The battle for space for low-orbit satellites

The U.S. November election has come to an end, and in this exciting presidential race, Trump's most eye-catching guest is none other than Elon Musk. On October 5, Musk attended Trump's campaign speech at Butler and happily jumped on the stage to express his strong support for Trump with practical actions. Not only that, but Musk is also unambiguous in terms of financial sponsorship, according to documents released by the Federal Election Commission in mid-October, Musk donated a total of more than $118 million to America PAC, which greatly reversed Trump's disadvantage in the early stage of the vote.

Musk, a famous entrepreneur, business tycoon, and founder of Spacex, became the richest man in the world in 2022. After the end of the Cold War, Musk gave up his advantage in physics, and started his business twice to earn the "first pot of gold" in his life, and after having the foundation of economic strength, he established Space X in 2002, hoping to realize his "Mars dream" through this project and launch a "human greenhouse" to Mars. The development process of Space X did not go well, and at first a series of failures almost bankrupted Musk. The turning point came in 2008, when the successful launch of the fourth Falcon rocket attracted the attention of NASA. Compared with the old launch alliance ULA, Space X has a competitive advantage in terms of single-batch production price and production speed. But as a private space launch company, both the market and the order book are crucial. In view of this, Musk proposed to be his own "customer" and open up the market. Except for socialist countries, no country will build base stations for free to benefit the people, so there is no signal in most remote places around the world. Musk is keenly aware of this, and in 2014 decided to start the "Starlink" plan, planning to launch 42,000 satellites to form a signal transmission coverage circle on the earth and achieve full coverage of satellite broadband Internet services.

In 2023, as the technology matures, SpaceX will complete an average of one launch every four days at its peak, and by 2024, the total number of satellites launched in orbit will reach 6,393. This alarming pace of development is a source of concern for the international community.

Although Starlink is still a private company research and development project in the United States, the Strategic Intelligence Agency and the Military Research Center of the United States have already shifted their attention to the Starlink project. The Starlink project was originally intended to provide network services to remote areas, but the scarce order volume was bound to make it difficult to maintain the program, and cooperation with the US government was inevitable. In 2012, Space X signed a space launch contract with the U.S. Air Force Space Missile Systems Center, provided purchase launch services for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Bureau in 2016, and conducted Starlink tests for military aircraft for the U.S. Air Force in 2019. According to the news, in a radar experiment in the South China Sea, scientists used Space X's Starlink satellite radiation to successfully detect a DJI with a radar cross-sectional area similar to that of a stealth fighter. Although the first and second phases of the Starlink project have not yet posed a substantial threat, there is no guarantee for the development of the third and fourth phases and the future, and the ambition of the United States for global control is unimaginable. In the future, information-based unmanned combat capability will be achieved.