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We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

arstechnica.com

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Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#51

Post by nine_k »

lxgr wrote: post #49
neuroelectron wrote: post #31

The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.

> This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers How so? I'd imagine the datacenter terminal side downlink to be much more easily tappable than fiberoptics. There are advantages in latency and potentially availability, but even there I would imagine fiber to win in an adversarial active jamming scenario.

> easily tappable

I suppose in any realistic scenario we should assume that the enemy may be listening to all our communication at all times. This is the assumption behind such daily things as WPA3, SSH, TLS.

Jamming is a much more serious concern.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#52

Post by IncreasePosts »

ceejayoz wrote: post #24
gus_massa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, people will chose on price, reliability, price, speed, price and free gigas.

Ah, yes. A low barrier to entry market with many competitors, like ISPs, cell phone companies, etc. Uh oh.

Well, there will be at least two, and people will have terrestrial options as well.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#53

Post by 93po »

croes wrote: post #4

So more satellites to block the view for astronomers.

this is such a weird talking about that basically any real astronomer doesn't really care about, at all. it just comes across as "let's find any way to criticize elon possible" or "let's write clickbait based on a couple of terminally online comments on twitter". satellites are not blocking views, and astronomers are overwhelmingly in support of a healthy space industry, which includes satellite launches. the cutting edge of astronomy relies on satellites, it would be weird to be against them

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#54

Post by nine_k »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #41
neuroelectron wrote: post #31

The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.

They will undoubtedly sell some aspect of Kuiper through AWS. They already have IP addresses and DNS in the AWS product list, and they have all kinds of data transport services. I don’t know if the government implication is as big as you think, as the US government has been doing secure satellite communications for decades and has already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield. So undoubtedly Kuiper would love a pi…

> already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield

Many key things the government buys need to have more than one independent source. This way Kuiper may be just in time.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#55

Post by 93po »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #42
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress tends to have downsides. Highways and rail tracks destroy the environment and make areas hard to cross, but I think most people would acknowledge that on balance, having them them is a good thing. In this case, the obvious solution would be to provide a small number of orbital observatories to the astronomy community for free or with heavily subsidized pricing.

What progress? I gain nothing from this. I have symmetrical cheap reliable fiber to my house.

this reads really strongly as satire to the point i can't believe it's authentic.

hacker news poster says "my cheap fiber is working just fine, why does anyone need satellite internet", completely ignoring the literally billion people who can't access the internet reliably at all due to infrastructure failures

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#56

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

93po wrote: post #55
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What progress? I gain nothing from this. I have symmetrical cheap reliable fiber to my house.

this reads really strongly as satire to the point i can't believe it's authentic. hacker news poster says "my cheap fiber is working just fine, why does anyone need satellite internet", completely ignoring the literally billion people who can't access the internet reliably at all due to infrastructure failures

My point was only that progress isn't so black and white. Oil drilling is progress too!

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#57

Post by croes »

nkrisc wrote: post #26
croes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could turn that around. Progress in Earth bound astronomy has the downside of less satellite internet.

I'm fairly certain that Earth-based astronomy predates artificial satellites by at least a few years.

And since then there was no progress?

We can build better, bigger and more sensible telescopes but we can hardly use those new capabilities if they are impaired by satellites.

Space telescopes are expensive and harder to maintain.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#58

Post by fulafel »

lxgr wrote: post #50
XorNot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End to end encryption has not been broken.

Yes, which makes the point of dedicated connectivity moot from a data security point of view. Metadata security and availability are different concerns.

Traffic analysis tells your adversaries who you communicate with, and what apps you're using, inferring what communication was caused by what preceding communication, etc which lets your adversary guess what the communication was about. Esp when compared against what other people is communicating about just then.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#59

Post by Perceval »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #41
neuroelectron wrote: post #31

The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.

They will undoubtedly sell some aspect of Kuiper through AWS. They already have IP addresses and DNS in the AWS product list, and they have all kinds of data transport services. I don’t know if the government implication is as big as you think, as the US government has been doing secure satellite communications for decades and has already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield. So undoubtedly Kuiper would love a pi…

Space is an AWS region, just like AWS has terrestrial regions. The AWS space region is named Pigeon.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#60

Post by Perceval »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #8

I wonder what "earth observation" opportunities there would be with such megaconstellations, from simply having a camera with a telephoto lens pointed down to a giant, sky-spanning Synthetic Aperture Radar utilizing multiple satellites. Anything like that would explain the secrecy...

There are already commercial constellations on orbit doing EO and SAR: Planet Labs, Capella, IceEYE, Umbra, Maxar, and more.
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