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SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

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Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#233
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still. What's the cost of deploying 800 sattelites vs cost of fiber infrastructure for 6 million people?

In cities, the fiber, or even some form of local wireless, is much cheaper. However, in more rural areas the satellite system can well end up the cheaper choice. The interesting part is what building 4425 satellites does to the economics of making satellites. Right now, most satellites are one-offs, or at most made in a series of 10 or so, handmade to exact specifications for maximum reliability and built for 25+ yea…

"This fleet is meant to be mass-produced and built to last a much shorter time, 5-10 years at most. I am very interested in just how low can they drive the cost of making a single satellite."

One of the best points in the discussion. This has potential to produce side-effects more valuable than whatever they were attempting to do. As in, they can fail in their overall goal but a ton of great things would come from success in this part.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're made up, and they lack context. 40ms for ADSL... From where to where are you pinging? Gamers will regularly achieve ~20ms pings to other gamers on the same continent. Where as pinging around the other side of world (under-sea cables) is going to add approximately 150-200 ms. Also FTTH vs. ADSL vs. Cable really shouldn't make much difference with regards to ping (they're all fibre for the…

You should try Australia. Undersea cables definitely adds more than 150-200ms (but I guess you mean the Atlantic) to everything here.

I have tried Australia... it's where I live ;)

~150ms is how much time it takes for my packets to travel the ocean from Australia to USA.

The UK in total is around 350ms (including lots of land routing). That's mostly due to non-optimal routing, it shouldn't be quite that slow.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, most people sleep at the same time. Working for a CDN, we see our POPs gets about 4x traffic at peak compared to low times.

Most people sleep at the same time in one given geography, but if you're looking at the world, those times are pretty well distributed. Assuming I'm sleeping 8 hours a day, even the continental US only has 5 hours per day when everyone is asleep when you account for time zones. But APAC, ME/Africa, and Europe are all pretty reliably awake at that time.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean you can just put all the satellites right above the part of the world that is awake - so you are still going to not have a perfectly efficient system.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's going to be 800 of the suckers. There are only about 33 GPS satellites. Although 700 miles is lowish orbit, it's still above the horizon over 2000 miles away.

Wow. I read this comment and thought, "This has to be bullshit." But lo and behold, the core satellite 'constellation' is only 24 satellites[1]. That's mega impressive. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/at...

Look up the connection between Einstein's general relativity and GPS accuracy for more fun. Especially early on in its deployment.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he is more talking about the heat that the fridge outputs to cool the inside, which is likely warmer than the ambient temperature in the room. Just a guess.

I was; the fridge outputs quite a bit of heat, good for raising seedlings on top of. But I would imagine the expenses involved in this stuff wouldn't make it sensible for a fridge (I don't think they draw that much power anyway). I just had never heard you could harness this, it's cool. Edit: Bit late to the party, 1821. Bit of catching up to do.

Okay, then that means you're ventilating the output heat poorly. If there is a significant difference in temperature between the coils and the room, you're spending more power than you need to when you pump heat out of the fridge. Adding fins or fans would save you more power than you could ever recover.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right: Knowledge shouldn't be the end goal, but I think you're overstating the effect of fringe communities on the internet. Consider that for many people on Earth, getting access to the internet takes them from the knowledge shared amongst the members of their community to the collective knowledge of world. That's quite a leap, and I'd argue that having to read flat-earther nonsense once in a while is a price…

> I think you're overstating the effect of fringe communities on the internet. Some believe that fringe information was a major factor in the U.S. Presidential election. A leader of a fringe community is the chief political advisor to the most powerful person in the world-elect.

Breitbart is far from a fringe community. Just because you didn't see it growing dramatically over the past few years it doesn't mean they have a small audience.

Re: SpaceX plans worldwide satellite Internet with low latency, gigabit speed

#240
post #178
post #7

Free, global internet access is the next step toward a smarter, more progressive planet. I don't even care about the speed - if the only thing users could access was wikipedia, I'd still personally donate to the project. I cannot emphasize how important democratizing knowledge is to me (and many others).

> Free, global internet access is the next step toward a smarter, more progressive planet. I don't even care about the speed - if the only thing users could access was wikipedia, I'd still personally donate to the project. I cannot emphasize how important democratizing knowledge is to me (and many others). Come on... It was very fine to say this 15 to 20 years ago, but now we have had the ability to see what Internet…

http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/articles2/X0095_The...

>The Internet is a perfect reflection of the world at large. It has everything in it except homeless people and that's only because they can't afford the monthly hookup charge. The Internet is scary to people because it TRULY makes everyone equal. All the people who are invisible in the normal world (the world run by the rich and powerful), all those people you can dismiss on the street as powerless and harmless -- ALL THOSE PEOPLE are now in your face. You can feel their hot breath on the Internet.

>It's called "humanity."

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Maybe you feel like comments have gotten too stupid or that too many people have backwards beliefs. Maybe you feel like that goes against the notion of a "progressive planet". But the way I see it you're absolutely wrong.

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