36 Million Ounces of Silver: The Silver Powered Satellite Space Race.
Silver and WiFi from Space.
Dolly Varden Silver Corp
Responsibly advancing silver-rich deposits in northwestern British Columbia
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Satellite Internet Startup Astranis Announces More Powerful Omega Satellite
Satellite internet used to be a fallback for people who had no other option, but things are changing with the availability of cheaper space launches.
SpaceX's Starlink service provides global connectivity that is almost as reliable as terrestrial services, and now other firms are looking to replicate Starlink's success. Astranis is one of them, but it's taking a different approach than Musk's outfit.
The firm has unveiled Omega, a communication satellite that will operate from a high geostationary orbit with five times the speed of the last-gen Astranis satellites. Astranis already has some first-gen satellites in orbit, each one capable of up to 10 Gbps throughput.
The company doesn't sell access to consumers directly just yet. Instead, it sells bandwidth to business and government customers, and they can decide how much speed to offer to end users. Currently, Astranis-based connectivity in Alaska offers about 25 Mbps downloads, which is nothing special compared to the 100-200 Mbps offered by Starlink.
Geostationary satellites tend to be big—the HughesNet Jupiter 3 is 9,000 kilograms whereas a full-size Starlink v2 is going to be 1,200 kilograms. Omega is positively tiny for a geostationary satellite at 600 kilograms, up from 400 kilograms for the first-gen units. Getting to geostationary orbit requires a lot of power, but Astranis says 12 Omega satellites will be able to ride on a single medium-lift rocket.
Astranis says that 70% of the satellites are built in-house, allowing for this relatively small company to churn out up to 24 Omegas per year. Not right away, though. Astranis hopes to launch the first Omega satellites in 2026. Over the next year, the company plans to work on the flight vehicle that will deliver its satellites to the selected orbits.
Astranis will continue improving its network in the meantime, though. It has four first-gen satellites ready to launch this year, and it's aiming for five satellites in 2025. Those aren't Starlink numbers, but it should provide some healthy competition in the satellite internet space.
Almost 18,000,000 ounces of Silver to power all these satellites and this does not count satellites launched by China, Russia, England, France, India, Pakistan, Japan, South Korea (rest of the World)
So it’s safe to double the 18 Million ounce number to equal 36 Million ounces of Silver all in a setting where there is a Worldwide Silver deficit.
Some of the larger satellites and space stations use thousands of ounces of silver per unit but the average use is around 500 ounces per Satellite.
EDITORS NOTE: Elon Musk is the CEO of Spacex so Now do you see why he doesn’t want #SilverSqueeze trending?
Elon Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX, the private aerospace company that developed and operates the Starlink satellite internet constellation.
Starlink is SpaceX's ambitious project to provide high-speed broadband internet access globally through a network of thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites. Musk has been closely involved in the development and rollout of Starlink, which aims to bring internet connectivity to underserved and remote areas around the world.
As the driving force behind SpaceX and its various initiatives, Musk has played a pivotal role in the creation and expansion of the Starlink satellite internet service
Citations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
https://blog.ucsusa.org/syoung/how-many-satellites-are-in-space-the-spike-in-numbers-continues/
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=2023-026N
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1224164/starlink-satellite-launches/
https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/satellite-internet-startup-astranis-announces-more-powerful-omega-satellite
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/zvulmm/billions_of_people_still_lack_highspeed_internet/
https://geo.com.ng/astranis-and-starlink-a-future-of-internet-connectivity/
https://www.astranis.com
https://www.astranis.com/news/astranis-partners-with-thaicom-to-provide-thaicom-9-satellite-over-asia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astranis
