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Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

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Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#521

Post by richrichardsson »

fooqux wrote: post #392
richrichardsson wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, that explains it, the button says "Order Now", which scared me off as I wasn't interested in actually ordering but was curious about the price. I really dislike this kind of (almost dark) pattern. TIDAL also is not showing you the cost until you start down the sign up process, it's quite frustrating if what you really want to do is compare service costs.

Since they use regional pricing, doesn't it make sense that it would require a service address before they can show you the price? Besides, it's not like if you click that Order Now button that it instantly places an order and a SpaceX kit drops from space in your front yard seconds later. There's a few more steps before that happens, like payment info.

Valid points. I do think something like "Enquire" would be better though. With regards TIDAL they knew enough to tell me that I can't get it in Croatia based on IP (so I signed up using a UK debit card via a VPN to circumvent that nonsense).

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#523

Post by oblio »

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?

For them? Probably not. When has anyone else made big decisions for you than you made for yourself?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#524

Post by shaklee3 »

shaklee3 wrote: post #495
midasuni wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With latency >600ms to the first hop

To the first hop? 600ms is the round-trip latency of geo.

No, 600 is the total. The propagation delay just to and from the satellite is roughly 500ms. The rest is internet latency and queuing delay.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#525

Post by partiallypro »

aero-glide2 wrote: post #170
partiallypro wrote: post #117

I pre-ordered and will probably not get it until July/August, I'm pretty excited about it. One thing I noticed when pre-ordering is that it didn't offer to sell me roof mount, which I'll need... I hope I can buy this later? I know they sell them but it wasn't an add on for the pre-order.

Preorder just puts you in the queue. Yes you can buy it later.

I had assumed so but the email/confirmation said it would immediately ship and I'd be charged when it became available.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#526

Post by tga_d »

rlt wrote: post #500
BenjiWiebe wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would mitigate it, until ISPs outright block all known DoH endpoints (probably not feasible though, too easy to fire up another one.)

I wonder if you could block unknown DoH endpoints via traffic analysis. They probably have pretty unique signatures, with every request/response being approximately the same size. Not that I want to give anyone ideas.

I haven't looked closely at DoH, but based on my knowledge of plugable transports and website fingerprinting attacks, the answer is: probably, but with just a little effort on the client side, detection could be made pretty expensive -- probably expensive enough that ads on unresolved domains wouldn't justify it. Basically, if live classification of network traffic on (obfuscated) metadata were easy, China would have deployed it by now.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#527

Post by Melkman »

mleonhard wrote: post #516
sandworm101 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because a beam in an open medium always diverges due to wavefront errors and diffraction. A very good laser system might possibly have a divergence of only 1 microradians. For reference a typical laser pointer has a divergence angle of 1 to 2 milliradians. With the 2000km or so between satellites for Starlink the laser "spot" on the receiving satellite with the very good laser will be about 2 meter. Not enough to receive multiple beams on one satellite without overlapping.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#528

Post by mleonhard »

Melkman wrote: post #527
mleonhard wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they overlap?

Because a beam in an open medium always diverges due to wavefront errors and diffraction. A very good laser system might possibly have a divergence of only 1 microradians. For reference a typical laser pointer has a divergence angle of 1 to 2 milliradians. With the 2000km or so between satellites for Starlink the laser "spot" on the receiving satellite with the very good laser will be about 2 meter. Not enough to rec…

Thanks for explaining. Would it work if they put receivers on a long pole, spaced 3m apart? Maybe they could mount them on the edge of the solar panel array, which is ~30m long [0].

[0] https://lilibots.blogspot.com/2020/04/starlink-satellite-dim...

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#529

Post by kortilla »

ianai wrote: post #331
kortilla wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead industry projects incompetence onto disruptive newcomer, news at 10. More seriously, the phased array antennas seem to be a big part of Starlink’s innovation. Launching tons of satellites cheaply by itself isn’t a super protected moat because if they block competitors from using the launch platform at a reasonable price, they risk antitrust action.

I don't see antitrust legislation being a real factor to anyone. Several companies have gone trillion dollar market valuation and several decades without such action. Even if Microsoft had a crystal ball of the future legislation when they were starting up they probably wouldn't have changed a thing. Antitrust in modern history is a thing without teeth when used and almost never used. (I say this as someone who 100%…

> don't see antitrust legislation being a real factor to anyone.

You’ll suddenly see it change when it’s a powerful company (Amazon) upset that they get boxed out of the only US launch platform.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#530

Post by 40four »

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.

It still sounds so wild for some reason! 60X closer!

You’re saying these and other satellites are planned for this ‘shell’ and maybe others at different distances? Could this be partly due to congestion and the problem of ‘space junk’?

Also, won’t satellites in an orbit this close to earth eventually be ‘sucked’ in to the atmosphere and burn up?

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