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Starlink Maritime

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Re: Starlink Maritime

#471

Post by lutorm »

roflyear wrote: post #232
Someone1234 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iridium Go is 2.4 Kbits/s compared with 350 Mbps here, and data is charged in minutes (i.e. the slower/worse the connection the more it costs). Apples and oranges. Iridium GO is cheap, but that's all you can really say positively about it. It is arguably not even offering "internet" in the normal sense, since loading a website would be incredibly expensive/bad and is therefore restricted to low data rate messaging an…

Doesn't matter. No person outside the mega wealthy are paying for this.

I think it's targeted at maritime business, not individual consumers.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#472

Post by JoshCole »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #452
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 can't edit anymore, so correction: Current sats only have 6y lifespan, which drops us to 1.3 billion yearly, but I think that's partially cause they're still iterating on them. It seems clear that satellite lifespan is the main factor for profit. edit: I've put up a Guesstimate Model: https://www.getguesstimate.com/models/20609

That is such a cool site; thank you for sharing it.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#473

Post by oittaa »

JoshCole wrote: post #470
plq wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 provide…

[flagged]

Re: Starlink Maritime

#474

Post by lxgr »

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…

5G and Wi-Fi don't use MIMO for terminal side spatial multiplexing though, as far as I know.

In MU-MIMO (available in newer versions of 802.11, for example), the base station transmits to and receives from multiple mobile devices that are located at different spatial angles. But in the mobile devices themselves, the gain from that steering is not high/fast enough to allow for multiple (relatively) fixed base stations in the same space.

In other words, a stationary/slowly moving antenna array on one side of the channel can target individual moving users due to angles changing slowly over time and the antenna array being quite sophisticated, but moving users with smaller antennas and angles varying over a much shorter period of time can't do the same.

Think about it: From a satellite's point of view, your angle varies much more slowly and predictably than the other way around, e.g. when taking a turn in a car or on a rocking boat (that's why high-gain antennas usually have to be gimbal-stabilized).

Starlink's orders of magnitude higher bandwidth, as far as I can tell, stems from requiring slowly and predictably changing angles on both sides, giving it m:n (relatively) independent spatial channels rather than just 1:n as is common for a one-sided omnidirectional approach. (That's also why Iridium and Globalstar wouldn't be able to scale significantly better in low-gain mobile-client applications by just launching more satellites.)

Re: Starlink Maritime

#475

Post by shaklee3 »

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…

thanks. couldn't have said it better

Re: Starlink Maritime

#476

Post by oittaa »

andrew_ wrote: post #290

We still need a 12v solution for the peasants that boat offshore. The current monthly fee represents a full year of boat payments. Definitely not targeted at consumers.

I think the "rv model" supports 12V. It's not officially supported on moving vessels by SpaceX, but you can find a lot of Youtube videos where people have installed terminals on their boats.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#477

Post by shaklee3 »

jhugo wrote: post #428
shaklee3 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iridium rates compared to SpaceX are not comparable and not the same technology

The data rate has very little to do with the complexity of the satellite-to-satellite links, and steering RF and optics isn't as different as you might think.

that's partially true. the data rates have a lot to do with frequency reuse, which means more complicated designs. starlink is complicated in the dynamic conditions, but the beamforming is relatively simple.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#478

Post by shaklee3 »

walrus01 wrote: post #421
shaklee3 wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you're usually here to promote starlink, but all ookla data shows starlink is 40+ms on average. it's dishonest to pretend 20ms will ever be normal.

I'm usually here to promote starlink? Before yesterday go through my comment history for weeks or months into the past and find how many times I mention it... Sheesh For the record if oneweb or kuiper or telesat's proposed LEO networks existed as a viable, usable product right now and worked similarly I'd be equally enthused about them. (Yes, I know about Oneweb beta tests in Alaska)

it's not an attack, you are always pro starlink and I'm always anti starlink (in a business sense). there's nothing wrong with different opinions. I just don't agree with the comments that the latency, speed, or cost will stay the same in a positive way.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#479

Post by mlyle »

shaklee3 wrote: post #401
mlyle wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that hard of a problem to do fast free-space optical in space within a single orbital shell. The only thing that makes it hard for SpaceX is the relatively small mass and volume budgets on their satellites to do precision pointing with, and that you'd really want each satellite to be able to do multiple links and that's taking up a lot of space.

it's extremely hard to do at those data rates. if it wasn't there would be existing examples. Facebook tried and failed.

> it's extremely hard to do at those data rates.

?

> if it wasn't there would be existing examples.

Let's see. NASA downlinked from the moon to the ground, through the atmosphere at OC-12 rates back in 2013-- so about 100x the distance, with the added penalty of traversing the atmosphere. NFIRE did 5.6 gigabit/sec LEO to ground (again through the atmosphere) in 2011-- shorter distances but higher angular rates which is the "hard part". And EDRS does 1.8gbit/sec over longer distances in geostationary orbit. Both flown and proven.

Re: Starlink Maritime

#480

Post by shaklee3 »

grecy wrote: post #418
shaklee3 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

they are not an order of magnitude lower. when you make comments like that you're not trying to have a serious dialogue.
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