Starlink Is a Big Deal • Hacker News Board

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#311

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 1:26 PM UTC

midnightclubbed wrote: post #95

Retric wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have approval for up to 42,000 satellites, most internet connections are shared at homes and businesses, and broadband is over subscribed anyway. One way to look at it is up to 42 million 4k streams at the same time. But, a significant fraction of the constellation will be over the ocean or other minimally inhabited regions so something like 25% of total bandwidth is likely utilized at any one time. However, tha…

I wonder if they will charge less for bandwidth over minimally inhabited regions?

I suspect they'll absolutely charge different amounts in different countries but not different pricing inside a single country.

They could sell a certain data speed to areas with low subscriber base though and provide more speed than advertised/agreed upon though.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#312

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #103

reaperducer wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in any event it would be silly to fly over whole landmasses in silence. I imagine if Mr. Musk wants to keep his shiny new Tesla factory in China, he'll make sure this won't be used to circumvent the Great Firewall.

SpaceX is not Tesla, and a company is not any single employee.

He however owns a significant percentage of both companies.

Countries already do this to pressure countries and/or individual entities. Trade embargoes are against entire countries, trade sanctions are over certain industries/companies/specific individuals.

I clear international freight through customs for a living, when I have a shipment containing something coming from/made in a sanctioned country I have to search the OFAC sanctions list for every party mentioned on the shipment https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/

China, or Fictionaltopia, could easily put pressure on one company to influence another if they have a significant investor in common.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#313

Post by swiley » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

shaklee3 wrote: post #225

baq wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latency is completely true. Can’t be otherwise because speed of light is a thing.

The latency part is true, but the cap is not: https://www.satelliteinternet.com/resources/unlimited-satell... We can argue about whether latency matters for most people, but it's not going to go anywhere.

Ok, that’s new. Back when I had it you couldn’t buy anything over 20GB.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#314

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

headcanon wrote: post #72

pwinnski wrote: post #4

I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.

I don't think we give up the night sky for this. naked-eye observers will never notice except close to sunrise and sunset, and even if astronomers are complaining about it now, there are solutions for their issues, either in image processing or with better scheduling (scheduling is straightforward if you have tracking data, so I imagine they're doing both already to some extent). Also, better heavy-lift capabilities…

>Also, better heavy-lift capabilities will likely make space telescopes easier to manufacture and deploy.

Exactly. If ITS/BFR/whatever it is right now actually starts launching in the next 10-15 years we'll be able to deploy (relatively) cheap space telescopes of all variety.

Even better, if it does get operational, we'll be able to build one or more observatories on the moon where you'll basically have a 14 day night at any point and they could be operated entirely remotely and actually be upgraded/changed as needed with manned missions showing up to swap out instruments.

You could even go drop a bunch of smaller-optic telescopes on the moon and use optical aperture synthesis to do some pretty impressive stuff. Spread little clusters all around the moon and you'd have an optical astronomer's dream come true. Similarly you could distribute a bunch of relatively small radio telescopes on the far side of the moon and aside from some communication relay satellites (which you could use lasers for) you'd have virtually no interference from Earth.

While it's certainly said for research from Earth right now, if Starlink gets profitable it gives SpaceX more money to develop better launch technology which opens up space for far cheaper science.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#315

Post by tachyonbeam » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

esjeon wrote: post #234

tachyonbeam wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I think you're mostly right, but not for these reasons. People have been sneaking forbidden things past borders for a long time. Think of the drug trade. Every country has a chemical drug trade it seems, even countries where the penalty is death such as Thailand. Then you also have to think that countries like China... Will be the countries making those Starlink receivers, so Chinese people looking to bypass the…

> You need specialized equipment to triangulate receivers, multiple vehicles It's not "specialized", more like just dedicated, because those devices are pretty simple to create. Also, mathematically, one "running" vehicle is enough, but two is minimum for the sake of precision and efficiency. > AFAIK Starling satellites use phased array antennas, Phased arrays do leak signals all over the place ("side lobe"). If tran…

> Phased arrays do leak signals all over the place ("side lobe")

I would expect the intensity of those signals to be constantly varying, given that multiple satellites are moving in the sky on different orbital planes. I'm also assuming that said "side lobes" are not equal in intensity in every direction. That has to be significantly more difficult to triangulate than a cellphone or an AM radio emitter. In other words, you would need trained crews specifically trying to locate Starlink users.

