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Having worked in two way satellite for many years it is always very amusing to see the HN crowd who've never implemented remote terminals in physical reality...

Having worked in two way satellite for many years it is always very amusing to see the HN crowd who've never implemented remote terminals in physical reality... They should definitely go price some Inmarsat I-4 or I-5 based BGAN services or gyro stabilized maritime C/Ku/Ka band VSAT terminals before thinking this is expensive. You can easily spend $130,000 on a fairly basic geostationary VSAT terminal for something like a small cruise ship or large yacht. Also lots of amusing comments from people who've never been 100% dependent for months or years at a time on 1:1 SCPC or oversusbcribed, contended geostationary based access at latency anywhere from 492ms to 1250ms and $ per Mbps cost of $2000 per dedicated Mbps as a floor figure.

xoa 4y ago
Thanks so much for your comments over the years on this, I've read a lot of them with great interest and to my edification since I'm not remotely as deep in the field as you are. It's a little frustrating though to see comments just rushing to compare it to their cable modem or something, like even if one has zero knowledge surely there'd be some intellectual curiosity over the cool and difficult problems one would have to solve to get packets to the middle of an ocean and back? If going to geostationary like ViaSat that's ~36000km out, that's a long ways for a wireless signal! The conditions are fairly intense, ships travel all over the place through massive storms and temperature differences and very heavy seas, saltwater is massively corrosive. Wondering about that would lead someone to a bit of basic searching and in turn to pricing, platform stabilization etc. Or wondering how Starlink can possibly track LEO sats, just 500km away but moving at something like 17000 miles per hour, and then learning about electronically steerable phased arrays. The terminals themselves already represent a really cool achievement in bringing something like that down to consumer prices. Heck, I'd love to see that brought elsewhere, it'd be a treat for terrestrial 11-60 GHz PtP/PtMP links even if they could just perfectly aim themselves and correct with near zero technician requirements, merely roughly pointing it in the right direction, for $500. Doing intersat optical links is also amazing, everything about the system really helps to reinforce other aspects, it's a heck of a vision executed well. "[A]imed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd" really? :(. And Starlink is an amazing experience, it's been life changing for a few clients even just in rural New England. The only "high speed" improvement they'd gotten over 20 years was the offer of a 10 Mbps connection for $300/month. People dump on even regular Starlink pricing anyway. Having to live constantly on dial up or regular MEO/HEO satellite then moving to Starlink is eye opening already and gave me at least a tiny taste of what it might be like for people on ships or platforms way out there (I've done multiweek zero connected expeditions too but that's not doing "regular business" or work it's a different mental space). And at least in this case it's possible to drive an hour and then have a solid net connection somewhere, so like for big software downloads one could work around it a little. No such luck at sea.
robswc 4y ago
Hey, at least you're not in econ/finance ;) Absolutely everyone can (and does) have an opinion on how to run the entire economy. At least you guys can say a bunch of stuff specific stuff and 99% of everyone will have to take you at your word and pretty much shuts up, lol. I totally get it though, has to be frustrating. I was really shocked at the price but when its put into perspective _if_ it works it's clearly going to be a significant improvement.
shaklee3 4y ago
as mentioned previously, I worked on exactly this for 15 years, and I also don't understand how people with knowledge of the industry believe SpaceX is going to be profitable on starlink without some course correction. nobody is debating that a under-provisioned service can be great during the honeymoon phase. but this won't last. they're strapped for cash and these enterprise plays are purely to keep afloat while the consumer business is burning cash
- grecy 4y ago
  Their launch costs are orders of magnitude lower than anything their competitors are paying, so it stands to reason their service costs can be a lot lower too. It also sounds like they're mass producing the Starlink sats for a fraction the price of "regular space".
  - shaklee3 4y ago
    they are not an order of magnitude lower. when you make comments like that you're not trying to have a serious dialogue.
    - grecy 4y ago
      How much are spaceX paying for a launch? How much does Immarsat of Iridium pay for a launch?
      - shaklee3 4y ago
        SpaceX sells a launch to customers for $50-70M. they make an estimated 10-30% profit, depending on your source and whether the rocket is reused. that is nowhere near an order of magnitude.
        grecy 4y ago
        Are SpaceX selling launches to Immarsat and Iridium? Who are they buying launches from? How much are they paying for those launches?

