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SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

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Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#261
post #192

For the people talking about space pollution and problems for astronomers. Yes, it is definitely an issue, but this constellation is also a way for many people to have access to education and information that will help them and their community. If you're curious about both the positives and negatives of Starlink I highly recommend the mini documentary "Is this the END of Astronomy?" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…

>Most things in life are like this. Wind turbines are a great way to supply green energy, but building them takes a lot of energy. Reminder : we only have one sky. Things offer both positives and negatives, but a) generally those things are decided by local powers and authorities that can be influenced by local populations -- not corporations from specific countries that may or may not be far away and without local p…

Starlink does create some real increased difficulties for Earth-based astronomical observations.

But by playing its part in SpaceX's goal of driving down the cost of access to space, it also creates real increased opportunities for space-based astronomical observations.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your latency like? I'm in exurban Wisconsin. Speeds are fine, but Charter has terrible routing that pushes everything out to Minnesota before routing back down to Chicago. 40ms to 60ms latency on EVERYTHING.

It's varied from as low as 30ms up to almost 80. Latency is just not going to be great with satellites, seeing that we're pushing it out to fricking space .

You might be interested in https://youtu.be/m05abdGSOxY, for some (long) routes it can theoretically be faster.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#263
post #4

I'm keen to see Starlink deals with government censorship requests. Can a country even effectively enforce their requests? How will China enforce the Great Firewall for instance?

I think if they want to operate in China, the Chinese government will tell them all traffic from Chinese customers has to be routed through a Chinese government controlled backbone operator, and the surveillance and censorship will be applied there. So Starlink won't have to directly apply any censorship. They will not be able to use laser links to route traffic of Chinese users to other countries. (Possibly the Chinese government might make an exception to that restriction for business use, such as low latency connections for financial markets.)

I'm not sure if China will let them operate though – nothing to do with censorship, to do with protectionism. They might want to reserve the Chinese market for a future Chinese controlled constellation.

Until such time as they are approved by the Chinese government to operate in China, they are going to geofence their satellites to refuse connections from terminals located on Chinese territory.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#264
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faster than? Also, does anyone know who's behind this effort? Other leaders would celebrate the people behind the development but at spacex and tesla it's only ever news about Musk? Any interesting people behind what is happening at SpaceX ?

It appears to be faster than rural Wisconsin internet service. someone I know (coincidentally in wisconsin) is getting 100m down 20m up There's always (the other) Linus: https://youtu.be/Fh1a2K9ZgNA

Yeah, they were getting 8 down 3 up in a rural area via a locally run ISP. Starlink is insanely disruptive in that market.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#266

My mother was raving about the service the other day. Speeds are 10-15x faster, she’s having an easier time with her online community college course and her job KPI is up by double digit percents [1]. She was worried that IT wouldn’t be OK with it when I said it was satellite (They’d been burned too many times), but the IT guy was incredibly excited because he’s also waiting to get Starlink. Looking forward to the se…

Faster than? Also, does anyone know who's behind this effort? Other leaders would celebrate the people behind the development but at spacex and tesla it's only ever news about Musk? Any interesting people behind what is happening at SpaceX ?

This was compared to a local run ISP that they connect to via a local tower (Farm silo). The ISP licenses spectrum from Verizon iirc.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#267
post #4

I'm keen to see Starlink deals with government censorship requests. Can a country even effectively enforce their requests? How will China enforce the Great Firewall for instance?

By pressuring Tesla. One thing making me nervous with Tesla's China business is that it will become too big for Tesla to let it fail, at which point Tesla (and every other Musk company) will be beholden to the CCP.

Even if Musk didn't own Tesla, I don't think SpaceX wants to pick a fight with the Chinese government unnecessarily. It would be a distraction from their core mission – which is to drive down the cost of access to space. Starlink's role in that is to provide a guaranteed customer to increase scale, and to provide profits which can be directed into further space ventures. Picking a fight with the Chinese government doesn't serve that mission in any way. If Starlink gets a reputation for being a thorn in the side of the world's governments, that's going to damage its success in countries other than China, by reducing the likelihood those other countries' governments will approve it.

SpaceX may or may not decide to bring Starlink to China. But either they will bring it to China following the Chinese government's rules, or they will geofence it so it can't be accessed from Chinese territory.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#268
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind turbines do not kill many birds, that is a myth pushed by climate hoaxers. They have their drawbacks, but that aint one of 'em.

Where are you getting this information from?

This was a serious question. There doesn’t seem to be a straightforward answer.

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#269
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area (APWRA) began operations during the 1980s and by 1998 included about 5,400 wind turbines of various models, each rated to generate between 40 kW and 400 kW of electric power, or 580 MW total >Using mortality estimates adjusted for searcher detection and scavenger removal rates, we estimated the annual wind turbine–caused bird fatalities to number [...] 2,710 (80% CI =-6,100 to 11…

And cats kill even more than building apparently. Screw cats, or rather people who let them roam free.

Why exactly is it a problem with cats killing birds? All sorts of animals kill all sorts of animals. Why are you specifically bothered by this pairing?

Re: SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

#270

Starlink is SpaceX's way of guaranteeing SpaceX has a launch client. It increases the number of launches they make, and drives down the cost per launch, both for themselves and for their other customers. They are creating a business model which is both profitable and drives profits to their launch business. This is similar to the synergy Amazon's online store and AWS have with each other. If SpaceX has room on a laun…

Yes, and they reuse the rockets more often than they would do with just external customers while proving to them that it's safe to use the same rockets uo to 10 times.

I love how undoectacular their flights have become, and wonder how long it will take until they stop commenting their live streams. I still watch them, but I started to skip forward or just listen to it in the background while programming.

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