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Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

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Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#221

Post by dmurray »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #194
jessriedel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The traditional justification for the government to own utilities is because they are a natural monopoly (e.g., the sewers), not because they are utilities. We should celebrate when technological advances changing things that previously were natural monopolies into competitive markets, like satellite internet. At the very least, this has to be be better than the terribly regulated private monopolies we see in the sta…

It could be argued satellite internet is also a natural monopoly / duopoly. How many n-thousand satellite networks can there be? How many companies / countries can afford to launch n-thousand satellites?

Two this year, of which one is a very young and not particularly huge company. That suggests there's room for a couple more.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#222

Post by znpy »

VvR-Ox wrote: post #217
drewbt wrote: post #215

Surely every country around the world needs to be involved in approving something like this. Amazon does not get my vote to put anything that could potentially become space junk in the air above South Africa. Not yet at least. What is the benefit to humanity as a whole?

I am with you here but: 1. It's never about what benefits humanity, it's just about money most of the times 2. Every country and probably several companies of each country will do this as long as we are the divided world we have to live in 3. Just like the internet never became the awesome tool one might see in series like Star Trek (benefit of humanity & stuff like that) something like this will never be that awesom…

> 2. Every country and probably several companies of each country will do this as long as we are the divided world we have to live in

I really hope that a “world government” never happens, it is too much of a risk.

Consider the US for example: once the land of the free, it has become a land of espionage, lack of personal privacy and persecution. This hasn’t begun with Trump, but it became a lot more evident with him as a president.

What I want to say is that the risk of a global government going rogue is too high.

I hope that we will always have a plurality of nations and ideas, living peacefully with one another.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#223

Post by VvR-Ox »

znpy wrote: post #222
VvR-Ox wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you here but: 1. It's never about what benefits humanity, it's just about money most of the times 2. Every country and probably several companies of each country will do this as long as we are the divided world we have to live in 3. Just like the internet never became the awesome tool one might see in series like Star Trek (benefit of humanity & stuff like that) something like this will never be that awesom…

> 2. Every country and probably several companies of each country will do this as long as we are the divided world we have to live in I really hope that a “world government” never happens, it is too much of a risk. Consider the US for example: once the land of the free, it has become a land of espionage, lack of personal privacy and persecution. This hasn’t begun with Trump, but it became a lot more evident with him…

In my opinion this is the only solution that will lead to success of the human race. For me that is not destroying our planet, evolving in the "right" direction (more education, more science and especially more ethics).

At the moment we kind of burn our resources without need and our nations compete which creates more unnecessary costs and suffering than good outcomes.

We live in a world where you wonder every day why things are solved in that particular stupid way instead of doing things the smartest possible way to really serve humanity as a whole. The fact that it's more important than anything else to "grow" money out of nothing speaks for itself.

What is the situation like, right now? Several countries with atom bombs "go rogue". They do what they want and behave like little children who's toys have been stolen (USA, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Great Britain...).

They screw their own people and take away the wealth and stability they enjoyed for some time now, they increase surveillance and take away the (human) rights the people have fought for many decades and they engage in wars and battles that serve no one on this planet but companies who produce weapons and political agendas of maniacs who shouldn't do this job in the first place.

Of course the danger that this one govt could do something bad is also present but at least we'd have a single point of failure that we could get rid of in case of emergency. Now your only chance is to migrate to some other country in the hope that you'll be given a chance to start a new life there and that no one does something that will force you to leave, again.

Wars, Nationalism, tax escaping, finance, poverty .... nearly everything could be solved in a better way when there'd be no seperate govt's who all believed they were the godsend rulers of earth.

I hope some force some day is just strong enough to force everyone into such a system as I don't think nations will be willing to give up their sovereignty that easily. Let it be some aliens - as long as they are intelligent and act rationally it's far better for us than the current unbearable state we have to endure.

Without that there will never be peace on earth. Plurality and ideas come from people and not from states. You can see that today e.g. in countries who are more open minded and welcome people with different believes.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#224

Post by portyllo »

H8crilA wrote: post #181
portyllo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not true. LEO systems are far more CAPEX intensive than GEO, and neither Starlink, Oneweb, Telesat, or Kuiper will be cheaper than Viasat-3 and will not be able to compete in terms of cost per Gbps.

