51–60 of 365 posts
"HFT firms will be the first customers, seeking a few-millisecond reduction in the transmission of realtime data between markets. Starlink has already said as much, and I think they rely on this as their first and primary source of revenue." I am not sure this is a good prediction ... the shaving of milliseconds that has been pursued by HFT firms (and other such actors) has progressed to the point where they are meas…
hopefully it makes inet service on planes better
Companies like Viasat are already offering that. A couple of years ago, they were talking about how they wanted to offer free internet to all passangers (with enough bandwidth that everyone could stream HD movies, thanks to the new satellite they launched in 2017). I'm not sure how the rollout is going, though, or if the airlines want to do this. I guess the airlines can make a fortune overcharging passengers for int…
The only thing that makes sense to me right now is what airlines are already doing: serving cached video from a server on the airplane.
I'm not convinced that Starlink will provide access to the "half of the human beings (who) are not online yet." Of course that would be good, yet my guess is that Starlink will target people in developed nations who are in rural areas, or people who want low latency. Maybe Starlink could serve people w/o internet if a whole village buys a subscription, or if a cell provider uses Starlink as backhaul for voice? Still…
Having a backup way of communicating can be important, even if you don't use it much. Land lines are expensive. If there is a low enough monthly fee, maybe a backup connection via Starlink will be feasible?
Just going to plug my Starlink tracker here: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink It tells you when to go outside and look up to see the satellites as they pass over your house. It's a cool sight to see because there are up to 60 of them crossing the sky at the same time in a line.
Could you add dates and time zones to the events? I want to manually add one to my calendar correctly.
Just going to plug my Starlink tracker here: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink It tells you when to go outside and look up to see the satellites as they pass over your house. It's a cool sight to see because there are up to 60 of them crossing the sky at the same time in a line.
I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.
Starlink satellites are quite small and probably won't be very visible even when deployed. SpaceX is working to reduce "glare" so this will probably be further improved.
Even with a full grid deployed, I doubt you would see more than a dozen satellites at any given time. Someone probably has numbers so please correct me or chip in.
I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.
We won't give up the night sky. Starlink won't be very high so majority of satellites will be in the shadow except close to sunrise/sunset. Starlink satellites are quite small and probably won't be very visible even when deployed. SpaceX is working to reduce "glare" so this will probably be further improved. Even with a full grid deployed, I doubt you would see more than a dozen satellites at any given time. Someone…
[0] http://astronomy.com/news/2020/01/with-more-spacex-starlink-...
I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.
Giving up some of the night sky for the billions of humans that live in rural areas, or live in countries where the physical internet is controlled by oppressive governments hellbent on withholding information from its citizens is worth it. The trillions of dollars it would take to build out infrastructure (and maintain) in Africa and India is worth it. In fact, even 20 Mbps would be life changing in bringing informa…
Oppressive governments that don't like the internet aren't going to just allow the transceivers. They need line of sight to the sky and even if you hide them, detecting them would be trivial. Super rural areas and 3rd world areas have their own set of problems. I'm thinking of the OLPC type issues here. I'm all for spreading knowledge, but these areas have far bigger issues than internet access.
Personally, I view this as just another bulldozing a place of nature to build a hospital or something like that. Is that hospital useful? Undoubtedly. Is it worth having one less place of nature? Debatable.
The only difference is scale. We're talking about the destruction of a place of nature for the entire world. Over dramatized? I don't think so- there are many examples of people talking about looking up at the stars in wonderment, driving them to great things. Maybe that will still happen when there are thousands of satellites streaming by, but nobody has that foresight.
I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing. Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.
> Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though. Oh, I wasn't aware we were getting any choice in the matter? Isn't this SpaceX just putting whatever they want up there?