Live data from Hacker News

Starlink Direct to Cell

starlink.com

741–750 of 831 posts

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#741
post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How more demand for national parks a bad thing?

If you’ve never been, I’d recommend visiting Lake Louise in Alberta. However, when I last visited in 2019, the lake base was packed nearly shoulder to shoulder at 7am. Hiking the trail to the tea house was like walking a sidewalk in NYC at 9am, just a little rougher and steeper. I’ve heard it’s only gotten worse since Covid. Is it selfish to want to be able to enjoy one of the most beautiful spots in Canada without i…

Do you think that, if “the masses” were cut off from Lake Louise, you in particular would still be able to go to it?

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon knows well enough to act as a supporting character. He can't run for presidency anyway given he's not a native, and no other political post would be interesting enough. There'll be no falling out.

Trump is not a native either, his family is German and Scottish (just checked). So far as I know a native has never held the presidency in the US.

Parent didn’t say Trump is a Native American, just a native (of America, from context). That’s a perfectly normal use of the word ‘native’, and you don’t win consciousness points by pretending otherwise.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Starlink is indeed awesome and SpaceX deserves every bit of their success. But there will be competitors eventually, if for no other reason than foreign militaries sponsoring them. There's no inherent reason for this to be a winner takes all market. We can only hope the competitors are half as responsible as SpaceX has been about space debris risk and ensuring the satellites are not visible to the naked e…

We civilians aren't going to get anything useful from foreign militaries launching payloads

[deleted]

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#744
post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla fanatics espouse the same sort of thinking. Tesla will figure out FSD and will capture the entire automotive market leaving competitors to close up shop and give up. I don't get it. Otherwise intelligent people have told me some version of this with a straight face. It's like they've somehow blocked how the economy functions out of their minds in an effort to further exalt Tesla.

It's not the same because there are plenty of companies that can manufacture cars at scale but only one company that can launch satellites cheaply. Arguably Waymo is ahead of Tesla FSD and they have access to the mature Hyundai and Zeekr supply chains.

Waymo could be much better at driving but without a low cost sensor strategy they can’t make money in a market that will immediately become commodity priced.

Reaching huge scale needs the right market strategy as well as good supply chain.

SpaceX has a clever strategy of exploiting their first mover advantage in cheap launch to create the first cheap satcom system. They will suck up so much of the available revenue from that market that the next movers will have trouble getting sufficient investment.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will happen over time

> It will happen over time I'm optimistic. I think that, once SpaceX starts launch Starlink satellites with Starship, they'll be able to increase their globally available bandwidth by a factor of 5-10x (although it might take 5 years to roll out). A lot of that bandwidth will be eaten up by existing demand. But hopefully some of it will enable novel services like global cell service through a single provider (even if…

That's still many orders of magnitude too little.

We're currently talking data rates on the order of (optimistically) 5 Mbit/s for a cell with a diameter of 15 square miles, i.e. something like 0.1 Mbit/s per km^2.

In very rural areas (which is the use case!), that's infinitely better than nothing, but anywhere people live, this is effectively nothing, and there is currently no way around ground-based infrastructure.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#746
post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"convincing a substantial portion of global launch demand to use Chinese rockets seems the trickiest bit, give the CCP's relationship with the rule of law." Expound more on this please assuming I'm a potential Brazilian South African ,Saudi or Thai client .

For countries that aren't on the US' shit list (e.g. Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, or Thailand), why would I take a chance on Chinese legal agreements instead of American ones? The American private company might be prohibited from launching military assets for you, but once a launch contract is otherwise signed, you know it's going to happen. In contrast, a Chinese legal agreement is worth what, if the central…

This is an interesting comment because Russia and China have been sending satellites for many countries over the years .Do you have an example of a Chinese company refusing to launch a payload for a foreign customer ? I'd love a link so that I can get educated more

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quick maths indicates that to achieve this, they’d have to launch 22.5 satellites per week every week for the next 18 months until that deadline. SpaceX seems to be launching at nearly twice that rate, having launched [1565 satellites]( https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/10/30/live-coverage-spacex-t... .) in the first 10 months of this year.

Keep in mind that Kuiper satellite is 600kg, while Starlink is 260. So you would have to adjust the math. I am sure it's doable if all the space providers work together and there aren't any showstoppers.

> I am sure it's doable if all the space providers work together and there aren't any showstoppers.

Are you living in a different world that me?

NO company or Government on Earth outside SpaceX has the capability to launch more than about 15 orbital rockets per year. Most are in the 5-10 per year range.

Who the heck is going to launch all these sats?

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What silly political posturing. Native-born is the specific reference, and a perfectly valid one. By your logic, if the current descendants of people who have been here for many centuries by now aren't natives, than vast parts of the world's population are also not natives of the places where their families have lived for centuries. Why not go further and say that the "natives" also aren't natives since they also mig…

> By your logic, if the current descendants of people who have been here for many centuries by now aren't native. It's not my logic. The term Native American has an agreed, standard meaning. Trump's family does not meet that meaning. My comment was not an attack on your political views. Are you suggesting that being born in a place makes one native? I'll accept that definition. Now go convince the rest of the world t…

And as you apparently agree, the term native, in reference to someone born in a particular place (regardless of ancestry) also has a standard meaning, which millions of Americans who are natives of the country meet. It also happens to be a good definition, because it helps fight against the kind of idiotic racism by which the descendants of immigrants (especially those who are non-white) still get labeled as foreigners despite being native born.

Again, silly, pedantic social justice posturing because the context of the comment about Musk not being native is obviously in reference to this, not native American history.

As the other reply above states, the first nations, as they're called where I'm from, often suffered terribly at the hands of white settlers historically, and there's no honest way to deny that, but it's a separate matter from discussions about what makes a person American today.

Re: Starlink Direct to Cell

#750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future of the US: 90% of cars will be Tesla (other carmakers will go bankrupt), internet access and space exploration will be monopolized as well.

Attempting to make Ford disappear would be a political suicide.

Yes, Ford will be on that 10% left.
Post reply on HN