8 ms·

SpaceX is going to be printing money with Starlink.

by hop 4y ago

adtac 4y ago
And consumer internet isn't even Starlink's endgame
- geoffeg 4y ago
  I'm aware that they expect one of their customers to be stock market companies where lower latency is highly important. Are you referring to that or something else?
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    I’m very ignorant about HFT, but https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/ says “latency as low as 20ms in most locations”. Isn’t that many many orders of magnitude too much for HFT?
    - paranoidrobot 4y ago
      High-Frequency Trading / Arbitrage between distant markets was what I'd read. i.e starlink can get much lower latency between say London and NY than terrestrial links.
      - HWR_14 4y ago
        As I understand it, HFT justified digging new tunnels between NYC and Chicago to take advantage of the shorter distance the signal would have to go. And that was transmitting at or near the speed of light. Somehow, I doubt bouncing on a roundtrip to a satellite is worth it.
        wolrah 4y ago
        > And that was transmitting at or near the speed of light. Somehow, I doubt bouncing on a roundtrip to a satellite is worth it. That's the thing, the speed of light in fiber is actually significantly slower than the speed of light through air, which itself is slightly slower than the speed of light through a vacuum. Over long enough distances this adds up to the point that high frequency traders already have built radio relay networks between New York and Chicago. You can't easily build radio towers across oceans, but a satellite relay network that could follow a nearly line-of-sight path is almost the same thing. Also fiber isn't run as the crow flies, sometimes it has to take a winding path which adds even more distance to the run than you might think, on top of the reduced speed of light. If Starlink manages to get their satellite to satellite laser link tech working, which is a MASSIVE if, they're in a very good place.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        fragmede 4y ago
        Based on what math? Tokyo and New-York are 10,848.68 km apart, terrestrially (though cables don't go as the crow flies), but LEO is only 2,000km off the surface. If Starlink can get connect Tokyo to New York in fewer than 3 hops, and thus over shorter distance, then you can bet that HFT firms will be falling over themselves to sign up.
        manquer 4y ago
        It is even better than that as Starlink shells start at 550km orbit . ( It doesn’t matter as the boost from not using glass as medium for light makes it no contest anyway)
        paranoidrobot 4y ago
        Mark Handley[1] has done a number of videos running the numbers based on published Starlink numbers, both with and without the inter-satellite laser links. It's been a while since I watched them, but I recall that even without laser links, they can beat any of the terrestrial links over a certain distance - because the terrestrial links can't get direct-LOS. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-k1j7M2-hBfXeECd9YAQ_g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-k1j7M2-hBfXeECd9YAQ_g
        manquer 4y ago
        The speed of light in fibre (I.e. glass) is substantially slower speed of light than near vacuum . So yes bouncing up a few hundred km is faster for medium and long range connections . It will not be faster than fibre for Manhattan to Princeton , but it would be faster for London - New York or London-Frankfurt
    - wmf 4y ago
      He's referring to highly speculative theories like https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062262/ https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062262/
    - fubbyy 4y ago
      I think it’s more like cross-world latency. Where going from one side of the world to the other will be slower going via fibre optic vs through space as with starlink? I think this is reliant on the satellite-satellite latency being low and the ground to satellite being not insanely high.
  - csteubs 4y ago
    I'd venture a guess they could mean using Starlink as the backbone for off-planet comms? I've heard that referenced a few times. The true end game is probably all of the above and more. If the need fits the bill and the pockets are deep enough, it'll probably be using Starlink.
  - kjksf 4y ago
    The "stock market companies" is a fantasy promoted by random people, not SpaceX. What SpaceX shared is that they plan to be "fiber cable" except via space. They'll carry a backbone traffic e.g. between Australia and U.S. via laser links. Companies that currently pay for undersea fiber cable to carry traffic will pay Starlink for the same service. Also, a backhaul for 5G operators (see https://www.telecompetitor.com/starlink-update-musk-sees-mobile-backhaul-future-and-cpe-equip-costs-cut-in-half/ https://www.telecompetitor.com/starlink-update-musk-sees-mob..., https://www.zdnet.com/article/japanese-telco-kddi-to-use-spacex-starlink-for-mobile-backhaul/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/japanese-telco-kddi-to-use-spa...). Also airlines.
    - morepork 4y ago