Do you have any good sources on that? Not that I doubt you, but would like to read more on the subject.

Well, look at Oneweb as an example. They have raised 3+ billions, still need more funding and their total system throughout is not that much larger than Viasat-3's,which has a cost of ~1 billion (?). I don't think that Starlink is gonna be significantly (maybe a factor of 0.5x) cheaper in terms of cost per Mbps.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#225

Post by portyllo »

ehsankia wrote: post #208
shaklee3 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SpaceX satellites cannot do 1Tbps, and it's irresponsible to keep saying this. See the MIT study. They estimate ~20Tbps of total capacity for 4000 satellites.

Can you attach said MIT study?

http://systemarchitect.mit.edu/docs/delportillo19a.pdf

I am one of the authors.

This was donde in Sept 2018 so its a little bit outdated by now.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#226

Post by Inthenameofmine »

gpm wrote: post #123
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 originally though this would be a good market, and have voiced that opinion on HN, but afaik SpaceX has never said anything about it. Someone has since pointed out to me that HFT is currently done by bouncing microwaves off the atmosphere. This, unlike fiber, should be faster than SpaceX's constellation making that business unlikely to work out. (Possibly unless high bandwidth almost as low latency is useful).

> Someone has since pointed out to me that HFT is currently done by bouncing microwaves off the atmosphere.

I would love to read up on this. Is this similar to HARP?

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#227

Post by Sabinus »

bparsons wrote: post #53
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?

Telecoms are among the most tightly regulated and jealously held national level industries. If you can put up a global network in a few years that pushes down 4 and 5G speeds, the national telecom companies become obsolete. There will be some holdouts, but eventually it will become stupid for many places to invest in terrestrial infrastructure just to protect a technologically inferior domestic telecom company.

There will still be bandwidth limitations. Same with 5g whenever that comes. Fibre isn't going anywhere.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#228

Post by jessriedel »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #194
jessriedel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The traditional justification for the government to own utilities is because they are a natural monopoly (e.g., the sewers), not because they are utilities. We should celebrate when technological advances changing things that previously were natural monopolies into competitive markets, like satellite internet. At the very least, this has to be be better than the terribly regulated private monopolies we see in the sta…

It could be argued satellite internet is also a natural monopoly / duopoly. How many n-thousand satellite networks can there be? How many companies / countries can afford to launch n-thousand satellites?

There can be a lot. Given the immense volume above Earth, satellite collisions are only a worry because of the speeds that satellites travel and the current difficulty with coordinating them. As the technology for satellite coordination improves (tracking, low-propellent maneuvering, etc), the number of satellites that can fit will keep rising for a long time.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#229

Post by Tuna-Fish »

gexla wrote: post #200
nordsieck wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard that at least with the SpaceX satellites, they have full plans for decommissioning with these satellites re-entering the atmosphere. It's not just that they have plans to do so, they're low enough that they'll de-orbit fairly quickly on their own without active control (boost from their ion engines). Something pretty strange would have to happen for them not to eventually burn up.

Isn't the Kessler effect partly about creating further junk from a cascade of collisions? Even if the "junk" were to re-enter the atmosphere eventually, how long would that take? How long would access to space be cut off before the junk were to clear?

The smaller any given piece of debris is, the greater it's surface area:mass ratio is, and therefore the faster it deorbits due to drag.

Project Kuiper and Starlink both put the very large, thousands-of-satellites constellations low enough that trash gets cleared quickly enough that even a set of multiple catastrophic collisions is very unlikely to threaten most of the network, and even if they all just blow up, the pieces will fall down shortly and clear the orbit for reuse. For Starlink, drag is actually so high that they are using the solar array as a sail for attitude control.

Re: Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites

#230

Post by fastball »

eloff wrote: post #173
fastball wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"standard StarLink"? StarLink doesn't exist yet, and when it does, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that two satellite constellation providers could serve the HFT market and both be profitable.

Still totally missing the point. You have to offer something extra to the HFT traders to sell them a $10000/month plan instead of a $49.99 plan. Discriminate on latency somehow for their traffic. Prioritize packets, prefer shortest links over most expedient links, minimize hops. Otherwise if they will just buy your standard plan and you don't monetize them effectively.

Where did you get the idea that satellite constellation internet will cost $10000/m? Or that HFT firms aren't already paying much more than $49/m?
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