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Starlink has the potential to completely revolutionise the shipping sector. Digitisation in the maritime space has been slow and adoption/innovation has been ha

Starlink has the potential to completely revolutionise the shipping sector. Digitisation in the maritime space has been slow and adoption/innovation has been hampered by poor connectivity. Cheap connectivity could be incredible. Current sat systems are expensive and coverage is interesting. IoT and autonomy offer the potential cost saving measures to get the investment from some of the most frugal operators.

mciancia 6y ago
How so? I mean, besides providing better connectivity for people on ships, what will/can change? What was blocked in building out by current satellite offerings?
- etrautmann 6y ago
  There’s a surprising amount of real time route optimization that in theory could improve efficiency and cost by a few percent by taking current and weather into account.
  - gomox 6y ago
    Weather routing is already prevalent over existing satphone connections. The GFS model that is typically used for this purpose has low enough resolution that there's marginal returns to additional bandwidth or reduced latency.
    - guywhocodes 6y ago
      You can interpolate the GFS very accurately in terms of wind over land and close to land with WRF-ARW. There is highish resolution land use data and good elevation models. This is something you can do on your laptop even these days. However I have no idea of good it is at wave and currents.
      - repsilat 6y ago
        You can also put the compute and the data on land, and do routing as a service. The decision bandwidth (i.e., ideal heading/route) is miniscule.
  - mciancia 6y ago
    Well, routing seems like something that needs just ship position. You can easily send that over, for example, iridium network and as long as you won't try doing that 10 times per second (because why?) if savings were actually that big, it could already be done, even many years ago
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
    You can also get real time data via ham radio although it’s extremely slow. It still works for navigation adjustments and optimizations. I fail to see how this is relevant beyond crew morale.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  Tracking the status of your cargo. At the moment you always have uncertainity during the voyage - you don't know if e.g. temperature was held consistently until you took control of the cargo after arrival, or if it was tampered with during transit in any way. For fleet owners, no matter if for ships, cars/trucks or planes, management becomes way easier if they have global high bandwidth data uplink: you can detect stuff like engine or other part wear early by running big data analysis on telemetry, and in disaster case you have way better logs to operate on (both post mortem and during troubleshooting). This by the way also is relevant for car manufacturers - with the exception of Tesla, the only way classic car manufacturers get information on how their cars are used in the real world comes from test drivers, accident reports and shop visits. Consistent data uplinks allow for a lot more telemetry that can be used to improve their products. Surprisingly, even scientists can benefit from this - have ships transmit real-time data about air pressure, sunlight, wave height etc. and suddenly you have a global network of floating data buoys.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Consistent data uplinks allow for a lot more telemetry that can be used to improve their products. Shipping is one thing -- the company still owns the goods. But keep this out of my cars.
    - sedgjh23 6y ago
      I’m curious, why?
      - mschuster91 6y ago
        Because that data can be seized by cops or mined by secret services.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    > temperature was held consistently until you took control of the cargo after arrival, or if it was tampered with during transit in any way. There are already temperature and tamper devices for sensitive freight. There are devices that will show if orientation has changed or if shock occurred etc. Sensitive freight is an entire industry that has already innovated around the lack of connectivity. That's not to say there isn't further innovation to be made.
- gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
  On cruise lines at least, internet is extremely expensive and slow. Like $80/gb. Starlink would be awesome (Assuming it will be safe to go on cruises in the future...).
  - ryanlol 6y ago
    > Assuming it will be safe to go on cruises in the future... Why wouldn’t it be?
    - hddu 6y ago
      New (covid) world order
    - rlt 6y ago
      Same COVID obsession that leads to people wearing masks during their wedding ceremony, etc.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    You could live on cruise ships 11 months out of the year...
- alwayshumans 6y ago
  Most vessels will have some form of connectivity on board right now. It depends on their vicinity to coast. Right now data sizes of an email are industry standard. As you go into 100s of Mb you start to see people really struggle. I would look at BIM systems for a parallel with ships. Ships are incredibly complicated and often self reliant. Shore based monitoring is hated by the crew but vessel operators see return from it. A simple example would be an extension of the IoT devices already on board probably around engines. Anything with tangible benefits to Efficiency and safety would see investment.
gamblor956 6y ago
Ships already have satellite connections, and GPS, and internet, and all of that. Starlink wouldn't revolutionize anything. At best, it might be cheaper than what is currently on the market, but that expense is largely driven by durability requirements for equipment exposed to heavy amounts of moisture and inclement weather. Durable products are not something that any of Musk's companies are known for (especially Tesla), so they enter this market with the disadvantage of that reputation.
- herval 6y ago
  That's precisely the argument I heard from Nokia die-hards when they iPhone was introduced :-)
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    This isn't a Nokia vs iPhone situation. Shipping already does everything that Starlink proponents claim Starlink will enable, i.e., track ships, track cargo, track temperatures in containers. And this data isn't like video, so you don't need a lot of bandwidth for it. Starlink might make things cheaper than current satellite communications offerings, but this is evolutionary not revolutionary.
    - briffle 6y ago
      And my blackberry could already run apps, browse the web, and send quick messages to each other years before the iphone.
      - ubercore 6y ago
        Not the same apps, though. In this comparison, it would be "my blackberry already runs iOS apps, but they're a bit slower than the new iphone". Improvement for sure, and I'd bet on StarLink making a lot of money on this by volume, but it's not going to radically change shipping.
      - krageon 6y ago

mciancia 6y ago

How so? I mean, besides providing better connectivity for people on ships, what will/can change? What was blocked in building out by current satellite offerings?

