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SpaceX’s Starlink Constellation construction begins
- 7e 8y agoI don't believe the required billions of financing for this project has been obtained yet. I am skeptical of the utility, since most humans live in dense cities, where it is both cheaper and faster to run fiber (even to 5G towers) than it is for millions of people to choke on a handful of satellites. This offering is only compelling for regions that have no people and no infrastructure (and therefore no money). All signs point to another Teledesic or Iridium.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nilskidoo 8y agoOr another purpose altogether.
- 7e 8y agoIts purpose is to create launch demand for SpaceX, and ultimately to fund a trip to Mars. A solution in search of a problem.
- cdumler 8y agoI can tell you any more choice in the US would be a good thing. Our infrastructure is pretty much bottom rung unless you are one of the very few who can get access to fiber. I have literally a Google fiber drop installed in my front yard, but they can't be bothered to give me service. Google is no longer deploying new locations in my city.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoSimilar to sexy electric cars stoking demand for lithium battery factories. HFT traders will be the first to sign on for StarLink to arbitrage between continents/across oceans, and the rest of the value chain will follow.
- politician 8y agoThis is an important point. Transit over StarLink looks like it will be faster than transit overland via fiber optic cable due to the speed of light being slower in fiber cable than free space. That means that this isn't just a stunt, but an actual upgrade to our communications infrastructure.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoHonestly, I’d love to see StarLink keep the latency advantage to themselves and acquire an HFT firm to extract the profits from the advantage. What are you going to do as a competitor? Build and lift your own comm sat network? The laws of physics are a hell of a moat.
- politician 8y agoIf they went this route, they could run the compute at the edge; that is, in space, perhaps in another sat in a higher orbit. Thereby avoiding one trip through the atmosphere improving their latency advantage even further. The real trick will be acquiring rooftop space at the exchanges for the uplinks.
- dx034 8y agoAcquiring an HFT firm won't be worth it. Just sell it to the highest bidder. It's likely they will pay too much anyway (winner's curse) in which case Starlink just needs to sell it to the next highest bidder a year later. Much easier money (and less regulation) than trading yourself.
- dbasedweeb 8y agoNothing about SpaceX except marketing hype has to do with Mars, can we just stop it with the Mars talk? It belittles what SpaceX actually is about, which is amazing in its own right. Launch demand, cheaper LEO/GEO/GTO, and a willingness to push the industry out of the 60’s is almost unbelievable, as is the journey they’ve taken to get this far. Throwing Mars into the mix makes it all sounds like bullshit, because anyone who actually understands the challenges of Mars beyond the big rocket portion rolls their eyes and sighs. I’d also add that competing with the likes of Comcast and Verizon could be very profitable in the long term. I don’t think we need to assume it doesn’t serve its own obvious purpose of being th first big step in getting that sweet ISP money. Edit api: It makes sense for a lot of things that a demand actually exists for, like heavy loads, launching a number of different contracts in one reusable rocket to save on overhead, defense contracts, and more. Those will actually make them money, and are all technically feasible today.
- api 8y agoThey are building a super heavy lift rocket that makes the most sense for sending humans to the Moon and Mars. Other roles can be served reasonably well by Falcon and FH. Outside manned tourism, exploration, and settlement there is little need for a rocket that big. Also... marketing hype for who? We think the Mars stuff is cool, sure, but we are not SpaceX's customers. Their customers could care less. They care if their payloads fly to the right orbit.
- inflatableDodo 8y agoDon't forget that SpaceX was born out of Musk's failed attempt to buy ICBMs from Russia in order to land a small greenhouse on Mars. For SpaceX to stop the Mars talk would be to ignore the defining event underlying the creation of the company.
- electriclove 8y agoMars is the vision and it is going to take an incredible amount of effort to make that possible. We need to find uses for that technology here and now so that the costs for it can be brought down. It is not just a matter of having a human put their feet down on Mars and then be done with it. How will we move around (Boring and Tesla btw)? How will we communicate there and back to people on Earth? How will we feed ourselves there? Etc.. IMHO, Starlink (on Mars) is an answer to the communication challenges we will face there. By doing it on Earth, we prove it out, bring the costs down, provide a better internet alternative to what we have now, and have synergies with his other companies like Tesla (communication without needing cell providers) and SpaceX (increase launch demand).
