导者WTA 表示怀疑 ，新的Starlink技术在应用日期之前的准备情况“过于乐观，无法实现。”

One of the core operating assumptions in the success of Starlink’s LEO constellation is the leveraging of a lot of satellites. And SpaceX has simply not deployed enough to meet the latency requirement for the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. Elon Musk himself has said that 800 satellites over a specific geographic area would provide “moderate coverage.” Today, the constellation only contains around 540 — not enough to provide high-speed connection. Starlink broadband services are not even being offered commercially yet with beta testing beginning this summer, which is a testament to how the technology has not quite proven itself in the eyes of the FCC. This is in contrast to the other broadband providers competing in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, who have longer track records providing services with established technologies. Another important aspect of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund is that it is, in fact, technology neutral. Starlink would not be competing just against other satellite broadband providers but DSL and fiber-optics providers too. In this way, more tested and traditional technologies have an advantage in meeting the requirements set out by the FCC. The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund in its design is implicitly biased towards DLS and fiber-optic broadband as these technologies require upfront investment for a specific area whereas LEO satellites require upfront investment but can be used anywhere. From the FCC’s perspective, there is a risk in providing subsidy dollars to SpaceX without a reliable expectation of the return on investment. As understandable as the FCC’s concerns are in investing in a technology not yet perfected at scale, the Commission should also caution itself on dissuading innovation in the information and communications technology sector. Creative innovations in broadband like Starlink’s LEO satellite constellation are exactly the kind of outside the box thinking that needs the competitive edge of government subsidies to be viable. Therefore, The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund’s technology-neutral bidding and technical requirements may in this way serve as a barrier to new innovative broadband approaches from entering the auction.

Starlink LEO星座成功的核心操作假设之一是利用了许多卫星。 而且，SpaceX部署不足以满足农村数字机会基金的延迟要求。 马斯克本人曾说过，特定地理区域的800颗卫星将提供“中等覆盖率”。 如今，这个星座仅包含大约540个-不足以提供高速连接。 Starlink宽带服务甚至还没有在商业上提供，并且将从今年夏天开始进行beta测试 ，这证明了该技术在FCC眼中尚未得到充分证明。 这与参加农村数字机会基金的其他宽带提供商形成了鲜明的对比，后者在提供成熟技术服务方面拥有更悠久的往绩。 农村数字机会基金的另一个重要方面是，它实际上是技术中立的 。 Starlink不仅会与其他卫星宽带提供商竞争，而且还会与DSL和光纤提供商竞争。 这样，经过更多测试和传统的技术在满足FCC提出的要求方面具有优势。 农村数字机会基金的设计隐含地偏向DLS和光纤宽带，因为这些技术需要针对特定​​区域的前期投资，而LEO卫星需要前期投资，但可以在任何地方使用。 从FCC的角度来看，在没有可靠的投资回报预期的情况下向SpaceX提供补贴资金是有风险的。 可以理解的是，FCC的关注点在于对尚未大规模完善的技术进行投资，因此，欧洲委员会还应告诫自己，不要劝阻信息和通信技术领域的创新。 诸如Starlink的LEO卫星星座之类的宽带创新创新恰恰是一种开箱即用的思维方式，需要政府补贴的竞争优势才能切实可行。 因此，农村数字机会基金的技术中立招标和技术要求可能会以此方式阻碍新的创新宽带方法进入拍卖。

Even though SpaceX’s Starlink may miss out on Federal funding from the FCC, Elon Musk’s aspirations for his constellation seem to be bigger than just rural America. In 2019, SpaceX submitted paperwork for 30,000 Starlink satellites with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Those satellite allotments will likely be filled over the next few years as SpaceX continues to launch over a hundred more satellites in the next year. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, there have been 8,500 satellites, probes, landers, crewed spacecraft, and other flight elements launched into Earth since 1957. If and when SpaceX launches its planned 30,000 Starlink satellites with the ITU in addition to the 12,000 it already has planned through the FCC, SpaceX by itself will be responsible for a fivefold increase in the number of spacecraft launched by all of humanity. It is important to remember that to date Starlink has only deployed around 500 of its LEO satellites, which is a far cry from the 42,000 planned over the next ten years. Elon Musk and SpaceX realize that satellite broadband has the potential for much greater global coverage to reach corners of the world where internet service today is either spotty or nonexistent. Over the next decade, SpaceX will add more and more satellites to Starlink’s constellation, and the latency issue highlighted by the FCC will inevitably drop giving way to a more reliable and higher performing service. Although the FCC has passed on awarding subsidies to SpaceX for their Starlink constellation, the technology will continue to develop, improve, and, if Elon Musk is right, be able to provide high-speed internet to the majority of the world that lacks it.

尽管SpaceX的Starlink可能会错过FCC的联邦资助，但埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)对他的星座的抱负似乎远不只是美国农村。 2019年，SpaceX向国际电信联盟(ITU)提交了30,000颗Starlink卫星的文件。 随着SpaceX在明年继续发射一百多颗卫星，这些卫星的分配将在未来几年内完成 。 根据联合国外层空间事务厅的数据，自1957年以来，已有8,500颗卫星 ，探测器，着陆器，乘员航天器和其他飞行元件发射到了地球。SpaceX是否以及何时与国际电联一起发射了计划中的30,000颗Starlink卫星SpaceX本身已经通过FCC计划将其计划的12,000架 ，将使全人类发射的航天器数量增加五倍。 重要的是要记住，迄今为止，Starlink仅部署了约500颗LEO卫星，这与未来十年计划的42,000颗卫星相去甚远。 艾隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)和SpaceX认识到，卫星宽带具有更大的全球覆盖范围，有可能到达当今互联网服务不完善或根本不存在的世界各个角落。 在接下来的十年中，SpaceX将在Starlink的星座中添加越来越多的卫星，而FCC强调的延迟问题将不可避免地下降，而让路给更可靠，性能更高的服务。 尽管FCC已将其Starlink星座的补贴授予了SpaceX，但该技术将继续发展，改进，如果埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)正确的话，该技术将能够为缺乏该技术的世界提供高速互联网。

Published exclusively in Brown Tech Review. Image source.

独家发表在《布朗技术评论》上。 图片 来源 。

翻译自: https://medium.com/brown-technology-review/fcc-satellite-snub-is-just-a-stumbling-block-to-elon-musk-low-earth-orbit-domination-bb56ce787055

埃隆马斯克