Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Starlink Maritime

starlink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 530 posts

Re: Starlink Maritime

#381

Post by pclark »

caymanjim wrote: post #370

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…

as most boat owners can attest, $5k is a literal drop in the bucket of owning a boat.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#382

Post by walrus01 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #377
walrus01 wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the same way that a flat panel phased array that maintains a fixed angle and aim at the sky can.

Actually in exactly the same way. The nice thing about phased arrays is they steer electronically, so you can aim them extremely fast and compensate for any movement. That's how 5G works and that's also how Starlink on moving vehicles works.

a flat panel phased array still has considerably more gain in the direction it's aimed, vs a randomly oriented omnidirectional (physical) antenna in a phone. i can guarantee you starlink doesn't work well when the array elements aren't aimed correctly in the general direction of where the satellites are.

the path loss and need for more gain at LEO satellite distance is considerably greater than talking about terrestrial cellphone networks in bands <2500 MHz.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#383

Post by yellow_lead »

fastball wrote: post #364
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.

For a cruise ship it seems like a bargain. I don't think you can expect to support thousands of passengers off $5000 / month

Re: Starlink Maritime

#385

Post by wpietri »

wumpus wrote: post #319
roflyear wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly it's "Elon likes to promise things that he may not be able to do" issue

The best part about the "Elon is a liar" meme is that you can use it on successful, on-time products, too. Very powerful: "Tesla production up 87% year-on-year!" "But what about Cybertruck, Roadster, and Semi? Fail."

No post body was provided.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#386

Post by bobsmooth »

wpietri wrote: post #385
wumpus wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best part about the "Elon is a liar" meme is that you can use it on successful, on-time products, too. Very powerful: "Tesla production up 87% year-on-year!" "But what about Cybertruck, Roadster, and Semi? Fail."

Quoted post unavailable.

There's a difference between someone that promises the world and never delivers and someone that promises the world and occasionally delivers.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#387

Post by lmm »

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 satellites are a lot lower than you'd think - something like 200-400km (compared with 35000km for conventional communication satellites).

(Although having run the calculations, that implies that conventional satellites should only be adding 200ms in the best case, which shouldn't be so bad?)

Re: Starlink Maritime

#388

Post by Robotbeat »

walrus01 wrote: post #382
Robotbeat wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually in exactly the same way. The nice thing about phased arrays is they steer electronically, so you can aim them extremely fast and compensate for any movement. That's how 5G works and that's also how Starlink on moving vehicles works.

a flat panel phased array still has considerably more gain in the direction it's aimed, vs a randomly oriented omnidirectional (physical) antenna in a phone. i can guarantee you starlink doesn't work well when the array elements aren't aimed correctly in the general direction of where the satellites are. the path loss and need for more gain at LEO satellite distance is considerably greater than talking about terrestr…

5G phones already use a flat panel phased array, just with fewer elements (and less gain, but that can be compensated by using a lot more elements on the satellite side and by operating at much lower bandwidth). And yes, I understand the difference between lower frequencies and higher. 5G can also use lower frequencies but the main bandwidth advantage (over LTE/etc) is in the higher frequency, the mm-wave, roughly 25-50GHz, a frequency band that overlaps that used by the Starlink phased arrays.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#389

Post by lmm »

robswc wrote: post #362
joewadcan wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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?

Yes, they send them up with a certain amount of propellant to do that, once that runs out they fall down.

> What happens when they fall? Do they more or less burn up?

Yes. They're small enough to burn up completely, and low enough to do that quickly rather than creating a space junk problem.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#390

Post by shaklee3 »

jpgvm wrote: post #241
Mo3 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely spot on. The market isn’t competitive, it’s artificial highway robbery to even be in business. The entry requirements and expenses are insanely high, preventing a lot of competition to begin with, and the few players are free to drive up their prices to disgusting altitudes while providing services of disgusting quality. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they have agreements going on between themselv…

The problem is actually that most of those systems are on considerably less advanced tech than Starlink and as a result only have a fraction of the capacity. Thus each piece of capacity costs more.. thus the very high costs of Iridium and Viasat. Their profit margins aren't actually that good because their costs are so high compared to their capacity and the costs are so high that demand simply doesn't materialise -…

this is completely incorrect. viasat's technology is far more advanced than starlink. just because it's not LEO doesn't mean it's simple.

and starlink doesn't have dramatically increased capacity. they have a moderate increase over the busy areas geo incumbents have. most of their capacity is over water.

Post reply on HN