xoa 4y ago

Thanks so much for your comments over the years on this, I've read a lot of them with great interest and to my edification since I'm not remotely as deep in the field as you are. It's a little frustrating though to see comments just rushing to compare it to their cable modem or something, like even if one has zero knowledge surely there'd be some intellectual curiosity over the cool and difficult problems one would have to solve to get packets to the middle of an ocean and back? If going to geostationary like ViaSat that's ~36000km out, that's a long ways for a wireless signal! The conditions are fairly intense, ships travel all over the place through massive storms and temperature differences and very heavy seas, saltwater is massively corrosive. Wondering about that would lead someone to a bit of basic searching and in turn to pricing, platform stabilization etc. Or wondering how Starlink can possibly track LEO sats, just 500km away but moving at something like 17000 miles per hour, and then learning about electronically steerable phased arrays. The terminals themselves already represent a really cool achievement in bringing something like that down to consumer prices. Heck, I'd love to see that brought elsewhere, it'd be a treat for terrestrial 11-60 GHz PtP/PtMP links even if they could just perfectly aim themselves and correct with near zero technician requirements, merely roughly pointing it in the right direction, for $500. Doing intersat optical links is also amazing, everything about the system really helps to reinforce other aspects, it's a heck of a vision executed well. "[A]imed at the champagne caviar, St Barts crowd" really? :(. And Starlink is an amazing experience, it's been life changing for a few clients even just in rural New England. The only "high speed" improvement they'd gotten over 20 years was the offer of a 10 Mbps connection for $300/month. People dump on even regular Starlink pricing anyway. Having to live constantly on dial up or regular MEO/HEO satellite then moving to Starlink is eye opening already and gave me at least a tiny taste of what it might be like for people on ships or platforms way out there (I've done multiweek zero connected expeditions too but that's not doing "regular business" or work it's a different mental space). And at least in this case it's possible to drive an hour and then have a solid net connection somewhere, so like for big software downloads one could work around it a little. No such luck at sea.

robswc 4y ago

Hey, at least you're not in econ/finance ;) Absolutely everyone can (and does) have an opinion on how to run the entire economy. At least you guys can say a bunch of stuff specific stuff and 99% of everyone will have to take you at your word and pretty much shuts up, lol. I totally get it though, has to be frustrating. I was really shocked at the price but when its put into perspective _if_ it works it's clearly going to be a significant improvement.

shaklee3 4y ago

as mentioned previously, I worked on exactly this for 15 years, and I also don't understand how people with knowledge of the industry believe SpaceX is going to be profitable on starlink without some course correction. nobody is debating that a under-provisioned service can be great during the honeymoon phase. but this won't last. they're strapped for cash and these enterprise plays are purely to keep afloat while the consumer business is burning cash

grecy 4y ago
Their launch costs are orders of magnitude lower than anything their competitors are paying, so it stands to reason their service costs can be a lot lower too. It also sounds like they're mass producing the Starlink sats for a fraction the price of "regular space".
- shaklee3 4y ago
  they are not an order of magnitude lower. when you make comments like that you're not trying to have a serious dialogue.
  - grecy 4y ago
    How much are spaceX paying for a launch? How much does Immarsat of Iridium pay for a launch?
    - shaklee3 4y ago
      SpaceX sells a launch to customers for $50-70M. they make an estimated 10-30% profit, depending on your source and whether the rocket is reused. that is nowhere near an order of magnitude.
      - grecy 4y ago
        Are SpaceX selling launches to Immarsat and Iridium? Who are they buying launches from? How much are they paying for those launches?