      High frequency traders would look into this, but I don't think it would be a big revenue stream for SpaceX. I used to work for a company doing microwave backhaul and they liked us as the speed of light through air is faster than fiber, and they could get more direct links. It was important enough that we had special low latency builds of our firmware with some features removed.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    HFT already uses HF radio bands between the UK and USA which is lower latency than either submarine fiber or starlink will be. Although much more limited in kbps. Big ass yagi uda antennas in certain locations with totally custom rf chains and modems.
    - lxgr 4y ago
      Fascinating! I've heard about microwave relay towers used for HFT through an amazing series of blog posts [1], but HF is news to me. Do you have any sources/further reading? I'd be curious what type of licensing that operates under etc. Edit: Turns out there's an article on it on the very same blog [2]! [1] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-part-i/ https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-ba... [2] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part-i-the-west-chicago-tower-mystery/ https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-tr...
      - walrus01 4y ago
        Experimental licenses so far or straight up illegal, they're making much more money than any FCC fines would be. The FCC enforcement bureau is actually pretty small and doesn't come after you until you really screw up someone else's pre existing licensed service. All FCC fines are public info (called a notice of apparent liability and published in their daily data dumps), I've yet to hear of one getting fined.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    Eventually, with satellite to satellite laser links, and full global coverage with this efficient number of highly inclined orbit satellites, they intend to capture the entire market that is right now addressed by various very expensive motorized tracking geostationary dishes mounted on offshore vessels, plus L/S band inmarsat, iridium, and others. Offshore oil and gas, cargo ships, Cruise ships, coastal vessels, medium-distance ferries such as in Greece, business jets, airliners, portable military applications, data links to offshore scientific applications for buoys and weather, all sorts of stuff.
    - texasbigdata 4y ago
      I understand that’s a lot of use cases, but is it a lot of REVENUE? Verizon and AT&T built multi billion of dollars a year of sales from cookie cutter DSL (simplistically). All these crazy edge cases…are they material? Does it make sense to shoot thousands of satellites in space for ferry boats in Greece? Financially that is. That being said it’s really cool what a “catch all” solution we’re getting as a humanity for basically free. This feels like Google Maps / Gmail / WhatsApp where all humans get like value for free (especially in the developing world) due to one company creating a massive positive externality due to their business strategy. So cool.
      - walrus01 4y ago
        Go look at the combined revenue in billions per year from all the geostationary satellite owning companies like Inmarsat, thuraya, Intelsat, ses, eutelsat, arabsat, amos, etc. Most are publicly traded ompanies. LEO properly implemented will beat the pants off it in performance and speed.
aaomidi 4y ago
Are they though? It's really not that expensive to manage 4G towers vs sending up thousands of small sats.
- kjksf 4y ago
  > It's really not that expensive to manage 4G towers vs sending up thousands of small sats. Is it, though? Can you share the pricing details of managing 4G towers vs. Starlink's small sats. And yes, I fully expect that you have no idea what either of those costs.
  - pengaru 4y ago
    This strikes me as a rather odd comparison to make. 4G serves an entire nation of cell phones, using generally similar wireless technology and limitations LEO satellite comms have. 4G towers are closer to the users than LEO satellites, meaning the power requirements are lower, this is a desirable thing for the people in terms of both battery life and radiation power levels. 5G takes it even further in this direction using more towers; shorter distances and lower power levels, AIUI. Unless I'm utterly mistaken, LEO satellites are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to competing with the cell network for handheld mobile customers. Satellite connectivity has its place, and it's basically where you won't have cell service, since that's obviously the preferable option if it's available.
- ehsankia 4y ago
  It's an expensive upfront cost, but once the full constellation is up, they'll have basically full world coverage, and anywhere that's not a big city charges big money for internet. See how much internet in rural Canada costs.
  - dntrkv 4y ago
    Except their network is extremely limited in capacity. 4G/5G is a much better solution for 99.9% of use-cases. Starlink is better for the extremely rural locations where installing a tower just isn't feasible. I have a pretty rural property and there are areas nearby that get 5G UW with speeds in excess of 1Gbps. Most of the area is covered by 4G with download speeds of over 40Mbps. 5G is already replacing wired home internet for many people. Give it a few more years to expand coverage and I bet 5G will make Starlink obsolete for most of its US users.
ge96 4y ago
Imagine your data gets cached on a Starlink satellite and it dies... then future people find the satellite and see your info.
