Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world • Hacker News Board

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#61

Post by walrus01 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 6:19 AM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #58

gedmark wrote: post #3

Hi everyone, I’m one of the cofounders of Astranis (YC W16). Thanks for taking the time to read about what we’re doing and happy answer any questions.

Where does the "industry’s targeted $75 per megabit per second per month for dedicated bandwidth" figure come from? Is it a satellite industry figure, or submarine cable cost, or normal terrestial fiber haul cost, or...?

$75 per Mbps per month is a weird figure. If they plan to resell transponder kHz capacity on a commercial basis, the Mbps capacity will be a function of the modulation scheme/coding density that can be pushed through a link. Let's say I write them a check for $1500 a month worth of transponder frequency, FDD, and set up a 3.0m earth station on a roof in Cologne, Germany and another identical 3.0m terminal in Skardu, Pakistan. Both with modern SCPC modems. This hypothetical example assumes crosslinked spot beam coverage between the two regions and appropriate satellite position in the geostationary arc.

The amount of Mbps I could push through that will be greater than if I do the same setup with a pair of 1.8m dishes. You can't know your Mbps figure for a dedicated geostationary satcom link until you know you RF link budget, system gain, and how close you can get to the Shannon limit. The same amount of kHz (same dollar spend per month) could be used at 16QAM 5/6 or at QPSK 1/2 modulations, with very different Mbps figures.

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#62

Post by gbhn » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 6:35 AM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #12

caio1982 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think this pin-point for-hire internet sat service is better than a constellation? Is it because you can profit right away without an initial setup cost of the constellation? But in the long run the constellation pays off and might drive you out of business, right?

It may or may not. If you think there is a rural/urban problem with optic fiber, you are jumping from the frying pan to the fire with LEO satellite constellations. That's because an LEO satellite constellation has to cover the whole world (or almost all of it) to be able to cover any inhabited area at all. Thus it has to cover oceans, large roadless areas, deserts, mountains, etc. At least with optic fiber you only h…

This makes sense to me. Even with managing orbits you are still having a huge part of the fleet over empty areas. If the idea is to manage high bandwidth needs of autonomous ships, trucks, trains, planes, etc maybe it makes sense...

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#63

Post by mmmBacon » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 6:42 AM UTC

How is 10Gb/s achieved and how reliable is that BW in the presence weather? What is the practical coverage area of the satellite and what would the typical user BW be on a clear day? How would the BW change on a rainy day?

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#64

Post by consciouskernel » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 7:41 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #19

consciouskernel wrote: post #17

There's a reason that no other company tries to use geosynchronous orbit. Stationary orbit is at a distance of 35800 km above sea level, which implies a one way latency of 110 ms based off the speed of light. Since any request from a user requires a total of 2 round way trips (one for request, one for response), the minimum latency for a request is 440 ms. Avg latency with fiber is something like 30-60 ms, so we can…

No other company... like HughesNet, ViaSat, Inmarsat, Intelsat, etc. Maybe you were led astray by this terrible TechCrunch article.

You're right. I don't really know much about the field at all. I was basing my opinions off the article. I'm still surprised they're touting geostationary satellites as superior though. The speed of light is constant. SpaceX's plan while very expensive, at least theoretically could provide a complete internet experience. Same thing with Google's balloons. Astranis at best can only serve static sites.

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#65

Post by nikanj » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 8:49 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #60

gedmark wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, I think you got the gist of it in a different part of this thread (each of our spacecraft has a fraction of the number of transponders as a typical large GEO). But if you'd like to discuss further I'd be happy to chat offline. Do you have an email address or other way that I could contact you?

I understand you are probably at a very early stage of product design for the satellite capabilities, so you are cagey and don't want to make any definitive statements of technical specs... But I'd rather not move the discussion off forum into private email when the other people reading this thread could possibly benefit from answers to my specific questions. I am kind of concerned that your answers to others' questi…

(C) Trust investors don't know enough physics to question the business plan.

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#66

Post by modeless » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 9:48 AM UTC

gedmark wrote: post #3

Hi everyone, I’m one of the cofounders of Astranis (YC W16). Thanks for taking the time to read about what we’re doing and happy answer any questions.

In a world where OneWeb and/or Starlink exist, how would a service with 10x worse latency compete? Are you betting that both will fail? Otherwise you'll only have a couple of years to recoup the entire cost of your system before it becomes obsolete.

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#67

Post by walrus01 » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 10:00 AM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #65

walrus01 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand you are probably at a very early stage of product design for the satellite capabilities, so you are cagey and don't want to make any definitive statements of technical specs... But I'd rather not move the discussion off forum into private email when the other people reading this thread could possibly benefit from answers to my specific questions. I am kind of concerned that your answers to others' questi…

(C) Trust investors don't know enough physics to question the business plan. See also: Theranos, uBeam, etc.

I just took a look at the currently frontpaged "Who's hiring" thread. Lots of software development, of course.

Hardware startups are costly and hard.

Now do it on super hard mode and build a thing that has to go 36,000+ km away, never to be seen or touched by a human, and make it super reliable.

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#68

Post by nkoren » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 11:15 AM UTC

Meta-comment: I haven't seen this noted elsewhere, but there's been a very sudden and significant acceleration in the pace of space launch. So far there have been 22 launches this year, which is about double the pace of last year. And there are more than 180 launches planned -- again, double the pace of last year. The most launches ever to occur in a single year was 139 -- during the height of the space race in 1967. Although many of this year's planned launches will undoubtedly slip into next year, we're quite likely to set an all-time record:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_spaceflight

Also notable is the fact that of the 22 launches this year, three have been the debuts of entirely new vehicles, two of which were entirely privately funded. There are likely to be several more private launch vehicle debuts this year.

This is a really significant shift for what had long been a moribund industry, and a lot of complementary innovations will be able to piggyback onto this momentum.

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#69

Post by wastedhours » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:16 PM UTC

nkoren wrote: post #68

Meta-comment: I haven't seen this noted elsewhere, but there's been a very sudden and significant acceleration in the pace of space launch. So far there have been 22 launches this year, which is about double the pace of last year. And there are more than 180 launches planned -- again, double the pace of last year. The most launches ever to occur in a single year was 139 -- during the height of the space race in 1967.…

Really exciting, but have the regulations of what "stuff" we're putting up/leaving up there moved as fast?

Re: Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world

#70

Post by nkoren » Fri, Mar 02, 2018, 12:47 PM UTC

wastedhours wrote: post #69

nkoren wrote: post #68

Meta-comment: I haven't seen this noted elsewhere, but there's been a very sudden and significant acceleration in the pace of space launch. So far there have been 22 launches this year, which is about double the pace of last year. And there are more than 180 launches planned -- again, double the pace of last year. The most launches ever to occur in a single year was 139 -- during the height of the space race in 1967.…

Really exciting, but have the regulations of what "stuff" we're putting up/leaving up there moved as fast?

For the most part, yes. Changes in the regulatory system have been one of the critical enablers for this during the last decade. The key area where the regulations haven't particularly kept pace is in extra-terrestrial property rights.