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SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

fastcompany.com

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Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#221

Post by russdill »

nugga wrote: post #197
creeble wrote: post #22

Curious how this will pan out. It's a shocking contrast to be in or near a city and have broadband speeds, and then be just a few dozen miles outside one and have... literally nothing. I just loaned my Iridium phone to a friend who was going to the jungle, and although he was able to make the data connection work, even doing email at 2400 baud(!) proved useless. Inmarsat is faster, but vastly more expensive. Outside…

Starlink could be a godsent for online gamers. Anything under 100 ms for fps games is quite playable and you don't need much bandwidth for those udp packets. Just guarantee some minimum bandwidth allotment of say 1 mbps and make sure the satellites are not so oversubscribed as to cause unnecessarily long or unoptimized routing. Games between west coast usa and eu or eu and asia would be playable.

If you're going to another continent, you're going to see a big latency savings. If your going to another state, you're probably going to get lower latency on fiber. But really, a 60Hz frame is 33.3ms, and many online games advance their world state at 60Hz too, so it's easy to get up to 67 ms of latency just sitting still.

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#222

Post by russdill »

creeble wrote: post #22

Curious how this will pan out. It's a shocking contrast to be in or near a city and have broadband speeds, and then be just a few dozen miles outside one and have... literally nothing. I just loaned my Iridium phone to a friend who was going to the jungle, and although he was able to make the data connection work, even doing email at 2400 baud(!) proved useless. Inmarsat is faster, but vastly more expensive. Outside…

As far as I know, they still serve different purposes. The starlink antenna needs to see a large portion of the sky and needs to be stationary.

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#223

Post by wbl »

zaroth wrote: post #11

Too bad the public markets have given Elon such a lashing with Tesla, because I would love to buy into SpaceX. But then, I’m not the only one; “There is an unlimited amount of funding that the company could probably access globally in private markets," Hilmer said, adding that he has personally met many of "a diverse group" interested in SpaceX. Everywhere I travel around the world, investors of all types — individua…

Sure it can. Those who sent like it sell to those who do, just like in the private market.

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#224

Post by penagwin »

ALurchyBeast wrote: post #139
Rooster61 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

<10K isn't the problem. It's when that 10K becomes much, much larger because of an unforeseen collision with an unrelated spacecraft/piece of space junk. It only takes one big collision to utterly litter that particular orbit, and thousands of slightly different orbits caused by the new trajectories of the various bits of the original spacecraft.

So whats your solution? Never put a bunch of satellites in space?

He's not necessarily saying he know's a solution, just that such a problem should be considered. Satellites do collide - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision

The idea of satellite collisions and space junk is an actual concern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome .

Sure a few washing machines in space isn't a big concern. Now imagine a few collide, hundreds of bits and bolts flying around earth, at unknown trajetories, at thousands of miles per hour.

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#225

Post by eloff »

zaroth wrote: post #163
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy they’re quoting sells SpaceX stock on the secondary market. Of course he’ll say it’s selling like hot cakes—it’s what he’s hired to sell.

Yeah, it seemed like hyperbole but fit my narrative and was the first hit on Google. Oops, am I not supposed to admit that?

Hah, upvoted for honesty!

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#226

Post by manquer »

Scoundreller wrote: post #157
dzhiurgis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's perplexing is why Iridium is not doing way more. They are essentially just letting SpaceX to cannibalise them. Sure, they don't have fancy rockets, but still can scale their satellite net before Elon catches up with sat tech or outsource launches to even cheaper Indian launch provider. p.s. the story of Iridium and how they recovered is quite amazing.

I think the more amazing part of Iridium’s story is that they got the money to launch their constellation in the first place. It’s crushing debt and inevitable bankruptcy with the assets being acquired for something like 1/20th of a cent on the dollar was to be expected really.

Iridium is around now. Both their next gen and the old gen. SpaceX will take atleast 5-7 years to get full coverage. The customer base of iridium is very different than what SpaceX is targeting.. there should be room for more than one player

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#227

Post by Robotbeat »

detritus wrote: post #41

This is probably a stupid thing to ask, but: Could this setup be hacked to provide a loose form of GPS?

Yes. The Iridium (the closest analogue) already can do this. It's not very good, though. Worse than cell tower triangulation, I think.

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#228

Post by intrasight »

nostrademons wrote: post #150
test6554 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who sees a ceo who plans to spend a large chunk of company profits on colonizing mars for the sake of humanity might think to themselves, "I wonder if I can start a similar company, avoid the mars colonization expenses and undercut them on price."

The advantage of rocket science as a business is that there's a pretty big barrier to entry for anyone who wants to spend a lot of money to get in. Plus a lot of the rocket scientists who work for SpaceX (as opposed to ULA or Astrium) are there specifically because of the Mars colonization mission.

Gravity is quite the barrier!

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#229

Post by azernik »

thinkcontext wrote: post #78

The fact that SpaceX can piggyback on its own customers' launches to put these in orbit is a significant advantage over competing communication constellations. Depending on the cost of their satellites it might make sense to use launching them as a means of testing the upper limits of reusability of their rockets. IE, they might not want to risk a customer payload on a rocket that has made 10 launches. But if they ar…

It's not about piggybacking on customer launches - these will mostly be launched on dedicated launches.

Rather, it's about using spare capacity freed up by the long-foreseen slowdown in the geostationary launch business that has historically been SpaceX's (and everyone else's) bread and butter, without crashing market launch prices.

Re: SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites

#230

Post by intrasight »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #21
zjaffee wrote: post #3

Does anyone have any context on what sort of internet speeds satellite internet has been benchmarked to provide. I can't imagine the latency being anywhere near good enough to do many of the high bandwidth things people use the internet for today.

Traditional satellite internet uses satellites in geostationary orbits, or 35,786km high above the equator. This is great because satellites in that orbit are stationary relative to the ground, so you just need a parabolic antenna pointed at a specific point in the sky to get great reception. But it's also terrible for latency because the signal takes 120ms just to get up, and another 120ms to get down. Assuming you…

>The satellites will pass the signal between each other using lasers

I thought there were regulatory barriers to doing that

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