When will we see data centers in space?
I think the biggest hurdle would be heat dissipation. Solar power is plentiful, but all that energy then has to be radiated away somehow.
Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
361–370 of 469 posts
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#362I just noticed that they were launching their first satellites in 2019. It's impressive that they are now able to casually talk about the different routing options for the data streams to remote areas just 5 years after that. At first this sounded like an utopian dream but now it looks like common infrastructure that has a place in everyones life. This must have been the same feeling when the first landlines were ins…
I think it's likely a bad idea at this point to bet against Elon - he seems to make more good decisions than bad decisions, and is able to attract and keep the talent that is enabling his companies to snowball exponentially towards reaching the abundance of the universe.
My deepest hope currently is that the riches of the universe now on the horizon of being relatively easily accessible, in a systematic and efficient way, will lead to the military industrial complex profit seeking to redirect their efforts to mining the riches of the our solar system and beyond, rather than likely mostly inadvertently driving for hell on Earth.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most customers aren't served by lasers, their data goes up to the satellite and down to the nearest gateway. Lasers serve customers out of range of a downlink gateway, and the traffic probably travels the minimum hops needed to get to one.
But with lasers, it makes sense to route your packets via space. For example traffic to a different continent would be faster (and cheaper) through space. Furthermore, I assume lasers have more capacity than gateways, so they could increase capacity of one satellite by bundling with more gateways.
I thought that Starlink always "landed" to a base station back in the same jurisdiction? I think relaying through space could open a regulatory can of worms.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#364Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most customers aren't served by lasers, their data goes up to the satellite and down to the nearest gateway. Lasers serve customers out of range of a downlink gateway, and the traffic probably travels the minimum hops needed to get to one.
But with lasers, it makes sense to route your packets via space. For example traffic to a different continent would be faster (and cheaper) through space. Furthermore, I assume lasers have more capacity than gateways, so they could increase capacity of one satellite by bundling with more gateways.
Unfortunately, the routing to make this feasible doesn’t exist yet. Users need a single IP address from a range that’s homed at a single PoP. Starlink doesn’t support user-user connections through the mesh, you need to go all the way out to your PoP, then over to the other users PoP, then back through Starlink to that user.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “Another really fun fact is that we held a link all the way down to 122 kilometers while we were de-orbiting a satellite,” he said. “And we were able to downstream the video.” > For the future, SpaceX plans on expanding its laser system so that it can be ported and installed on third-party satellites. The company has also explored beaming the satellite lasers directly to terminals on the Earth’s surface to deliver…
So what happens to the laser beam when there are clouds?
There are some wavelengths that maintain decent signal quality through cloud cover, and even rainstorms. I cannot find the paper right now, but iirc Tightbeam (formerly from the Google sharks with lasers team, now spun out as Aalyria), demonstrated space to ground comms in adverse weather with negligible packet loss and something like 40% reduced bandwidth.
The customer terminals will likely never connect through lasers (because a laser can only point in one direction at a time), but moving the ground station uplink to a laser link sounds very beneficial.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
A privately-held strategic advantage?
Like all other US defense companies, why not? Do you think US Navy produces their own ships?
Note that, historically, the US Navy had plenty of its own shipyards, and did produce many of its own ships.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_Navy_sh...
But that's mostly been "optimized away" in more-recent times, in the name of Capitalism and Campaign Donations.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who has 4-5 hrs a day to watch television? ..or am I completely out of touch?
According to historical Nielsen data[1] from 1991 to 2009: most Americans. Even back to 1950, for per household data, it was above 4 hours. [1] https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2009/average-tv-viewing-for...
Thats per household, not per person. That's different. And households also tended to get smaller.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
_actively_ watch? Probably not many. Having it on as background noise however? 5 hours is pretty easy
Is that still a thing with young people? I associate leaving the TV on in the background as an older generation thing.
If Millennial still = young then yeah, YT or something in background on TV, doing something on laptop (dev, or photo editing or other) and then occasionally phone over laptop as well to reply to chats and stuff.
I would kill for some decent high res wide fov AR glasses.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that still a thing with young people? I associate leaving the TV on in the background as an older generation thing.
I'm middle aged. This kind of background noise sounds terrible to me. Maybe I just grew up in a quiet place.
I grew up being accustomed to having the TV as background noise but stopped watching it when I moved out. Now, when I visit my parents, it's honestly quite difficult for me to focus on conversation - there's a machine in the corner making deliberately attention-grabbing sights and sounds. So I think your experience is normal & I empathise with the generation that complained about TV ruining family life.