Elon Musk Believes SpaceX's ~100,000 V4 Starlink Satellites Are Enough To "Outcompete ...

Elon Musk believes SpaceX is building a redundant backbone for the internet in the Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). And, just around 100,000 V4 Starlink satellites will suffice to gain an acceptable level of redundancy, one that can't be easily threatened en masse by hostile actors.

Each SpaceX V4 satellite will sport 100 lasers, where each such laser operates at a throughput of 10 Tbsp

As we noted in July, SpaceX is now ready to mass produce its V3 (or Gen3) Starlink satellites that sport the following specs:

Each satellite weighs 2,000 kg vs. a mass of just 575 kg for the Gen2 variant.

The Gen3 or V3 is designed for Very-Low Earth Orbit or VLEO, which corresponds to an altitude of just around 350 km.

A 10x increase in downlink capacity to 1 Tbps .

A 22x increase in uplink capacity to 160-200 Gbps.

Combined RF and laser backhaul capacity at ~4 Tbps per satellite.

The larger central bus is equipped with advanced phased array antennas and longer solar arrays.

Because of their higher mass, Gen3 satellites can only be launched via the SpaceX Starship.

-generation onboard computers and modems.

Argon Hall thrusters for station-keeping.

The constellation employs advanced phased-array beamforming, electronic beam steering, optical inter-satellite links, and dynamic power control for spectrum sharing and interference mitigation.

Well, Elon Musk participated in a fireside chat with Ron Baron recently, in which he detailed an important specification of SpaceX's -gen V4 satellites:

"Starlink version 4 will have 10x the capability of V3 (which itself is 10x better than V2), especially with the long-distance laser links. Our -gen laser links will be 10-terabits per second. 100x better. And we'll put 10 of them on."

"Starlink version 4 will have 10x the capability of V3 (which itself is 10x better than V2), especially with the long-distance laser links. Our -gen laser links will be 10-terabits per second. 100x better. And we'll put 10 of them on."

Musk added in a subsequent X post :

"~100 lasers per satellite, each operating above 10 Tb/s, with over 100k satellites should be able to outcompete undersea cables." "Speed of light in space is ~40% faster than cable and the path is direct, instead of following the outline of land masses."

"~100 lasers per satellite, each operating above 10 Tb/s, with over 100k satellites should be able to outcompete undersea cables."

"Speed of light in space is ~40% faster than cable and the path is direct, instead of following the outline of land masses."

Basically, 100,000 V4 satellites can offer a cumulative throughput of around 100 million Tbps (or 100,000 Petabits per second). Do note that the global network of subsea telecommunication cables currently offer a total bandwidth of around 6.4 petabits per second (Pbps) . This means that it is entirely possible for a constellation of V4 Starlink satellites to replace the sprawling network of these subsea telecommunication cables, as noted by Elon Musk.

Of course, this redundancy goal has become all the more important now that Iran has explicitly threatened subsea cables in the flare up of hostilities with the US and/or Israel.

And, to hammer this threat, Iranian ships were recently seen lingering over subsea cables in the Gulf of Oman , possibly in a bid to map their layout, or place sea mines. In fact, one ship, the Celestial Sea, was seen lingering near the 2Africa cable for over four hours on October 14. The same vessel lingered over the Europe India Gateway and Transworld cables in the latter part of the month. Do note that as many as seven major undersea internet cables run through the Strait of Hormuz.

the author : Rohail Saleem reports on the business of AI and semiconductors for Wccftech: the chips, data centers and compute deals behind companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, TSMC, OpenAI and Anthropic, and what those deals mean for the hardware people buy. He has written more than 2200 articles for Wccftech since 2019, often reading earnings reports, supply-chain data and analyst notes to explain where the money and the hardware are going. He holds a commerce degree from the University of Toronto's Rotman Commerce program.

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