> The reality is that traffic control can be imposed based on physical location of satellite.

Satellites don't have enough fuel to constantly dodge specific countries. We're talking about low earth orbit satellites, that's one orbit every 1.6 hour. You could adjust your orbital planes to optimize coverage for some countries and not others, but once the whole Starlink fleet is up there, you will still have coverage basically everywhere.

> This new internet won't cause any kind of paradigm shift that some people desperately try to push.

Probably not, but it will be one more means of global communication, with more coverage than anything we've seen before.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#316

Post by rtkwe » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

desdiv wrote: post #241

rtkwe wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is people have already built most of those microwave tower paths here on earth and in addition SpaceX probably isn't going to set it up as a mesh where intra-Starlink traffic stays goes directly. And even if they do you have to go up then across (probably in a zig zag) then back down which will always be higher latency than the point to point microwave distance.

>people have already built most of those microwave tower paths here on earth I can assure you that lucrative paths like New York-London and New York-Tokyo have not been built yet. In fact, the vast majority of lucrative trading paths have not been built yet due to geographical restrictions. Yes, fiber optic links exist, but those only go up to 0.7c. To a trading firm, the choice between a satellite link that does ~0.…

That all depends on Starlink supporting point to point inside their network. Also that path will be more zig-zaggy than the great circle fiber path and importantly will vary during the day as the satellite tracks shift relative to earth. [0]

[0] Unless their in a harmonic orbit I guess not 100% sure abou that one. There should always be some jitter in the connection time just from the satellites moving even if their ground tracks are very stable.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#317

Post by Veedrac » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

chameleon_world wrote: post #196

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…

Contrary to what Musk & co's claims it doesn't look like this will help the people/countries who actually need access, at least not with the prices that they are saying they will charge. Someone scatter-plotted the GDP of countries and internet penetration, and it turns out none of the countries who need access can afford starlink internet. (There are many other similar calculations out there on the interwebs). https…

Starlink will sell at pretty much whatever price it needs to, since serving data has effectively no marginal cost. The only unavoidable one is the ($300) base station, but people can share.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#318

Post by neurostimulant » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

carlivar wrote: post #218

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.

Because you're thinking of "space" as just boring orbital stuff. Astronomers think of our solar system, deep space, distant stars... a bunch of gadgets blocking the view of that is a legitimate concern.

It's not like the constellation move in unpredictable manner. The orbits are known, the movements are predictable, surely with some processing it shouldn't affect astronomy too much? If astronomers can overcome random atmospheric dispersion, surely they can elimitate starlink from post-processed images too?

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#319

Post by gumby » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

In the middle of this document is a reference to Joseph Nacchio who appears to be a rare CEO who was punished for respecting his customers' civil rights. Up until that moment he was lauded as a go-getter CEO.

I remember my impression of him at the time was that he was simply a tough CEO who could also be a bit of a jerk to his team. But he refused a government request to break the law and shortly thereafter was arrested. I don't know the merits of the government's case, but it was suspicious that nobody else in his notoriously corrupt industry ever got into trouble for their quite blatant corruption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#320

Post by skinnymuch » Thu, Jan 30, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

sedatk wrote: post #105

modeless wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you deny the location permission it uses geoip instead. If the geoip location is incorrect there's a "Change Location" link you can use.

Perhaps it could be better other way around. Start with GeoIP and add an "Improve Location" option. That way more people would enable it.

I don’t have data backing this, but I can’t imagine the vast majority of people aren’t totally fine giving their location to a site like this if they’re interested.

Your way seems like it just adds a step and possible side effects like people thinking less of the site for not having their correct location or not seeing the improve location option after being turned off, etc.