Elon Musk, the man who’s determined to move our civilization to Mars, will also tackle creating an Internet in space.
The
CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX said Friday night that he will use a
fleet of satellites to make the Internet speedier and to bring it to
those without access, according to media reports of a private event in
Seattle. Details of the plan were shared before the event with Bloomberg.
While
this new network would initially benefit only those of us on Earth,
Musk said he has much loftier plans: using the profits to build a
Martian city.
“We see it as a long-term revenue source for SpaceX
to be able to fund a city on Mars,” Musk told Bloomberg. He didn’t offer
specifics on how he’ll make money off the project, but he did mention
the possibility of selling satellites after the network is completed.
SpaceX did not return a request for comment.
To create the new network, SpaceX will build and launch roughly 4,000 satellites orbiting about 750 miles above earth, GeekWire reported.
Musk is known for his determination to colonize Earth’s relatively nearby neighbor, with plans to put humans on Mars by the mid 2020s.
A member of the so-called “PayPal Mafia” — co-founders of the payment
service who have found continued success after selling the company to
eBay — Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 to “to revolutionize space
technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other
planets,” according to the SpaceX website. It won a $2.6 billion contract
from NASA last year, becoming one of the first private companies — the
other is Boeing — set to ferry astronauts to the International Space
Station, beginning as early as 2017.
SpaceX unveiled its first manned spacecraft, the Dragon V2, in May. The craft is intended for trips to and from the space station, and the company successfully sent a cargo capsule to the ISS this month, but the “reusable” rocket crashed into its floating landing pad in the Atlantic Ocean.
And now it looks like
Musk sees his space Internet project as another way of getting him to
Mars. The network would take at least five years to develop and cost
around $10 billion, he told Bloomberg. Instead of sending data through a
network that uses fiber optic cables, the proposed system would bounce
signals from satellite to satellite. Musk said the setup would also
connect underserved communities that don’t have Net access. The project
will be overseen at SpaceX’s new Seattle headquarters.
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CEO of Tesla Motors is trying to bring the Internet to space
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