Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#71

Post by bsder » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

repsilat wrote: post #52

aalleavitch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably are valuable customers. Tech companies have literally no reach where the internet does not touch. If they want to expand to their full (terrifying) power, they would need to give internet access to everyone, and then control it.

Terrifying power? Amazon has succeeded by getting customers what they want, and doing it cheaper, faster and more conveniently than their competition. Of all the tech companies to be cynical about, they most obviously make people's lives better , and expanding their reach (along with the "ancillary benefits" of giving people access to the internet...) is a moral good. Really, this knee-jerk paranoia is difficult to u…

> If Amazon stops serving its customers well it'll go out of business.

You have no evidence for this, and the fact that a court case to hold Amazon liable for bad products was even required provides a counterfactual.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#72

Post by kupiakos » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

Scaevolus wrote: post #61

new_realist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about debris from LEO collisions moving into higher orbits?

A single impact can't put something into a higher circular orbit-- it can create an elliptical orbit with a higher apogee (max distance), but the correspondingly nearer perigee (closest approach) means that it experiences more atmospheric drag and falls out of orbit faster.

Granted, I don't know the math and this is intuition from Kerbal Space Program, but I'm not sure that's right. Wouldn't two objects colliding at 0° and 90° orbits result in a higher apoapsis and the same periapsis? Wouldn't it be equivalent to a normal impulse? Some pieces of one of the satellites would have more energy than they did before the impact.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#73

Post by etaty » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:27 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #69

dharmab wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of Starlink's planned markets is global high frequency trading. The latency of radio and laser transmission in atmosphere and space is much lower than undersea fiber optic cables. (Light moves significantly slower through glass than through air.) Even with the longer distance and retransmission they stand a good chance of being lower latency across oceans than undersea cables.

I did the math on this. It probably wouldn't be good for hft. The highly profitable hft is done on the floor of the nyse. There's some from Boston but they typically use directed radio instead of fiber-optic. Satellites will be even slower, but maybe cheaper if you're sending date from California or Australia. But it's still probably cheaper (and more profitable) to put a machine on the floor or even just in NYC. I'm…

Think London to NYC, or NYC to Tokyo. Fiber will be slower. https://youtu.be/QEIUdMiColU?t=196

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#74

Post by davidlumley » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

kodz4 wrote: post #56

davidlumley wrote: post #50

Private corporations owning more and more utility infrastructure really concerns me. Is there a world where nations band together and launch this as public infrastructure rather than private corporations lobbying a USA government agency for permission?

Get specific about the concern, otherwise it's easy to get afraid about everything. Govt's hardly own telecom infra, it's all in private hands. And when orgs get too big for their boots, things like this happen- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

> Get specific about the concern, otherwise it's easy to get afraid about everything.

There are many reasons to be afraid about a private corporation from a country with little regulation providing a utility to areas with no other choice.

If Amazon was sponsoring this, that's one thing, but them owning the network raises red flags for me surrounding: 1) Privacy 2) The potential for anti competitive practices 3) Quality of service / expected lifetime of service

I simply don't trust Amazon (or any other large private company) to do anything else than look out for their bottom line when push comes to shove.

> Govt's hardly own telecom infra, it's all in private hands

I'm old enough to remember when Australia did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra#Privatisation

Since Telstra was privatised, any impetus to upgrade Australia's struggling networks has gone out the window and when they do end up upgrading capacity, it is usually as part of a Government project. All in all, tax payers still foot the bill to improve utilities while a private company furthers their monopoly.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#75

Post by godelski » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:29 PM UTC

etaty wrote: post #73

godelski wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the math on this. It probably wouldn't be good for hft. The highly profitable hft is done on the floor of the nyse. There's some from Boston but they typically use directed radio instead of fiber-optic. Satellites will be even slower, but maybe cheaper if you're sending date from California or Australia. But it's still probably cheaper (and more profitable) to put a machine on the floor or even just in NYC. I'm…

Think London to NYC, or NYC to Tokyo. Fiber will be slower. https://youtu.be/QEIUdMiColU?t=196

What I'm saying is that it's faster to just buy a server in NYC.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#76

Post by perl4ever » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #13

reaperducer wrote: post #2

Welcome to the dystopian future where no human anywhere on Earth can look up and see an authentic sky, as their ancestors did. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-a... And thanks to SpaceX (and now Amazon), astronomers will now have to do their observations from space. If only there was a way to get telescopes up there. Oh, wait... SpaceX just happens to have a way to solve the problem it creat…

A world where two billionaires can take the stars from humanity. It's like a fairytale, and yet it can happen.

Next, one of them will sell the moon!

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#77

Post by thefourthchime » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:33 PM UTC

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #9

Anyone wanna offer me their hypothesis on what Amazon and other tech companies gain from offering internet to people who probably aren't valuable consumers?

High speed trading. You can send a packet faster from London to nyc via a LEO network than an underwater fiber.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#78

Post by megous » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

So what it's gonna be like - latency and bandwidth?

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#79

Post by thefourthchime » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

Who else thinks these systems deliver wireless high speed Internet faster than 5G?

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#80

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #63

reaperducer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3,000 from Amazon, 10,000 already approved from SpaceX, who knows how many will go up from various companies in Europe, China, India, etc... This is the beginning, not the end.

Yeah... still not enough. Millions probably wouldn't be enough. It's a really big sky.

Sounds like that plastics industry talking about disposal in the 1970's. Now look where we are.