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Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

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Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter. You can initiate whatever connection you want from inside the cgnat, but there's nothing externally accessible yet. Mine has a few different openvpn tunnels (clients at the starlink side, servers in datacenters elsewhere) going different places.

Wow, they rolled it out without IPv6?

Right? At this point why would you even design the system to carry anything other than IPv6 natively? You can always get IPv4 via a tunnel if needed.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#502
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't actually know that. There was one unknown source who once said it was some number X but the reliability of that claim is highly questionable.

We do know that. We know how much phased array costs, and many experts in that area have said so. Shotwell and musk both have said getting the terminal cost down is their biggest challenge. They wouldn't say that if it was $500.

Correction: We know how much phased array antennas produced by other companies have historically sold for. They’re not commodities with uniform costs.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#503
post #222

I see that some people think we can do much better in latency. But you need to realize an information will never, never ever, travel from Europe to US West under 30 ms. Why? Light travels from Berlin to SF in 30 milliseconds. That is absolute minimum you can do. This is not even roundtrip time. So when Starlink tells you it will be 20 ms, just think about 20 ms to where? To the nearest satellite? Sure.

I think it’s implied that’s 20 ms to geographically close destinations on the internet rather than within their own network.

Online gaming is mostly where this matters. I don’t know much about this but I assume most games have geographically diverse set of game servers so no matter where you are (within limits) latency isn’t terrible.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#504
post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do know that. We know how much phased array costs, and many experts in that area have said so. Shotwell and musk both have said getting the terminal cost down is their biggest challenge. They wouldn't say that if it was $500.

Correction: We know how much phased array antennas produced by other companies have historically sold for. They’re not commodities with uniform costs.

No, they are commodity and we know how much they cost. SpaceX hasn't magically solved somehow decreasing the price of components they don't even make. They are paying over $1000 for a terminal.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#505
post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: We know how much phased array antennas produced by other companies have historically sold for. They’re not commodities with uniform costs.

No, they are commodity and we know how much they cost. SpaceX hasn't magically solved somehow decreasing the price of components they don't even make. They are paying over $1000 for a terminal.

Cool, can you link me to the BOM cost analysis you’re referring to?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#506
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are commodity and we know how much they cost. SpaceX hasn't magically solved somehow decreasing the price of components they don't even make. They are paying over $1000 for a terminal.

Cool, can you link me to the BOM cost analysis you’re referring to?

Sure! You mean every phased array that's ever been built? I suppose you have the BOM for the starlink terminal that spacex themselves have said is too expensive? I guess the fact that musk is behind it means the cost is magic and you can discount all prior technology, right?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any insider info but there is absolutely no chance that the dish is costing them even <2x what they are charging for it. I don't really see how their business model pencils out even assuming massive oversubscription, perfectly geographically distributed customers, and the new laser links. It's just hard to make it work when your satellites fall out of the sky and need replacing. The technology certainly…

Why? It will take less than two years, maybe one year subscription to pay for the dish, and calculation show $10 a month pays for the satellites. It looks like pure profit for any customer who uses their service for three or more years, and there are a lot of customers out there.

It's not pure profit because, a) you can only oversubscribe 20GB/s so much without data caps and speed limits b) a small fraction of the constellation will be over inhabited land and wealthy enough countries at any moment c) I am assuming they lose money the first ~1.5 years to recoup the dish cost and R&D, d) ground link opex e) sats fall out of the sky and need replacing f) subsidized launches via rideshare only work if there is enough demand into inclined LEO, otherwise its $30M per launch at per sat costs go way up g) Customers are not uniformly distributed over earth's landmasses

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Why couldn’t intersatellite laser links have similar capacity to fiber? In principle, if not practice? Because laser energies, signal paths, traveling through free space must literally share that space with each other. It is effectively one wire. An underground cable can have hundreds, thousands, even millions of wires lying beside each other without interference. It is comparable to the difference between a wifi…

I'll start by saying my understanding of the laser connection on the satellites is virtually nil. Could you just add more beams on each satellite?

No. The beams would overlap, which is fine of they are on different frequencies, but eventually you run out of frequencies to use. Fiber confines the beam to inside the fiber. No overlap between one fiber and another means you can run multiple down the same pipe.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#509
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, can you link me to the BOM cost analysis you’re referring to?

Sure! You mean every phased array that's ever been built? I suppose you have the BOM for the starlink terminal that spacex themselves have said is too expensive? I guess the fact that musk is behind it means the cost is magic and you can discount all prior technology, right?

[deleted]

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#510
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, can you link me to the BOM cost analysis you’re referring to?

Sure! You mean every phased array that's ever been built? I suppose you have the BOM for the starlink terminal that spacex themselves have said is too expensive? I guess the fact that musk is behind it means the cost is magic and you can discount all prior technology, right?

The burden of proof is the on the one making absolute claims like yours.
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