Starlink

Rinat Malik: 00:00:01

Hi Everyone, welcome back to Tech Talk, a podcast where Amit and I talk about various technology-related topics. Today's topic is Starlink. A lot of you will know about Starlink already. It is a new way to get internet provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX. So it's a very, very new technology. And we're both very excited to talk about it, there is a lot of things to cover. And just because it's so new, it's really exciting. And we're looking forward to how it's going to change the landscape of the internet and how a regular user will get into internet in future and how it will, you know, change the whole experience. So yeah, Starlink it's, it's one of the flagship or one of the leading internet providers in from satellites. So I am very excited to talk about it with Amit. So, yes, I mean, how, what do you think of Starlink? Or what, what is Starlink? For people who don't know already?

Amit Sarkar: 00:01:14

Thanks. thanks Rinat Again, as you rightly mentioned, Starlink is part of SpaceX. SpaceX is a company from Elon Musk,if a lot of people don't know about Elon Musk, then Elon Musk is the guy who's currently the owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and many other companies, people would be familiar with electric vehicles. So, we have discussed electric vehicles in one of our previous episodes. So please do listen to that or watch the video. But essentially, Elon Musk has created a company SpaceX that launches rockets, reusable rockets to space. And as part of his small company, he has opened a subsidiary called Starlink and star link, the clue is in the name. So it's linking not linking the stars, but linking satellites outside the planet Earth. Now, what is the what? What is its benefit? And what is? Why is he doing that? I think we will discuss that in the episode. But Starlink is very crucial. It's like the infrastructure, but the infrastructure is not built on the planet. It's built outside the planet, serving it. So, it's a very interesting piece of technology that Elon Musk is working on for his company SpaceX. So yeah, let's explore this topic, and I'm quite excited about it.

Rinat Malik: 00:02:38

Yeah, absolutely. And the way you put it, it's outside the planet and then serving the planet. I mean, this is the best example of thinking outside the box. And this is the whole box is the earth, then yeah, it's doing exactly that. So I think, you know, before discussing Starlink, we could just quickly talk about the journey of the internet as a consumer. I mean, I remember, you know, decades ago, when, you know, the internet was through telephone lines, and then, you know, it was dial-up connections with a modem. And you know, though it was slow, frustratingly slow. But it was still there, the internet was in its infancy. And we were all excited about, you know, being able to connect to the world, essentially. And then when the broadband came it was a very quick turnaround very, very quickly, everyone who had internet changed from more than two broadband, which is that benefit was exponential. I mean, the speed from kbps went to Mbps quickly. And the whole experience of using the internet changed I mean, you know, in a dial-up modem, you couldn't think about a site like YouTube ever being popular because it just wasn't practical to watch videos, after videos. Even Skype was, you know, most of the time when I had a conversation in Skype was can you hear me? Or can you know, can you hear me now and that was most of the conversation. But now we are, you know, replacing GSM mobile phone and landlines and everything with, you know, Voice over IP and everything. So that shift, I mean, there was a big shift it was you know, the whole landscape was changed because of this. And I'm kind of anticipating and hoping that Starlink would also bring about the same kind of exponential difference in internet usage altogether. And one other thing that it promises is, you know, bringing in a lot more people who currently don't have access because they live in remote areas. Within You know, bring them on online, and then that increases the whole market, like the e-commerce market. And there are so many other positive implications of that, you know, starting from expanding the expansion of e-commerce to going towards, you know, making the internet accessible to underprivileged or third world countries where people could, you know, have access to a lot of educational content, so they can improve themselves. And they can make their skills available in the global market. So they can also provide the skills they have the knowledge they have, and yeah, I'm just really excited that how it will change the whole paradigm of internet.

