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Starlink Maritime

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Re: Starlink Maritime

#361

Post by ncmncm »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #145
elif wrote: post #78

Wow they are now clearly selling a product that depends upon starlink 2.0 satellites which depend upon starship for launch. Starship tests haven't even attempted a static fire on their launch platform let alone a stacked launch attempt. Not to mention, their launch calculations include re-use based upon a completely invented and also untested catching apparatus. Talk about going all in...

Musk companies have a habit of going all in, then claiming they didn't when the bill comes due. So far it has worked, but I wouldn't bet on the coverage expanding much for the next 2 years.

Right: coverage will increase to places that would add the shitload of high-ticket subscribers they will need to be able to continue operating at all, once the first tranche of birds drops out.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#362

Post by robswc »

joewadcan wrote: post #159
sillysaurusx wrote: post #146

Can anyone explain how the ping is so low on starlink? I always assumed satellite internet was always going to be inferior for online gaming, but everything I find online says that starlink is great for it. I guess I don’t have a specific question. It’s just one of those engineering marvels that I never thought I’d see. No wires, but still frag people at <90ms ping.

The Starlink satellites orbit closer to the earth than other comms satellites (iridium, oneweb). Closer distance = faster times, in addition to laser links between sats and other spectrum differences. Downside to lower orbit means they won't last as long (a few years) before they are pulled down into earth's atmo. Which is fine since their rocket company will just send up some more cheaply.

So stupid question but I guess it isn't worth it to somehow push them up with small corrections/booster-like things? At least to save it for a few more years? What happens when they fall? Do they more or less burn up?

Really fascinating stuff.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#364

Post by fastball »

yardie wrote: post #27

"$5,000/mo with a one-time hardware cost of $10,000 for two high performance terminals." Definitely aimed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd rather than the hard scrabble, cruiser on a fixed income. In other terms, Iridium Go is still the best value around and truly global for the time being.

I think it is much more aimed at commercial vessels.

Tankers, cruise ships, etc.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#365

Post by ncmncm »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #287
sillysaurusx wrote: post #146

Can anyone explain how the ping is so low on starlink? I always assumed satellite internet was always going to be inferior for online gaming, but everything I find online says that starlink is great for it. I guess I don’t have a specific question. It’s just one of those engineering marvels that I never thought I’d see. No wires, but still frag people at <90ms ping.

Note that latency isn't as good as Starlink advertises. My residential service is supposed to get 20-40ms latency. In reality I get 40-80ms (as measured with ping to 8.8.8.8) and it's highly variable. Starlink latency is still quite good and a completely different category of service than any geosync satellite ISP. But they've got a ways to go to improve it. A lot of gamers seem unhappy with it right now, FWIW.

Don't expect it to get better. Asking for lower latency will become an upsell opportunity.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#366

Post by scubazealous »

I know some commercial fishermen in California and noticed they like to post on social media while at sea. I asked and it turns out they for the most part can get LTE coverage a good distance offshore, to the point that while dragging nets in water 10,000 ft deep they still can use their phone. The cell signals travel much further over water compared to over land.

I will ask one of them for an idea of how far they get when they lose coverage and edit when I hear back. He is on the boat now.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#367

Post by lxgr »

Robotbeat wrote: post #353
walrus01 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

big difference also is that iridium was designed from the outset to address handheld size customer terminals like an original iridum 9505 phone, starlink is something that needs a considerably larger fixed phased array. rf laws of physics being what they are I don't see a ku/ka-band starlink handheld phone or anything similar to the iridium L/S-band hockey puck sized antennas any time soon. the business model was cle…

Starlink has plenty of room for increasing their antenna size on the satellite size to something that a handheld could use. I was surprised how small the phased array on the sat side is. Increase that to make it similar to the size of the satellite (not counting solar array) and with the larger v2 satellites, and they'd have much more gain (allowing the handheld antenna to be smaller). They essentially already use 5G…

Isn‘t part of what allows much hire bandwidths for Starlink due to spatial frequency reuse, which requires mandatory beamforming on both sides of the connection?

There are many satellites overhead at any given time (the current LEOs and MEOs usually have just one), so terminals need to be able to limit their gain to a small angle not only for gain reasons. Steering in handheld applications seems very difficult.

Of course, they could dedicate parts of their spectrum to "one sided beamforming" and compete with Iridium that way (no idea if the L-band has any other advantages over Ka when used like that).

Re: Starlink Maritime

#368

Post by pdc56 »

scubazealous wrote: post #366

I know some commercial fishermen in California and noticed they like to post on social media while at sea. I asked and it turns out they for the most part can get LTE coverage a good distance offshore, to the point that while dragging nets in water 10,000 ft deep they still can use their phone. The cell signals travel much further over water compared to over land. I will ask one of them for an idea of how far they ge…

I lived and worked full time on a boat for many years. The answer to your question is in three parts:

1 - normal cell hand held phone use, you can often get (patchy) reception up to 15 (more sometimes) nautical miles off shore if lucky.

2 - setup a wifi hotspot on your phone and pull it up the mast. Range increases, i'm not sure how much to, but at 15nm the reception is good. Can work out further too, i've been on the far side of the channel islands in CA and had (poor) reception

3 - device with directional antenna up the mast - I always intended to do this but never did. I expect probably can get genuinely good coverage at 20nm out, maybe a bit more

Re: Starlink Maritime

#369

Post by jcoder » 

  Starlink Maritime allows you to connect from the most remote waters across the world
checks map, it’s literally the least-remote waters possible. Why does an actually innovative company feel the need to do this.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#370

Post by caymanjim »

Everyone is assuming this caters to the rich yacht owner. While I'm sure that's a component of the target market, there are also plenty of other customers. Commercial fishing boats, coastal freighters, offshore oil platforms, cruise ships, various charter vessels, etc. It'd be worth it for a lot of businesses. And once it's available in the middle of the ocean, an enormous armada of freight vessels. $5k/mo is nothing for many of those commercial customers, both for improved logistics and metrics gathering and for keeping the employees/guests happy.
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