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Starlink Is a Big Deal

sneak.berlin

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Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#271

Post by sgt101 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #10

> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…

Yeah. In the UK 12m connections are serviced with 80000 points of presence to provide consumer grade internet. This will be niche...

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#272

Post by bzbarsky »

mantap wrote: post #250
icelancer wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very obviously is. Homework assignments, keeping up with their friend groups, etc.

I don't agree. I grew up (partially) before DSL, as did everybody before Gen Z, and I'm very thankful for it. I don't think always on internet is necessary for a fulfilling childhood. There's so much more to the world than the internet.

It's not if society is generally structured around that, sure.

But if the only way to find out what your homework is is a website, and that homework is posted as a multimegabyte PDF (this is how it's working for my kids, not a hypothetical), then lack of an available internet connection immediately affects your ability to effectively attend school, for example.

Now we can have a discussion about whether school is necessary for a fulfilling childhood, of course. :)

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#273

Post by pmontra »

> SpaceX will be pressured by the governments in the jurisdictions where their staff reside (where their physical threats of enforcement can be carried out) to selectively censor/blackout or otherwise wiretap use of the system,

It's easier than that.

To provide a low latency service satellites can't just forward the signal to other satellites and beam it down to a base station on the other side of the planet and back. It would take too long.

StarLink needs base stations (on Earth) close to the terminals of their users: terminal -> satellite -> base station -> internet -> base station -> satellite -> terminal

So if a country doesn't want its citizens to use StarLink it only has to deny permissions to build base stations there. Of course that's useless for small countries with a base station in a nearby country, but it's OK for large countries. Or they could welcome a base station: it will be connected to the local internet and be subject to all the usual monitoring and censorship.

A different take to the same issue: probably StarLink has to apply as an ISP in every country they want to service (take money from people there). This means a base station there or not.

From [1]

> 2019 April - SpaceX files for 6 base stations for Starlink. Locations: North Bend WA, Conrad MT, Merrillan WI, Greenville PA, Redmond WA, Hawthorne CA, Brewster WA

> 2020 - Service to be offered across the contiguous United States and Canada

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/wiki/index#wiki_what_kind_...

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#274

Post by bzbarsky »

modeless wrote: post #267
aylmao wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the sentiment of the parent comment. Not because I have a huge passion for astronomy, but because I think we're prioritizing things in a wrong way. We're prioritizing yet another billionare's networking business over the capacity to study our night's sky. Much like other types of pollution, this is something that could stick around for hundreds of years, even after all its utility is gone. Cell towers, l…

Firstly, the satellites fall out of orbit automatically within 5 years even if they break because they're in LEO. Secondly, again because they're in LEO they are invisible for most of the night while they are in Earth's shadow, not affecting stargazing or astronomy in the slightest during that time. It's only an hour or so near dawn and dusk where the satellites are visible.

Trying to match up that claim with the claim of https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink that satellites should be visible at 12:10am this Saturday over Boston. 12:10am is nowhere close to dusk in Boston this time of year.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#275

Post by mhandley »

rtkwe wrote: post #178
mhandley wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These first satellites don't have the free-space lasers I modelled in that paper, but my simulations show they can still beat fibre on many paths without inter-satellite links, by relaying via groundstations: https://youtu.be/m05abdGSOxY Later satellites will have inter-satellite links, but probably not till near the end of this year, and most of the first phase will already be deployed by then.

In many places for HFT the comparison is against microwave links though not standard fiber.

Indeed, and I mention microwave links in the paper linked above. But those are relatively short distance: New York - Chicago, London-Frankfurt, and similar. Where Starlink and Kuiper can provide real latency benefits is on long distance paths, trans-oceanic, or passing over countries where it's geographically or politically infeasible to built microwave links.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#276

Post by ddalex »

aylmao wrote: post #245
jayd16 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't fathom the reasoning behind this much passion about astronomy tied to this much hatred of putting things in space.

I agree with the sentiment of the parent comment. Not because I have a huge passion for astronomy, but because I think we're prioritizing things in a wrong way. We're prioritizing yet another billionare's networking business over the capacity to study our night's sky. Much like other types of pollution, this is something that could stick around for hundreds of years, even after all its utility is gone. Cell towers, l…

I feel that's a super limited point of view of the whole affair.

Starlink is here not because it makes a networking business (although it doesn't hurt).

Starlink is here because on Mars you need reliable communication and positioning over the planet, and you can only do that efficiently with satellites, and Starlink is destined for Mars, not Earth. What we have here is just the testing grounds for the technology.

Personally I'm stoked about pushing 1200 sattelites in orbit to Mars - highly automated, and it would make the current 2 orbiters by NASA as peanuts.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#277

Post by rini17 »

aylmao wrote: post #253
wahern wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't geostationary satellites. There's no opportunity cost to selling service when flying over poorer countries. Of course, the price has to include the backhaul, and even poor countries have rich residents, but in any event it would be silly to fly over whole landmasses in silence.

> in any event it would be silly to fly over whole landmasses in silence. It wouldn't if the satellite network is operating at capacity, and therefore you can't guarantee service. Satellites communicate with one another to send information around the world. Most servers are not in developing nations— a lot of them are in the US, for example. Satellites from all over the world will all try to reach the ones that are n…

So you assume Starlink will relay the data primarily between satellites and will avoid handing them over to ground till close to destination? Why?

Consider the inter-satellite relay is still in development and current mode of operation was described as "bent pipe". Even when it will be developed, it makes sense to offload data to nearest convenient fiber-connected ground station instead of satellites around the globe.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#278

Post by modeless »

bzbarsky wrote: post #274
modeless wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firstly, the satellites fall out of orbit automatically within 5 years even if they break because they're in LEO. Secondly, again because they're in LEO they are invisible for most of the night while they are in Earth's shadow, not affecting stargazing or astronomy in the slightest during that time. It's only an hour or so near dawn and dusk where the satellites are visible.

Trying to match up that claim with the claim of https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink that satellites should be visible at 12:10am this Saturday over Boston. 12:10am is nowhere close to dusk in Boston this time of year.

12:10 AM Saturday in your device's time zone. 6:10 PM Friday in Boston's time zone. It's on my to-do list to change the displayed time zone when you select a faraway location instead of your current location, but just figuring out which time zone a given location is in is a non-trivial problem. Time zones are kind of bonkers, as I'm sure you're aware.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#279

Post by ddalex »

coding123 wrote: post #213
coding123 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if astronomy isn't affected. Can you imagine a grid/net of fast moving satellites, 80,000 satellites covering the entire globe that are visible for 2 to 3 hours every night. This is the thing that creates global suicides. Mark those words. It will happen.

Sorry this is worth more commenting - I am just imagining this network above us. Every centimeter to an inch "visually" a grid pattern crossing over us for a period of 2 hours a night. No, a website that tells you when it's coming, ooooh... No this is every single night, and morning, a grid from HELL. I'm a fairly regular poster, a software engineer, decently intelligent guy - and this future absolutely disgusts me.…

[DELETED because dups and all that; I guess I got over excited :) ]

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#280

Post by jlgaddis »

mirimir wrote: post #266
modeless wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox 60 It's the old browser, not anything to do with your privacy settings. Sorry, when you decide to use an old and uncommon browser version the price you pay is that sites aren't going to be testing compatibility with it.

Come on, that's not much more than a year old. > Firefox ESR > October 23, 2018

The site doesn't work at all on the iPad I'm reading HN with right now, but I'm not complaining about it because it's running iOS 10.0.1. I expect lots of sites to not work correctly -- and they often don't!
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