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Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

starlinkmap.org

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Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#61

Post by k4rli »

lom wrote: post #58

> The Starlink constellation could serve up to 188,160 MB/sec to Earth. Does that feel very slow to anyone else?

So 100Mbps for ~16k people. Barely useful. I can only ever see it being useful for real rural people, who don't get any 4G signal, but these people might also not want to pay the crazy subscription fees or $500+ for the equipment.

I don't see any reason why anyone living in or <100km near a city would ever want this. 5G mobile can already provide 500Mbps and fiber is just unbeatable. At least the night sky was ruined for a billionaire's useless constellation.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#64

Post by danw1979 »

londons_explore wrote: post #29
modeless wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad take. There are plenty of regulatory bodies that control what SpaceX is allowed to do. The satellites are not visible to the eye in their operational orbits and are incredibly tiny compared to the vastness of space. Their depiction here is thousands of times larger than actual size.

There are 7.8 billion people on earth. 7.5 billion of them had no say at all, and 0.33 billion of them had a tiny say via elected representatives who wrote the laws before starlink was even envisioned. I'm pretty sure if a global vote was held on the question of "Would you like to have 10,000 satellites launched so you have the option of paying a US company for broadband anywhere in the world?", the vote outcome woul…

You could ask a less leading question, like “would you like it if you had the ability to rent infrastructure to get access to a much better internet connection that your local ISPs, and even your own government have no chance of building themselves ?”

I’m British, so this question definitely applies to me, by the way.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#65

Post by cycomanic »

lom wrote: post #58

> The Starlink constellation could serve up to 188,160 MB/sec to Earth. Does that feel very slow to anyone else?

Even more:

> Starlink is the world’s most advanced satellite internet constellation, beaming terabytes per second to the most remote parts of Earth. Made possible by the advent of reusable rocketry, Starlink marks the beginning of a new age of orbital technology.

And 188 Gbit/s is still quite far away from Tbytes/s.

Also the later counters of Tbytes of "bandwidth" per day are somewhat weird measures. Unfortunately way too often people denote the measure of data/time as bandwidth while it is more accurately named throughput. Also as a rate it shouldn't be counting up like that. I suspect it means data transferred today.

Generally speaking I think the website is quite cool, but I wish they'd dial down the fanboyism.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#66

Post by beejiu »

k4rli wrote: post #61
lom wrote: post #58

> The Starlink constellation could serve up to 188,160 MB/sec to Earth. Does that feel very slow to anyone else?

So 100Mbps for ~16k people. Barely useful. I can only ever see it being useful for real rural people, who don't get any 4G signal, but these people might also not want to pay the crazy subscription fees or $500+ for the equipment. I don't see any reason why anyone living in or <100km near a city would ever want this. 5G mobile can already provide 500Mbps and fiber is just unbeatable. At least the night sky was ruined…

Nobody uses 100Mbps continuously. Not even close. Would probably average about 0.5% of that capacity. 16000/0.005 = 3.2 million customers. That's quite close to the 2.6 million they have on the page.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#67

Post by ghaff »

k4rli wrote: post #61
lom wrote: post #58

> The Starlink constellation could serve up to 188,160 MB/sec to Earth. Does that feel very slow to anyone else?

So 100Mbps for ~16k people. Barely useful. I can only ever see it being useful for real rural people, who don't get any 4G signal, but these people might also not want to pay the crazy subscription fees or $500+ for the equipment. I don't see any reason why anyone living in or <100km near a city would ever want this. 5G mobile can already provide 500Mbps and fiber is just unbeatable. At least the night sky was ruined…

The "crazy subscription fees" are about $40 more than the $80/month I pay for pretty modest Internet. Not everyone has great cellular service. I barely get it 50 miles west of Boston--presumably because I live at the base of a hill between myself and the tower. I routinely lose cell entirely when I take the train in through some of the highest-end suburbs in the area.

Starlink really is a game-changer for people who don't have other good Internet options. And there are a lot of them even if they don't live on a montaintop in Wyoming someplace. Can everyone in rural locations afford broadband at all? No. But Starlink is actually pretty competitive with equivalent broadband offerings.

I am a long way from being a Musk fanboy but Starlink is genuinely extremely useful for a lot of people.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#68

Post by gambiting »

Klaster_1 wrote: post #9

Wow, I knew Starlink had an enormous constellation, but visualizing it like that really empathizes the scope. Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world, without bothering about new contracts, moving cities or country borders.

>>Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world

That sounds like an absolute distopian nightmare and the last person on earth that I want to be running this service is Elon Musk. In general I find it horrendous how a single american company can pollute the night sky for every human being in the world, whether they can use their services or not. Technologically I'm in awe of what Starlink achieves, it's an incredible feat - and yet I still think it's a travesty that it's allowed to exist at all.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#69

Post by gambiting »

k4rli wrote: post #61
lom wrote: post #58

> The Starlink constellation could serve up to 188,160 MB/sec to Earth. Does that feel very slow to anyone else?

So 100Mbps for ~16k people. Barely useful. I can only ever see it being useful for real rural people, who don't get any 4G signal, but these people might also not want to pay the crazy subscription fees or $500+ for the equipment. I don't see any reason why anyone living in or <100km near a city would ever want this. 5G mobile can already provide 500Mbps and fiber is just unbeatable. At least the night sky was ruined…

>>I don't see any reason why anyone living in or Do you think being within 100km of a city guarantees good service? I used to live literally right on the outskirts of a major British city, the best internet I could get was 10mbps ADSL, not because there was nothing better in the area but because the local exchange was oversubscribed and no one could connect us with no estimate of when a space might free up. Also mobile signal was really crappy because it was in a valley.

But even ignoring that weird edge case - plenty of small villages around here where internet is really poor and there are no 5G masts anywhere nearby. A friend of mine has starlink because the only other option was 36mbps through BT, even though he lives few miles out of a city.

>>. At least the night sky was ruined for a billionaire's useless constellation.

On that we 10000% agree.

Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit

#70

Post by doublerabbit »

beejiu wrote: post #66
k4rli wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So 100Mbps for ~16k people. Barely useful. I can only ever see it being useful for real rural people, who don't get any 4G signal, but these people might also not want to pay the crazy subscription fees or $500+ for the equipment. I don't see any reason why anyone living in or <100km near a city would ever want this. 5G mobile can already provide 500Mbps and fiber is just unbeatable. At least the night sky was ruined…

Nobody uses 100Mbps continuously. Not even close. Would probably average about 0.5% of that capacity. 16000/0.005 = 3.2 million customers. That's quite close to the 2.6 million they have on the page.

> Nobody uses 100Mbps continuously

Only because nobody can sensibility obtain 100Mbps as a connection. I'm still stuck on 2Mb ADSL.

Where games are now 30-60GB in download, family streaming is a thing. This would be topped pretty easily.

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