- electriclove 8y ago1. High speed internet available to anyone on Earth. 2. Communication for Tesla vehicles which I think is currently dependent on cell networks. 3. Communication network for humanity on Mars.
- nilskidoo 8y agoI was thinking along the lines of this: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133936-using-wifi-to-see-through-walls https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133936-using-wifi-to-see... It was always about surveillance.
- jacobush 8y agoBasically SpaceX is doing what Steve Jobs first wanted to do when faced with the stubbornness of telecom giants - create his own cell phone / data network. He was advised it would be too expensive. Maybe Apple and SpaceX should do a joint venture...
- dx034 8y agoCan it really replace mobile networks? It's great for areas currently not served by 4G but would serving large cities (New York, SF, Seattle, London) really make sense via satellite?
- hbcondo714 8y agoNot billions but looks like Musk is raising $500M for this https://finance.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-raising-500m-satellite-164330351.html https://finance.yahoo.com/video/elon-musk-raising-500m-satel...
- vidanay 8y agoAs someone who does not live in a dense city, and is willing and capable of paying for a service such as Starlink, I resent the idea that it is not a worthwhile endeavor.
- apatheticonion 8y agoAs someone who lives in a dense city (Sydney), I can tell you that I would use this satellite internet if it's faster than the ADSL2 and poop fibre most people get at home.
- ahje 8y agoDitto in rural Finland. I'd happily pay for a service that can provide decent speeds _reliably_. There's definitely a market for the product. Whether they succeed at bringing it to the market at a decent price, well, time will tell...
- pbreit 8y agoOne of the most short-sited posts I think I've ever seen on HN.
- louprado 8y agoI initially thought the same but he did write "All signs point to another Teledesic or Iridium" and I can't argue to the contrary.
- nordsieck 8y agoOne of the very real dangers is that all of the satellite constellations come one line at the same time, and none of them get to critical mass before they all go bankrupt. Mass adoption is the key to reasonable per-user costs here. Amazon, and possibly SpaceX are at an advantage here, since they have other revenue streams, so they might be able to wait out the rest of the field and grab customers from failed networks.
- shaklee3 8y agoAmazon and SpaceX are nowhere near equivalent. SpaceX is relying on starlink to be a major portion of their revenue by 2025, far outweighing launch. That's all they have. Amazon has retail and aws, and satellites will be nowhere near a majority.
- mrep 8y agoPlanes, boats, busses, trains, cars, and rural sites can all massively benefit from a much bigger bandwidth pipe with low latency. Add in the US military which has already given spacex $28.7 million dollars to see if they can put it on all their vehicles (planes in particular for that award) and I think they have a decent sized market. [0]: https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-us-military-500-700m-raised/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-us-military-500-70...
- blago 8y agoYou may be underestimating the resentment with current duopoly operators in the US. I live in a dense city and I would switch in a heartbeat even if Starlink didn't offer better/faster/cheaper service. Just being on par would be enough.
- pascalxus 8y agoFor Sure. I know I would switch in a hearbeat, if there was an equivalent service that costs equal or less. And just imagine the possibilities. once you can get your ISP internet anywhere, you won't even need a data plan on your phone anymore (just hook it up to your ISP). In this case i would be willing to pay a bit extra for that.
- shaklee3 8y agoIt will not cost equal. It will be far more. Shotwell has hinted at this recently.
- wurst_case 8y agoSource?
- shaklee3 8y agohttps://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/spacex-raises-500-million-its-most-promising-profitability-path-now-faces-internal https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-16/spacex-raises-500-...
- ancientworldnow 8y agoThe steaklink receiver is not small (about the size of a pizza), last I heard it's similar to a satellite television dish. You won't be getting this on your phone.
- shaklee3 8y agoThat's a very niche view. Almost nobody will switch isps because of a duopoly if everything is currently fine on price and performance.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoThat's unfair to the millions of Americans living in rural areas having to cope with current slow speeds. Don't you want the world more connected? The problem with the current scenario is ISPs and wireless providers won't run lines or stand up towers for a low populated area. They know they won't ever make the money back for the project. With low orbit satellites this problem is solved. Would you rather those people live in the past just because they don't choose to live in the city?
