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Starlink Aviation

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Re: Starlink Aviation

#481

Post by rkangel »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #474
rkangel wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wifi is improving now. Newer standards like Wifi 6 are doing that basically by taking the good ideas from LTE (4G) and applying them to Wifi. The cellular radio community has been much better about evolving standards, coming up with new technology and rolling it out . Maybe they have it easier because everyone gets a new phone every two years, but they've still had fairly good backwards compatibility support. Multipl…

Sometimes I work in a factory (full of metal everything) that's a metal plated building with no signal repeaters inside, basically a faraday cage. U can get enormous signal boost by just opening doors trough the wall. Most places inside the building report low signal with no usable internet connectivity, but some special spots provide enough signal to get few KB/s trough both ways. I was always impressed by the amoun…

That's an unfair comparison to cellular though as cellular has its own licenced spectrum with nobody else able to interfere, high transmit power limits and potentially a friendlier frequency for the sort of waveguiding you're talking about.

That's why I find the smartsky comparison so interesting - because it's a completely level playing field.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#482

Post by lxgr »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #476
throwaway894345 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it does not require a lot of extra investment to support ships and aircrafts. Are you sure about that? I have a friend who worked in airspace comms his whole career (including at Gogo) and he described some of the challenges of the engineering problem (these systems have to be airgapped from the critical systems on the plane, the certification processes, the antennas have to be super highly directional to talk with…

Yes, of course it is relative. Developing new terminals is orders or magnitude cheaper than developing and deploying a cellular network.

True, but complex terminals increase the unit price and ongoing cost (higher weight and surface area both increase fuel consumption).

EAN supposedly works with only 300 base stations – in terms of terrestrial networks, that‘s nothing.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#483

Post by nharada »

sidcool wrote: post #410

It says 350 Mbps per plane. How much does it translate to per seat? Say if all passengers start a video call or a S̶t̶a̶d̶i̶a̶ Nvidia GE force game, then?

Personally I feel that plane WiFi doesn't need to be that fast. If they can make it more reliable (especially over water) and with lower latency I'd be more than happy with it. I don't need to stream YouTube.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#484

Post by ridgered4 »

rkangel wrote: post #423
mytailorisrich wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Is it based on 4G/5G or something ad-hoc?

It's basically LTE in the 2.4 GHz band, with a load of extra bits for beam forming, coping with speed and distance etc. Using the 2.4 GHz band allows them to build a network covering the US without spending billions on spectrum. Yes, it's the same 2.4GHz ISM band that wifi uses, with the same power limits. And yes, it works well enough that you can do video calls hundreds of kilometres from the base station. That's h…

This kind of shocks me honestly. Maybe it is because wifi is shit as you say but I wouldn't have thought hundreds of kilometers was possible, much less with one target moving.

I've been looking into a way to get a wifi link between a couple locations maybe 500ft apart and wasn't sure if even that was possible.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#485

Post by ridgered4 »

ezfe wrote: post #435
pb7 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same flight stats and I have only had to ask for a refund once because it straight up didn’t work for most of the flight. Many airlines have very usable internet now, some even for free (jetBlue).

I fly jetBlue a fair amount and the free Wi-Fi is a joke

I recently flew across country with jetblue and since I haven't flown in over 10 years I appreciated the wifi. However, I found I couldn't stream a music video on my phone without buffering. Fortunately if I turned off the video the music played fine. It was OK for reading hacker news and the like.

On the return flight it just didn't even work. Fortunately, I'd had newpipe download some content before we left.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#487

Post by mlindner »

FireBeyond wrote: post #109
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…

And, knowing Musk, a way to play loose with the books. I can imagine a bunch of these reservations "financially delivered" to prop up SpaceX's numbers, which aren't looking hugely healthy.

> knowing Musk, a way to play loose with the books

Do you have any source that shows that he's committing such fraud?

Re: Starlink Aviation

#488

Post by lm28469 »

bottlepalm wrote: post #432
lm28469 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> environmentally friendly means of transportation Hate to break it to you but displacing three tonnes of metal and batteries to move your 80kg ass to Walmart isn't environmentally friendly in any way

If the energy to build and power the batteries all came from sunlight then why not?

And methane is made of unicorn farts right ?

Producing one tonne of lithium requires digging out 500 tonnes of earth. We don't mine lithium with solar panels and horses, it's an extremely energy intensive and polluting industry, and that's only a tiny part of the equation, building the car already is already extremely polluting

Is it better than straight up burning dino juice ? Sure, is it sustainable and eco friendly as it is presented today ? not at all

And that's not even talking about the fact that a big part of car pollution is due to tires, heavier/faster accelerating cars = eat through tires more quickly than lighter/slower vehicles

There is no shame in buying a tesla but don't feel like you're saving/helping the planet, this is environmentally friendly the same way having 1 terminal cancer is healthier than having 2 terminal cancers, you might die in 6 months instead of 5 but you're still utterly fucked

Re: Starlink Aviation

#489

Post by unsupp0rted »

jaywalk wrote: post #399
mlindner wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly lessening privacy at the very least. Government sanctioned spying in exchange for saving a few minutes.

It's really not. You just provide some info that the government already has along with your fingerprints, they do a quick background check, and you're done. Whether you have PreCheck or not, the government knows what flights you've taken because the airlines have to submit their passenger lists. $85 for 5 years of less hassle at security is worth it for anyone who flies even once every 1-2 years.

I'd happily part with the $85 or whatever nominal amount, but I almost never fly through the USA.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#490

Post by throwaway894345 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #476
throwaway894345 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it does not require a lot of extra investment to support ships and aircrafts. Are you sure about that? I have a friend who worked in airspace comms his whole career (including at Gogo) and he described some of the challenges of the engineering problem (these systems have to be airgapped from the critical systems on the plane, the certification processes, the antennas have to be super highly directional to talk with…

Yes, of course it is relative. Developing new terminals is orders or magnitude cheaper than developing and deploying a cellular network.

That's fine, I wasn't sure if you were making a relative point or if you were implying that equipping planes was trivial in some absolute sense.
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