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Starlink Maritime

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Re: Starlink Maritime

#461

Post by FeepingCreature »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #459
FeepingCreature wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just going to throw some numbers out here. edit: MASSIVE miscalculation fixed! Let's say they have 12k satellites. With oversubscription at 10? and a third of time over land? but 20gbps capacity for 200mbps connections, you get 333 users per satellite. 12k gives you 4 million users, at $100/mo or $1.2k/y. I'm going to drop that to $80/mo because Starlink need to pay for backhaul, so let's say $1k/y because it's r…

This calculation illustrates the problems of subtracting a big number from another big number. Here's some of my math: * Each customer brings in $1.2k/year. * Satellites have 20 gbps of bandwidth, and consumers today are reporting about 50 mbps links. * Maximum capacity is then ~1000 customers/sat because a 50 mbps connection takes 100 mbps of capacity to run duplex, and you need to double that again because customer…

See my model over at https://www.getguesstimate.com/models/20609

The biggest factor driving disagreement seems to be satellite lifetime. You also didn't account for oversubscription.

edit: Though-

> Let's raise the unit cost to $1.5 million assuming a very good yield on satellites making it to orbit.

How do you get that?! Starlink don't lose 30% of sats, lol.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#462

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Starlink Maritime

#463

Post by gsich »

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…

>the mm-wave, roughly 25-50GHz, a frequency band that overlaps that used by the Starlink phased arrays.

And those require line of sight or be very close to them to achieve high speeds. That's why there is little incentive to provide them.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#465

Post by ncmncm »

legolas2412 wrote: post #460
ncmncm wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They announced they are not launching any more v1s, and they cannot launch v2s on current hardware. That is not to say that, even when they can launch new birds, they will be able to make a profit on regular peon service. They probably will depend utterly on top-dollar accounts. Don't be surprised if your peon bandwidth gets disappointingly slow as they add more customers, and more who are more important than you.

They also said that v2 has 5x more weight, and 10x more "capacity". Not sure what capacity is, and why falcon 9 isn't enough for something that's giving them 2x more "capacity" per unit mass.

Capacity is supposed to mean something like bits per second, although of course there are lots of other numbers that are important. One wonders who they have farmed out the packet handling to. Shoveling a commercial router on there would probably be a mistake, because of the "harsh" orbital environment, the restricted power budget, and the extremely variable routing environment.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#466

Post by Thrymr »

adrr wrote: post #209
shmoe wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's very little value with Iridium -- do you work for them or something?

I thought they went bankrupt and had to deorbit all the satellites so I googled them. They have 1.7M subscribers. Seems they are doing something right.

They did go bankrupt, and Motorola (their original main funder) lost billions on the initial investment [0]. But shed of debt and reborn with new investors, they are now profitable [1]. They have now deorbited the first generation satellites, but since 2017 they have launched the Iridium NEXT constellation and that is what is functioning now [2].

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-rise-a...

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fall-and-rise-of-iridium-14...

[2] https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/iridium-next.htm

Re: Starlink Maritime

#467

Post by [deleted] »

plq wrote: post #437
FeepingCreature wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just going to throw some numbers out here. edit: MASSIVE miscalculation fixed! Let's say they have 12k satellites. With oversubscription at 10? and a third of time over land? but 20gbps capacity for 200mbps connections, you get 333 users per satellite. 12k gives you 4 million users, at $100/mo or $1.2k/y. I'm going to drop that to $80/mo because Starlink need to pay for backhaul, so let's say $1k/y because it's r…

I came across this guy recently: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg&feature=youtu.be Looks to me that you forgot about the consumer-side terminal.

[deleted]

Re: Starlink Maritime

#468

Post by wumpus »

wumpus wrote: post #392
wpietri wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Your theory is that we can only call somebody a liar if 100% of their statements turn out to be false? No, but thanks for twisting my words.

Fun that comment that twisted my words is "flagged, dead", but my complaint about having my words twisted is downvoted.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#469

Post by JoshCole »

plq wrote: post #437
FeepingCreature wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just going to throw some numbers out here. edit: MASSIVE miscalculation fixed! Let's say they have 12k satellites. With oversubscription at 10? and a third of time over land? but 20gbps capacity for 200mbps connections, you get 333 users per satellite. 12k gives you 4 million users, at $100/mo or $1.2k/y. I'm going to drop that to $80/mo because Starlink need to pay for backhaul, so let's say $1k/y because it's r…

I came across this guy recently: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg&feature=youtu.be Looks to me that you forgot about the consumer-side terminal.

Very bad source. I go into why in more detail in this comment, but to keep it short: his numbers are lies and he knows it too - some of his screenshots are photoshopped to preserve his narrative. He has an agenda - an anti-Elon Musk agenda - and has no intellectual integrity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31486083&p=2#31487813

Read around and that thread a bit and you'll see that people confirmed my claims and that those who doubted it and checked his numbers themselves observed a three order of magnitude difference* in his cost estimation versus their estimate.

This isn't a source to get informed by, but one that makes you delusional.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#470

Post by JoshCole »

plq wrote: post #447
FeepingCreature wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they make a loss on it, but probably not a huge one. Call it half a year to a year of fees. Can you tl;dw? I'm not watching 40 minutes of a video that has DEBUNKED in the title.

He claims the terminal costs at least 3× the retail price and will never make a profit because of it He also claims that its product offering brings nothing new to the table compared to hughesnet and viasat which is wrong imo as offering 1/10th latency of these products is a gamechanger. Sorry, I'd do better but I'm on mobile, I think it's worth a watch at 1.5×

Your source is a liar.

Some examples:

- After lying about SpaceX launch costs, he later posts screenshots of articles. One of those articles had the true launch costs. The image was photoshopped to remove this launch cost.

- When posting pricing information for competitor services, he uses their lowest cost tiers for their highest cost service provision. He also falsely implies that SpaceX and other satellite providers are providing comparable services despite the latency difference. This is all part of his effort to mislead with regard to demand.

- When quoting speed test results, he uses outdated alpha information. He argues that speedtests would not improve, but at the time he posted the video the speed tests results did improve. He knew this. You can tell because he claims there is a government conspiracy to favor SpaceX for funding for rural internet. This reveals he knows that they qualified for this. Which reveals that he knows his speed test numbers are out of date.

- He lies about the number of launches SpaceX will have to do, double counting replacement launches. I might think these sort of things were an honest mistake, but the pattern of behavior is clear. Given any information, he distorts it and attempts to paint a bad narrative, going as far as photoshopping or proposing government conspiracies. It is obvious he did a great deal of research - so it is absurd to give him the benefit of the doubt with regard to ignorance.

TL;DR - Watching that video will make you uninformed and delusional, not informed. It is not worth watching. The person who made it is not trustworthy. You are linking, not to a skeptic, but to an Elon Musk conspiracy theorist.

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