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Earlier quoted context omitted.
You want to downlink near the server, not near the client. Packets will move 40% faster through vacuum than through fiber.
Each RF hop is going to have more latency than fiber for RF physical layer processing. Forward error correction intentionally uses large frames to spread out burst errors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they had planned ahead, they could have had a system to lift a bunch of satellites off together, then take off/replace the bad one, and then put all the rest back again.
> If they had planned ahead, they could have had a system to lift a bunch of satellites off together, then take off/replace the bad one, and then put all the rest back again. My guess is that they did a cost benefit analysis of doing this, and realized it was worth more to them to launch a dead satellite and verify it deorbits as planned than it was to miss a launch deadline, take apart the stack, fix the bum satelli…
There could be some systematic failure that affects them all, and just this was the first to fail. If the rest fail over the next 2 weeks, that will be a big goof.
Goodbye amateur astronomy https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=1...
I don't know how practical or useful this idea is, but I wonder how useful a camera on the back of the Starlink satellites would be, looking up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You want to downlink near the server, not near the client. Packets will move 40% faster through vacuum than through fiber.
Each RF hop is going to have more latency than fiber for RF physical layer processing. Forward error correction intentionally uses large frames to spread out burst errors.
The final cage match to settle dominance between Musk and Bezos is going to be so epic.
Having said that, my understanding is that BO has nothing even planned for full re-use. They are going for 1st stage re-use only, similar to what Falcon 9 is doing right now.
SpaceX Starship, which is well under development, and has had two very short test hops, is fully re-usable. Musk said that each Starship flight to orbit and back costs a TOTAL of $2m, including fuel and operational overhead. The currently expendable 2nd stage on Falcon 9 costs several times more than that, and Blue Origin's 2nd stage should be in the same cost category.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind, the entire Starlink array will only be able to handle like ~1% of global consumer internet traffic. They're only a handful of gbps downlink each. ~10gbps downlink.
But if you remove all streaming/porn/torrent traffic it would be able to handle a lot more of the global traffic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been having this hard to articulate notion that humanity hasn't really begun to fathom the changes that will come with "cheap" launch vehicles. We have better than half a century where space launch was so expensive, and so rare, that this had an impact on the payloads themselves. Perversely it caused the payloads to become so highly engineered (for a variety of reasons) that they also became ultra-expensive in-l…
During the height of the cold war the US launched ~20 disposable film-based spy satellites per year; I wonder if they got meaningful cost reduction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind, the entire Starlink array will only be able to handle like ~1% of global consumer internet traffic. They're only a handful of gbps downlink each. ~10gbps downlink.
But if you remove all streaming/porn/torrent traffic it would be able to handle a lot more of the global traffic.
Can't wait to see every Tesla become a wifi hotspot hooked up to Starlink. Traditional ISPs are in trouble if the Starlink latency is really in the sub 100ms due to the LEO distance advantage. Global coverage with decent latency! I wonder if that's why google dipped out on rolling out fiber infrastructure. Physical infrastructure is about to become obsolete as more advancements in wireless tech and satellite internet…
Google dipped out of rolling their own fiber because all the other ISPs started doing it, so there was no need anymore.
The money quote imo, I haven't read this explicitly stated before: Shotwell said the company’s board of directors in 2012 realized the profit margins from the commercial satellites it was launching for customers were “much higher” than SpaceX’s launch business. Musk estimates Starlink could generate more than $30 billion per year – at least 10 times what SpaceX could bring in at best from its launch business. What ot…
Iridium isn't really a direct competitor to Starlink. The Iridium ground station can be much smaller (like a cell phone) and it's intended for a different set of customers with much lower data bandwidth requirements.