- shaklee3 4y ago
  there is no cache. it's an analog repeater.
- xur17 4y ago
  What??
- p1mrx 4y ago
  Dead Starlink satellites burn up in the atmosphere within a decade... and why are you sending your data unencrypted over the internet?
  - ge96 4y ago
    Ahh yeah, have this archaeology fantasy like my data lives on in space somewhere but yeah forgot about the LEO atmosphere drag bit.
    - p1mrx 4y ago
      You'd have better luck with a GEO satellite like HughesNet, but I'd be surprised if any of them cache user data in nonvolatile storage.
      - ge96 4y ago
        Yeah I wonder if there will be a service like "send your data into space" which sounds equally stupid (use radio waves) but yeah... just longevity woes (sculpt a rock and burry it). Some of my code is in the arctic vault though a piece of crap Todo List.
- martyvis 4y ago
  Imagine your data gets on a server in the cloud and it dies (gets replicated/replaced/decommissioned ...) What's special about satellites (and how much caching are they gonna do) and why are you worried about data you have chosen to send in the clear over a network you don't own?
rtpg 4y ago
This video[0] seems to disagree with this. In particular it seems like there's a lot of recurring costs involved and this infrastructure is not super stable (the video talks about satelites having a shelf life of 5 years. We're not rebuilding fiber out every 5 years!) The videos "has an agenda" but it seems a bit easy to accept the idea that constantly launching satelites into space is pretty expensive. Infrastructure on the ground is expensive, but most people tend to not move around so at one point just building out lots of wires everywhere can work pretty well. Having great coverage across the globe is great! But especially after seeing that (super crappy!) satelite internet providers getting the same shit done with 3 satelites.... you're looking at the intersection of people needing access to fast internet who can't somehow take advantage of existing infra, _and_ who won't eventually get covered by ground infra (and I guess don't have trees around their house). [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg
- darknavi 4y ago
  I think their commercial business will be plentiful as well.
  - kcb 4y ago
    Military too.
- frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  Not to mention that (someone can fill in the accurate numbers) some rather significant number of satellites are expected to be lost every year due to various factors at a rate that will require several rocket launches just for maintenance of the current state. My understanding when I was reading about that, is that it did not even consider the "shelf life" issue.
  - rtpg 4y ago
    It's possible that "shelf life" is shorthand for that. I watched the video a while back but only skimmed it to remember the details.
kirykl 4y ago
At least right now starlink is really more of a long tail capture
vkou 4y ago
What happens if someone decides to flex their ASW in a demonstration of capability, and accidentally triggers a Kessler syndrome situation?
- maccam94 4y ago
  Starlink orbits are far too low for kessler syndrome. Atmospheric drag would clear them out in <10 years, probably much less. In fact, Starlink satellites are far too numerous for anti-satellite weapons to be effective (at least, until countries decide it's worthwhile to start mass producing orbital-class rockets to attack enemy satellite constellations, which would almost certainly lead to a loss of their own satellites as well). Russia would love to be able to take out Starlink right now, but they can't.
- walrus01 4y ago
  Nobody has enough asw weapons, and probably can't afford to build enough, quickly enough individual asw missiles, to take out even 15% of starlink. They launched four batches of 53 satellites each just in May and the month hasn't ended yet. Additionally the US and NATO would see an act like that as barely one step below declaring nuclear war.
  - vkou 4y ago
    People with ASW don't want to use them against Starlink, they want to use them against spy satellites. Starlink would just be collateral damage. If anyone in NATO considers blowing up satellites to be one step below killing hundreds of millions of people, I want that person fired. Because they have completely lost touch with reality, and should not be allowed anywhere near a weapon, or a job where they manage people with weapons.
    - thinkcontext 4y ago
      Ukraine is using Starlink to control drones and Russia has tried jamming the service. Given that its not outlandish to contemplate Russia escalating. They might destroy one and say they'll do worse unless Ukraine is kicked off. The reason taking out spy satellites is taken so seriously is it is considered a likely prelude to an attack.
thinkcontext 4y ago
Musk has said there's a risk of bankruptcy if both Starlink 2 and Starship don't work. > The consequences for SpaceX if we can’t get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1 by itself is financially weak, whereas V2 is strong. I very much hope they both do work but let's be clear there's still a lot of risk to get through before that's clear. https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/30/22809720/elon-musk-spacex-raptor-engine-crisis-bankruptcy-starship https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/30/22809720/elon-musk-space...