- shaklee3 8y agoThere are existing high speed satellite services.
- jagger27 8y agoLatency matters. LEO gives us that.
- shaklee3 8y agoIt does for some things, and not for others. Streaming and web browsing hardly have a difference.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoThe caps, bandwidth, and latency are all awful for current solutions.
- shaklee3 8y agoThey will be the same for SpaceX. What makes you think otherwise? Their constellation will not start out anywhere near the max capacity they've stated.
- AngryData 8y agoOnce upon a time power companies refused to provide grid access to people outside of the cities because it didn't make money fast enough, the government stepped in and made it happen and now not being able to get a power hookup is a ridiculous notion. If this doesn't happen, the government will have to step in again, otherwise those people either become second class citizens or they get really angry at being excluded from society and take violent action.
- rayiner 8y agoIt’s not at all similar. There is no alternative to wired electricity. There are lots of alternatives to wired broadband, and they’re getting better every day. A double digit percentage of households earning six figures has no wired broadband (cellular only), and that percentage is growing. Note that water is more important than broadband, and the government doesn’t step in to build/compel people to build water/sewer systems in rural areas. (I live 10 minutes from the capital of Maryland, and we just got city water/sewer in 2015, and I just have to drive another 5 minutes down the road before all you have is well water/septic systems.)
- discordance 8y agoSolar + storage is an alternative to grid, although initial costs are high.
- rayiner 8y agoIf it had been in 1930, you likely wouldn’t have seen rural electrification be a government policy.
- hedora 8y agoThe government does compel you to have water and sewerage handling out in the country. You can’t build or get a conventional mortgage without both. Wells and septic tanks scale better in sparsely populated regions, so they require that in places that are outside of municipal systems.
- 8y ago
- BurningFrog 8y agoYeah, but you don't need "most humans" to use it. 10% would probably finance it very nicely.
- vidanay 8y ago700 million people paying $100USD per month? I am imagining Elon doing a Scrooge McDuck dive into his bank vault.
- awad 8y ago700 million people parting with $100 USD per month seems pretty high
- XorNot 8y agoThink any company with remote assets it needs to monitor. Drones, backup internet etc. There's a very big market for fast internet access which just works anywhere on the planet. It would be worth a premium just to let large organisations consolidate to a single biller.
- apexalpha 8y agoSure, there's a lot of potential customers but: a) no one pays $100 for internet. Maybe some in monopoly-internet USA have to, but literally no one else. b) most countries are poorer than the US and would definitely not have $100. c) Local providers can simply lower their prices, and SpaceX will have competition from Oneweb and possibly others.
- ncallaway 8y ago> since most humans live in dense cities 55% of the human population currently live in cities. That means 45% don't live in cities. 45% of 7B is one hell of a TAM.
- JetSpiegel 8y agoHow many of those earn less than $50 per month, a reasonable ballpark for the price? I would bet about 75%, if not more.
- kylek 8y agoCouple questions (curious if anyone knows...) >> ... averaging 44 satellites per launch. How big are these things and how many can _actually_ be put up in a single launch? >> However, SpaceX intends to use this to their advantage by gradually replacing inactive satellites ... What happens to inactive satellites? Do they de-orbit themselves in safe locations? Or just stay as space junk?
- ceejayoz 8y agoThey’ll be in low orbit, so they deorbit on their own in months/years due to atmospheric drag. The ISS requires regular boosting for this reason. 44 in one launch is very doable. They’ve done 64 in a launch before: https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2018-12-spacex-satellites.amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2018-12-spacex-sa...
- kylek 8y ago>> carrying 15 micro-satellites and 49 CubeSats IANASJ (I am not a space junkie) but this makes those ones sound unusually tiny and brings me back to the first question - are the Starlink birds similarly sized?
- mrep 8y agoMost people on r/spacex are guesstimating that each falcon 9 will launch 25 satellites. 44 has been discounted because many think the falcon 9s fairing will be volume limited when launching that many satellites. That being said, no official number has been given out by spacex so this is all guesswork and this article did not cite a source for the "44 satellites per launch".
