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Starlink Aviation

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Re: Starlink Aviation

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but latency will be suboptimal as viasat's satellites are in geosynchronous orbit. Many laws a optional, but I'm afraid they can't get around the speed of light...

this is a common thing SpaceX people say, but in reality, it doesn't matter that much. streaming media isn't affected by latency at all, and web browsing/app usage is good enough. what really suffers is real time games or VPN, but that's not as common.

250ms minimum latency (just for the speed of light), once you add switching that's going to be over 400ms. You have to be pretty apologetic to accept this.

I live in Australia (118ms round trip), and whenever I'm in SF, I'm amazed at the quality of life increase brought about by decreased latency. It feels like the whole net is on localhost.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#502
post #465
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It must have gone downhill since my last flight with them. I vividly remember getting something like 18 Mbps in a speed test and was shocked that they were giving it away. This article from 2017 confirms that it was 15 Mbps at one time: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-travel-briefcase-airl... It looks like they have since reduced the free tier to less than 1 Mbps and added a paid option that allows you to stre…

It makes sense, if everyone streams then it'll create significant congestion once awareness rises due to people trying to use Netflix/Hulu/Disney+ etc. Better to offer people a free tier to allow folk to WhatsApp, FB, tweet, whatever and effectively manage the bulk of traffic through the paid tier.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair you can always choose to disconnect for a period of time. I understand if your job expects you to be online when possible but if you have difficulty disconnecting without an external pressure to be online you could consider talking to a therapist to help you manage your reliance, especially if it's bothering you significantly.

could be about half of Americans could use therapy by that metric, as that's how many had unusued and thus forfeited time off in 2019[0]. Work culture is ill. [0] https://www.ustravel.org/press/study-record-768-million-us-v...

> Could be about half of Americans could use therapy

I'd say that's a conservative estimate! Most people go for dental work etc., why ignore the mind in your health support regime?

Re: Starlink Aviation

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 friendl…

Why can't lithium be dug with solar power? California generates 10 gigawatts of it on a good day. Tire technology is also improving to be eco friendly - https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=... The system doesn't go from bad to good overnight. Every piece needs to be updated, vehicles that don't put out fumes is just one piece of that system. You're argument reads, 'well the entire system isn't…

> Why can't lithium be dug with solar power?

It isn't and most likely won't be until upgrading the whole production is cheaper than burning fossil fuel and god knows how long it'll take given how advanced and specific mining equipment is. And even if it was 100% electric, it's still an absolute nasty thing: https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-li...

> Electric cars are a huge step forward.

Only if you believe personal vehicles are a good thing in the first place, which is already something you can argue against, but I guess most of us have been brain washed by decades of auto industry marketing. Teslas aren't a step in the right direction, e mustangs either, the new f150 either, we're just making the same mistake all over again "but it's electric so you're saving the planet", no it's just a 3 tonnes pile of e waste moving a 80kg meat bag, putting candy sprinkles on top of a big turd doesn't change its fundamental nature.

> The world will move forward while you sit on the sidelines and complain.

I'm fine on my legs powered bicycle thank you

Spraying kids with DDT was progress, lead in paint and gas was progress, freon in fridges was progress, asbestos was the best thing after sliced bread. Everything is progress if your definition of progress is "the hot new thing that generates money". It's always the same thing, the people pushing for these things are making big bucks while selling you a dream that's going to last xx years until it falls apart and be replaced by the next

Re: Starlink Aviation

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tesla is already half solving this problem indirectly through their batter research, buuut the biggest issue with electric aircraft is the energy density of batteries isn't, and isn't projected, to get anywhere near what it needs to be to handle long range flying. Many industry experts believe we're going to see an electrification but in tiers. Pure electric in the regional space, with more regional options than now…

The cool thing is that with every 50km you can unlock new locations.

The ES-30 flying from Zürich can get you to important cities in France, Germany, Italy and Austria. With they hybrid mode almost to Paris.

In Europe you have great trains but in the US this could be a game changer in all the big metro areas, North East, Florida, Texas Triangle, Southern California, Mid West/Canada.

Pushing on that whole stack you can get out more then the ES-30. There is potential for things like flying higher, using PRANTL Wing, Flying wing structure, batteries as part of the structure and so on.

A startup wouldn't risk doing any of these, but a company like SpaceX/Tesla could easily invest the capital to do this.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody getting PreCheck and all those other features is basically lessening security, but only if you pay.

It’s not lessening security.

Its lessening security theater if I understand the process correctly. I'm not American.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't lithium be dug with solar power? California generates 10 gigawatts of it on a good day. Tire technology is also improving to be eco friendly - https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=... The system doesn't go from bad to good overnight. Every piece needs to be updated, vehicles that don't put out fumes is just one piece of that system. You're argument reads, 'well the entire system isn't…

> Why can't lithium be dug with solar power? It isn't and most likely won't be until upgrading the whole production is cheaper than burning fossil fuel and god knows how long it'll take given how advanced and specific mining equipment is. And even if it was 100% electric, it's still an absolute nasty thing: https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-li... > Electric cars are a huge step forward. Only i…

The entire world uses vehicles of all shapes and sizes. If they’re all built and powered with sunlight, what does it matter if it’s a passenger car or not.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#508

I wonder if this also means future astronauts will have wifi when launching to moon/mars. Imagine watching watching a movie while taking off to somewhere distant

Mars is 3 minutes away at the speed of light at it's closest. So e-mails at best.

> 3 minutes away

That's latency, not throughput. Streaming a pre-filmed movie is sensitive to the latter, not the former.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#509
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The base stations were never free - they were subsidized by various sources. But that $4,500 a month is insanely cheap and an absolutely incredible value for Ukraine. The media loves to whip up a frenzy over Musk, but Ukrainian commanders on the front have said Starlink is the single biggest advantage they have, their efficacy would drop by more than half without it, and even, they’d rather have more Starlink than mo…

"The media loves to whip up a frenzy over Musk" No, Musk does that himself by saying and doing a lot of very stupid things and also lying a lot.

It's fair to say it's both.

Re: Starlink Aviation

#510
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a dense city near Amsterdam. My home does not yet have a fiber for high bandwidth connection. However, I found myself content with the 300 Mbps line supplied by cable. A typical 4K video stream is about 25Mbps of bandwidth. So, for households 300Mbps is plenty for now. What is nicer is reliability of the connections and the latencies. If fiber could bring any benefits there, I'd be happy to pay up. How is S…

How is DOCSIS in terms of latency (compared to a fibre line)?

I just checked at home, and the latency I get on my Cable connection is about 70 ms on average!

If Starling does indeed provide even a lower bandwidth connection at just 20ms, that is a nett win. Cool!

I don't know if a fiber to home would achieve lower latencies than 20 ms.... Someone mentioned DOCSIS - don't know much about it. Is that not needed for a fiber connection?

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