Heh, to someone not overly familiar with North American geography, the clear cutoff between off-polar orbits and the few exceptions almost looks as if they decided to turn around at the Canadian border.
Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
81–90 of 248 posts
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#82Earlier 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…
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…
I agree - for a while it was my only option, and I would have paid 10X what they charged to have it. Now I have other options (FTTH), but was quite happy with Starlink while I had it installed.
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#83Wow, 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 service…
Have you seen them in orbit?
I look at the sky regularly in a low light area and I've not seen any "pollution", but maybe I don't know how to look?
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you ask the entire world you would get stupid answers to a lot of questions. "How old is the universe?" for example would get it hilariously wrong.
Particularly given that the satellites are absolutely minuscule compared to the distances between them. People are bad at conceptualising tiny fractions.
You can see them with a naked eye so it's not that minuscule. Either just before sunrise or just after sunset, when the sky is black, and so your eye adapts and you start to see things otherwise too dark to be visible on the sky (stars), the Starlink satellites reflect the light from the Sun (because they are higher than you and so their daylight is longer, earlier sunrise, later sunset).
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#85Wow, 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.
I'm wondering it this is even technically possible because of bandwidth? There is many more mobile cell towers worldwide - all they are big, connected to power grid, connected internet with fiberoptic, much closer to users but such one tower can still struggle to handle traffic during peak times when many users are connected.
Density, I'd imagine. Some cell towers are serving hundreds of thousands of people individually. It seems on average the satelites are serving 400-500 on average.
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#86> Bringing internet connection to everyone on Earth is an incredibly important mission. Consider supporting this mission by joining SpaceX's Starlink team. I wish I could too.
Bringing certainly would be. Selling , however...
Not sure I understand - you expect some one/some company to invest billions and billions of dollars to create internet access in places that where it doesn't exist and then give away the service?
Who would, or could, do that?
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#87> 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 wa…
Isn't that 188GB per second - roughly 1.5tbit?
My understanding was the intent is to serve traffic across the mesh and only downlink it at the closest terrestrial point, which should allow for significantly more.
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#88Wow, 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.
Elon has already stated that Starlink is not a replacement for a quality wired/fiber connection. His goal with Starlink is to cover areas that aren't covered by ISPs for whatever reason.
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#89> 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…
My reading is that's current throughput, not possible throughput.
Also, 100mbps internet is not achievable via normal means for most of the worlds population. Your view appears fairly narrow.
Re: Real-time map of every Starlink satellite in orbit
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Particularly given that the satellites are absolutely minuscule compared to the distances between them. People are bad at conceptualising tiny fractions.
Not miniscule enough to not interfere with astronomy due to the exposure times and light sensitivity involved. But yes, they're not big enough to cause a "space junk preventing space travel" kind of scenario.
I think the 2nd statement of yours is a false dilemma: Starlink is increasing risks in space travel - a space rocket now needs (even more - otherwise it would be a false dilemma as well) maneuverability to stick to the planned path or avoid a satellite if the path changed, I don't think it's easy considering how rockets are propelled by continuous explosions, where an engine becoming disabled is somewhat normal…
And of course once all goes to hell and you have a chain reaction of destroyed satellites destroying other satellites - each next satellite moves the scenario towards a positive feedback loop.