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Starlink Maritime

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Re: Starlink Maritime

#411

Post by shaklee3 »

elif wrote: post #100
extheat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely subsidizing the losses in the consumer business. Without Starship Starlink is on a path to bankruptcy like the companies that came before.

Please share your math. At $15M to launch 50 v1 satellites costing $250k each to build, they are looking at $320k per satellite At $110/mo with 500k customers, they can afford to launch roughly 170 satellites per month. That is about break-even for their average launch cadence over the last 3 months.

I think you conveniently forgot to include NRE and OPEX

Re: Starlink Maritime

#412

Post by diimdeep »

Anyone got ideas whether sattelites like Starlink can be used for military purposes or SigInt? Snowden revelations about goverment agencies and military contracts in Musk companies, one could imagine...

Re: Starlink Maritime

#413

Post by wumpus »

xvilka wrote: post #345
_Microft wrote: post #7

The maritime coverage map shows coastal coverage around countries with inland coverage right now, i.e. they are bouncing the connection via one of their satellites to a nearby groundstation. Starting in Q4/2022 they want to cover mid-latitudes around the globe. That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite links then? (This is a bit surprising - on one hand, this step extends coverage towards higher and lo…

Will constellation completion and intersatellite links expand the reach to polar areas as well? It would be a game changer for Arctic and Antarctic.

OneWeb already offers service above 50 degrees north, so it's not really a game-changer. It's the other game-changer.

My South Pole colleagues would love to have a better network.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#414

Post by vl »

jonah wrote: post #281
vl wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I really want is hardware that is mounted on RV roof and can be deployed and folded with a press of a button. While I don't care if it works in motion, I do care about setup convenience, and I'm not getting current version because setting it up is just too cumbersome. Or even better: just flat beam-forming antenna on the RV roof. Once thing there is enough on the roof is space.

Ehh, we just got an RV unit for Search and Rescue use in remote areas[0]. Setup is about three steps and just a couple minutes. Waiting 5-15 minutes for it to connect to the constellation takes longer. [0] https://www.instagram.com/p/CfUUWVfJKo1/

When you setup RV, you already have to do a lot. Every extra thing counts. On top of that you can’t really leave this unit deployed and leave - the risk of it being stolen is relatively high.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#415

Post by ackbar03 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #388
walrus01 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry to interject between two people who clearly know what their talking about.

I've been reading books on satellite communications and have some idea of all the technical terms you guys mentioned as well as relationship between 5g and phase array etc.

Where do you get your knowledge from regarding these issues in such detail? Do you guys work in this area? Are there any reading materials you recommend in this field that are relevant and updated to keep track of these tech?

Re: Starlink Maritime

#416

Post by [deleted] »

paulsutter wrote: post #116

Genius price segmentation. Of course it costs them little more to provide the service than for home users on land, but easily worth the 50x higher price for this market The Starlink IPO will provide hundreds of billions in funding for Starship and Mars

[deleted]

Re: Starlink Maritime

#417

Post by panick21_ »

aml183 wrote: post #164

I work in the space industry and follow SATCOM closely. This is a very competitive space. Companies like Viasat, Iridium and Inmarsat already work in this vertical. SpaceX beats all these companies from a marketing perspective, but the big question is will a LEO operator provide better coverage than a GEO operator?

In my opinion, between SpaceX and Amazon, the majority of heavy lift launch is already booked for years to come. OneWeb has to bet on Relativity Space that has never even launched anything to launch their constellation.

Companies like Viasat, Iridium and the others will have a very, very hard time ever competing in the LEO space.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#418

Post by grecy »

shaklee3 wrote: post #406
walrus01 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in two way satellite for many years it is always very amusing to see the HN crowd who've never implemented remote terminals in physical reality... They should definitely go price some Inmarsat I-4 or I-5 based BGAN services or gyro stabilized maritime C/Ku/Ka band VSAT terminals before thinking this is expensive. You can easily spend $130,000 on a fairly basic geostationary VSAT terminal for something l…

as mentioned previously, I worked on exactly this for 15 years, and I also don't understand how people with knowledge of the industry believe SpaceX is going to be profitable on starlink without some course correction. nobody is debating that a under-provisioned service can be great during the honeymoon phase. but this won't last. they're strapped for cash and these enterprise plays are purely to keep afloat while th…

Their launch costs are orders of magnitude lower than anything their competitors are paying, so it stands to reason their service costs can be a lot lower too.

It also sounds like they're mass producing the Starlink sats for a fraction the price of "regular space".

Re: Starlink Maritime

#419

Post by mytailorisrich »

aml183 wrote: post #164

I work in the space industry and follow SATCOM closely. This is a very competitive space. Companies like Viasat, Iridium and Inmarsat already work in this vertical. SpaceX beats all these companies from a marketing perspective, but the big question is will a LEO operator provide better coverage than a GEO operator?

I suppose this is why they highlight "low latency" so much. This has to be a parameter GEO cannot compete on.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#420

Post by dzhiurgis »

roflyear wrote: post #278
dzhiurgis wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW if they ever to offer 10 Mb/s plans for ~$150/mo, the power use becomes a question again.

Not really. You won't run it all the time on a cruising yacht. Just when you need it. You probably don't care about having internet constantly under passage just for short times to get weather and to send out updates to friends and family.

At 50-100W you might not, that's close to what your fridge uses. Make it 10-20W and it becomes no brainer to keep always on.
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