SPACE LASERS!!! Sorry. The inner child in me got far too excited by this.
I read the title and couldn't help but hear it as something Steve Carrell would exclaim really loudly in some sitcom.
Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
181–190 of 209 posts
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, it depends on who "you" are. I'm pretty sure the USAF can use them on all seven continents. Meanwhile I, not having a contract, can't use them on any continent.
Do you mean to say that the USAF can use devices that cause arbitrary interference on frequency bands that the country they're operating in hasn't reserved for such uses, and said countries tolerate that? Those countries' poor radio engineers...
I think the radio engineers suffer at the hands of poorly-shielded switch-mode power supplies and inadvertent spark-gap transmitters caused by aging powerline infrastructure more than anything else.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#183According to its Wikipedia entry, McMurdo Station had a 20Mbit/s satellite link so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station#Communications
I had a buddy [1] that worked in the kitchen at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station for a few seasons in 2012-2014. From what he told me: The internet works at certain times of the day at different bandwidths depending on the satellite. I think at that time there was 3 in orbit, and one of them was a retired Navy sat that had like dial-up speed. Also everything that goes to the station stays there so the vinyl collecti…
Shemya Air Force Base (now Eareckson Air Station) in the Aleutian Islands had a policy that weight limits were waived for entertainment media. So you weren't going to be charged any penalties for bringing in movies, comics, CDs, or books because they increased the quality of life of such an isolated base (you were expected to share).
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#184According 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.
That map doesn’t distinguish between waiting for enough satellites to be in the sky overhead and waiting for permission from the local government. For better or worse, each country’s government has to approve the use of any particular frequency, as well as things like transmission power.
> waiting for enough satellites to be in the sky overhead
Seriously, wtf? Look at some orbits. Satellites do not sit stationary over one location, except the ones called "geosynchronous satellites".
Edit: if Starlink is not available in a country it is for one of three reasons:-
- the country is not at the top of Starlink's priority list for connection (commercial reasons)
- the country wants nothing to do with anything based in the USA (politics)
- the country has an obstructive bureaucracy (corruption, stupidity).
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#185I 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…
Fortunately, NIMBYism isn't holding things up in low earth orbit.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also everything that goes to the station stays there What's the reasoning behind that? Presumably people bring back clothes and other personal affects right?
Most things are probably cheaper to replace than to bring back from the most remote area on Earth, and far cheaper to leave for someone else to use than make them bring their own. If unwanted, it’s trash - too expensive to move when there’s presumably an acceptable landfill right there (may sound environmentally unfriendly, but hauling trash back is likely worse).
If I remember right they're actually required to ship all trash back. There are no trash landfills in Antarctica.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#187I 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…
That's fair. I will say that my parents are loving it. They live in a very rural area.
Until Starlink, the fastest speed they could get from Verizon (the only provider they have access to) was maybe 4 to 5Mbps. And it was still capped at 20GiB a month. Starlink gets them 60 to 70Mbps during overcast/rainy days and 100 to 120Mbps on sunny days with no cap.
I know it isn't altruistic of Starlink to cover these areas, but at least they are. I can now see my parents via video chat multiple times a month vs. seeing them a couple of times a year.
Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, the cable providers, etc. just don't care about them. And rightfully so. They are an extremely small market. It annoys me how much money the US government has given to these ISPs in the hopes that they'll expand rural access, but they never do. Or they use the money to pay lobbyist to say "4g is fine for them"
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the first mention of it working that I've seen. I wonder if it's a limited deployment for Antarctica or the beginning of a large rollout.
That's basically what I'm wondering about. Is this an unfortunate headline, or are we really there already?
It can't function in Antarctica without the satellite links, so it's already there.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, I think that's the implication of the "space laser network". The plan for Starlink has been to have laser crosslinks between the satellites to provide coverage in places where the satellites can't directly see a ground station.
That's the plan, but it's an unimaginably difficult task. Many have speculated they wouldn't be able to pull it off at scale.
If they wouldn't have been able to pull it off why would they have launched the satellites? I don't get why people constantly underestimate the ability of Elon Musk companies to points beyond what is reasonable. They're not going to just do something that's very likely to fail. That'd be completely uneconomic and unaffordable.
Re: Starlink is now on all seven continents, enabled by its space laser network
#190Earlier 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...
Satellites in the same plane aren't moving at all relative to each other and satellites in adjacent planes move very little relative to each other.