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I thought I read somewhere that they cancelled the plans to use lasers and were going to use radio instead. But now I can't find anything about it.
by plopz 7y ago
I thought I read somewhere that they cancelled the plans to use lasers and were going to use radio instead. But now I can't find anything about it.
- tpmx 7y agoRadio and light have (for the purposes of this comparison) the same speed in vacuum.
- Ajedi32 7y agoThe current generation of Starlink satellites don't have satellite-to-satilite links, but I haven't seen any indication that that feature is canceled for future iterations.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoHow do they work without sat to sat links? Are they going to build thousands of ground stations?
- Tuna-Fish 7y agoThey have not cancelled the plans to use lasers, but have delayed the introduction of lasers until "satellite version 2.0", whatever that means. That is, the initial constellation (my guess, the first 800 satellites) goes up without intersat links and acts as a bent pipe only. Lasers are still very much a plan for the later parts on the constellation, and the laserless satellites will eventually be replaced with ones with the lasers once they age out, but the laser links were simply not ready yet and their spectrum license essentially forces them to put the birds up on as quick a schedule as they can. The laserless sats will not use radio to communicate with each other, but rather will use it to communicate with customers and fixed earth stations.
- scrumbledober 7y agominor correction, they have delayed the laser interlink for version 1.0, which should be the next launch. the first launch is considered by spacex to be version 0.9 satellites