Amit Sarkar: 00:05:41

It will. And I think that's the aim of Elon Musk. Because, as you rightly mentioned, there are still a lot of people who are not connected to the internet. And you mentioned Skype, you mentioned voice calling. So this was something very new, when the internet had come, instead of calling someone over the phone, you're calling someone over the internet. I mean, it was still using the broadband connection and the infrastructure provided by the telecom company. But essentially, it was called using data. I think that's the key differentiator. So you're making like a WhatsApp call that we think about today. So imagine, you could make a phone call, but it's like a WhatsApp call, you can call a number, but from your computer instead of a mobile phone. So that's the difference. But that again, had a challenge, because it was not accessible to a lot of people, people who didn't have money, people who were in remote areas where the infrastructure was not available, people who were there, stuck very far away from cities, where I mean, it was very difficult to lay down the infrastructure. I mean, there is one, there are two aspects, I mean, you live so far, that there is no cost-benefit for a company to provide infrastructure there, or you live in such an inhospitable condition are in such an inhospitable place, that even if the company wants to give you infrastructure, it's just not possible, physically, or it's too expensive because it's it will take a lot of time, money and effort. So what if we outsource that problem to space, everyone can see the stars, if you just look up, you see the sky, and you look up at the stars, and you see a plane flying above you, you see birds flying above you? What if we have satellites flying above, which transmit the TV channels that we see, and everyone is familiar with the cable TV, so you have a dish-antenna. And what it does is it just points to a place in the sky. And it then receives all the TV channels, and then you watch it on your television. What if now you can broadcast the internet in the same way. So you receive data and send data through a dish antenna just like you're receiving your TV channels to a satellite. And then that satellite communicates to other satellites and then transmits that data to the place where it's supposed to go or receive it from where you want to receive it from. And because it's a satellite, it means it can go any on any surface of the planet over any surface of the planet. So that means anyone who lives in a very remote place who lives high up in a mountain or lives in a very remote island. If they have the dish antenna provided by Starlink they can get access to the internet. That's a game-changer, I believe.

Rinat Malik: 00:08:49

Yes, yes, absolutely.

As you mentioned, the idea of getting information on data from satellites is not necessarily new. And because we've been getting that for TV, television,

Amit Sarkar: 00:09:00

Something Rinat that even what Starlink is trying to do is something very extraordinary. But there have been companies who have tried this in the past, some have gone bankrupt, some are still surviving, and some are very expensive. So there are still companies that are able to do what Starlink is trying to do. But Starlink has an advantage and that is reusable rockets. So suppose you want to send satellites. Now satellites cannot be sent by itself. You have to put them in a car that goes to space, that car is a rocket. So you have to have a rocket and then you put the satellite in the rocket, the rocket goes to space, the satellite gets launched, and then it's in orbit. Now the thing is, once it's in orbit, do you have to then send another satellite and you need to have a group of satellites so you can receive the data from different parts of the globe and then route it to somewhere else. So if you don't have a lot of satellites, you don't get good coverage or you don't get good bandwidth, or speed, or get good speed. But the response times are very high or latency. So that's what they say. So you send a request, but the response, it takes time. So what Starlink is trying to do is it has reusable rockets. And with those reusable rockets, it can send 100 satellites in one launch, then maybe a month later, another 100 satellites. So it brings down the cost so drastically.

Rinat Malik: 00:10:31

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, SpaceX was ideally suited for doing exactly this, because the space technology that they've been developing for quite a few years, that goes hand in hand quite well with building the infrastructure for this kind of technology.

Amit Sarkar: 00:10:51

And Rinat the interesting thing is that SpaceX is experimenting with Earth.

Rinat Malik: 00:11:00

That's, right, okay.

Amit Sarkar: 00:11:02

Starlink, is actually planned for Mars.

Rinat Malik: 00:11:04

To be honest, that's interesting. You say that, because I had another talk, maybe in another podcast, that was also quite interesting that everything Elon Musk is doing, including Tesla, is not for this planet. And you know, it kind of did make sense that it was so mind-blowing for a second. But yeah, Tesla is such a good car for us. But actually it's more designed so it can be driven anywhere. And yeah,

Amit Sarkar: 00:11:36

The autonomous driving the self-driving capabilities. So imagine you want to go to Mars, and you want certain technologies, you want internet. people, won't stop using iPhones and Android phones on mass, right? If they want to go eventually. And they would want to talk to their loved ones, they want to watch movies and shows on Netflix. But for that they would need the internet, the data is being created on our planet, and they are living on Mars, how do they receive the data? And even if they receive the data, they need to have good infrastructure in place so that they can talk to each other from different parts of the planet?

