4. €‹Quadrupling The Number Of Satellites In Orbit
With all of this technology, Musk has announced that SpaceX will begin manufacturing and launching satellites, hopefully putting 4,000 new satellites in Low Earth Orbit by the year 2030. Why? Because most of the satellites up there today are dinosaurs in technology terms. Due to the high cost of launching a satellite, companies are unwilling to risk their investment on new, unproven technology. The upshot of this is that most of the satellites that provide us with services such as GPS are using technology that was already old in the 80s. By launching a veritable swarm of cutting edge, low cost satellites into orbit, Musk wants to achieve a number of things, chief of which is providing global high-speed satellite internet coverage. Not only would this mean that you would be able to check Facebook in the remotest corner of the planet, but it would also force the hands of the massive corporations who currently hold the monopoly on internet provision. This would mean that they would have to begin offering a cheaper, higher quality service (i.e. stop strangling speeds at peak times and imposing data limits) or risk losing all their customers. The move from cables to satellites also opens up a whole world of opportunities in terms of setting up new systems in places such as, say, Mars much more quickly and efficiently. Cables are in the past, satellites are where it's at according to SpaceX.
