5 ms·

Another aspect is that the objective is to provide global communications over oceans too, e.g., for container ships, sail boats, planes, global surveillance, et

Another aspect is that the objective is to provide global communications over oceans too, e.g., for container ships, sail boats, planes, global surveillance, etc. The cross-satellite comms are not yet ready to essentially create a global mesh-net, but that's the plan.

hnlmorg 5y ago
Starlink doesn't support roaming between ground stations. Plus if you look at the oceans you can see there aren't any ground stations there anyways. So you wouldn't get internet out in the oceans even with Starlink. At least not in its current phase -- future releases, maybe? The reason there are satelites over the oceans is simply because they're not at a geo-stationary orbit. ie their orbit is faster than the rotation of the earth.
- bagels 5y ago
  To be fair, some early pr and articles talked about satellite to satellite hops across oceans, even.though this is not a current capability.
  - KiwiJohnno 5y ago
    current starlink satelites in polar orbit do have satellite to satellite routing capability, via laser comm links. More info here: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/spacex-adds-laser-links-to-starlink-satellites-to-serve-earths-polar-areas/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/space...
    - bagels 5y ago
      There are only a few in polar orbits, from what I've seen.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  > Starlink doesn't support roaming between ground stations That's mostly a beta problem and Starlink is saying they plan to allow roaming eventually. From what I've seen it sounds like right now they only look for your dish in whatever cell it's registered to and don't do any discovery of dishes, it's all preprogrammed.
  - foobiekr 5y ago
    They also say they will do satellite-to-satellite switching. Let's see if they actually do it. SpaceX's real innovation is that their base stations are cheap and can go anywhere you can legitimately get a fiber drop. I doubt the inter-satellite switching will _ever_ happen.
    - rtkwe 5y ago
      Roaming base stations seems simpler than the intra constellation communication at least. It seems like it's largely a problem of doing the discovery on the fly where the multihop communication requires some pretty dynamic routing and complex laser pointing and decoding. I imagine they'll figure both out but the intra constellation communication will be limited to customers like ships where it's required or for people willing to pay for the speed since there's some speculation it could be useful for HFT in places that microwave antenna routes can't be laid easily.
    - KiwiJohnno 5y ago
      Inter-satellite switching (user laser links) is already happening with the sats in polar orbits. The sats in polar orbits need this, because there is no base stations on the ground within range - They need to route the signal through several satellites to a base station. Elon Musk has said all satellites will eventually use laser interlinks, but they just don't have this ready yet (and the current generation of satellites probably doesn't have the hardware either) More info here: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/spacex-adds-laser-links-to-starlink-satellites-to-serve-earths-polar-areas/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/space...

hnlmorg 5y ago

Starlink doesn't support roaming between ground stations. Plus if you look at the oceans you can see there aren't any ground stations there anyways. So you wouldn't get internet out in the oceans even with Starlink. At least not in its current phase -- future releases, maybe? The reason there are satelites over the oceans is simply because they're not at a geo-stationary orbit. ie their orbit is faster than the rotation of the earth.

bagels 5y ago
To be fair, some early pr and articles talked about satellite to satellite hops across oceans, even.though this is not a current capability.
- KiwiJohnno 5y ago
  current starlink satelites in polar orbit do have satellite to satellite routing capability, via laser comm links. More info here: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/spacex-adds-laser-links-to-starlink-satellites-to-serve-earths-polar-areas/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/space...
  - bagels 5y ago
    There are only a few in polar orbits, from what I've seen.
rtkwe 5y ago
> Starlink doesn't support roaming between ground stations That's mostly a beta problem and Starlink is saying they plan to allow roaming eventually. From what I've seen it sounds like right now they only look for your dish in whatever cell it's registered to and don't do any discovery of dishes, it's all preprogrammed.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  They also say they will do satellite-to-satellite switching. Let's see if they actually do it. SpaceX's real innovation is that their base stations are cheap and can go anywhere you can legitimately get a fiber drop. I doubt the inter-satellite switching will _ever_ happen.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    Roaming base stations seems simpler than the intra constellation communication at least. It seems like it's largely a problem of doing the discovery on the fly where the multihop communication requires some pretty dynamic routing and complex laser pointing and decoding. I imagine they'll figure both out but the intra constellation communication will be limited to customers like ships where it's required or for people willing to pay for the speed since there's some speculation it could be useful for HFT in places that microwave antenna routes can't be laid easily.
  - KiwiJohnno 5y ago
    Inter-satellite switching (user laser links) is already happening with the sats in polar orbits. The sats in polar orbits need this, because there is no base stations on the ground within range - They need to route the signal through several satellites to a base station. Elon Musk has said all satellites will eventually use laser interlinks, but they just don't have this ready yet (and the current generation of satellites probably doesn't have the hardware either) More info here: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/spacex-adds-laser-links-to-starlink-satellites-to-serve-earths-polar-areas/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/01/space...