- ceejayoz 8y agoSpaceX's two test Starlink satellites were of the "micro-satellite" size, which typically means sub-100kg: https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/microsat-2.htm https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/microsat-2.htm
- kohtatsu 8y ago
- phkahler 8y ago>> Starlink is also going to be seeing competition in the coming years thanks to companies like OneWeb and Telesat, which plans to create smaller constellations that will offer service by 2021. Tech giants like Amazon and Samsung have also announced plans to deploy their own constellations, which would consist of 3,236 to 4600 broadband satellites, respectively. SpaceX has a huge advantage in launch costs here. Mass produced satellites will be lower cost per unit than most others, and launching on used rockets will give them the cheapest deployment costs ever. And they are the only company that can reuse rockets today. I don't see the competitors really having a chance.
- BurningFrog 8y agoAnyone can buy a launch on a SpaceX rocket.
- unmole 8y agoAnd anyone can buy a launch on an ISRO rocket.
- kirrent 8y agoCould they? When you're launching such a large constellation the key metric is $/kg. All of ISRO's rockets are at least double as expensive as SpaceX's prices for customers. Plus, they're smaller rockets and it'd remain to be seen if ISRO could produce enough of them to launch an entire constellation.
- dd36 8y agoAnd they can deny service to anyone.
- penagwin 8y agoI'm not too sure about this, given the highly limited market options and high regulation of space travel, I'm guessing they'd be hit with anti-trust laws pretty quickly.
- louprado 8y agoOff topic, but can anyone comment on their experience renting a portable internet satellite receiver or provide a recommendation. Thanks.
- pmorici 8y agoDepending on where you are going you options are probably Iridium Certus, BGAN, or Thuraya. I believe groundcontrol.com sells or rents all three.
- woodandsteel 8y agoAt some point SpaceX is going to start flying the Superheavy, which will be able to carry hundreds of satellites at once, and cost less per launch than Falcon 9 because the second stage will be reusable. That will give it a huge cost advantage.
- shaklee3 8y agoAt some point they'll also start regularly flying the heavy. It's about 3 years behind schedule now, and their satellite constellation has much shorter timespans.
- dx034 8y agoDoesn't distribution in space become an issue if you release several hundred satellites from the same rocket and need to get them into position without any collision risk?
- sudhirj 8y agoNot for the Starlink system at least. If you look at the orbits simulation linked in the article there will lots of satellites on a train the same orbit. The rocket could set orbit and drop off a satellite every X minutes.
- ceejayoz 8y agoSpaceX has released dozens from a single launcher. They have get released in a staggered fashion and use onboard thrusters to modify their orbits a bit after release.
- ignoramous 8y agoThe true power of such systems is that they might eventually help overthrow hegemony of the BigTelco, who have been in bed with governments for as long as they have been in existence. I'm excited to see what this would mean not just for the internet but mobile communication systems that are so much dependant on a few vendors and MNOs that have time and again proven to breach on privacy repeatedly [0][1]. For instance, there's no viable open source baseband alternative for 4G+ mobile devices [2][3][4][5], and acquiring frequency and setting up base stations is mired neck deep in regulations and patents [6], so there is not much room for a startup to disrupt the incumbent. Given the advent of eSIMs and increase in embedded SecureElements [7] in smartphones, the traditional way of going mobile might soon be gone for good. I, for one, can't wait. --- [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6722292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6722292 [2] https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE [3] https://telecominfraproject.com https://telecominfraproject.com [4] https://www.opennetworking.org https://www.opennetworking.org [5] https://osmocom.org https://osmocom.org [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931072 [7] https://www.nfcworld.com/2018/08/07/357810/android-9-nfc-secure-element-tee-biometric-security https://www.nfcworld.com/2018/08/07/357810/android-9-nfc-sec...
- ggm 8y agoOr they might not. Tesla might also rent space to large telcos who then monetize close to current pricing to recoup.
- sschueller 8y agoDon't be fooled. This will not be good for consumers, it will be good for profits and share holders.
- baud147258 8y agoI don't see why SpaceX will be any better than traditional telcos
- a012 8y ago
- sambroner 8y agoSemi-Joke: Will/Could they fund this with a high frequency trading strategy?
- frazar0 8y agoInteresting point. However, I believe frequency trading relies on connections with extremely low latency, while satellite links are characterized by high Round Trip Time.
