We have been talking about the internet a lot lately and it is because this technology brought a whole new era to the human revolution. Even though we use the internet daily, we don’t really realize the vastness and the potential this technology possesses. It is like a privilege to be one of the users of the internet. But just like any other privilege, there are people that cannot utilize this special technology.
Previously we talked about the physicality of the internet and about how physical wires connect the whole world. However, this physicality comes with a disadvantage of reachability in the corners around the globe. There are places where wires simply can’t be installed and maintained due to geographical hindrances like in a forest, an ocean, or a desert. More than 4 billion people still don’t have access to the internet and the numbers are even more if we talk about its reliability. To solve this issue of reachability and reliability, SpaceX launched its most ambitious project called Starlink.
Starlink is a satellite internet constellation; thereby, this network will be all virtual eliminating the need for physical wires. The constellation will consist of around twelve thousand satellites, double the number of satellites already present in the earth’s orbit, which will provide the access to even the remotest corner of the world. You may think that it may cost a huge amount of money to launch all of its satellites and it does cost around $10 billion to complete the whole project; however, it is nothing compared to the $1 trillion required to establish 5G network in the United States. Such low-cost operation is only possible because of SpaceX’s reusable rockets– Falcon 9.
Once Starlink is fully operational, Starlink will be able to provide a very low-latency long-distance connection. Latency is basically the time it takes for a person to see a result of an action; for example, when you search the meaning of a word on google, then the time between the moment you click on ‘search’ and the moment it displays results is called latency. Starlink can provide a very fast internet connection which is even faster than the traditional internet that we use today because of the fact that the speed of light is more in a vacuum (i.e., in Space) than fiber optic glass in a wire.
Starlink will open avenues for education for third-world countries that don’t have established infrastructure facilities. With the potential to connect the whole world together, it will finally make the internet a right each person should have and a global privilege.
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