Rinat Malik: 00:12:11

Absolutely Right. The sense to build all of the infrastructures that we built for broadband in us to do that all over again, in another planet?

Amit Sarkar: 00:12:21

Yes, Because you have satellites, have satellites, have the Starlink, whatever you have on this planet orbiting. So I mean, for people who are listening to this, listening to a podcast for the first time. So I'll just quickly explain what Starlink is because that's the aim of this podcast. I think you've talked a lot about the aspects but we haven't focused on the technology. So starlink is basically an internet connection for you. So you buy an internet connection from a provider, and you pay for the router. And then you pay for the plan that’s it, and then you get a data cap, and you get either say 200 gigabytes of data per month, or you get an unlimited plan where you can download and upload as much data as possible. So Starlink is offering the same. Starlink will provide you with the infrastructure. So here it's a router and a dish-antenna, and some few cables, power cable, network, cable, etc. For about $500 or about 500 pounds for people in the UK. With that infrastructure, they give you an internet speed, guaranteed up from 50 Mbps to 150 Mbps. Mbps is megabit per second. Now that's a very good speed, you can watch Netflix, you can have zoom calls, or you can watch YouTube videos, it's perfect for day-to-day usage. But because it's satellite, and it's currently in the beta phase, it means your connections might drop. Sometimes you can, your speeds may be very high, sometimes your speeds will be very low, because the infrastructure is still very new, and they have not launched all the satellites they are supposed to. Currently, there are about 1700 satellites in orbit. They aim to have about 40,000 satellites to get full coverage with very low latency. But it's in the beta phase. So it's still in the testing phase. So it's good. They have signed up about 100,000 customers. So it's still doing very well. In terms of people who are interested in this technology, especially people living in remote areas are signing up quite a learn a lot and their internet plan costs about 99 pounds or $99 per month for unlimited data. And they won't have any other plan. They'll have one plan with unlimited data for that speed. That's it. And the dish antenna that they provide has a stick and the antenna and the antenna can move on its own once it points to the sky To adjust based on where the satellite is, so it needs an open space to direct. So if you have trees around your houses, don't point them there. So Starlink provides you with all the instructions. And the way they do that is through their app. So just like for any internet provider these days, you have an account. Similarly, with Starlink, you will have an Android app or iOS app, you can download that app on your phone, and you can control the billing the connection, the speed, and you can also set up the dish antenna. So it will tell you where is which is the right place outside your house, where you will get good internet connectivity with open skies. Suppose you live in a flat where you don't have the space to provide to keep the dish antenna, they will provide you with a wall mount or a rooftop mount something like that, which will help you to put it outside your flat, where you can get just like dish antenna for your cable TV, you can attach it and you can then receive the internet connection. So currently, it's in the beta phase. And the way it works is the way Starlink works. So this is the ground infrastructure. So the space infrastructure consists of a swarm of satellites, which means hundreds and 1000s of satellites. So currently, as I mentioned, there are 1700 satellites are orbiting our planet. And what they are doing is they are orbiting low Earth orbit L.E.O . International Space Station if people are not familiar International Space Station is a collaboration between many nations to build a permanent base in space. And that orbits about 400 kilometers of Earth's surface, and SpaceX satellites are orbiting about another 100 150 kilometers above the International Space Station. So they are still very close to us. So they might be closer to those satellites might be closer to us than maybe some of the places that we visit. So they're not very high, about 500 kilometers high maybe. So now what happens is because they're so high, sorry, so low because low Earth orbit,

