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

Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 209 posts

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#111

Post by wsinks »

TheCowboy wrote: post #28

[Deleted]

Totally agree. Not sure I care about Starlink.

Chatted once on a Webex with Chris Hadfield about 6-12 months ago, who said that the service was somewhat better and more reliable than his current satellite connection, but also that it wasn't necessarily good enough for a change in mindset. He knew that sometimes he wouldn't have good enough connection for video calls out there, and that was ok by him.

I don't think he was thinking about the space dust / negative externalities

I find no Google results that are appropriate for "Starlink satellite retrieval"

The Starlink website notes "95% of "all components of this design will quickly burn in Earth's atmosphere at the end of each satellite's lifecycle".

It's amazing that it's already looking like this: https://satellitemap.space/

And of course, it's not black and white. Took me a bit longer... had to remember that Corporate Social Responsibility departments exist, but in February 2022 SpaceX put out a statement at least: https://www.spacex.com/updates/

Funny - so they've done a reasonable amount of work to minimize space junk, which is great! Absolutely no mention of helping out astronomers with the line of sight problem.

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#112

Post by heyda »

capableweb wrote: post #63
mchusma wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is availability for purchase map, not coverage.

What is the difference? If I pick an address in Africa, it tells me "Service date is unknown at this time", does that mean they have coverage there but I cannot purchase it if I live there? So I could, if I live in Africa, buy it and send it to an address in Europe, go pick it up and then use it from my home in Africa?

The Starlink dishes have GPS data reported so if you aren't authorized in an area it will be disabled. That said, this coverage map looks like it's for commercial sale, Africa is big complicated continent, if you look at Nigeria for instance, it says availability starting in Q4 2022, which means they likely already have some ground stations installed. If the ground stations are installed and the spectrum is allowed then a local government/school could probably purchase a Starlink dish legally and have it work right now.

All they need is one dish installed on every continent for the 'all seven continents supported' to TECHNICALLY be correct, obviously this tweet is just marketing. It's still pretty cool to see that many incredibly under-served communities in South America/Africa/Asia will be able to be served considering running physical infrastructure is very expensive.

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#113

Post by wmf »

count wrote: post #107
minhazm wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive my ignorance but I don't understand why it's an unimaginably difficult task. The satellites are operating in a vacuum with no weather interference or anything and have line of sight to each other. I would think that it should actually be easy to pull off, and actually should get easier at scale since the distances between individual satellites would shrink and would be easier to align the laser links.

They're also moving in different, independent directions on different planes at extremely high speeds...

Some people have speculated that laser links within the same plane (where satellites are stationary relative to each other) are working and the others are not.

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#114

Post by elil17 »

db48x wrote: post #70
capableweb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes perfect sense. If the service is not available, it's not available. The reason why doesn't make a difference "how available" it is. Either it is, or it isn't. Seems a bit like false marketing to say "Starlink is now on all seven continents" when it's more like "Starlink has satellites over seven continents but you can only actually use it on five of them"

Well, if you hover over various countries where it’s not yet available, it will tell you when they estimate that it will be available. Nigeria says “Q4 2022”, which is not very far away. In order to be sure of having service available in a month or two, they have surely already built a ground station or two, printed some instruction booklets in Nigerian, hired some Nigerian sales reps, etc.

FYI English is the official language of Nigeria, and the one most people who can afford satellite internet speak day-to-day. No need to translate!

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#115

Post by dantondwa »

I don't like Starlink. It increases light pollution, even in places without much human activity, which is a disaster for astronomers.

Moreover, sending satellites to space is really inefficient. It wastes a lot of energy and pollutes a lot. To increase coverage, the amount of satellite they'll need will be more and more. And the skies will become more and more full of space junk (each satellite lives for 7 years).

I think there are other solutions. But of course, other solutions do not favour Elon Musk as much.

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#116

Post by Bubble_Pop_22 »

capableweb wrote: post #110
Bubble_Pop_22 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> with very little to show for Global internet coverage would be amazing, and definitely something I and many others would consider worth it. Not just for people to browse Twitter/TikTok/social media, but for access to things like Wikipedia and various other knowledge-bases, and communication protocols.

The world's poor are ahead of us in this realm. Lagos will clock 100M people by the end of the century.

Megalopolis are only getting bigger. Like luxury EVs , starlink is aimed at the particular preferences of the RV crowd and the yacht crowd.

Improving the quality of life of the avg. consumer is never the goal. The goal is to have rich people get excited about some luxury product so that they immediately log on their Fidelity account and buy the stock of the company which puts itself out there as the so called leader in that luxury product niche.

It turns out that too much optimism about the future can damage an economy just as much as not enough faith in the future. This is exactly what has happened with the "everything bubble".

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#117

Post by capableweb »

samatman wrote: post #91
capableweb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You come across quite poorly in this exchange.

Might be so. Guess it seemed obvious to me that we're talking past each other if one is talking about "What's available for consumers today" vs "What the military in the US has access to", but I digress.

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#118

Post by yodsanklai »

dantondwa wrote: post #115

I don't like Starlink. It increases light pollution, even in places without much human activity, which is a disaster for astronomers. Moreover, sending satellites to space is really inefficient. It wastes a lot of energy and pollutes a lot. To increase coverage, the amount of satellite they'll need will be more and more. And the skies will become more and more full of space junk (each satellite lives for 7 years). I…

> But of course, other solutions do not favour Elon Musk as much

How a single man can be responsible to so much nuisance to the rest of humanity...

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#119

Post by NelsonMinar »

capableweb wrote: post #50

According to their coverage map ( https://www.starlink.com/map ) there is no coverage in Africa nor Asia, unless I'm missing something obvious. Or if there are new continents I'm not aware of.

Perhaps it's available in all seven continents the way Tesla cars have full self driving.

Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network

#120

Post by unity1001 »

hollander wrote: post #5

How about providing free internet to China and Russia, to give the people there proper information without government oversight?

Yeah. Because there is 'proper' information without government oversight in the West.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10613795/Joe-Biden-...

Post reply on HN