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Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

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Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#391

Post by performative »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #184
performative wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

other than introducing public policy to encourage building more housing, i assume?

The problem is that in places like Seattle and the Bay Area, there are hard geographic limits to construction, even if you turn them into endless high-rises. Having watched the WA state legislature go through several years of attempts to fix housing by throwing random policy ideas into the void, I'm not convinced any of it matters nearly as much as a) more money in the state housing trust to help people with down pay…

i'm realizing i don't have a great knowledge base on like,, exactly how many people live in a suburb but would rather live in a city and vice versa. anything you can point me towards? you can make sure the whole state has access to the basic living amenities required to, say, do remote work effectively, but my gut tells me that a significant number of people are drawn to urban areas for the types of amenities only possible with higher population density

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#392

Post by bblcla »

bblcla wrote: post #77
rootusrootus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Took me a second to parse that. It says 28 of 28 E175s have Starlink, but what I am hearing you say is that Alaska has more than 28 E175s. Indeed, wikipedia says their fleet includes 47 E175s. Consider my hopes dashed :(. Oh well, I don't usually bother with wifi on flights that are only a few hours anyway, but free Starlink speed wifi would be fun! Feature request: Put a disclaimer on the fleet page that the trackin…

> Feature request: Put a disclaimer on the fleet page that the tracking is limited. Or pull enough data to say "28 airframes of 47 are starlink capable" which is what I think most people will be looking to know in the fleet info. Oh, this one is very doable and makes sense! We track this internally anyway so it's just a matter of surfacing it on the fleet information.

Fixed now! :)

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#393

Post by ghaff »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #175
TulliusCicero wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why should we subsidize package / letter delivery to people in the sticks?" Good point, it doesn't make much sense to do that either. > The economic benefit of making those people available as consumers, lowering barriers to their engagement in markets, is enormous and certainly pays for itself. Or , we could zone areas to encourage people to live in towns where it's feasible for both corporations and the governme…

The situation with the electric grid is pretty crazy. The cost to supply power to houses in sparsely populated communities is orders of magnitude higher than urban apartments. Not just the power infrastructure itself but all sorts of little ongoing things like maintenance visits, as well as losses from transmission and distribution. I worked on smart grid systems and getting apartment buildings online was a piece of…

And it’s not universal. Just heard a talk today from someone who lives off-grid along with a well, rain collection, and septic.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#394

Post by ghaff »

iknowstuff wrote: post #356
gib444 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if 10 million people from rural towns moved to their nearest cities, the cities would become cheaper? What would drop in price exactly?

Yes, if you compare the efficiency of China’s economy to America, you’ll find that their giant cities save them a ton of money on everything overall. As long as you’re willing to build a lot of dense housing very quickly.

And not give people much of a choice. Chairman Mao would like a word.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#396

Post by ghaff »

jfoster wrote: post #247
gpt5 wrote: post #4

One nice thing about Starlink is that they force the airlines to offer it for free. I’m not sure why SpaceX is doing this, but it was surprising enough to me that my international WiFi was not only fast, but completely free that I researched it.

I think this approach gets the whole industry to adopt it. Consider the opposite approach. If they let airlines charge any amount for it, the airlines that installed it would make it expensive. No one would use it. Other airlines would feel no pressure to offer it. By making it free, it gets used, and eventually depended upon. SpaceX are making free wifi the expectation from consumers on flights.

It’s available on some ships—not free but pretty reasonably priced. Debated last time I went trans- Atlantic but $20 per day seemed fair.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#397

Post by throw__away7391 »

ghaff wrote: post #393
throw__away7391 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation with the electric grid is pretty crazy. The cost to supply power to houses in sparsely populated communities is orders of magnitude higher than urban apartments. Not just the power infrastructure itself but all sorts of little ongoing things like maintenance visits, as well as losses from transmission and distribution. I worked on smart grid systems and getting apartment buildings online was a piece of…

And it’s not universal. Just heard a talk today from someone who lives off-grid along with a well, rain collection, and septic.

Not sure what you mean exactly. In the jurisdictions I have experience the utility is legally obligated to provide service to any residence within the territory. That resident can then decide to use 100% solar with batteries and pay us nothing, or use solar during the day and rely on the grid at night, or in our case we had net metering so resident were able to treat the utility as a free battery, producing excess kWh during the day and drawing it back at night, paying only the difference in total draw (or receiving a credit even).

I have not worked in water/sewage, but the characteristics are quite different compared to electricity--electricity cannot be stored, it needs to be sent directly from the power plant to the consumer at the exact moment it is consumed, but on the other hand electricity can be produced more or less on demand with the quantity limited only by your willingness to pay. Water is finite, and is simply being managed by the utility rather than created on demand. Someone collecting rainwater is still impacting the local water system and depending on the environment this still needs to be managed by someone.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#398

Post by martin_ »

libria wrote: post #344
martin_ wrote: post #297

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

This is the 1st link posted in /r/unitedairlines anytime someone mentions "starlink". One use-case better covered by https://unitedstarlinktracker.com/ is the upfront log that shows a quick swath of airports that might receive and depart starlink equipped planes. I can CTRL-F -> "RDU" and know immediately my chance of checking this out (not much). Would it be hard to produce a pie chart showing top 10 airports with m…

Oops sorry just saw this - done! https://unitedstarlinktracker.com/#airports

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#399

Post by panick21_ »

infinitewars wrote: post #379
mattmaroon wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don't know about the math. I've seen numbers that differ significantly from yours, but none which make it profitable at a reasonable price. I am sure he will continue to drop launch costs and I assume satellite improvements will make them able to serve more people, maybe orbit longer as they get smaller. Or maybe it'll just implode. I hope not.

That math doesn't need to mask sense, it's always been about Golden Dome.

Complete nonsense. They didn't start in 2015 and didn't get investment into Starlink from Google because hopefully some presidnet would want Goldon Dome in the future. Starlink is a good business and has plenty of military value without Goldon Dome.
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