Amit Sarkar: 00:17:07

we can launch them very quickly, and we don't need a lot of energy to send them into orbit. So that's why Falcon nine rockets, which are currently the reusable rockets used by SpaceX, are quite effective for launching satellites to low Earth orbits, launching cargo to International Space Station. Because you don't have to go that high, it means you don't need that much fuel. And because you don't need that much fuel, it means your rocket can be a smaller size. And it means that fewer complications. SpaceX is trying to build bigger rockets, but for now, it's focusing on low Earth orbit. Low Earth orbits mean you can launch very quickly you can, you need a smaller rocket, and you don't need that much fuel. And with reusability, you can launch frequently. So once you're all the satellites are in place, they're revolving around a planet in a circular path. So, so there might be in that path, there could be hundreds of satellites. I'm not sure of the exact number, but say in one circular path there are hundreds of satellites. So every point in a day you will have at least one or two satellites crossing your house or over your house. And now imagine that same circle of satellites warming the planet, now it goes to another circle. You're familiar with latitude and longitude on planet Earth. So now think that one of the orbits is one latitude, another orbit is another latitude, and so on or longitude, depending upon the orientation of the satellite. So you have satellites orbiting in the longitudinal plane and the latitudinal plane around the Earth. So that means now you can have constant coverage about almost the entire planet, right? Even in the Amazon forest. If you can find the gap between the trees and you can see the stars, you can get an internet connection there. So now what happens is the dish antenna is pointing to the satellite, the satellite receives the data. Now it has to send the data somewhere else. To do that it has currently has ground stations. So it sends it to the ground station and then it uses that infrastructure, the ground infrastructure to send the data to the required destination. But in the future what will happen is they'll use lasers. So each satellite will communicate with the other satellite using lasers. and communicating with lasers in space is much faster than fiber optics are on the earth which also use light. So laser is nothing but light. But light travels faster in a vacuum than in fiber optic cables. So imagine the speeds that you can get. And if you have a lot of satellites very close to you and they're all talking to each other instantaneously at the speed of light, then it means you can send data very very quickly. So that's how Starlink will work. Now currently the dish antenna is quite heavy, so you cannot use it,ff you want to use it on mobile, in the sense that if you want to use it on a car, say, Tesla, you won't be able to use it because it's a bit heavy. But if you have a truck, you can, if you move your house, you can. So currently, every starlink is linked to the geographical location that you are. So if you move houses or if you move your satellite, then it will the services will stop working. So you'll have to tell Starlink through the app, that okay, you have moved location. And Starlink will then first check whether you have the internet service available or not, which you can do before moving as well. If you're if applied to move to a new place, just check before you have Starlink coverage there. If you have the move it if you don't have the pre-order a new satellite, or sorry, pre-order a connection for that particular location. And once the coverage is available, you can get a new connection there. So essentially, it is an internet connection powered through space.

Rinat Malik: 00:21:03

Yeah, that's quite a lot of insight. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I mean, I mean, I've also learned quite a bit. I mean, I knew about Starlink. But I didn't know all of these details, which is interesting. I mean, the way you put it is like you first focus on the consumer side. And then you also looked at the infrastructure from the SpaceX side. But if I look at I mean, it's just my opinion, I mean, for I mean when I, whenever there's any new technology, they're early adopters, and you know, who gets the new technology, and the very beginning and for early adopters, I would say go for it as soon as you can, you know, it's an amazing technology, and it will, you know, I have big hopes that it will, you know, get more and more, they will have mass adoption very soon. But for right now, I mean, obviously, when they launched, for the first time, they were invite-only, I think it still invites only

Amit Sarkar: 00:22:01

No, I think it's not invite-only because I tried applying for Starlink at my particular address. And it is currently available now in the UK, I think it has launched in a couple of countries as well. So if you go to the Starlink website, there is an FAQ section, you can read everything about Starlink from there. And you can also apply. I think the challenge is Starlink is the upfront cost, which is about $500 for the infrastructure, which is the dish antenna. And you know,

Rinat Malik: 00:22:28

yeah, that's always gonna say that. Yeah, for early adopters. Definitely, yeah, go for it, if you can afford it, but for me, I am at the beginning when it was invited on, or something. I sort of submitted my application straight away. And then I did get the invite. And I was told that yes, you can get it. This is the price. But, for practical reasons, I kind of had to pass on that opportunity. Because Yeah, I had internet and it was a bit too expensive to sort of experiment. Exactly. Because also the monthly cost is, you know, a bit higher than broadband connection.