SpaceX is going to be printing money with Starlink.

by hop 4y ago

SpaceX is going to be printing money with Starlink.

adtac 4y ago

And consumer internet isn't even Starlink's endgame

geoffeg 4y ago
I'm aware that they expect one of their customers to be stock market companies where lower latency is highly important. Are you referring to that or something else?
- codetrotter 4y ago
  I’m very ignorant about HFT, but https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/ says “latency as low as 20ms in most locations”. Isn’t that many many orders of magnitude too much for HFT?
  - paranoidrobot 4y ago
    High-Frequency Trading / Arbitrage between distant markets was what I'd read. i.e starlink can get much lower latency between say London and NY than terrestrial links.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      As I understand it, HFT justified digging new tunnels between NYC and Chicago to take advantage of the shorter distance the signal would have to go. And that was transmitting at or near the speed of light. Somehow, I doubt bouncing on a roundtrip to a satellite is worth it.
      - wolrah 4y ago
        > And that was transmitting at or near the speed of light. Somehow, I doubt bouncing on a roundtrip to a satellite is worth it. That's the thing, the speed of light in fiber is actually significantly slower than the speed of light through air, which itself is slightly slower than the speed of light through a vacuum. Over long enough distances this adds up to the point that high frequency traders already have built radio relay networks between New York and Chicago. You can't easily build radio towers across oceans, but a satellite relay network that could follow a nearly line-of-sight path is almost the same thing. Also fiber isn't run as the crow flies, sometimes it has to take a winding path which adds even more distance to the run than you might think, on top of the reduced speed of light. If Starlink manages to get their satellite to satellite laser link tech working, which is a MASSIVE if, they're in a very good place.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - fragmede 4y ago
        Based on what math? Tokyo and New-York are 10,848.68 km apart, terrestrially (though cables don't go as the crow flies), but LEO is only 2,000km off the surface. If Starlink can get connect Tokyo to New York in fewer than 3 hops, and thus over shorter distance, then you can bet that HFT firms will be falling over themselves to sign up.
        manquer 4y ago
        It is even better than that as Starlink shells start at 550km orbit . ( It doesn’t matter as the boost from not using glass as medium for light makes it no contest anyway)
      - paranoidrobot 4y ago
        Mark Handley[1] has done a number of videos running the numbers based on published Starlink numbers, both with and without the inter-satellite laser links. It's been a while since I watched them, but I recall that even without laser links, they can beat any of the terrestrial links over a certain distance - because the terrestrial links can't get direct-LOS. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-k1j7M2-hBfXeECd9YAQ_g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-k1j7M2-hBfXeECd9YAQ_g
      - manquer 4y ago
        The speed of light in fibre (I.e. glass) is substantially slower speed of light than near vacuum . So yes bouncing up a few hundred km is faster for medium and long range connections . It will not be faster than fibre for Manhattan to Princeton , but it would be faster for London - New York or London-Frankfurt
  - wmf 4y ago
    He's referring to highly speculative theories like https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062262/ https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062262/
  - fubbyy 4y ago
    I think it’s more like cross-world latency. Where going from one side of the world to the other will be slower going via fibre optic vs through space as with starlink? I think this is reliant on the satellite-satellite latency being low and the ground to satellite being not insanely high.
- csteubs 4y ago
  I'd venture a guess they could mean using Starlink as the backbone for off-planet comms? I've heard that referenced a few times. The true end game is probably all of the above and more. If the need fits the bill and the pockets are deep enough, it'll probably be using Starlink.
- kjksf 4y ago
  The "stock market companies" is a fantasy promoted by random people, not SpaceX. What SpaceX shared is that they plan to be "fiber cable" except via space. They'll carry a backbone traffic e.g. between Australia and U.S. via laser links. Companies that currently pay for undersea fiber cable to carry traffic will pay Starlink for the same service. Also, a backhaul for 5G operators (see https://www.telecompetitor.com/starlink-update-musk-sees-mobile-backhaul-future-and-cpe-equip-costs-cut-in-half/ https://www.telecompetitor.com/starlink-update-musk-sees-mob..., https://www.zdnet.com/article/japanese-telco-kddi-to-use-spacex-starlink-for-mobile-backhaul/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/japanese-telco-kddi-to-use-spa...). Also airlines.
  - morepork 4y ago
    High frequency traders would look into this, but I don't think it would be a big revenue stream for SpaceX. I used to work for a company doing microwave backhaul and they liked us as the speed of light through air is faster than fiber, and they could get more direct links. It was important enough that we had special low latency builds of our firmware with some features removed.
- walrus01 4y ago
  HFT already uses HF radio bands between the UK and USA which is lower latency than either submarine fiber or starlink will be. Although much more limited in kbps. Big ass yagi uda antennas in certain locations with totally custom rf chains and modems.
  - lxgr 4y ago
    Fascinating! I've heard about microwave relay towers used for HFT through an amazing series of blog posts [1], but HF is news to me. Do you have any sources/further reading? I'd be curious what type of licensing that operates under etc. Edit: Turns out there's an article on it on the very same blog [2]! [1] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-backyard-part-i/ https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/hft-in-my-ba... [2] https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-trading-part-i-the-west-chicago-tower-mystery/ https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/shortwave-tr...
    - walrus01 4y ago
      Experimental licenses so far or straight up illegal, they're making much more money than any FCC fines would be. The FCC enforcement bureau is actually pretty small and doesn't come after you until you really screw up someone else's pre existing licensed service. All FCC fines are public info (called a notice of apparent liability and published in their daily data dumps), I've yet to hear of one getting fined.
- walrus01 4y ago
  Eventually, with satellite to satellite laser links, and full global coverage with this efficient number of highly inclined orbit satellites, they intend to capture the entire market that is right now addressed by various very expensive motorized tracking geostationary dishes mounted on offshore vessels, plus L/S band inmarsat, iridium, and others. Offshore oil and gas, cargo ships, Cruise ships, coastal vessels, medium-distance ferries such as in Greece, business jets, airliners, portable military applications, data links to offshore scientific applications for buoys and weather, all sorts of stuff.
  - texasbigdata 4y ago
    I understand that’s a lot of use cases, but is it a lot of REVENUE? Verizon and AT&T built multi billion of dollars a year of sales from cookie cutter DSL (simplistically). All these crazy edge cases…are they material? Does it make sense to shoot thousands of satellites in space for ferry boats in Greece? Financially that is. That being said it’s really cool what a “catch all” solution we’re getting as a humanity for basically free. This feels like Google Maps / Gmail / WhatsApp where all humans get like value for free (especially in the developing world) due to one company creating a massive positive externality due to their business strategy. So cool.
    - walrus01 4y ago
      Go look at the combined revenue in billions per year from all the geostationary satellite owning companies like Inmarsat, thuraya, Intelsat, ses, eutelsat, arabsat, amos, etc. Most are publicly traded ompanies. LEO properly implemented will beat the pants off it in performance and speed.

