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First SpaceX Starlink satellites loaded into Falcon fairing
- erentz 7y agoI long for much more detail about the engineering of this project, in particular the traffic engineering and routing aspects. Theres so many interesting possibilities there.
- rashomon 7y agoThe FCC filing has a lot of good technical details on the deployment and frequency usage. Additionally, Mark Handley has a good primer on it. It may kill actual east-west terrestrial traffic due to latency improvements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIUdMiColU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIUdMiColU North-South will still be terrestrial.
- matt2000 7y agoJust a reminder of the key things related to Starlink (since I had to go look them up - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellat...): * Total deployed size will be ~12K satellites and take a decade or so. Will be operational in a reduced capacity as early as next year. * Since they're in low earth orbit, latency could be in the 35ms range.
- new_realist 7y agoI believe the 35 ms latency number is on top of any required routing latency, either on the ground or in space. I'm curious how much each satellite hop will add.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cagenut 7y agothis guy made an excellent youtube video modeling and visualizing the satellite orbits, the network routing paths across them, and the resulting latencies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIUdMiColU&t=4m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIUdMiColU&t=4m NYC to London on the current internet is 76ms, he shows it across starlink's updated plans as working out to around 46ms. Later in the description he points out a mistake in his own math and says that starlink paths should be 8.7% faster than the video shows, so really jfk<->lhr ~ 42ms.
- nugga 7y agoSome people on the Spacex subreddit calculated that the upcoming Starship vehicle could dispense over 500 Starlink satellites in one launch: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/bnjrnf/elon_musk_on_twitter_first_60_spacex_starlink/en6g4wn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/bnjrnf/elon_musk_on...
- OrgNet 7y agoCould be 35ms? What will be the average ping for a user? You must be a Tesla stock holder...
- willio58 7y agoThey are quoting a Wikipedia page. If you believe the information is untrue and you know better, edit the Wikipedia page.
- OrgNet 7y agoWhy quote something that means nothing? "Could be 35ms" will always be right even if it is 300ms... Also, I didn't even see that quote on the Wikipedia page.
- dang 7y ago> You must be a Tesla stock holder. This breaks the site guidelines. Could you please review them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- iamcreasy 7y agoAre they going to use Falcon Heavy for this launch?
- mrep 7y agoNope, regular falcon 9. However, this is predicted to be one of they heaviest loads they have ever done (15-16 tons) considering how far down range the drone ship is going.
- z3t4 7y agoOne satelite only seem to be able to handle 20Gbit meanwhile a single fiber can handle 20Tbit and you get a lot of fiber cables for $10 billion. One advantage with satellites thoug are that there's nothing for warlord or censoring states cut off. Time to re-watch the movie "enemy of the state" ...
- sschueller 7y agoIt's operated by a single company which cares about profit. You can't tell me that the US government isn't capable to pushing Tesla to censor something they don't like or that Tesla will do it willingly to enter a market like China.
- Analemma_ 7y agoGet rid of this idea that satellite internet is somehow more resistant to censorship or control than wired internet, it’s totally false. In censorship-minded countries, this service will be completely illegal, and it will be enforced on both the client-side (the necessary tech to communicate with the sats will be impossible to acquire legally) and server-side (SpaceX will be forbidden from doing business in the country, and banks and payment processors will be forbidden from having anything to do with them).
- SECProto 7y agoThis isn't meant to replace fibre (except maybe for some high speed intercontinental trading purposes). This is high speed Internet for people in rural areas, where they'll pay for the bandwidth and latency improvements. This isn't going to let them jump past national regulatory agencies. It will help them avoid local regulations and right-of-way issues that helped kill Google fiber. Where did you get the $10 billion number from?
- gbear605 7y agoI believe $10 billion is approximately the cost of the whole satellite network, definitely not a single satellite.
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- new_realist 7y agoWith more fiber being laid every day, increasing wireless deployments, and technologies like AirGig in the horizon, is Starlink launching into a shrinking market? Further, as SpaceX is having trouble raising the needed funds, is this launch simply a fundraising exercise?
- tyingq 7y agoRural areas should still be a viable market. Also ships and aircraft. Current airborne internet access is pretty expensive, slow, and high latency.
- portillo 7y agoIf all the constellation + GEO systems proposals end up being launched, there will be an oversupply of capacity from space. Rural areas are a viable market only in the US and Canada, where people can afford to pay $50+/month for connectivity. Elsewhere in the world, they are not going to sell to any end-users. The 4,425 and the 7,500 satellite constellations proposed by SpaceX are way oversized and simply put, a waste of money and efforts.
