The future of mankind depends on pornography and illegal torrenting

Kudos to Space X for having not just the grand dream of starting a space-faring civilisation, but at least trying to figure out a way to fund it. Grand visions are limitless, but this is one of few even remotely plausible schemes as to how to get enough cash to make it happen.

On Thursday (May 23), SpaceX plans to loft the first 60 spacecraft of its planned Starlink megaconstellation, which is designed to provide affordable internet service to people around the world.  But don't expect a signal right away. Six more launches with 60-satellite payloads each will be needed to activate Starlink, and six more after that are required for the network to provide "significant coverage," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said.  

There's a "fundamental goodness" inherent in improving internet access, the billionaire entrepreneur said in a call with reporters on May 15. But there should be a lot of money in the enterprise as well — perhaps up to $50 billion per year for SpaceX. "Total internet-connectivity revenue in the world is on the order of $1 trillion [annually], and we think maybe we can access about 3% of that, or maybe 5%," Musk said. 

"We think this is a key steppingstone towards establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the moon," Musk said of Starlink. "We believe we can use the revenue from Starlink to fund Starship."

There's a nice article on the specifications of the Starlink satellites here. They sound impressive. And while it might be nice to think that governments will finally see sense and fund space exploration instead of war, it probably isn't going to happen. Having a company which actually wants to do something with its profits instead of just buying all its executives a superyacht... well that's very nice as well.

Best of all is the notion that we could fund the start of an interplanetary civilisation because we're all desperate for the three biggest uses of the internet : downloading movies, sharing pictures of cats, and watching boobies. That's a vision of humanity I can get behind. It may not be particularly grand or noble, but let's face it : it is realistic.

But it this approach economically credible ? I don't know, but it strikes me as high risk. It's not clear to me what advantages the proposed network offers over existing ones. Granted, some networks are crappy and treat their users badly, but can this one offer anything different and/or at a lower cost ? I doubt there are sufficient numbers of people in remote areas who are able and willing to pay enough money that Starlink can ignore existing internet users. What do they have to offer that terrestrial companies can't ? Does any new ground-based network have any hope of achieving 3-5% of the global revenue or would that be ludicrously high ?

How SpaceX's Starlink Internet Satellites Could Help Humanity Colonize Mars

(Image: © SpaceX via Twitter) The satellites that is about to launch to Earth orbit could help humanity settle the moon and Mars someday. On Thursday (May 23), SpaceX plans to loft the first 60 spacecraft of its planned Starlink megaconstellation, which is designed to provide affordable internet service to people around the world.