aaomidi 4y ago

Are they though? It's really not that expensive to manage 4G towers vs sending up thousands of small sats.

kjksf 4y ago
> It's really not that expensive to manage 4G towers vs sending up thousands of small sats. Is it, though? Can you share the pricing details of managing 4G towers vs. Starlink's small sats. And yes, I fully expect that you have no idea what either of those costs.
- pengaru 4y ago
  This strikes me as a rather odd comparison to make. 4G serves an entire nation of cell phones, using generally similar wireless technology and limitations LEO satellite comms have. 4G towers are closer to the users than LEO satellites, meaning the power requirements are lower, this is a desirable thing for the people in terms of both battery life and radiation power levels. 5G takes it even further in this direction using more towers; shorter distances and lower power levels, AIUI. Unless I'm utterly mistaken, LEO satellites are at a severe disadvantage when it comes to competing with the cell network for handheld mobile customers. Satellite connectivity has its place, and it's basically where you won't have cell service, since that's obviously the preferable option if it's available.
ehsankia 4y ago
It's an expensive upfront cost, but once the full constellation is up, they'll have basically full world coverage, and anywhere that's not a big city charges big money for internet. See how much internet in rural Canada costs.
- dntrkv 4y ago
  Except their network is extremely limited in capacity. 4G/5G is a much better solution for 99.9% of use-cases. Starlink is better for the extremely rural locations where installing a tower just isn't feasible. I have a pretty rural property and there are areas nearby that get 5G UW with speeds in excess of 1Gbps. Most of the area is covered by 4G with download speeds of over 40Mbps. 5G is already replacing wired home internet for many people. Give it a few more years to expand coverage and I bet 5G will make Starlink obsolete for most of its US users.

ge96 4y ago

Imagine your data gets cached on a Starlink satellite and it dies... then future people find the satellite and see your info.

