Starlink Is a Big Deal

Post by dzhiurgis » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 11:15 AM UTC

Trombone12 wrote: post #64

fooqux wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you think it's worth it. I'm not as sure, personally. Especially since your examples don't hold water with me. Oppressive governments that don't like the internet aren't going to just allow the transceivers. They need line of sight to the sky and even if you hide them, detecting them would be trivial. Super rural areas and 3rd world areas have their own set of problems. I'm thinking of the OLPC type issues h…

Yeah, all that talk about free internet for all the poor and oppressed sounds pretty suspicious set beside the claims that starlink is supposed to make money too. How will a rural Guatemalan farmer that cooks on a three stones fire provide any sort of profit?

Post by Tepix » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 11:40 AM UTC

herova wrote: post #201

pier25 wrote: post #86

> For reference, my last flat in Berlin (the capital of the largest economy in the EU), on the ground on a main street in the city center, was serviced with approximately 14MBps ADSL, and this was the fastest offering available from any vendor. 14Mbps in Berlin? How is this possible? I had 20Mbps in Mexico City almost a decade ago. A family member who lived in the same building at the time had 100Mbps symmetrical.

Because it's Germany. Cash only, slow internet, roads without speed limit - Germany.

Post by loriverkutya » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 12:21 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #288

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.

You will at most see 2-3 satellites from the whole Starlink constalation and only if you take a lot of care where you look and when. Most people will never even notice those satellites.

Post by bzbarsky » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 12:43 PM UTC

modeless wrote: post #278

bzbarsky wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by virtuallynathan » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

eqvinox wrote: post #131

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…

On one hand, as other sibling posts are pointing out, you're comparing true network capacity with subscribed ("sold") capacity; those are massively different by orders of magnitude (depending on how shitty your ISP is.) On the other hand, it's far worse than "20G per satellite." Bandwidth is limited by available RF spectrum, and that's not magically gonna increase with satellite count. Best thing they can try is limi…