Live data from Hacker News

Starlink Maritime

starlink.com

271–280 of 530 posts

Re: Starlink Maritime

#271
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would there be any concern that you are essentially advertising your location at all times to some third party corp? Or is that only a concern during certain times and you can just turn off the commercial system at that point?

By the time NATO partners can no longer trust each other with the position of their naval vessels you have serious problem already. The official satcoms are all NATO-shared satellites anyway, so you could probably derive their positions from that. With regards to SpaceX ratting on our location, I don't think that would be a serious worry but in any case whenever shit gets serious a warship will go into "black hole" o…

>With regards to SpaceX ratting on our location, I don't think that would be a serious worry but in any case whenever shit gets serious a warship will go into "black hole" operations that block any non-essential comms.

As a practical matter as well, both in theory and based on usage in Ukraine, Starlink appears to be a somewhat challenging target too. A phased array doing 10-12 GHz is a fairly tight beam and it's tracking very fast across the sky, jumping around between LEO@550km (and in the future VLEO@~350km) sats. In a naval setting it's not clear that'd be much of a limiting factor: something capable of seeing that would probably need to be at such an altitude and angle to ships on the ocean that it could also just plain see any surface naval vessel directly optically or via radar. The stealth ship proposals Skunkworks suggested back around the F-117 never went anywhere since the US Navy is dumb^Wtraditional.

But as you say either way they can always just turn it off as needed. It'd be very helpful the much higher percentage of time that things are boring.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#272
post #4

"$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $10,000 for two high performance terminals." wow! Why cant you just take your normal starlink with you on your boat? Don't people do that with RVs?

- This is a more niche product (just due to sheer numbers). Therefore, supporting it for each user will have higher overheads. - Competition is expensive, e.g. BGAN at $284/GB of data transfer or more, while offering lower speeds (700 Kbps for a $6.5K Cobham Explorer 710, Vs. 350 Mbps for this). - Competition likely won't be able to directly compete on offering for a while. The next step will likely be commercial air…

[deleted]

Re: Starlink Maritime

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget Inmarsat. https://www.inmarsat.com/en/solutions-services/maritime/serv... Or Globalstar. https://www.globalstar.com/en-us/blog/articles/satellite-sol...

globalstar is a bad joke and not a viable option for maritime services (or over-ocean aviation services) because unlike iridium or inmarsat, its satellite terminal-to-earth-station architecture is a bent pipe. there is zero globalstar mid ocean coverage. there is a reason you will see lots of competing options for people integrating the iridium embedded modems into things designed to go on top of $40 million business…

An Iridium embedded modem is one of the things we came across in the wreckage of a small plane we were recovering the pilot's remains from[0].

It was for his Spidertracks[1] flight tracking system. (Which, with the ADSB track, helped us hone in on the possible location. The wreck ended up being right in line with the last few pings.

[0] https://lompocrecord.com/news/local/experienced-solvang-bush...

[1] https://www.spidertracks.com/

Re: Starlink Maritime

#274
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree, I probably wouldn't touch them at this point any more at all. Was just replying to the notion that this couldn't be artificial highway robbery just because their net margin isn't great. I believe it definitely still can be, because apparently the only way these companies are even in business right now is exactly by highway robbery.

I cannot agree with that characterization. How can a business be a suboptimal or undesirable investment because it does not earn enough profit relative to risk, and simultaneously be committing highway robbery (i.e. charging too high a price for its products/services)? If anything, it seems like the customers should feel lucky the investors are risking their money on this product/service, and it is being offered at a…

I think there's a misunderstanding. I noted that I wouldn't see these businesses as a good investment any more because of SpaceX and further developments.

I believe they can still commit highway robbery even without their net margins being dramatically high, since highway robbery is exactly what you stated - charging too high a price for its products/services.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they stationed them near the edge of current coverage, the ship could be the inter-satellite link until the actual inter-satellite links are working.

That would only buy you one increment of offshore range gain; it wouldn't cover the whole ocean unless you had a huge network of ships and used multiple up/down hops. And at that point the overall latency would suck so bad your customers might be better off with GEO.

It would depend on how fast the internal relay latency is on the ground terminals.

Geostationary satellites are up at around 35,000 km. Starlink is about 500-600km - you can get a whole lot of hops between Starlink satellites and terminals before you're looking at the same distance.

There's talk that they might be able to use either existing terminals, or a special set of terminals to do this, without the need to deploy them in fixed locations.

They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too.

There's enough of those around to provide a massive network of potential relays.

But they are deploying inter-satellite laser links on newer launches, so those will come on and provide more coverage too.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#276

$5000 a month? Who is this for? I'm a little confused. Seems like even the military would be reluctant at that price point, let alone private boat owners who aren't multimillionaires.

People who own $1M plus boats. This isn't for ski-boats at the local lake.

Way more than than. Think $10m+ boats.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#277
post #256
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink RV is only currently meant to be used while stationary and can't track while in motion, which is why the hardware is identical to the home unit. They're supposed to be coming out with new hardware that allows use while in motion. It was only a week ago that the FCC approved the application for "vehicles in motion."[1] It will be on airplanes as well, soon. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/fcc-approves-spa…

What I really want is hardware that is mounted on RV roof and can be deployed and folded with a press of a button. While I don't care if it works in motion, I do care about setup convenience, and I'm not getting current version because setting it up is just too cumbersome. Or even better: just flat beam-forming antenna on the RV roof. Once thing there is enough on the roof is space.

Yeah would be possible with a larger antenna that has a wider FOV. The current dish has too narrow a FOV to simply recess it into the roof/enclosure unfortunately.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can afford $5000 a month for internet maybe you're more likely on a Silent 60 (17 kWp solar) than a Catalina 30.

FWIW if they ever to offer 10 Mb/s plans for ~$150/mo, the power use becomes a question again.

Not really. You won't run it all the time on a cruising yacht. Just when you need it. You probably don't care about having internet constantly under passage just for short times to get weather and to send out updates to friends and family.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#279
post #164

I work in the space industry and follow SATCOM closely. This is a very competitive space. Companies like Viasat, Iridium and Inmarsat already work in this vertical. SpaceX beats all these companies from a marketing perspective, but the big question is will a LEO operator provide better coverage than a GEO operator?

Given how hard the 'old guard' have been fighting Starlink, I think it's relatively clear that it's going to shake things up significantly for traditional GEO operators.

IIRC Viasat has been especially active in trying everything they can to throw up regulatory hurdles and slow down Starlink deployment.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#280
post #7

The maritime coverage map shows coastal coverage around countries with inland coverage right now, i.e. they are bouncing the connection via one of their satellites to a nearby groundstation. Starting in Q4/2022 they want to cover mid-latitudes around the globe. That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite links then? (This is a bit surprising - on one hand, this step extends coverage towards higher and lo…

Not all the satellites are the same, some are enabled for inter-sat communications
Post reply on HN