Amit Sarkar: 00:00:00

Yes. Yeah. Comparative the speeds that you normally get?

Rinat Malik: 00:23:10

Yeah, but, I mean, something to check out. And, you know, it has a lot of benefits as well. I mean, for the right people right now, because it's in beta phase, as you mentioned, it is, you know, the performance is a little bit fluctuating. But there are such a niche group of people for whom it would be really helpful because people who are in rural areas, as you mentioned, where there isn't, you know, the broadband infrastructure isn't even there and then dig lines to get to one house or a few houses, you know, the internet providers are just not willing to do that unless you kind of shell out a massive cost, you know, for them to get you that line for that kind of situation. Starlink is the best and most cost-effective option. But for you know, a lot of people who are living in the city or in you know, densely populated areas, it's probably not for them and not as cost-effective as it can be for them. So right now, it probably, you know, from a consumer point of view a applies to a certain niche group of people. But you know, eventually, I think he would, you know, have mass adoption very, you know, well, I don't know if it's very soon, but yeah, well, eventually, because it is,

Amit Sarkar: 00:24:34

I think the use case what I'm I'm thinking in my mind is for the remote areas, if you can't afford it, maybe someone can in your village, and maybe you can get one connection. And then with that connection, you can create like an internet cafe. And then people can come and access the internet. access to the internet.

Rinat Malik: 00:24:52

you can also probably bench lan I mean, you know, we all have LAN.

Amit Sarkar: 00:24:58

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Rinat Malik: 00:24:59

Lan stands for local area network. I mean, it does get lan in just in your apartment, it could be like a locality where you can sort of share the internet speed. If there is no other option for you to gain internet, then yeah, definitely it is……

Amit Sarkar: 00:25:19

And the other thing is, I mean, of course, it's weather-dependent. So on the FAQ of the Starlink website, it's written that it can melt snow if it falls, but if there is snow around the area, say no not tree, and it blocks the view, then, of course, Starlink can control it. And you might get us your speeds might get affected because of rain, thunder, showers, and lightning. So you have to be mindful of that as well, because of different weathering conditions, sorry, weather conditions, it might affect the speed, but generally speaking, it should work even with clouds in your sight. So it doesn't matter if there are clouds or no clouds, I think it should still work. I think the other advantage of having a space infrastructure is suppose you have earthquakes and you have wildfires, your cables are gone, but if you have the satellite still working, and if you have power, you can talk to people around the world using that in internet infrastructure, which is crazy. I mean, all you need is a diesel generator or electric battery, and you can power a computer, and then you can start talking to someone.

Rinat Malik: 00:26:24

This is so inspiring, to be honest, because a lot of the groundbreaking technologies a lot of the like, you know, technologies that change the world, you know, moved us to the next you know, I don't know, the next step is usually always promising this thing that, you know, it is not controlled by anything. Like for example, the internet itself, you know, you know, a government can sort of, you know, control the southern ISP, but you know, there has been some examples where maybe some governments tried to do that, but then, you know, regular people still found a way to connect to the rest of the world and then again, decentralized technologies like blockchain technology and cryptocurrency that's also becoming more and more popular, and that's another thing that government or any other organizations, you know, like, you know, people or organization that controls the world, and controls regular people, if you want, you can kind of escape, that's one of the big steps and, you know, Starlink in a way promises that because yeah, if all the infrastructure is gone, you can still connect to the rest of the world. Through this technology.

Amit Sarkar: 00:27:50

Why Don’t you have electricity?

Rinat Malik: 00:27:53

Yeah, but I mean, that's, you know if you want to live off the grid, if you want that kind of rebellious person that Yeah, no, I don't you know, I'm rebelling against society. And you know, I'm gonna hunt and farm and you know, make grow my own food and do all of that. Then it would probably have a renewable energy source at home.

