LONDON: Elon Musk is planning to construct a Space Internet platform that will bring cheap, reliable, and scalable internet services to people all over the world. The SpaceX founder’s mission doesn’t stop there. Musk wants to spend $10 billion on the program so it can enlarge all the way from Earth to Mars.
The news comes at the tail end of a busy week for Musk, with the CEO announcing that a five-mile Hyperloop test track is in development only a day earlier. According to Musk, the satellite internet project would make for fast, cheap global internet that isn’t impeded by terrestrial wires. “The speed of light is 40 percent faster in the vacuum of space than it is for fiber,” he says, explaining that internet provided by satellites in low orbit can serve those in sparsely populated areas. However, the dream doesn’t end there; with his eyes already on a future Martian colony, the SpaceX founder wants connectivity to reach the Red Planet when mankind eventually lands there.
“It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well,” he says. “I think this needs to be done, and I don’t see anyone else doing it.”
Musk expects the project to take $10 billion and at least five years to get off the ground. In the meantime, SpaceX’s resources will be devoted to making satellites in addition to the rockets and vehicles it already manufacturers and tests.
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