Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

starlink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 541 posts

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#511

Post by shaklee3 »

rlt wrote: post #510
shaklee3 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nope. The burden of proof is on those suggesting history is wrong. Phased array doesn't just drop 3x in price overnight. I'm waiting...

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#512

Post by shaklee3 »

rlt wrote: post #510
shaklee3 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"DaveMosher reports @SpaceX has contracted @ST_World already "a few years ago" to build 1m #Starlink user terminals at $2400/pc, hence current hardware subsidy for beta testers is $1900. Article suggests, SpaceX may be paying $2.4 billion for the order. https://t.co/jak0hKQBGn"

So the current estimate published in business insider means you are about four times off based on the contract with ST, who we now know builds the chips inside of it. Please show your sources of a $500 phased array terminal.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#513

Post by hidden-spyder »

ncallaway wrote: post #433
RapidFire wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

History tells us it is far better to let Martians govern themselves. The colonies would eventually rebel regardless; might as well embrace it and let them dictate their own laws. That being said. Guns on mars! GUNS ON MARS!!! They have a rIGHt to hunt space deer!

I agree that any Mars colony should very quickly become independent. However, I think we should wait until there are enough people on Mars that there can be a small representative government (or other form of government that they would choose). Mars shouldn't be independent when the first 10 people land on the surface of the planet. This tos item has always been my biggest complaint about Starlink. I shouldn't be for…

> I agree that any Mars colony should very quickly become independent.

Why do you think so? Wouldn't it be better for them to be Earth dependent?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#514

Post by ncallaway »

hidden-spyder wrote: post #513
ncallaway wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that any Mars colony should very quickly become independent. However, I think we should wait until there are enough people on Mars that there can be a small representative government (or other form of government that they would choose). Mars shouldn't be independent when the first 10 people land on the surface of the planet. This tos item has always been my biggest complaint about Starlink. I shouldn't be for…

> I agree that any Mars colony should very quickly become independent. Why do you think so? Wouldn't it be better for them to be Earth dependent?

> Wouldn't it be better for them to be Earth dependent?

Mars very likely would be dependent on the Earth for trade and resources for a long time. It will be a long, long time before it becomes totally self-sustaining.

But, in terms of their government, I generally believe broadly in the principle of local self-determination. I think that will and should apply to Mars, once the population is sufficient.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#515

Post by ncallaway »

koheripbal wrote: post #477
ncallaway wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that any Mars colony should very quickly become independent. However, I think we should wait until there are enough people on Mars that there can be a small representative government (or other form of government that they would choose). Mars shouldn't be independent when the first 10 people land on the surface of the planet. This tos item has always been my biggest complaint about Starlink. I shouldn't be for…

This is someone semantics anyway since there will be no enforcement mechanism in the beginning from Earth to Mars. People on Mars will just do whatever they want.

That doesn't seem accurate to me.

Let's say you're in the _first_ colony ship that lands on Mars. 12 people disembark from the vessel.

There are resources available for 5 years on the planet from prior cargo runs.

All future cargo will be launched from Earth, and very likely from territory controlled by large and powerful governments. All those flights require mission approval to launch and resupply.

Are you _sure_ there's no enforcement mechanism that Earthbound authorities can apply to the Martian people?

I actually think independence for Mars quickly (but not immediately) is important exactly _because_ the Martian people will be able to be so easily held hostage by the whims of a few Earthbound governments.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#516

Post by mleonhard »

sandworm101 wrote: post #508
binaryblitz wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would they overlap?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#517

Post by mleonhard »

spockz wrote: post #343
Jedd wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect a fair bit of interest from latency-sensitive markets (eg finance) here in Australia. A few years ago when I was in the WAN optimisation space, IIRC Sydney/Singapore latency was ~150ms, partly raw distance, partly because the route was physically quite convoluted. There's some expectation that once Starlink's mesh comms ramp up, it'll be significantly faster to go up to a bird, across through one or more at…

Is there any mechanism by which we (in general) or a client specifically could use an expensive low latency for say browsing and a high latency but wide/cheap pipeline for bulk transfer? I can imagine being able to do this when you control both sides by letting one type of data flow over one IP and the other over a different one with different peerings. But I wonder whether this is generally available.

