Live data from Hacker News

Starlink Satellites Tracker

findstarlink.com

141–147 of 147 posts

Re: Starlink Satellites Tracker

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go outside this evening if the sky is clear. If you're anywhere between 30 degrees and 60 degrees, there are multiple starlink satellites in your line of sight all the time. Can you point them out? No, they're invisible at their operational altitude.

Even if they weren't, we can't have everything. Do you know how crippled a huge chunk of the world's population is without robust internet access? I have two telescopes in my house and I would give up looking at the sky forever if it meant my cousin's kids got to attend Zoom class instead of having to work from take-home materials.

The US is not the world. The US could have invested in their infrastructure, but they don't want to. Starship is a solution to an American problem.

Re: Starlink Satellites Tracker

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they weren't, we can't have everything. Do you know how crippled a huge chunk of the world's population is without robust internet access? I have two telescopes in my house and I would give up looking at the sky forever if it meant my cousin's kids got to attend Zoom class instead of having to work from take-home materials.

Your country doesn't seem to deploy infrastructure You've likely got mains power and probably water (Sure I know some places are off the grid competely, but it's rare). Why don't those cables have fibre along side them to connect you.

Because, gasp, they might be paying for something that would benefit others more than themselves. The US is the world's richest 3rd world country.

Re: Starlink Satellites Tracker

#143
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in an area where it's not worth building cell towers, then Starlink will have plenty of bandwidth... but that's not where most people live. When you look at a city from orbit, you see millions of radios all stacked on top of each other, screaming. That can never scale as well as a distributed array of towers.

Maybe. Or maybe in these areas it’s even more expensive to waste space on towers.

Land use by towers is ~0%, and the ones we need have mostly been built already.

Next should we eliminate WiFi because it's wasting expensive real estate?

Re: Starlink Satellites Tracker

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The starlink antenna is a $499, and the subscription is $99 a month. So your whole argument on pricing is based on a beta product with limited availability currently. Because prices have never dropped significantly once the product has actually reached mass market adoption?

What are the factors that you think would cause prices to reduce? To the contrary, as more subscribers join the service, satellite throughput capacities will eventually be saturated and will require more satellites or more advanced and powerful satellites. Meanwhile, constant replenishment of the orbital network means that it's not a build-and-amortise asset. There's not a point at which revenue pays-off the asset an…

> What are the factors that you think would cause prices to reduce?

1) reductions in cost of launches 2) reductions in cost of satellites 3) bandwidth capacity improvements per satellite

I could keep going, but it’s obvious you’ve convinced yourself of a narrative and aren’t willing to think rationally about the topic, so I’m not going to waste my time.

Re: Starlink Satellites Tracker

#145
post #103
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you can also give filters for "on station" satellites from all. Satellites not yet in station are not really giving coverage yet ?

Original author here When I originally created this it was so sparse that it was really easy to distinguish, now that would probably be a useful feature. It's also just not that simple to implement. I threw this together really quickly, and the only data I am using is the orbit tracks, it doesn't include whether or not a satellite is on station yet.

That makes sense,

I guess you can look at the orbit parameters ? I am assuming if the satellites are not yet on station they won't share the exact same plane as those that are in station. They are elevated over few months as they are spread to the right position I believe

Re: Starlink Satellites Tracker

#146
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Original author here When I originally created this it was so sparse that it was really easy to distinguish, now that would probably be a useful feature. It's also just not that simple to implement. I threw this together really quickly, and the only data I am using is the orbit tracks, it doesn't include whether or not a satellite is on station yet.

That makes sense, I guess you can look at the orbit parameters ? I am assuming if the satellites are not yet on station they won't share the exact same plane as those that are in station. They are elevated over few months as they are spread to the right position I believe

Yes... or maybe better would be to monitor whether or not the orbital parameters for any particular object are changing over time. If they're still using the ion thruster they're not on station...

It would take a fair bit of work on making the heuristic robust, so I don't plan to do it. If you're interested in doing so feel free to download the source (just scrape it from the website) and go at it.

Re: Starlink Satellites Tracker

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they weren't, we can't have everything. Do you know how crippled a huge chunk of the world's population is without robust internet access? I have two telescopes in my house and I would give up looking at the sky forever if it meant my cousin's kids got to attend Zoom class instead of having to work from take-home materials.

The US is not the world. The US could have invested in their infrastructure, but they don't want to. Starship is a solution to an American problem.

Assuming you mean Starlink, what makes you think poor internet availability is a uniquely American problem? 13.4 percent of American households don't have internet access, compared to 10 percent of Europeans and 44.9 percent of households in Asia.
Post reply on HN