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> That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite links then? Or maybe they'll have stationary ships with "ground"-stations until the inter-satellite

> That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite links then? Or maybe they'll have stationary ships with "ground"-stations until the inter-satellite thing is working.

dreamcompiler 4y ago
That wouldn't solve the problem. Those ships would still need a backhaul.
- sathackr 4y ago
  If they stationed them near the edge of current coverage, the ship could be the inter-satellite link until the actual inter-satellite links are working.
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    That would only buy you one increment of offshore range gain; it wouldn't cover the whole ocean unless you had a huge network of ships and used multiple up/down hops. And at that point the overall latency would suck so bad your customers might be better off with GEO.
    - paranoidrobot 4y ago
      It would depend on how fast the internal relay latency is on the ground terminals. Geostationary satellites are up at around 35,000 km. Starlink is about 500-600km - you can get a whole lot of hops between Starlink satellites and terminals before you're looking at the same distance. There's talk that they might be able to use either existing terminals, or a special set of terminals to do this, without the need to deploy them in fixed locations. They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too. There's enough of those around to provide a massive network of potential relays. But they are deploying inter-satellite laser links on newer launches, so those will come on and provide more coverage too.
      - dylan604 4y ago
        >They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too. Would an airplane using Starlink be more easily tracked in an emergency to avoid MH370 type of mystery?
        paranoidrobot 4y ago
        No idea. They may not track/keep that information, but there's no reason they couldn't.
        cjrp 4y ago
        Inmarsat (satelite phone provider) actually helped reduce the search radius based on their contact with MH370.
        mschuster91 4y ago
        > Would an airplane using Starlink be more easily tracked in an emergency to avoid MH370 type of mystery? The thing that makes Starlink so appealing to airliners is that they can now do real-time telemetry of virtually every sensor on the plane without going bankrupt from the satellite data cost - not just for disaster recovery, but also for regular maintenance. Think of some random but unimportant component failing and the airline can dispatch a spare part and a repair crew to wait for the plane and do the maintenance right when it lands.
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  The idea is that the ships go up to another starlink and then down to a base station.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    You could have all the maritime subscribers participate in a sort of mesh network, pingponging packets toward the nearest on-shore hub.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
walrus01 4y ago
highly unlikely, the per day cost of operating a medium sized ship in an offshore environment with actual human staffing, fuel, maintenance, purchase or lease cost of the ship itself is extreme. the one thing any satellite operator absolutely does not want is absurd ongoing monthly recurring costs to run their earth stations.
- sneak 4y ago
  They are charging $5k USD per month per customer for this per TFA. Depending on demand (and 350Mbps downlink can generate a lot of demand) that may still be feasible.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    Cargoships have operation costs in the 10s to 100s of thousands per h. Sure you could bring that down for what's required here, but you'd still sink a lot of money into these ships. How many maritime subscribers would there be?
    - walrus01 4y ago
      $5k USD a month is significantly less than the monthly cost for any usable bandwidth allocation to a current tech ku band geostationary maritime vsat terminal, such as for the smallest "expedition" cruise ships, nevermind a big one.
dghughes 4y ago
Starlink should rent space on oil rigs at least those areas could have a "ground station" in a way. Oil rigs don't have physical undersea comm lines to land. But it can be a repeater since more power available on a rig.

> That might mean that they plan to enable inter-satellite links then? Or maybe they'll have stationary ships with "ground"-stations until the inter-satellite thing is working.

dreamcompiler 4y ago

That wouldn't solve the problem. Those ships would still need a backhaul.

sathackr 4y ago
If they stationed them near the edge of current coverage, the ship could be the inter-satellite link until the actual inter-satellite links are working.
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  That would only buy you one increment of offshore range gain; it wouldn't cover the whole ocean unless you had a huge network of ships and used multiple up/down hops. And at that point the overall latency would suck so bad your customers might be better off with GEO.
  - paranoidrobot 4y ago
    It would depend on how fast the internal relay latency is on the ground terminals. Geostationary satellites are up at around 35,000 km. Starlink is about 500-600km - you can get a whole lot of hops between Starlink satellites and terminals before you're looking at the same distance. There's talk that they might be able to use either existing terminals, or a special set of terminals to do this, without the need to deploy them in fixed locations. They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too. There's enough of those around to provide a massive network of potential relays. But they are deploying inter-satellite laser links on newer launches, so those will come on and provide more coverage too.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      >They're already in talks (trials, too I think) with Airlines to equip their aircraft with terminals. I'm sure commercial shipping companies would be interested too. Would an airplane using Starlink be more easily tracked in an emergency to avoid MH370 type of mystery?
      - paranoidrobot 4y ago
        No idea. They may not track/keep that information, but there's no reason they couldn't.
      - cjrp 4y ago
        Inmarsat (satelite phone provider) actually helped reduce the search radius based on their contact with MH370.
      - mschuster91 4y ago
        > Would an airplane using Starlink be more easily tracked in an emergency to avoid MH370 type of mystery? The thing that makes Starlink so appealing to airliners is that they can now do real-time telemetry of virtually every sensor on the plane without going bankrupt from the satellite data cost - not just for disaster recovery, but also for regular maintenance. Think of some random but unimportant component failing and the airline can dispatch a spare part and a repair crew to wait for the plane and do the maintenance right when it lands.
thepasswordis 4y ago
The idea is that the ships go up to another starlink and then down to a base station.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  You could have all the maritime subscribers participate in a sort of mesh network, pingponging packets toward the nearest on-shore hub.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

walrus01 4y ago

highly unlikely, the per day cost of operating a medium sized ship in an offshore environment with actual human staffing, fuel, maintenance, purchase or lease cost of the ship itself is extreme. the one thing any satellite operator absolutely does not want is absurd ongoing monthly recurring costs to run their earth stations.

sneak 4y ago
They are charging $5k USD per month per customer for this per TFA. Depending on demand (and 350Mbps downlink can generate a lot of demand) that may still be feasible.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Cargoships have operation costs in the 10s to 100s of thousands per h. Sure you could bring that down for what's required here, but you'd still sink a lot of money into these ships. How many maritime subscribers would there be?
  - walrus01 4y ago
    $5k USD a month is significantly less than the monthly cost for any usable bandwidth allocation to a current tech ku band geostationary maritime vsat terminal, such as for the smallest "expedition" cruise ships, nevermind a big one.

dghughes 4y ago

Starlink should rent space on oil rigs at least those areas could have a "ground station" in a way. Oil rigs don't have physical undersea comm lines to land. But it can be a repeater since more power available on a rig.