Earlier quoted context omitted.
Satellites are outside the regulatory authority of countries they operate over. They can do far more of value than merely provide Internet access to poor people.
Satellites also have to be specialty built for their purpose. You can't just take a small communications satellite, attach a small camera, and have a spy satellite. Well you "could" but it would be so crappy that it'd be useless. Also LEO satellites lose their altitude rather quickly, not a great investment for spy satellites. > Satellites are outside the regulatory authority of countries they operate over. Except th…
Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites
81–90 of 252 posts
Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#83Anyone wanna offer me their hypothesis on what Amazon and other tech companies gain from offering internet to people who probably aren't valuable consumers?
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.
Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#85Earlier 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.
It seems useful, but tricky to monetize. But if you gave priority to hft traffic then you could charge more as it would still have a small advantage over a standard StarLink plan.
* HFT firms will pay for it if the latency is lower
* Online gamers that play with other people around the globe would also probably be willing to pay to get their ping down.
* Maybe they could have a LEO CDN.
* People like me who travel a lot would be willing to pay for it. It would be especially sweet if I could somehow ditch my phone plan and just have global satellite coverage and use VOIP via Google Voice or something.
Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is simple math.
I know people here are emotionally fixated on their dystopian fantasies, particularly where Amazon is concerned, but no one is launching so many satellites that they will blot the sun and stars from the sky. Aside from probably being physically impossible, there's no practical reason for even launching that many satellites.
"Welcome to the dystopian future where no human anywhere on Earth can look up and see an authentic sky, as their ancestors did?" No... that's just silliness.
Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites
#87Anyone 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
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't know if the person edited it after you replied, though.
Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
High speed trading. You can send a packet faster from London to nyc via a LEO network than an underwater fiber.
Why are there people investing so much money on these things, filling up the space, just for some stupid trading. Why is humanity doing this ??