This looks beautiful.
Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
101–110 of 241 posts
Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#102In South Africa we have the Square Kilometre Array in the Meerkat National Park; I sincerely hope it doesn't come here. We don't need it polluting our skies. Fibre should be rolled out for internet access, not another unsensible Musk dream
Starlink is already wreaking havoc on the night sky for every part of the planet inhabited by humans and it is only going to get worse. Unfortunately this is not getting much attention from anywhere besides the astronomy community and they are largely ignored because their funding is dwarfed by venture capital funds.
The main reason it's mostly astronomers who care and they're being ignored is that it's not even close to "havoc".
I grew up near Portsmouth in the UK. Most nights, the stars were hidden by the kind of orange glow that a political cartoonist would use for Donald Trump's face, thanks to all the sodium vapour street lamps.
Things are so much better than they used to be (also I've moved) but that childhood memory? Most don't even think of that as "havoc".
Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#103check more stuff here:
Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the closest they have to a competitor is oneweb, which hasn't completed the roll out for their first constellation yet. They are surprisingly close though, and could've been able to actually have an operational internet service if it wasn't for a scrapped launch related to the Russian invasion. I remember thinking they were basically dead, but they have recovered surprisingly well. Though their satellites are…
IPv6 is not a solution when there still is a lot of people whose networks don't support it. Making the network publicly routable shouldn't be any more complex than any other ISP which seem to do this just fine.
IPv6 is 24.5 years old.
When there's enough time for you to conceive a new child, send them through school, then university, then most of a PhD program…
If your network equipment supplier doesn't support the tech, demand better of them rather than blaming the ISP that's specifically intended for people who weren't being properly served until now anyway.
Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#105Frequently Commented Questions: Yes, space looks crowded in these visualizations. But the size of the satellites is exaggerated here by thousands of times. Space is huge and the collision risk is extremely low. If displayed at their true size the satellites would not be visible, and indeed the vast majority are not visible in the real life night sky. The exception is recently launched satellites that are still in tra…
It does seem like we need a term for a civilisation that decides that serving internet is more important than its ability to observe the universe. Then, in that pursuit, they completely miss an otherwise easily detectable near earth object and become extinct, but the satellites will continue happily beaming internet to a user base that no longer exists. Then again, it's probably a non-issue. Not because the satellite…
just dont look up
Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#106No one in Asia or Africa or India seem to be using it. Are we just polluting LEO for the sake of a handful of Americans? I feel like in the US it's not even widely used...
I believe so - its a very small niche. If I understand correctly, the target audience is:
- remote places, with
- people who need internet but dont have a wire or fiber running to them, and
- who can afford a super expensive starlink (have disposable income), and
- for who 3G/4G isnt good enough
Thats not a lot of people outside the US
Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. Space is definitely 3D and has 3D packing. Starlink is at about 550km. That has an orbital period of 1.5917hrs. Satellites are 7m (as suggested above, but this sounds large). So let's space the next group by 10km. Now the orbital period is 1.5952hrs. We have to go to 580km (+30km) to get to 1.6hrs, which is a difference of 37 seconds. So you got 60km (520km-580km) where you have an error rate of under 1% (0…
I'm not considering such concerns at all; my comment holds even considering perfect orbits followed by frictionless point objects of zero mass. You can of course pack into the height-dimension trivially when using circular orbits; the issue then is how many orbits you can pack into an orbital plane. I contend it scales with radius, not radius squared.
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Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time Starlink comes up it’s the same argument. “It’s not meant for high population density areas” Without the “high population density areas” it is simply not economically viable
it's probably economically viable without selling to consumers at all. if they get planes boats and military, that on it's own would be plenty to sustain it
I doubt it. The ongoing operational costs of a mega constellation like this is huge and I doubt they will be able to sell their services to maritime, aviation and military sectors at a much higher price than existing operators.
They will also meet hefty competition the next few years from Amazon Kuiper, Oneweb and I assume existing operators are scrambling to meet the competition. Interesting times.
Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#109Once China launches it's own 13000 satellite in the coming year then we will start hearing about Kessler syndrome.
Till then it's a beautiful sight to behold.
Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Space is not really 3d in the intuitive sense from a packing perspective, because satellites take up orbits rather than stationary points and orbits don't pack densely. It's more like an embedded 2d space, the intuition for that being that a ring, think Saturn's, is 2d and intersects any orbit.
Yes, the key is that all circular orbits at the same altitude must cross, and if the orbits cross there is a potential collision. Satellites at the same altitude can only avoid collisions by controlling the position in the orbit. Also, mean free path in a particle cloud depends on number density, cross sectional area and speed . The cross sectional area is small, but relative speed is also very high, which makes coll…
Though note: SpaceX does exactly that. They passively position the positions of the satellites along their orbits so that Starlink satellites don't need to avoid other Starlink satellites in orbital operation.