shaklee3 4y ago
there is no cache. it's an analog repeater.
xur17 4y ago
What??
p1mrx 4y ago
Dead Starlink satellites burn up in the atmosphere within a decade... and why are you sending your data unencrypted over the internet?
- ge96 4y ago
  Ahh yeah, have this archaeology fantasy like my data lives on in space somewhere but yeah forgot about the LEO atmosphere drag bit.
  - p1mrx 4y ago
    You'd have better luck with a GEO satellite like HughesNet, but I'd be surprised if any of them cache user data in nonvolatile storage.
    - ge96 4y ago
      Yeah I wonder if there will be a service like "send your data into space" which sounds equally stupid (use radio waves) but yeah... just longevity woes (sculpt a rock and burry it). Some of my code is in the arctic vault though a piece of crap Todo List.
martyvis 4y ago
Imagine your data gets on a server in the cloud and it dies (gets replicated/replaced/decommissioned ...) What's special about satellites (and how much caching are they gonna do) and why are you worried about data you have chosen to send in the clear over a network you don't own?

rtpg 4y ago

This video[0] seems to disagree with this. In particular it seems like there's a lot of recurring costs involved and this infrastructure is not super stable (the video talks about satelites having a shelf life of 5 years. We're not rebuilding fiber out every 5 years!) The videos "has an agenda" but it seems a bit easy to accept the idea that constantly launching satelites into space is pretty expensive. Infrastructure on the ground is expensive, but most people tend to not move around so at one point just building out lots of wires everywhere can work pretty well. Having great coverage across the globe is great! But especially after seeing that (super crappy!) satelite internet providers getting the same shit done with 3 satelites.... you're looking at the intersection of people needing access to fast internet who can't somehow take advantage of existing infra, _and_ who won't eventually get covered by ground infra (and I guess don't have trees around their house). [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vuMzGhc1cg

darknavi 4y ago
I think their commercial business will be plentiful as well.
- kcb 4y ago
  Military too.
frankfrankfrank 4y ago
Not to mention that (someone can fill in the accurate numbers) some rather significant number of satellites are expected to be lost every year due to various factors at a rate that will require several rocket launches just for maintenance of the current state. My understanding when I was reading about that, is that it did not even consider the "shelf life" issue.
- rtpg 4y ago
  It's possible that "shelf life" is shorthand for that. I watched the video a while back but only skimmed it to remember the details.

kirykl 4y ago

At least right now starlink is really more of a long tail capture

vkou 4y ago

What happens if someone decides to flex their ASW in a demonstration of capability, and accidentally triggers a Kessler syndrome situation?

maccam94 4y ago
Starlink orbits are far too low for kessler syndrome. Atmospheric drag would clear them out in <10 years, probably much less. In fact, Starlink satellites are far too numerous for anti-satellite weapons to be effective (at least, until countries decide it's worthwhile to start mass producing orbital-class rockets to attack enemy satellite constellations, which would almost certainly lead to a loss of their own satellites as well). Russia would love to be able to take out Starlink right now, but they can't.
walrus01 4y ago
Nobody has enough asw weapons, and probably can't afford to build enough, quickly enough individual asw missiles, to take out even 15% of starlink. They launched four batches of 53 satellites each just in May and the month hasn't ended yet. Additionally the US and NATO would see an act like that as barely one step below declaring nuclear war.
- vkou 4y ago
  People with ASW don't want to use them against Starlink, they want to use them against spy satellites. Starlink would just be collateral damage. If anyone in NATO considers blowing up satellites to be one step below killing hundreds of millions of people, I want that person fired. Because they have completely lost touch with reality, and should not be allowed anywhere near a weapon, or a job where they manage people with weapons.
  - thinkcontext 4y ago
    Ukraine is using Starlink to control drones and Russia has tried jamming the service. Given that its not outlandish to contemplate Russia escalating. They might destroy one and say they'll do worse unless Ukraine is kicked off. The reason taking out spy satellites is taken so seriously is it is considered a likely prelude to an attack.

thinkcontext 4y ago

Musk has said there's a risk of bankruptcy if both Starlink 2 and Starship don't work. > The consequences for SpaceX if we can’t get enough reliable Raptors made is that we then can’t fly Starship, which means we then can’t fly Starlink Satellite V2 (Falcon has neither the volume nor the mass to orbit needed for satellite V2). Satellite V1 by itself is financially weak, whereas V2 is strong. I very much hope they both do work but let's be clear there's still a lot of risk to get through before that's clear. https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/30/22809720/elon-musk-spacex-raptor-engine-crisis-bankruptcy-starship https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/30/22809720/elon-musk-space...