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Starlink Is a Big Deal

sneak.berlin

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Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#101

Post by stephen_g »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…

I'm also interested to see what kind of throughput they can achieve with a 'briefcase sized' terminal. Our company makes satellite terminals for military, and from that experience I can't really see the physics working for hundreds of Mbps with some type of panel antenna (phased array, etc.) that small at any kind of decent spectral/power efficiency...

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#102

Post by Rebelgecko »

mrfusion wrote: post #81

I don’t understand how you can make functional satellites so small? That they can launch 60 at once. Usually a launch just has one satellite.

Lots of launch providers and various 3rd parties have been providing rideshares for a while. e.g. there's the big thosuand pound payload, with an extra rack of cubesats to take advantage of extra fairing capacity.

The starlink satellites are relatively small, but they're still larger than Sputnik for example. ISRO has launched 100+ satellites at a time, although I believe those were mostly cubesats which are an order of magnitude or two smaller than the Starlink sats

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#103

Post by sneak »

reaperducer wrote: post #85
wahern wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't geostationary satellites. There's no opportunity cost to selling service when flying over poorer countries. Of course, the price has to include the backhaul, and even poor countries have rich residents, but in any event it would be silly to fly over whole landmasses in silence.

in any event it would be silly to fly over whole landmasses in silence. I imagine if Mr. Musk wants to keep his shiny new Tesla factory in China, he'll make sure this won't be used to circumvent the Great Firewall.

SpaceX is not Tesla, and a company is not any single employee.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#104

Post by Rebelgecko »

genzoman wrote: post #29
pwinnski wrote: post #4

I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.

Giving up some of the night sky for the billions of humans that live in rural areas, or live in countries where the physical internet is controlled by oppressive governments hellbent on withholding information from its citizens is worth it. The trillions of dollars it would take to build out infrastructure (and maintain) in Africa and India is worth it. In fact, even 20 Mbps would be life changing in bringing informa…

I would be astounded if SpaceX turns on Starlink over China and other countries that censor the internet.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#105

Post by sedatk »

modeless wrote: post #69
saganus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be nice if I could select the location manually, since I don't like sharing my location directly by a prompt. When I got the location permission request I denied it and then it says there were no sightings available for the next 5 days :(

If you deny the location permission it uses geoip instead. If the geoip location is incorrect there's a "Change Location" link you can use.

Perhaps it could be better other way around. Start with GeoIP and add an "Improve Location" option. That way more people would enable it.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#106

Post by sneak »

akira2501 wrote: post #97
mrfusion wrote: post #81

I don’t understand how you can make functional satellites so small? That they can launch 60 at once. Usually a launch just has one satellite.

> can make functional satellites By reducing their "function" until they're basically a battery with a radio repeater strapped onto it. Obviously it's a bit more complicated, but there's very little these satellites actually have to _do_.

The Starlink satellites additionally have krypton ion thrusters for stationkeeping as well as to raise their orbits from their 290 km deployment altitude up to the 550 km service altitude.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#107

Post by mobilefriendly »

fragmede wrote: post #79
Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…

There are scant details about what the launched product will look like in practice, but keep in mind that urban and suburban areas are spoiled by high-speed 4G LTE and wired gigabit. The vast majority of the US, by land area, has to chose from dial-up and very expensive pre-Starlink satelite Internet service. Even 1 Mbit is a huge improvement over 56 kbps. I'm haven't looked into the economics of running fiber everyw…

I live in the greater Washington DC metro area (Census-defined) and don't have internet access at my farm. No cable and no DSL available. I connect through a wireless 4G hotspot. This is really inadequate, my kids can't get online and we can't do any connected household stuff like Alexa or Ring. Our entire community is praying for Starlink!!!

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#108

Post by gpm »

pwinnski wrote: post #4

I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.

Not the night sky, you can't seem them at all at night. You can see them during twilight, when they aren't in the shadow of the earth.

Work is ongoing to reduce their visibility during twilight, and even during twilight it's not giving up the sky, just making a minor alteration.

For comparison, there are as many planes in the sky at any time as their second phase plan of 12,000 satellites, and planes are much more concentrated around where humans are. There is also something like 5000 satellites already in orbit.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#109

Post by farzy »

modeless wrote: post #16

Just going to plug my Starlink tracker here: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink It tells you when to go outside and look up to see the satellites as they pass over your house. It's a cool sight to see because there are up to 60 of them crossing the sky at the same time in a line.

leolabs.space - does something similar for tracking low Earth orbit satellites. The great thing with this tool is that you can modify the velocity and filter the data.

https://demo.leolabs.space/visualizations/leo

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#110

Post by Barrin92 »

sneak wrote: post #76
Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…

Do you think California would be prosperous without connectivity? It’s not 100% of it, but it is absolutely an essential prerequisite. Slow or no internet makes places a nonstarter. Having a fallback option to a single national telco lets lots of places start the long process of building an information economy that they cannot begin at all without it.

it's a prerequisite sure I don't disagree. But it's actually funny in how many ways California is mismanaged, from lack of public transport to infrastructure to rent cost and tax burden and silly regulations and still people run there. The human network-effect is insanely substantial.

If you were to do napkin math on which cities have the best internet speeds and the lowest cost of doing business, and the best regulations then probably we'd all have moved to Estonia by now, but people are still more likely to go to Israel, a place in the middle of a warzone.

So for that reason, I find hyping technology up as the great equalizer very cynical. It's mostly still people and culture at the end of the day.

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