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Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

starlinkmap.org

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Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#191

Post by LorenDB »

wmf wrote: post #156
LorenDB wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon has already stated that Starlink is not a replacement for a quality wired/fiber connection. His goal with Starlink is to cover areas that aren't covered by ISPs for whatever reason.

I once read about a gas station chain that used VSAT for credit card processing because it's faster than POTS and they didn't have to deal with different local telcos/ISPs. I'm not sure how true that is, but for some low-bandwidth uses I can see the appeal of having a single national/worldwide ISP.

Yeah, that completely makes sense. The comment I was thinking of was made in the context of Starlink for home users.

By the way, I think that comment was from the 2023 SpaceX all-hands talk that was posted online if you wish to find it yourself.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#192

Post by gambiting »

TMWNN wrote: post #142
gambiting wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world That sounds like an absolute distopian nightmare and the last person on earth that I want to be running this service is Elon Musk. In general I find it horrendous how a single american company can pollute the night sky for every human being in the world, whether they can use their service…

>That sounds like an absolute distopian nightmare and the last person on earth that I want to be running this service is Elon Musk. Given that Musk was the only person with the ambition, capital, and ability to deliver such a project, you're basically saying that you'd rather have Starlink not exist at all than to have Musk in charge. >it's an incredible feat - and yet I still think it's a travesty that it's allowed…

>> you're basically saying that you'd rather have Starlink not exist at all than to have Musk in charge

No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying having Musk in charge makes it distopian, but even without him at the helm I'd rather it didn't exist.

>>Confirmed: You'd rather have every Starlink customer go dark than have someone you've been told to dislike provide those customers with a service they willingly sign up for.

No, I'd rather not have my sky polluted to satisfy an American billionaire's fancy, even if he has willing and paying customers. The night sky is a common good of every single person on earth, and he's playing with it to make money. I'd have the exact same complaint about any competing constallation, and in fact I am going to have it because Amazon is building a competing service themselves.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#193

Post by kube-system »

londons_explore wrote: post #29
modeless wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad take. There are plenty of regulatory bodies that control what SpaceX is allowed to do. The satellites are not visible to the eye in their operational orbits and are incredibly tiny compared to the vastness of space. Their depiction here is thousands of times larger than actual size.

There are 7.8 billion people on earth. 7.5 billion of them had no say at all, and 0.33 billion of them had a tiny say via elected representatives who wrote the laws before starlink was even envisioned. I'm pretty sure if a global vote was held on the question of "Would you like to have 10,000 satellites launched so you have the option of paying a US company for broadband anywhere in the world?", the vote outcome woul…

Presuming that you translated it to every language:

* 3 billion people don't care because they don't use the internet

* 7 billion people don't care because they wouldn't be able to afford it anyway

* 7 billion people don't care because the question doesn't make much sense to them nor do they really understand what it is about

* 4 billion people likely won't participate because voting is not an activity they are familiar with and/or is not something they desire to participate in.

Direct democracy also has a pretty bad track record in producing just, principled, and reasoned results.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#194

Post by barbazoo »

daemonologist wrote: post #184
barbazoo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand your second reason. Could you elaborate what you mean by "dwell over our province" which would explain improved coverage beyond the fact that there are as you said probably fewer subscribers the satellites are visible from?

Starlink has a lot of (most?) satellites at an orbital inclination of 53 degrees to avoid "wasting" time over the poles where few people live while still providing coverage at most other latitudes. This means that at any time there's a higher density of satellites above that latitude than at the equator. Here's a map of the ISS orbit (similar inclination) over time which shows the effect: https://engaging-data.com/pa…

That was very helpful. Clicking on a few satellites and looking at their orbit confirms that. The majority do not go over the poles. Interesting that this also leaves northern Canada, Denmark and Scandinavia with what looks like not much coverage but at the same time there's coverage offered [0] in all those regions.

[0] https://www.starlink.com/map

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#195

Post by daemonologist »

ck2 wrote: post #173

What happens when there are half a dozen startups with 42,000 satellites around earth?

I don't think startups will be able to enter this market, at least not any time soon - it's too capital intensive. We might get several large "constellations" someday though (Starlink, Eutelsat/OneWeb, Amazon Kuiper, Guowang).

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#196

Post by jessriedel »

daemonologist wrote: post #184
barbazoo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quite understand your second reason. Could you elaborate what you mean by "dwell over our province" which would explain improved coverage beyond the fact that there are as you said probably fewer subscribers the satellites are visible from?

Starlink has a lot of (most?) satellites at an orbital inclination of 53 degrees to avoid "wasting" time over the poles where few people live while still providing coverage at most other latitudes. This means that at any time there's a higher density of satellites above that latitude than at the equator. Here's a map of the ISS orbit (similar inclination) over time which shows the effect: https://engaging-data.com/pa…

Any idea why there is such a discrete separation between the near-polar orbits and the 53-degree orbits? Naively I would have thought that there would be several classes orbits with degrees ranging from ~0 to ~90, with the number in each chosen so that coverage roughly matched the subscriber distribution.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#197

Post by buffington »

jcims wrote: post #161

When I fullscreen this page the globe is 870 pixels wide, equating to about 9.1 miles per pixel. Each satellite is represented by a cube 3 dots on edge. This equates to 27 miles per edge or 19,683 cubic miles of volume for each square represented. That's approximately four times the total volume of the Great Lakes in the US.

And if the satellites were represented as panda bear emojis?

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#198

Post by jessriedel »

barbazoo wrote: post #194
daemonologist wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink has a lot of (most?) satellites at an orbital inclination of 53 degrees to avoid "wasting" time over the poles where few people live while still providing coverage at most other latitudes. This means that at any time there's a higher density of satellites above that latitude than at the equator. Here's a map of the ISS orbit (similar inclination) over time which shows the effect: https://engaging-data.com/pa…

That was very helpful. Clicking on a few satellites and looking at their orbit confirms that. The majority do not go over the poles. Interesting that this also leaves northern Canada, Denmark and Scandinavia with what looks like not much coverage but at the same time there's coverage offered [0] in all those regions. [0] https://www.starlink.com/map

There's probably always going to be issues with getting good coverage of Scandinavia economically because (1) the physics of the orbits means that regions at the same latitude (both Northern and Southern hemisphere) "share" the satellites to an extent and (2) Scandinavia is an outlier in population density at its high latitude. In other words, there are not many other high-latitude countries with which to share the cost of the putting satellites in these inclinations orbits. I believe this is ameliorated somewhat by the US Military's desire for pole-to-pole coverage. I think (?) the near-polar orbit Starlinks were only added later because of this.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#199

Post by jessriedel »

nameless912 wrote: post #176
tills13 wrote: post #172

This is really cool but what's with the borderline propaganda in the sidebar interlaced with the data?

Agreed. Internet to the whole world is a noble goal, but the internet provider in chief is, in my estimation, a ghoul. The gushing praise is a strange choice to be sure, considering how informative the rest of the site is.

The gushy-ness of the webpage is weird, but note it does not mention Musk at all. It only discusses Starlink and SpaceX.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#200

Post by jessriedel »

ddp26 wrote: post #136

Striking visualization, makes me wonder: can this density of satellite coverage meaningfully change how earth appears to an alien civilization many lightyears away, in a way that coverage by 1% or 10% as many satellites over the last ~50 years would not?

No. There are over a billion road vehicles on Earth, but they do not change how the Earth appears from space (even accounting for the fact that ~half are blocked by clouds at any given time). A few tens of thousands of Starlink satellites will not change the Earth's visual appearance.
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