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Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

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Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#291

Post by jandrese »

mrb wrote: post #276
schiffern wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>these laser links are used in bursts and the link stays established only for a few tens of seconds or minutes, until the satellites move away The way Starlink satellites are in orbit, the same satellites will remain "ahead" and "behind" you in the orbital plane. Those laser links (specifically!) will remain relatively persistent. This arrangement is similar to Iridium FYI. FTA: "in some cases, the links can also be…

FTA: "in some cases, the links can also be maintained for weeks at a time" I think there is a lot of variance. The article also states about 266,141 “laser acquisitions” per day, which, if every laser link stayed up for the exact same amount of time, with 9000 lasers, means the average link remains established for a little less than an hour: 9000 (lasers) / 266141 (daily acquisitions) * 24 * 60 = 49 minutes So some l…

I would guess that the links between satellites on the same orbit stay for weeks, but the ones that cross between orbits have to constantly re-established.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#292

Post by edude03 »

seemaze wrote: post #289
garciasn wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix uses 3-7GB an hour. The average person is spending 4-5hrs a day watching TV. I’d say most are above 100GB/month. But that’s me.

Who has 4-5 hrs a day to watch television? ..or am I completely out of touch?

_actively_ watch? Probably not many. Having it on as background noise however? 5 hours is pretty easy

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#293

Post by hprotagonist »

seemaze wrote: post #289
garciasn wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix uses 3-7GB an hour. The average person is spending 4-5hrs a day watching TV. I’d say most are above 100GB/month. But that’s me.

Who has 4-5 hrs a day to watch television? ..or am I completely out of touch?

watch, or leave running as background noise …

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#294

Post by petesergeant »

techopoly wrote: post #277
le-mark wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real time video and telemetry for military drones that’s nearly immune to electronic warfare counter measures is the real end game. The fpv drone carnage in Ukraine is currently limited to the contact lines plus or minus a few kilometers. Satellite comms change that drastically. Yes it’s available now but highly restricted.

But not immune to missiles. Russia's already threatened to target Starlink satellites. Maybe they're bluffing, or not, but it does offer a reminder that these are just floating computers in the sky.

There's no way Russia can afford to make a significant dent in the number of Starlink satellites, even assuming their ASAT missiles aren't mostly filled with water rather than rocket fuel as a result of corruption.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#295

Post by hinkley »

andy_ppp wrote: post #178
why_at wrote: post #147

Random thought I just had: What are the odds of a rocket launch crossing through one of these laser links on its way to a higher orbit and disrupting traffic for a fraction of a second? I know space is really big and so the odds of a rocket hitting a satellite on its way up are incredibly low, but now we're talking about lots of lines between each satellite rather than just the satellites themselves. Are the odds sti…

It's absolutely incredibly small, think of how large the surface area of a sphere of LEO and the surface area of these lasers linking the vertices of the 5,289 satellites. The gaps between them are probably hundreds of kilometres. I would imagine that each link has multiple routes so if there was a failure traffic can still be routed in the same way the Internet has many routes. https://satellitemap.space is pretty a…

There’s no friction in space. So the question is not how wide the plume of a rocket engine gets, but how spread out does the vapor trail need to be before it stops being an optical impediment?

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#296

Post by schiffern »

jandrese wrote: post #291
mrb wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA: "in some cases, the links can also be maintained for weeks at a time" I think there is a lot of variance. The article also states about 266,141 “laser acquisitions” per day, which, if every laser link stayed up for the exact same amount of time, with 9000 lasers, means the average link remains established for a little less than an hour: 9000 (lasers) / 266141 (daily acquisitions) * 24 * 60 = 49 minutes So some l…

I would guess that the links between satellites on the same orbit stay for weeks, but the ones that cross between orbits have to constantly re-established.

Correct.

I believe Starlink (like Iridium) doesn't even try to establish connections "across the seam," ie the one place the satellites in the adjacent plane are coming head on at orbital speed.

This make side-linking easier because the relative velocity is comparatively low, but in general you unavoidably still need to switch side-link satellites (on one side) twice per orbit. Hence 49 minutes: this average must be calculated per connection not per second, so the front/back links (plus random noise) count less, so it only drags the average from 45 minutes up to 49 minutes.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#297

Post by feedsmgmt »

mrb wrote: post #225

So that is "432 Mbit/s per laser, and 9000 lasers total". I don't know you guys but I find that statement much more relatable than "42 PB/day". Interestingly, they also say each laser "can sustain a 100Gbps connection per link" (although another part of the article even claims 200 Gbit/s). That means each laser is grossly underused on average, at 0.432% of its maximum capacity. Which makes sense since 100 Gbit/s is p…

Where did you get that 100GB/mo number from? 4K streaming eats up data transfer quickly. Comcrap & friends knew what they were doing making arbitrary data caps that sounded like a big number at the time. Wireline data caps should be illegal.

Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day

#298

Post by supertrope »

mindwok wrote: post #285
techopoly wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not immune to missiles. Russia's already threatened to target Starlink satellites. Maybe they're bluffing, or not, but it does offer a reminder that these are just floating computers in the sky.

How feasible is it though once the network reaches a huge size? Starlink satellites are tiny, and they've been deploying thousands of them over the last few years. I imagine it would take enormous resources to shoot them down, especially if the US does treat them like a strategic resource and adds more for redundancy.

Even if anti-satellite missiles are too expensive to be used to shoot down thousands of targets, the ground stations could be bombed instead. Hacking the control plane and sending de-orbit commands could be even cheaper.
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