Why space might become unnecessary

 October 4, 2017 marks exactly 60 years since the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite. It was simply called "Sputnik-1" (or, quite officially, "The Simplest Sputnik-1"). This proper name, which quickly became a household name, had to be learned by the whole world. For almost 60 years of the space age, we have become accustomed to space, and it has become an extension of our common home. Today, there are thousands of spacecraft in orbit: communication satellites, Earth remote sensing, meteorological, reconnaissance, space observatories and many others.

"The Simplest Sputnik-1" was launched on October 4, 1957.

The space industry grew rapidly during the Cold War. As a result of the confrontation "on all fronts", the USSR and the United States began to play leading roles in world cosmonautics: the United States is still leading in almost all directions, except for manned flights. Russia has no equals here yet, and most likely will not be in the coming years.

Recently, space has attracted the interest of businessmen, the possibility of private space exploration, processing of asteroids, colonization of the Moon and Mars has opened up. In the near future, entrepreneurs will be able to offer everyone suborbital flights to an altitude of about 100 km above the ground - almost into space!

People who were far from this sphere, who had hitherto been engaged in other things, began to show interest in space: Richard Branson, Vladislav Filev (S7 airline), Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. So far, these are mostly Western entrepreneurs.

In the future, we can expect a boom in space tourism, launching thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbits for distributing the Internet, as well as bases on the Moon and Mars from private companies and the movement of millions of tourists there.

And this is not a joke, but the real plans of entrepreneurs in the field of private space. For example, Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX, promises to send a million people to Mars!

It seems that in the foreseeable future, humanity will gradually occupy the entire near-earth space and settle there thoroughly. The number of working spacecraft in the Earth's orbit will also sharply increase. But is another scenario possible?

Space is difficult, expensive, long-term, and therefore the business prospects of its conquest do not appeal to many. So far, the entire range of services in this area is available only to states and large private companies (which again enjoy state support). But even for them, investing in space is a risk. The device in orbit may fail, the launch vehicle may explode. Naturally, space technology is insured, and insurance will cover all costs, but there may simply not be enough time to produce another satellite.

Even if everything goes well and the devices launched into orbit begin to function, the investments may not be "repulsed", and the technology may become outdated. There is a good example - the Iridium satellites, which provide space communication via a satellite phone anywhere on the planet Earth. The first call in the Iridium system took place in 1997, and the system itself was conceived 10 years earlier - in 1987, when not everyone knew about cellular communication.

But as we now see, the Internet for the same purposes is simpler and cheaper. In addition, cell towers in many countries are growing like mushrooms. LTE is no longer something outlandish - rather, you will be more surprised if you see a person with a satellite phone. “Iridium” was not needed in the mass segment - there is cellular communication, in extreme cases - cheaper satellite services from other providers. One of the reasons for the bankruptcy of the company in 1993 was an incorrect assessment of the spread of a new technology - cellular communications. Iridium continues to exist to this day, but it’s harder for them to compete with other providers that offer much cheaper satellite phone services.

Something similar is happening today, but already with the world wide web: companies like OneWeb or SpaceX threaten to launch thousands of artificial earth satellites, providing them with antennas to distribute the Internet around the world.

That is, theoretically, every inhabitant of the planet will be able to have access to high-speed satellite Internet for relatively little money or even free of charge.

The latter depends on which monetization model is chosen. Today this is relevant, since about half of the world's population does not have constant access to the Internet.

When Motorola launched its Iridium satellite network, a similar situation developed on the market: the current scale of mobile communications in the late 1980s was not even dreamed of, and the company intended to cover the globe with its own network. Now cellular communication is rapidly penetrating even the remote corners of our planet, but the quality of the Internet leaves much to be desired - this is what OneWeb and SpaceX want to fix.