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With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

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Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nation using an anti-satellite weapon against another entity's satellite would be an unlikely, enormous escalation.

OTOH one country enabling communication infrastructure to another country's citizens without approval of their government would be rightly considered as violation of national sovereignty and could presumably be seen as an act of war.

But its the citizen of the country who initiated the communication, and the act of providing a service cannot be made as an excuse for war. At best, the citizen get prosecuted for illegal communication.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they do this? EDIT: Data customers would pay for access on an individual basis. Helicopter-parent countries might cry foul, but what leverage do they have? It's not like they were going to launch things with SpaceX and they can threaten to stop.

> but what leverage do they have? The buying, selling and using of satellite internet equipment will be outlawed in countries that don't allow free access to the internet (unless of course the internet satellite company signs agreements to impose the blocking of choice of the regime in question). SpaceX might be safe from the Turkish, Chinese or Egyptian governments, but the users won't be.

But what incentive would satellite communication providers have to agree? Wouldn't it be better to facilitate a black market by not putting any blocks?

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#123
Get it up there, and you will have Australia as a client. We have made a mess of the national broadband network rollout, and this might be going live before the NBN rollout is complete. Probably faster, cheaper, and with reliability still to be seen.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#124
post #90

It's been said before, but what people need to understand is that the goal of this service isn't to make money- it's to balance demand. SpaceX can plan to launch be 30% more launches than their actual customers need. All those extra rockets are used for internet satellites. If there's an accident (boom) or a sudden need for more rockets, the internet satellites get delayed, and the paying customer gets a rocket. If c…

Musk himself has stated the goal is to make money to help pay for colonizing Mars.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's more of problematic than great news for places with state controlled study. But it has potential. Where it's Great news is places which already can use only satellite internet, but have very poor experience. Rural Australia for example. Having low local (or even global) latency would be amazing.

25ms is pretty close to my broadband latency across Australia(Brisbane to Sydney).

1. Neither is rural. 2. LOL at Brisbane to Sydney being "across Australia" :-)

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#126
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure NSA will want a backdoor in the system. If it can do what they say it can do, they are basically the new pipes of the Internet. It's too good for NSA and our current US govt to leave untouched.

Say hello to ultra-fine real-time triangulation of your position. Of course privacy protected with the same care and zeal that protects your Tesla.

It's not going to be better than GPS/GLONAS. If there is a specific location component in the ground stations, it will be known pretty soon. Otherwise, the location will be very weather dependent.

If you have a phone with you, you're likely providing a better location to Google/Apple right now.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#127
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's more of problematic than great news for places with state controlled study. But it has potential. Where it's Great news is places which already can use only satellite internet, but have very poor experience. Rural Australia for example. Having low local (or even global) latency would be amazing.

I'm pretty sure NSA will want a backdoor in the system. If it can do what they say it can do, they are basically the new pipes of the Internet. It's too good for NSA and our current US govt to leave untouched.

For plaintext communication, you should already assume someone's​ either listening, or will get recorded traffic in the future. Why do you think a specific backdoor in satellite traffic would change anything? The bandwidth there would also have physical constraints, more than a magic box at Telco, making full slurping harder.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#128
Interesting. What would this be able to do ? Current wireless speeds, even with state of the art technology, is going to be something like 10Gbit. That'll have to be shared by an entire city at least (correction: about 2 satellites per state on average. Less for New York), and of course there won't be any CDNs or HTTP caches "upstairs" so to speak. So 1 bit in = 1 bit back out.

Even at 4425 satellites that means, let's see. The earth is 500 million km2, and they don't need the same density everywhere, so some optimizations may be possible, so let's say 5000 satellites. That means 100,000 km2 per satellite. That means one satellite per decent sized country, only about 100 for the entire US. This is not geostationary orbit, so they'll have to aim for evenly spaced satellites.

Let's say they fix their satellites and do 10x what is currently possible, so that means 100Gbit/satellite. Current internet traffic into and out of the Netherlands is 50 times that (granted, more and denser cities than portugal, but the Netherlands would have to share one SpaceX satellite with Belgium and parts of the UK).

They would only be able to provide about 1/10,000,000th of a Satellite to a cellphone in the US, and if they have 100 Gbit/satellite, that's not even 1kbit on average. Even 10x or 100x that capacity wouldn't change much. Doubling or tripling the number of satellites won't fix this, we'd need between hundreds of thousands and to millions of satellites.

This will either need to be rather expensive (certainly as much as your cellphone, probably more, as this seems to indicate the system can only support 100x less users than the mobile network in the US, and even less in smaller dense countries or cities like the Netherlands or New York). Even at state of the art technologies, bandwidth limits are going to be tight. Like any satellite service, I can't see this work at city densities, or for mobiles.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#129
post #124
post #90

It's been said before, but what people need to understand is that the goal of this service isn't to make money- it's to balance demand. SpaceX can plan to launch be 30% more launches than their actual customers need. All those extra rockets are used for internet satellites. If there's an accident (boom) or a sudden need for more rockets, the internet satellites get delayed, and the paying customer gets a rocket. If c…

Musk himself has stated the goal is to make money to help pay for colonizing Mars.

"Musk himself has stated the goal is to make money to help pay for colonizing Mars."

Which I continue to misunderstand ...

You can go to Mars ... you can have an outpost on Mars ... you can have scientists and tourists and so on go back and forth to Mars - all very positive and exciting.

But you can't live on Mars for an extended period because the gravity is 1/3 of earths.

Your teeth will decay. Your bones will weaken (even with hours per day of resistance work, which will be mandatory). Your heart will weaken. Your organs will malfunction. You will get cancer from a weakened immune system. Red blood production goes down.

Your body is built for and tightly coupled to Earths gravity. I fail to see how one could actually live on Mars without sacrificing 30 or more years of lifespan.

Re: With latency as low as 25ms, SpaceX to launch broadband satellites in 2019

#130

Shorter summary of SpaceX's Senate testimony https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/6c08b6c2... : Initially, the SpaceX system will consist of 4,425 satellites operating in 83 orbital planes (at altitudes ranging from 1,110 km to 1,325 km). SpaceX has proposed an additional constellation of 7,500 satellites operating even closer to Earth. For the end consumer, SpaceX user terminals—essentially, a relativ…

Where do you see anything about the antenna size? All I've seen is that this will be for Enterprise customers, and the antenna will be very large.

By the way, a very small phased array will be very low gain, thus using more capacity on their satellite for the same speeds. Unless they've invented a new type of antenna...

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