While all you mere mortals are so focused on your earthbound concerns about “what La-Croix flavor is your favorite” or who’s going to repair the “economy,” Elon Musk has his gaze fixed on humanity’s next frontier: space and its boundless possibilities. What started out as small satellite launch business in 2002 has grown tremendously in both financial bandwidth as well as support garnered from the aerospace community.
SpaceX, the brainchild of eccentric entrepreneur Elon Musk, was founded with the goal of reducing the cost of traveling to space while simultaneously putting in the groundwork to hopefully establish a new colony of Earthlings on the planet, Mars. Per the official statement of purpose from their website, “SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft,” and now the company wants to take their adventures one step further.
Bloomberg recently reported that SpaceX has requested a $500 million leveraged loan from Goldman Sachs, most likely to fund its two major projects, the Star-link internet satellite constellation and another round of the company’s Big Falcon Rockets.
So What’s The Big Idea, Huh?
Well, tough guy, SpaceX has recognized something that many of us are still very much in denial about. We believe that the Earth is still a sufficient planet for our future generations. Elon Musk and the creative hive mind responsible for SpaceX does not share this same ideology. Musk recognized, early-on, that space is an untapped resource in terms of development and placement of technology, as well as a new setting for our existence.
The Starlink project is meant to create an interconnected web of thousands of spacecraft in low-orbit of the Earth, with each craft providing a broadband internet signal to people around the world. Back in February, Musk tweeted that the “first two Starlink demo satellites, called Tintin A & B” were deployed and successfully communicating with SpaceX stations back on Earth. SpaceX officials say that Starlink will be fully operational, “in at least limited capacity,” 2020.
In advancement of SpaceX and Musk’s goal to increase global access to broadband connectivity, Viasat (VSAT), a global telecom company based in Carlsbad, California, announced Thursday that a SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket will launch one of their newest broadband satellites sometime between 2020 and 2022. SpaceX’s partnership with Viasat (VSAT) represents a partnership between the company, United Launch Alliance, and Arianespace in a trilateral agreement for Viasat’s new launch contracts.
Viasat, What’ve You Been Up To?
Prior to tapping SpaceX for some much needed rocket-based support, Viasat (VSAT) launched two of its broadband internet satellites, ViaSat-1 (launched in Oct. 2011) and ViaSat-2 (launched in June 2017) over North America. According to the company’s recent corporate update, Viasat (VSAT) wants to expand their network on a global scale, with “coverage zones over the Americas, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region and has placed orders for two new satellites from Boeing.
As to their choice of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, Viasat said that SpaceX’s rocket will deploy their new satellite “extremely close” to the heavy-lifters last stop in geostationary orbit roughly 22,000 miles over the equator.
Viasat (VSAT) explained their reasoning for choosing SpaceX in their official announcement:
“Viasat sought a ViaSat 3 launch partner that understood our unique mission requirements: to safely and quickly bring a ViaSat 3 spacecraft into orbit, to further our goal of delivering terabits of data from space to meet growing global broadband. We selected SpaceX as they continue to demonstrate their commitment to advancing space technologies. Their proven technology is both powerful and efficient enough to thrust a ViaSat 3 spacecraft close to geostationary orbit.”
–Dave Ryan, president Viasat Space Systems
As a brief aside, president of space systems is probably one of the coolest job titles I’ve heard in my entire life.
It’s clear that Elon Musk is not only one of the most revolutionary minds of our generation, but an individual who believes strongly that humanity is meant to achieve more, and ascend to new frontiers. With the help of SpaceX and its “advanced rockets and spacecraft,” soon Musk’s childlike dreams will be a reality.
