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Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

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Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#151

Post by sandworm101 »

chaboud wrote: post #148
godelski wrote: post #68

Earlier 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…

Huh. I wasn’t worried before reading this thread. Now I’m a little more worried. 1. We don’t need to worry about Kessler syndrome, as the orbits of Starlink will decay in five years (from 550km). 2. ISS is at 420km. Has anyone else ever worked with something dangerous dangling over their heads? It’s kind of nerve wracking, even if you know that there’s very little chance of it falling and hitting you.

The moon seems pretty stable up there. Doesn't rattle my nerves on iota that it is overhead.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#152

Post by oittaa »

hypertexthero wrote: post #140
ghaff wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Twitch, but it seems to work pretty well with video in general. Not as reliable as my wired connection at home but pretty good. Can't really speak to latency (though looked OK on a connection test) but I don't really do anything that's especially latency sensitive.

Thank you! Note to self and others considering this: The dynamic bitrate setting in Open Broadcaster Studio could help smooth things out: https://obsproject.com/wiki/Dropped-Frames-and-General-Conne...

The bitrate won't be a problem with Twitch since their maximum bitrate is super low. Just depending on where you live there might be outages every now and then if all the satellites are behind trees or buildings.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#153

Post by walrus01 »

gibolt wrote: post #45
teruakohatu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a screenshot of the default view on my web browser. The satellites appear to be around 100km in diameter, but they are in reality 7m wide, so they are 14,000x larger on the map than in reality. The entire constellation would fit within 0.2% of one of the white dots as they appear in the map. Then you need to remember that the space is 3D, unlike road surfaces (ignoring bridges etc.)

Put another way, it is like there are 10,000 fish equally spaced around the ocean. One could swim 100 lifetimes and never see another fish.

As the surface area of a theoretical 3 dimensional spherical shell at earth diameter plus 550 km is considerably larger than the oceans, more like having 10,000 tiny anchovy sized fish, swimming a hundred lifetimes and never seeing one.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#154

Post by Gordonjcp »

crispinb wrote: post #74
tenpies wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> a civilisation that decides that serving internet is more important than its ability to observe the universe It's slightly worse than that. Starlink is only viable because of huge gaps in planned provision of what is now a basic utility (even government services in many parts of the world are hard to access without the internet). We're actually giving up our inalienable and multimillenial rights to a real night sky…

They're more-or-less invisible in all but the darkest skies.

I've seen a freshly-launched train of the very early ones from a quite light-polluted city sky in Glasgow, but even going deliberately looking for Starlink sats in properly dark skies I've never seen any.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#156

Post by chaboud »

sandworm101 wrote: post #151
chaboud wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh. I wasn’t worried before reading this thread. Now I’m a little more worried. 1. We don’t need to worry about Kessler syndrome, as the orbits of Starlink will decay in five years (from 550km). 2. ISS is at 420km. Has anyone else ever worked with something dangerous dangling over their heads? It’s kind of nerve wracking, even if you know that there’s very little chance of it falling and hitting you.

The moon seems pretty stable up there. Doesn't rattle my nerves on iota that it is overhead.

The moon is slowly getting farther away. Starlink satellites are expected to relatively quickly return to earth.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#157

Post by sandworm101 »

godelski wrote: post #68
Veedrac wrote: post #61

Earlier 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.

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…

Comparing our terrestrial notion of 2 or 3d space with orbital positions doesn't solve much. Low orbit is a very different area requiring we drop traditional notions of size and speed.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#158

Post by newZWhoDis »

tenpies wrote: post #67
modeless wrote: post #7

Frequently 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…

Extremely short-sighted opinion.

With this capability we can observe better than ever before, and soon regular people will be able to afford at least a ride to LEO via ICBM-turned-airline

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#159

Post by twosdai »

kortilla wrote: post #62
noncoml wrote: post #59

Earlier 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

Based on what? What user count do you think Starlink needs to be economically viable? Napkin math time because the economics for satellites are not intuitive compared to stuff where density is better. 10% of the surface of the earth is inhabited by people. 510 million square kilometers * .1 is 51 million square kilometers. At a service density of only one user per square kilometer, that’s 51 million users for regular…

I agree with you, and your 2nd point about the b2b areas being important.

However I think the general math you do needs a bit more nuance. You'd want to exclude all people living in cities so you'd need to exclude the land mass taken up by cities to get a more accurate estimate.

Also I'm not sure where you get the 10% number from for people inhabiting the world. From this report they talk about humans impacting 15% of the landmass https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-human-impact-on-the-...

Again, I agree with your point but I'm skeptical about your back of the napkin math.

Re: Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map

#160

Post by TinkersW »

randomcarbloke wrote: post #132
noncoml wrote: post #59

Earlier 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

Yeah, I guess "it's not meant for high population density areas" argument would work if rurals didn't also have garbage service on Starlink.

I have used it regularly in a rural area, it works amazingly better than what was available prior, and keeps improving as more satellites are launched.
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