- mhandley 8y agoGeostationary satellites have high latency because they're so far up (36000 km). But dense low earth orbit satellite constellations can give lower latency than fibre over longer distances if you relay from satellite to satellite, because the speed of light in a vacuum is 1.5 times faster than in glass.
- vasco 8y agoLow orbit is less of a vacuum
- LeonM 8y agoThat's why HFT's have switched to using RF communication years ago, as it has less delay than optical transmission over fibre. Most of they use radio towers, not satellites.
- ls612 8y agoBut even NYC to Chicago you have to bounce off several RF base stations due to the curvature of the earth, and each station will add latency. One LEO satellite can probably get LOS to both NYC and Chicago at the same time.
- derekp7 8y agoCouldn't you build analog relay stations that add 0 latency if they are for a dedicated (non-switched) connection? Where the receiving antenna pipes the RF through an analog amp and sends it out the transmit side (possibly using filtering to clean up the raw signal)?
- Proven 8y agoAnd plenty of deficit-funded government-backed jobs created, too!
- tzfld 8y agoSpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon. I hope this will not turn to be a space debris disaster.
- LeonM 8y agoNo, it won't. These satellites are placed close to earth, so they will deorbit after some time. An orbit this close to earth is not sustainable, you need fuel to keep the orbit going. Once the fuel runs out, or the satellite malfunctions, it will fall back into the earth's atmosphere and burn. It's also in the article: > Second, there’s the matter of attrition, as satellites will begin to deorbit after a few years and SpaceX will need to replace them regularly in order to maintain its constellation.
- garmaine 8y agoSpaceX is going to be putting thousands of satellites in the ~750mi orbital range, which takes centuries to decay. So long as they are closely tracked I don't think this is an issue, but these things are not meant to decay on short lifespans.
- abledon 8y agoDoes anyone work on building satellites like the ones mentioned here? what is a normal day in the life at a job like that? Are you pulling 40+ hrs/week ?
- kristofferR 8y agoI really recommend watching this simulation of how the Starlink Constellation would massively cut global internet latency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKNCBrkZQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdKNCBrkZQ4
- wcoenen 8y agoI wonder how this will affect Iridium in the long term. They target applications that provide critical services with low bandwidth requirements, and a need for small lightweight antennas with low power use. Starlink's design doesn't fit those requirements for now. But I'm not sure whether Starlink will stay out of that market if they will be continuously upgrading their swarm. On the other hand, it would be strange if SpaceX destroyed Iridium's business model after launching their latest generation satellites for them...
- derekp7 8y agoI could see a market where you put up a Starlink base station, which communicates to regular phones via LTE or WiFi. That could cover the use case of many Iridium deployments, where you are always within range of a camp or vehicle.
- dalbasal 8y agoI wonder how many subscribers at what price this project requires to be successful/sustainable.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoDepends on a bunch of variables of course but ballpark a few million monthly users would probably be good enough. The falcon heavy launches are going to be ballpark somewhere around 90 million. So excluding the satellite construction that's what it costs to launch around 70-100 satellites. They need at least about 30-35 launches. So ballpark that means a it is going to take probably 3-4 billion. Of course that is excluding the production cost for the satellites and other infrastructure. Lets call it 10 billion altogether, give or take a few billion. Not a crazy amount to spend on infrastructure in the telco world. German operators paid tens of billions just for spectrum licenses. Considering you'd be able to compete world wide with this, 10 billion is a bargain. It's still a lot of money of course but with a few million customers paying in the order of 10-40$ per month it would earn it self back quite rapidly. Even at the low end of that price range. Arguably they could charge more.
- Sammi 8y agoWe also need to factor in the cost of replacing all the satellites every 5 years or so, as they only last this long in the super low orbit that they will be in. So it's ~10 billion every 5 years, not just once up front. So 10.000.000.000 / 5 / 12 = 166.666.666 bucks per month Say an average subscriber pays 20 bucks. 166.669.666 / 20 = 8.333.333 You'd need about eight million subscribers paying an average of 20 bucks a month to keep the business sustainable.
- derekp7 8y agoCompared to the $200 Comcast bill I would be more than willing to pay $50 a month for this, plus another $100 for video content. The big question I have is how many subscribers can they support per square mile in higher population density areas?
- oxyboy 8y agoAm I silly to worry about the amount of space junk all these companies are gonna contribute?