Just for context, here's SDA's Open Standard on how they expect to do connections over Optical Links. I assume the starlink terminals work in a similar manner:
https://www.sda.mil/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/SDA_OCT_Stand...
Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
411–420 of 469 posts
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Past performance is a piss poor indicator of future performance. You can’t deny (I don’t think) that the things he’s done are amazing. He’s in the zone where he’s smelt too many of his farts though, and believes he can do no wrong, which is historically a very bad place to be. I hope, for all of the awesome things he’s said he’d like to do, that they don’t come agutsa due to that
Past performance is the only data available to help predict the future.
Don't forget about prophecy
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#413I sit in my hot tub at night and see 1-2+ satellites go over every single time I'm out there. Which also makes me wonder how many of the shooting stars I've seen recently are just old starlinks burning up.
As someone who also spends a decent amount of time outside at night, do you also see a ton of shooting stars?
I see them 1/3 of the time in outside for 30 minutes or more I’d say. Thought they were much rarer. Only seems a Starlinkn train once.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s no friction in space. So the question is not how wide the plume of a rocket engine gets, but how spread out does the vapor trail need to be before it stops being an optical impediment?
Volume is even larger than area…
You’re being condescending. That belongs on Reddit, not here.
If you’re in low earth orbit you’re traveling through rocket exhaust. That doesn’t mean you’re seeing enough to affect optical transmission gain. Or orbital decay. But the notion that you’re going to miss because there’s 100’s of kilometers between fast moving satellites? That’s the part of this conversation that deserves condescension, if anything.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#415The amount of bleeding edge innovation that is rapidly developed and deployed into production in Musks companies is incredible.
> The amount of bleeding edge innovation that is rapidly developed and deployed into production in Musks companies is incredible. SpaceX for sure. Hard to argue that Tesla is "bleeding edge" anymore; they maintain some advantages, but have fallen behind in other domains.
What are you talking about - weather you think it will work or not, no other company is collecting training data and attempting to solve FSD in the same order of magnitude as Tesla. (last is saw, TSLA collects more video data in 1.5 years then Waymo does in 1 year)
FSD12 is end-to-end neural nets and the videos are pretty impressive. Who else is doing that ?
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#416Earlier 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.
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.
Millennials are currently in their late 20s to early 40s.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm middle aged. This kind of background noise sounds terrible to me. Maybe I just grew up in a quiet place.
John Von Neumann liked to do math with the TV on as background noise. Genius.
I heard all those stories about Von Neumann working like that.
According to a biography, his wife once designated a room as his office and he became very angry about that since it was too quiet for him to work there.
Personally I need almost complete silence in order to get anything done, his abilities in this regard always fascinated me.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess that the links between satellites on the same orbit stay for weeks, but the ones that cross between orbits have to constantly re-established.
Correct. I believe Starlink (like Iridium) doesn't even try to establish connections "across the seam," ie the one place the satellites in the adjacent plane are coming head on at orbital speed. This make side-linking easier because the relative velocity is comparatively low, but in general you unavoidably still need to switch side-link satellites (on one side) twice per orbit. Hence 49 minutes: this average must be…
I believe Starlink (like Iridium) doesn't even try to establish connections "across the seam," ie the one place the satellites in the adjacent plane are coming head on at orbital speed.
The slide showing the multiple possible paths traffic can take seems to disagree with this statement?
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Volume is even larger than area…
You’re being condescending. That belongs on Reddit, not here. If you’re in low earth orbit you’re traveling through rocket exhaust. That doesn’t mean you’re seeing enough to affect optical transmission gain. Or orbital decay. But the notion that you’re going to miss because there’s 100’s of kilometers between fast moving satellites? That’s the part of this conversation that deserves condescension, if anything.
Until one of us does the actually maths and builds a model of the probability of intersection I guess our intuition on this being different is fairly irrelevant, either of us could be wrong. I didn’t really think much about my comment, maybe it was patronising I don’t know. I try not to treat the comments I write here (or receive here either) with much seriousness, often you can take most things I say here as me thinking out loud rather than some planned sarcasm or as you say Reddit type posting.
Re: Starlink's laser system is beaming 42 petabytes of data per day
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Which also makes me wonder how many of the shooting stars I've seen recently are just old starlinks burning up. Probably close to none. The lifetime of the satellites is about 5 years give or take. According to this page [1], a total of 355 satellites have deorbited over the past roughly 5 years. That's an average of about 71 per year or about one every 5 days. Since planned disposals are done over uninhabited area…
>The lifetime of the satellites is about 5 years give or take. According to this page [1], a total of 355 satellites have deorbited over the past roughly 5 years. Wow ... is it economical to replace the entire constellation every 5 years? How does the business side work? Or is it just a great money-burning party?
This is a large part of why they're pushing so hard on Starship. Falcon 9 is great and wildly economical, but it's not enough to make Starlink profitable in the long term. They need Starship to make that happen.
They also want to make Starlink satellites bigger, which also requires Starship's much larger diameter.