Amit Sarkar: 00:28:14

yes. solar panels.

Rinat Malik: 00:28:15

Solar panels or, you know, some people are doing private wind power banks as well. So yeah……….

Amit Sarkar: 00:28:22

So if you have your energy source, then you can have your internet connection through satellite and you're covered. You don't need any other infrastructure, except water maybe. But we are not talking about that……

Rinat Malik: 00:28:34

I think yeah, this is another interesting topic because due to Coronavirus you know, a lot of people start working from home. And then some people took it one step further. And then they moved away from the city and then they experienced, you know, living in a peaceful, close to nature, and, you know, in a self-sufficient way, and that does, you know, a lot of people did say that they felt like they were more, you know, closer to nature, they felt more peaceful. And a lot of people are exploring this kind of, you know, lifestyle and yeah, Starlink enables that, which is amazing.

Amit Sarkar: 00:29:17

Yes, it does, I think that's the use case. And imagine if you're the first mover. So suppose you are a space company you have you are the only one who has reusable rockets. You're the only one who can launch to low Earth orbit very rapidly. And you have now created a satellite, a swarm of satellites, or a network. Now imagine if there is a competitor and who wants to do the same thing. Who wins? It's a first-mover advantage, right? So what StarLink is or SpaceX is trying to do is get the first-mover advantage. Whoever gets control of those people, and that infrastructure orbiting the planet Earth, they controls the internet.

Rinat Malik: 00:30:00

Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, there was a time when I thought, oh my god, Google has become such a monopoly, you know, will there ever be anything that can top of that, but then, you know, you never know how technology changes the landscape of, you know………

Amit Sarkar: 00:30:16

Exactly And then with the recent petrol and the fuel crisis in the UK, a lot of people started searching about electric cars. And what came up …? Tesla's….

Rinat Malik: 00:30:29

Yeah, it is a little bit off-topic, but I was looking at a few other ads of electric vehicles from BMW and Rolls Royce. And to be honest, I mean, I'm sorry to say, but their car looks so much cooler now. I mean, you know, Tesla does have the first-mover advantage. So you know, mass people like you know, whenever you say electric vehicles then thinking the first think will be Tesla. But obviously, the big boys are also now coming in the market,

Amit Sarkar: 00:31:00

They're getting the features. But what's Tesla does is the battery, I think no one is getting a good enough battery for now, with the range that Tesla provides. I don't own a Tesla. Tesla is not sponsoring this video. I'm just a big fan. Because I've read, and watched a lot of YouTube videos and read about them online, I think you'll have to look at it critically. So there are two things when it comes to mass adoption. And why Tesla's are such a big hit is first, their supercharging network. So This enables you to charge rapidly very quickly, especially in UK, US, and many other European nations. So far, they are not been very popular, of course, because of their cost in countries like India, and say other developing nations. But I think their range and their network, I think that is crucial. If any other car companies like BMW, and Audi and Mercedes, or Volvo, they are coming up with electric cars, and they are coming up with very, very good because they have experience of building cars for a very long time, more than what Tesla has. So of course, they're going to build a good car. But will you be able to charge that car on a trip that you're making, say a 200 mile or two or 300/500 kilometers trip? And will your battery last for that long before you have to recharge? I think that those are the questions that we need to ask when we talk about electric cars.

Rinat Malik: 00:32:30

Yes, yes. I mean, Tesla has the advantage of, you know, the R&D of battery technology. But then again, you know, you never know how the landscape changed through it, they do have the first-mover advantage of people know about just as soon as you talk about electric vehicles, but the same way people would know about Starlink as soon as they talk about Satellite Internet, and I do wonder, like, you know, if there are more competitors, and they could very well be I mean, you know……

Amit Sarkar: 00:33:01

there are….. The thing is those competitors, their lagging is…. The reason they are lagging is they don't have the kind of reusable rockets that SpaceX has. So they have satellites, they are in orbit, but they are big satellites, the bigger satellites

Rinat Malik: 00:33:16

Yeah, but eventually there will be having you know, Virgin Galactic and then

Amit Sarkar: 00:33:21

Blue origin, they are planning.