In 1998, I lived in Ghana and used the Africa Online ISP. They ran a transparent HTTP proxy that routed through a high-bandwidth high-latency satellite connection. All other traffic went through a very low-bandwidth low-latency fiber connection. I used to proxy my browser through SSH to a US server and enjoy very fast text-mode browsing.

I expect some ISPs will end up using differential routing over Starlink and fiber. They could have the routers on each end automatically switch large one-way TCP transfers from the Starlink connection to the fiber connection after the first 2MB.

They could even make the transition smooth, by buffering data transferred over Starlink and slowly adding delay to match the delay of the fiber connection. This would require some RAM, but only during the transition period for each TCP session. The client would see the throughput go down during the transition period.

If the remote server could increase the data rate, then the ISP could perform the transition with no drop in throughput seen by the client. The sending router would send fake ACKs to the server to get it to send data faster. The sending router would send the burst of data through the fiber link and also buffer it and send it through Starlink at the original rate. Once the receiving router is receiving the same data at the same time over both the fiber link and Starlink, the sending router can stop sending over Starlink. The client's TCP ACK packets would continue to flow over Starlink.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#518

Post by mleonhard »

martinald wrote: post #375
geerlingguy wrote: post #14

I was able to place an actual order just last week in St. Louis, MO. I will be using it and doing some tests in an area that actually has cable Internet (though spotty, and until very recently was limited to less than 20 Mbps up, no matter how much you paid). But you have to realize, when you look at the $600 initial cost and $100 monthly fee—this will bring 100+ Mbps down and 15+ Mbps up to so many places (even in s…

Let's see how well it copes with more users. My guess is it won't cope well. There is only 20gig/sec of capacity per satelite, and I believe that is raw speed, which will get hammered in poor weather conditions and more FEC or less efficient QAM is required. 20gig/sec is not a lot of capacity for many thousands of square kms. It's 1-2k users at peak times watching Netflix for example on 1080p or 4K streams, nevermind…

Could they add more satellites to increase bandwidth? I can imagine a continuous stream that passes over multiple cities. Urban ground stations would have a choice of 5-10 satellites visible at any time.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#519

Post by walrus01 »

alex_duf wrote: post #350
walrus01 wrote: post #40

I have been using a starlink beta terminal for 3 months now, ask me whatever you want. Day job is senior network engineer for a regional-sized (4 US states) fiber based ISP. My most important message to everyone reading this is that it's not intended to compete with properly implemented wireline based services. It's going to absolutely blow away consumer-grade highly oversubscribed, bottom of the barrel ku and ka ban…

If i understand correctly the antenna tracks a specific satellite as it transit above it. So how does it handle the switch from that satellite to the next one without losing signal?

the patent for the antenna shows dual simultaneous beamforming. some form of make-before-break. how exactly they're doing it is quite opaque to the end user, and part of their secret recipe.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#520

Post by Plutoberth »

twicetwice wrote: post #244
Plutoberth wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink roughly orbits at 1200km. The most common orbit for internet sats is geostationary orbit, which means that the satellite is stationary with regards to an observer on Earth. It works because a satellite on a circular orbit at that height moves at the same speed as the rotation of Earth. This way you can have a simple, pointed antenna and not an obscenely expensive phased array like Starlink. That being said,…

Starlink currently orbits at 550 km. 550*60=33000 so that puts it slightly more than 60 times closer than GEO. There are other shells planned at different heights, but the current satellites, and ones launched in the near future, are all orbiting at 550km. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink -- in the table of launches there's a column for orbit height.

Right - thanks for the correction.
Post reply on HN