- gbear605 7y agoThere are essentially no variable costs for the satellites, and since they will be in LEO, a satellite to supply rural US also supplies everywhere in India. So SpaceX can sell their services for $5/month (or less) to people in India and $50/month to people in the US. Everyone (within certain longitude bounds) is a possible customer.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoThe mesh of satellites favor the northern hemispheres, you have a much lower density in lower regions, so you could charge less for them. And they could stop launching them if they don't see a supply, basically just matching their registration numbers and launching more when the bandwidth/users require it. Those numbers seem to just be a target for an ideal completed system, not for it to become operational.
- wcoenen 7y agoTeslarati is reporting that these satellites will not yet have the laser interlinks. I guess that means they can't route traffic from satellite to satellite; they can only bounce data traffic back down to a base station. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-tease-revolutionary-design/ https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-tease-r...
- arijun 7y agoI saw an unsourced comment on reddit that claimed they would have a microwave interlink instead of the laser interlinks, which would give several orders of magnitude lower bandwidth (although still better than nothing). Either way, I think that these are mostly being put up to serve two important purposes: testing various technologies with enough test vehicles to get strong(ish) statistics, and working their way to the thousands of deployed satellites the FCC will require them to have deployed if they don’t want to lose their frequency allocation.
- Klathmon 7y agoI have also heard that they are having some trouble with the laser interlinks and alignment as well as the cost of them at this point, so they are starting with the microwave interlinks. They still plan on doing the laser interlinks eventually, but they weren't reliable or cheap enough by the time they wanted to begin launching, so they are being left off this first batch. All of that is completely unsourced and heard through anonymous sources that have posted on various forums, so take it with as much salt as you need.
- xvilka 7y agoOh, microwave links effectively nothing compared to the laser ones. Terrible news. So I guess marketed bandwidth will never be delivered within the first generation of the network.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- setquk 7y agoBehold the space trash dispenser.
- mikeash 7y agoNote that these are going into a low orbit that requires regular boosting, otherwise they’ll fall back into the atmosphere within a couple of years at most. There’s no long term space junk threat.
- hef19898 7y agoBut quite some operating cost!
- mikeash 7y agoThey’ll have thrusters to keep them aloft longer than they would otherwise last. But the whole constellation will have to be refreshed every five to ten years. The whole project depends on cheap launches, which fortunately SpaceX is able to provide.
- hef19898 7y agoIt was an off hand remark considering the cost of replacement satellites and the running costs to keep the existing ones up there and running. Launches are only a part of the equation.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoThe pro is you can refresh the tech in those satellites allowing more bandwidth or adding more lasers to connect to more satellites. The cost of satellites will only go down as they make more, and it's relatively cheap for them to launch them.
- senectus1 7y agohow will they eject these suckers from the payload module? Maybe put it in a spin and just let them go? (in a controlled release)
- Klathmon 7y agoI'm really hoping they will show it during the livestream!
- zaroth 7y agoI can’t get over how they designed the packaging of 60 satellites into the fairing. Elon said there’s no separate dispenser to deploy them. I really hope we can see them deploy, that would be an incredible sight. Best of luck. They are expecting a lot will go wrong, but let’s hope they’re wrong about that!
- rwz 7y agoI’m a bit worried about how we’re throwing stuff at space as fast as we can afford it without any legitimate way to clean it up after it becomes garbage. This project intends to have interlink based on 7k+ satellites and they will undoubtedly become outdated in about 20 years and will have to be replaced by next generation. This is tons and tons of useless metal and silicon orbiting Earth colliding with other useless silicon forming a layer of very high-energy fragments that will destroy everything they come in contact with. And we currently don’t know how deal with it. It feels uneasy especially when you recognize parallels with climate change in how we’re creating a problem for future generations chasing shorter-term goals.
- antpls 7y agoFrom a bit of research on Internet, the satellites will re-enter into atmosphere after end of operation, because they are sent to relatively low orbits. There is no garbage involved here.
- ceejayoz 7y ago> This project intends to have interlink based on 7k+ satellites and they will undoubtedly become outdated in about 20 years and will have to be replaced by next generation. They'll deorbit long before 20 years are up. The ISS requires regular boosts to stay in orbit, due to atmospheric drag. SpaceX's satellites will last probably ~5 years at most.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoThe satellites fall from orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.
- naveen99 7y agoStarlink will make camping, cruises and air travel over oceans and non civilized land a lot more tolerable. You could even setup a small city of boats in the middle of the ocean. The market for remote internet will be a lot bigger than it is now as it removes our inhibition in traveling to disconnected areas.