Rinat Malik: 00:33:25

There will be an eye what I wonder is, you know, if Starlink already has a network of 1000s of satellites, how would another network be exactly they have to be in a different height from us to so they don't collide together? I'm sure there's a lot more complicated a calculation that goes on for, you know….

Amit Sarkar: 00:33:50

Yes, yes. But yeah, imagine you are going to space so own space, who regulates space.

Rinat Malik: 00:34:00

Also, and also, you know, if as we progress, you know, the probably commercial space flights and stuff, and then they have to calculate so they don't knock over some of the satellites on its way out. So these are some interesting….

Amit Sarkar: 00:34:20

There are other challenges of space observation. So people in astronomy, they say that okay, SpaceX now has so many satellites, they are blocking our view. yes, because they reflect light. And so SpaceX took notice that they started putting a code that doesn't reflect light, so much, so that it doesn't interfere with the observation. But imagine if you have so many satellites, and they're reflecting light, and you have to observe a point in space constantly and because of the satellites, you get that noise. It's not acceptable. So Yeah, there's a lot of other cons. But let's see what happens because I think it's all about going to Mars. How do you create an internet infrastructure for Mars? How do you create reusable rockets? How do you launch very quickly? How do you send cargo to space very quickly? I think those are the kind of challenges that Elon Musk is trying to solve. How do you so Elon Musk is also in the solar business as well through Solar City? I think that's the name of his company that makes and installs solar panels. So that is also again, important because if you have seen the movie, The Martian, the protagonist, uses solar panels to recharge his vehicle every day. It takes time. But that's one of the energy sources. So you have more solar energy, how can you harness that? And then Tesla also is a battery company. So whatever energy that you get from the solar, if you can't store it, what's the point because you're charging the whole day, but if you can't store it, and reuse it in the night, what's the point? So then you have a battery company at Tesla is, of course, sorry, Elon Musk is, of course, focusing on battery technology through Tesla's and also through his other companies. So he's moving in the right direction. But let's see who wins this game.

Rinat Malik: 00:36:25

Yeah, this actually reminds me of a topic in business and logistics that I read, like, you know, when you start a business, you know, if your business is doing well, you want to expand and you can either expand vertically or horizontally, you know, expanding vertically, meaning that, you know, maybe if you're an ice cream company, you know, you're selling ice cream, you go, you know, you create another company or a subsidiary, which actually supplies or generally no manufactures the milk, or other ingredients. So that's, that's moving vertically, that you know, you go through the supply chain of all of the ingredients, and you know, you go to the actual very root, and that's, that's your line of expansion. Or you could go horizontally, where you open more and more branches, and you know, that you get gain, you know, you keep your ice cream company, but you reach more customers, in different cities or whatever. But, you know, what Elon Musk is doing with all of these different ventures This is so such an interesting way of doing of looking at it because he is moving, I don't know whether I could call it vertically or horizontally because this is looking at the customer experience, the user experience and is filling all the needs of that cycle. So yeah, you know, you need to generate renewable energy, and then you need to store the renewable energy and in a battery, and then you need to use the renewable energy from the battery, you know, to go from the place a to place B, and then you know, why all the while doing that you're getting, you know, artificially intelligent robot giving you directions with open AI, and then you're using the internet while you're moving to a remote location from Starlink. I mean, you know,

Amit Sarkar: 00:38:19

And you forgot about the mind control neural link?

Rinat Malik: 00:38:23

Yes, yes. So yeah, you're probably going to be experiencing all of this from your computer. But, yeah, no, I mean, this is such an interesting way. I mean, because you know, in logistics, you know, business expand in this way. But what Elon Musk is doing is that he's expanding not based on the supply chain or the logistical side, but he's expanding based on the user experience, and whatever it takes to go full circle with all the different things that the user needs. And that's probably, you know, the new ways of looking at expanding businesses.

