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Starlink Aviation

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Re: Starlink Aviation

#311

Post by panick21_ »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #293
ggregoire wrote: post #161

Slightly unrelated but makes me wonder how different would be the airline industry nowadays if Musk had launched a airline company at the same time he launched SpaceX. How different would it be to take a plane and travel across the world.

Not very I'm sure; for space tech, they tried Concorde, too expensive. for electric tech, companies are working on electric airplanes but that too is still far away - despite the huge drop in the cost of battery tech for example that in part Tesla was responsible for.

Electric planes are not 'far' away. They will see service for shorter routes this decade most likely.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#312

Post by panick21_ »

ggregoire wrote: post #161

Slightly unrelated but makes me wonder how different would be the airline industry nowadays if Musk had launched a airline company at the same time he launched SpaceX. How different would it be to take a plane and travel across the world.

What Musk should have done is create a company that is owned 50% by Tesla, 50% by SpaceX and they should be developing a electric airplane.

If you are willing to do the necessary investment, I think there is huge potential to build an airplane that goes significantly further then planes like the Aviation Alice or what Heart Aerospace ES-30 is doing.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#313

Post by vinay427 »

hello639 wrote: post #283
httpz wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming a plane has about 100 passenger per flight in average, that's $4/passenger. I can see airlines like Southwest making wifi free just like how they provide checked bags for free. Also, to me free wifi sounds better than those laggy entertainment systems I never use.

> I can see airlines like Southwest making wifi free just like how they provide checked bags for free. Southwest is not providing free bags out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s purely a profit-oriented business decision. - Free bags means fewer people putting carry on bags in the overhead bins. - Fewer carry on bags means faster boarding. - Faster boarding means less time spent at the gate. - Less time spent at…

To be fair, this doesn’t consider the fuel costs of the extra 46 kg or so of baggage allowance that passengers have, the additional check-in desks that need to be “kiosked” and/or staffed, etc.

I’m sure it still works out for them, but it’s far from obvious and probably depends on many passengers not maximizing their allowance.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#315

Post by _flux »

acover wrote: post #144
jazzyjackson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Highest demand for normal starlink is in cities. ?? cities have fiber, who wants starlink in a city?

Let's say cities have 3000 people per square kilometer. Farms have 1 person per square kilometer. Only 1 in 3000 people need to desire starlink for cities to have more demand. Strange situations happen. Not having good service in your neighborhood, hating the one provider available, wanting a backup, liking the idea of internet from space, lower latency over seas and thousands of other reasons I'm not crazy enough to…

To use Starlink you need to have a line-of-sight to the satellites, and that basically requires you'll get to install the ceiling of the whole building and even that might not be enough, right?

To do that you probably need to get the whole building (or the building manager) to go along with this.

So if you have 1/3000 of people wanting this in the city, those same people also need to be in a matching situation to have the possibility to use Starlink, which can significantly reduce the ratio.

It's still possible, but the initiative will need to come from Starlink, possibly involving plans for complete buildings.

edit: I was of course thinking city centers, but in the nearby regions the demand might be significantly higher, access to roof is easy, population density is OK, and fiber internet still not well available.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#316

Post by esskay »

londons_explore wrote: post #238
ShakataGaNai wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ku/Ka band antenna's used by other providers are quite significant in size. https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/gogo-2ku-inflight-wi... https://twitter.com/jonostrower/status/466228743522893824

If I was an airline considering this, I'd want to see $/km fuel costs from the extra air resistance in the sales brochure...

It's vastly smaller than what most airlines have installed right now for KU band. Those things are huge.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#317

Post by traceroute66 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #306
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think there would be investors popping up left and right to improve it, because offering 500 Mbps in an area where you can only get 3 Mbps is sure to sell. Is this where the weird dichotomy between the US being on the one side very liberal for businesses yet on the other very restrictive? (the restrictive being protectionist practices from the established companies in this case)

The primary issue is * there isn’t any sort of provider like Openreach where all the ISPs share some portion of the network (in Openreach’s case, the last-mile network) so every ISP has to build every last inch to the home themselves * generally speaking, ISPs have to get permits from localities, which are often cash-strapped and thus looking to scrape as much money as they can from an unsympathetic sector

> there isn’t any sort of provider like Openreach

Yeah, erm, mate ... don't get me started on Openscreech.

TL;DR: They are not the panacea, ESPECIALLY when it comes to fibre. Openreach might sound good on paper, but boy does it really not work out well in practice.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#318

Post by leoedin »

londons_explore wrote: post #239

Won't this require spectrum licensed from every country the plane fly's over? Easy in North America... But all other regions of the world a typical flight might go over 20 countries. If you can't secure a license for just one, you're gonna have a 5 hour flight with 20 minutes of no internet... Not great. And I don't think they're getting a license for Russia, Iran, China, half of Africa, etc any time soon.

How do existing inflight internet solutions solve this? Do they only allow internet over water and selected countries?

Re: Starlink Aviation

#319

Post by esskay »

ericraio wrote: post #182
eganist wrote: post #105

Edit: a fatal assumption that it's the airlines providing the service underpins my original post below, whereas instead it's the providers charging passengers directly. That's an entirely different model from below, so disregard my original comment aside maybe my last line. Preserving the comment for context though. --- At 25,000/mo, assuming a jet makes 60 trans-con segments in the US per month and a price of $20 pe…

Let’s not forget that this could be a value add, they can easily increase flight ticket prices by $20 and offer the service for free. They can also remove inflight monitors from the planes, reducing the weight of the overall plane, increase plane tickets by $10 and offer it Free. There’s many ways to play with the numbers

Not sure they'd need to go as far as removing the IFE completely, but a vastly more simple and cheap system could be used instead.

Airlines still rely on those massive clunky boxes under each seat, plus a server rack which adds a fair bit of weight.

Swapping to an all-in-one system - essentially a smart tv built into each monitor that just provides a browser and basic apps for major streaming services would reduce the overall weight of the plane, fix the annoyance of that big box where your legs are supposed to go, and provide entertainment on board.

There's also the costs that airlines normally have for licensing content - those would go away completely if everyone can just log into their own netflix or prime account.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#320

Post by esskay »

eganist wrote: post #105

Edit: a fatal assumption that it's the airlines providing the service underpins my original post below, whereas instead it's the providers charging passengers directly. That's an entirely different model from below, so disregard my original comment aside maybe my last line. Preserving the comment for context though. --- At 25,000/mo, assuming a jet makes 60 trans-con segments in the US per month and a price of $20 pe…

You're assuming its a fixed increase in price here.

When planes come to be refitted:

- You take out the IFE server rack - weight saving. - Replace the seatback tv's with essentially an all in one smart tv system with apps for major streaming services - Take out the underseat IFE box as its no longer needed - The airline no longer has to pay for tv/movie/music licensing

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