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Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

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Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#291

Post by ValentineC »

As someone who's really not a fan of fElon (he made Twitter steal my OG username), it's nice to see people misuse the Starlink term, and I hope it would eventually be genericised [1]. ;)

The proper term should be Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, and there are other providers like Amazon [2] and Panasonic Avionics [3] that I hope other airlines would do business with.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

[2] https://leo.amazon.com/

[3] https://www.panasonic.aero/blog/blog-post/what-is-low-earth-...

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#292

Post by HorizonXP »

This is awesome! I just came back from Cancun with my family, and I was on a WestJet flight. I was taken aback by a) free Wifi and b) how fast it was to support everyone streaming YouTube even. Your tracker let me figure out that it was a WestJet flight; now I know that I have to seek out these flights from now on.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#293

Post by heavyset_go »

sysguest wrote: post #173
TulliusCicero wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, private companies want to make money by getting customers. Obviously there can be edge cases, but if there's profit to be made by hooking people up, they'll want to do it, and if private companies don't want to get more customers, you have to ask yourself some hard questions about why. I think we both know what's usually happening: people in an area who, as a whole, are rural enough and poor enoug…

this people here don't understand how large USA is -- connecting every corner with copper/fiber, with all the intermediary networking devices means tax money...

We paid $900 million in taxes to subsidize rural access to Starlink in one year lol

We also paid $42 billion in taxes for ISPs to roll out broadband access in a 2021 bill, and it hasn't connected a single person to the internet

Before that, we paid $400 billion to ISPs to do the same thing with the same results

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#295

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

infinitewars wrote: post #216
DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea .. so new that I have only worked in the industry for 5+ years now. Your link doesn't support anything you said. What passage in that interview says anything about "In‑Q‑Tel invested in SpaceX" or "CIA funded SpaceX"? That interview is a NASA oral history of Mike Griffin’s career. It mentions his time at In‑Q‑Tel and later NASA, but it never says In‑Q‑Tel or the CIA funded SpaceX. You’re conflating "this guy once…

You just created the straw man argument about the CIA directly funding SpaceX. Not that simple. Read the articles.

> SpaceX was in fact founded with the architect of SDI

> Griffin who went from the CIA to become head of NASA and funded the early SpaceX (10x from what Musk himself put in!)

Strawman eh? You pretty much claimed that Griffin funded SpaceX, and not just that, that he invested 10x as much as Musk.

Now you go around editing your comments. Lol.

It is not a strawman to say that what you said is non even nearly close to reality.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#296

Post by modeless »

jojobas wrote: post #285
modeless wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have it exactly backwards. It is far less complex and expensive and resource intensive to build Starlink than to run a new copper or fiber line with associated telecom equipment on both sides to every rural residence in the US, let alone worldwide. Yes, despite the large cost of launching satellites. And it's especially good that we don't have to force everyone to subsidize inefficient monopoly utilities with our…

Starlink recently hit 10k satellites. I'd hazard a guess that's not anywhere near enough getting everyone in the US, let alone worldwide, online.

Not everyone. But it's enough for rural areas, which are the most expensive and least practical to serve with wires.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#298

Post by sandworm101 »

modeless wrote: post #197
devin wrote: post #126

I've written it elsewhere, but: it is such a shame that the United States saw fit to run electricity _everywhere_, no matter how rural your location, but instead of do the same for rural internet we had to wait for... a private company to launch a global network of satellites. Yes, this post is about internet access while traveling 500mph, which is a different problem, but it is so messed up that people fall over the…

You have it exactly backwards. It is far less complex and expensive and resource intensive to build Starlink than to run a new copper or fiber line with associated telecom equipment on both sides to every rural residence in the US, let alone worldwide. Yes, despite the large cost of launching satellites. And it's especially good that we don't have to force everyone to subsidize inefficient monopoly utilities with our…

Maybe today, but internet over radio cannot defeat physics. There is only so much bandwidth, so much space in the RF spectrum for data. But landline internet is effectively limitless. You can always lay a second, or twentieth, fiber run. A 10cm bundle of fibers can carry more bandwidth than the entire starlink network many times over, with much lower running costs.

The most effective in rural areas is generally a combination. Fiber to a central location and wifi radio out to customers. I am monitoring a property on the west coast connected via such a setup. The last relay is actually solar powered atop an island.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#299

Post by throwaway132448 »

lxgr wrote: post #212
throwaway132448 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is holding you hostage. Sounds like you need the timeout more than anyone. And the assumption that this view was drawn from nostalgia is completely invalid.

> What’s nice is not that it’s just me, but that it’s everyone. This made it sound like you enjoy me being offline, and that seems pretty selfish (as long as I don't annoy you somehow with my Internet connection, and on that, see my original comment). I'm a big fan of offline gatherings (ideally in nature, which is pretty much the opposite of economy class on many dimensions), but I think this should be a choice.

I do enjoy you being offline. There’s nothing selfish about having different preferences to you. Selfish would be forcing those preferences on you. That you assumed one was the other is a good reason to reflect.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#300

Post by bblcla »

martin_ wrote: post #297

I built something similar[0] a while back, Stardrift looks 100x better - nice work! [0] unitedstarlinktracker.com

hey! I saw this and liked it a lot! It’s impressive how you pull in all the routes per tail - we considered doing it but were worried it would be too expensive. Definitely opens up cool options though.
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