Amit Sarkar: 00:39:01

I think infrastructure would be crucial, I mean, for the ground apart. So Amazon, when Amazon was built, Jeff Bezos said he had the infrastructure, he had the credit card or the payments, internet thing matured, he had the internet. So he didn't have to build the internet, the internet was already there. And then he had the postal system, the US postal system for the logistics. So they already had a network of posting to different parts of the country. So when Amazon was created, he had the necessary infrastructure. And SpaceX is I think, trying to build that infrastructure. What do you do with that infrastructure is the next step of business like okay, I have now all these Tesla. Autonomous self-driving cars. What can I do with it? Can I lease it? Can I rent it out? Can I use it for some other purposes? I have the solar panels I have Starlink What can I use Starlink for? Maybe I can use Starlink for something else. Maybe I sell Some other products now do remote sensing because I have so many satellites, if I put cameras on them, maybe I can now do remote sensing, I can see what's happening on the planet. And I can sell that data to people. So I don't know what the plan is. but he's getting there Slowly,

But that's how you evolve, right? From one level to another. So we build the infrastructure on planet earth, but planet earth, because of global warming, rapid climate changes, fluctuations in the temperatures environment, lots of words, quakes, lots of floods, lots of wildfires,rainfall, et cetera. And with all that, our infrastructure gets affected. Now you build all that infrastructure and, you know, that sunlight is going to be everywhere in the solar system.So how do you deliver? Is that, uh, how do you store energy in a battery? And then how do you have that link of satellites infrastructure to communicate data from maybe one planet say, earth, to the moon, to Mars, Mars to the moon, Mars to earth, et cetera. So I think, he's heading in the right direction, because those are problems that need to be solved.

Rinat Malik: 00:41:11

Yes, yes. But then, but then again, you know, if you've, if you are living in Mars and if I am living in earth, I would get the premiere of the new movie release 11 minutes in earth.

Amit Sarkar: 00:41:25

True..Yeah. That's always there, but, uh, still 11 minutes is not bad. Even if you watch something live it's anyway, a few seconds later. So you see the goal in the stadium, but when someone hears it on the radio, someone sees it on the TV, it's a few seconds late, maybe 30 seconds delay. So you're still not seeing that in real-time, but it's okay.

Rinat Malik: 00:41:51

Yeah. Yeah.

That is true. That is true. I mean, yeah, that's an interesting way of looking at it as well. Yeah, no, this has been a this has been insightful, insightful conversation. I've learned a lot of hope our audience did too. Um, it was a lot of information from you and, um, I feel like I've, you know, I was able to give the audience some perspective to look at this technology with, and yeah, again, I've said this earlier as well, if you're an early adopter that kind of, you know, a customer who gets excited about new technology and if you've got afford it, definitely go for it. Um, you know, you will have the, you know, the advantage of knowing and you know, using it and, yeah, for the rest of us out here, I mean, you know, we're still like really hopefully waiting for it to become, you know, more, more, usable or more sort of, value for money in densely populated areas as well. And then we can also take advantage of it.

Amit Sarkar: 00:43:06

Yeah. I think Starlink is working on that because once the adoption increases, they can lower down the cost of, deploying the, infrastructure. So what they are anticipating is, once they are more satellites in place and they have more customers, they can bring down the cost of that first, a bit of infrastructure for which you currently have to pay half a grand. So it's still a lot of money, but, if they can reduce the cost, the availability goes high, people who are able to buy it increases.

So, yeah. And, for those of us, I mean those of you who watching or listening to this podcast, the reason why we selected this topic is that, this is more to do with the infrastructure than with, some kind of software. Some of them, some of the topics that we are trying to now tackle are more hardware-related than software-related. So yeah. Watch out, this space.

Rinat Malik: 00:44:07

Yeah, yeah. And again, yeah, if you guys have any feedback on what we've talked about, or if you have any idea of what we should talk about in the future, definitely reach out to us. You know, whenever we get any emails, we do take into a count, choose our topics based on that. So, yeah. Thank you very much. And we will see you guys again next week. Thank you, everyone. Bye. Bye.