etrautmann 6y ago
There’s a surprising amount of real time route optimization that in theory could improve efficiency and cost by a few percent by taking current and weather into account.
- gomox 6y ago
  Weather routing is already prevalent over existing satphone connections. The GFS model that is typically used for this purpose has low enough resolution that there's marginal returns to additional bandwidth or reduced latency.
  - guywhocodes 6y ago
    You can interpolate the GFS very accurately in terms of wind over land and close to land with WRF-ARW. There is highish resolution land use data and good elevation models. This is something you can do on your laptop even these days. However I have no idea of good it is at wave and currents.
    - repsilat 6y ago
      You can also put the compute and the data on land, and do routing as a service. The decision bandwidth (i.e., ideal heading/route) is miniscule.
- mciancia 6y ago
  Well, routing seems like something that needs just ship position. You can easily send that over, for example, iridium network and as long as you won't try doing that 10 times per second (because why?) if savings were actually that big, it could already be done, even many years ago
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  You can also get real time data via ham radio although it’s extremely slow. It still works for navigation adjustments and optimizations. I fail to see how this is relevant beyond crew morale.
mschuster91 6y ago
Tracking the status of your cargo. At the moment you always have uncertainity during the voyage - you don't know if e.g. temperature was held consistently until you took control of the cargo after arrival, or if it was tampered with during transit in any way. For fleet owners, no matter if for ships, cars/trucks or planes, management becomes way easier if they have global high bandwidth data uplink: you can detect stuff like engine or other part wear early by running big data analysis on telemetry, and in disaster case you have way better logs to operate on (both post mortem and during troubleshooting). This by the way also is relevant for car manufacturers - with the exception of Tesla, the only way classic car manufacturers get information on how their cars are used in the real world comes from test drivers, accident reports and shop visits. Consistent data uplinks allow for a lot more telemetry that can be used to improve their products. Surprisingly, even scientists can benefit from this - have ships transmit real-time data about air pressure, sunlight, wave height etc. and suddenly you have a global network of floating data buoys.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Consistent data uplinks allow for a lot more telemetry that can be used to improve their products. Shipping is one thing -- the company still owns the goods. But keep this out of my cars.
  - sedgjh23 6y ago
    I’m curious, why?
    - mschuster91 6y ago
      Because that data can be seized by cops or mined by secret services.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  > temperature was held consistently until you took control of the cargo after arrival, or if it was tampered with during transit in any way. There are already temperature and tamper devices for sensitive freight. There are devices that will show if orientation has changed or if shock occurred etc. Sensitive freight is an entire industry that has already innovated around the lack of connectivity. That's not to say there isn't further innovation to be made.
gkfasdfasdf 6y ago
On cruise lines at least, internet is extremely expensive and slow. Like $80/gb. Starlink would be awesome (Assuming it will be safe to go on cruises in the future...).
- ryanlol 6y ago
  > Assuming it will be safe to go on cruises in the future... Why wouldn’t it be?
  - hddu 6y ago
    New (covid) world order
  - rlt 6y ago
    Same COVID obsession that leads to people wearing masks during their wedding ceremony, etc.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  You could live on cruise ships 11 months out of the year...
alwayshumans 6y ago
Most vessels will have some form of connectivity on board right now. It depends on their vicinity to coast. Right now data sizes of an email are industry standard. As you go into 100s of Mb you start to see people really struggle. I would look at BIM systems for a parallel with ships. Ships are incredibly complicated and often self reliant. Shore based monitoring is hated by the crew but vessel operators see return from it. A simple example would be an extension of the IoT devices already on board probably around engines. Anything with tangible benefits to Efficiency and safety would see investment.

gamblor956 6y ago

Ships already have satellite connections, and GPS, and internet, and all of that. Starlink wouldn't revolutionize anything. At best, it might be cheaper than what is currently on the market, but that expense is largely driven by durability requirements for equipment exposed to heavy amounts of moisture and inclement weather. Durable products are not something that any of Musk's companies are known for (especially Tesla), so they enter this market with the disadvantage of that reputation.

herval 6y ago
That's precisely the argument I heard from Nokia die-hards when they iPhone was introduced :-)
- gamblor956 6y ago
  This isn't a Nokia vs iPhone situation. Shipping already does everything that Starlink proponents claim Starlink will enable, i.e., track ships, track cargo, track temperatures in containers. And this data isn't like video, so you don't need a lot of bandwidth for it. Starlink might make things cheaper than current satellite communications offerings, but this is evolutionary not revolutionary.
  - briffle 6y ago
    And my blackberry could already run apps, browse the web, and send quick messages to each other years before the iphone.
    - ubercore 6y ago
      Not the same apps, though. In this comparison, it would be "my blackberry already runs iOS apps, but they're a bit slower than the new iphone". Improvement for sure, and I'd bet on StarLink making a lot of money on this by volume, but it's not going to radically change shipping.
    - krageon 6y ago