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This is not a surprising next step, it gives me several thoughts; 1) Starlink usurps nation-state controls, period. Whether it is enabling service when the loc

This is not a surprising next step, it gives me several thoughts; 1) Starlink usurps nation-state controls, period. Whether it is enabling service when the local government doesn't want it, or denying service to an ally the US is trying to assist. My hunch is that if Elon keeps pushing it this direction it will be nationalized in order to bring it under government control. 2) The radio aspects are straight forward. As others have mentioned the satellites are just 340 miles away which is about 150 miles closer to earth than Iridium satellites. People have had Iridium satphones from even in the last century :-). Data bandwidth is better with Starlink and satellite to satellite links look like they will work. 3) Starlink is very difficult to jam (ask the Russians). The reason is that the comms are up/down versus side to side so jamming horizontally (typical) has no effect. That said, there are mixed reports of "ddos" jamming which is to say putting a bunch of ground terminals together to suck down bandwidth. As SpaceX retains the capacity to disable individual ground terminals at will this can be manually managed so it is a stop gap effort at best. Serious jamming efforts will probably be devised (a phased array antenna with a decent microwave power amplifier could probably "blind" all of the satellites in 'view') but that will take a while to happen. 4) Phone providers (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Etc.) who are still paying off huge debt for the billions they paid for cellular spectrum in various regions will mount a political attack on the effort. I expect submarine campaigns suggesting that Starlink "defrauded" the FCC with its original spectrum licensing requests etc. Random prediction here is that SpaceX ends up making some big payout to spectrum holders to offset the "lost value" of their spectrum investment. 5) And finally, it isn't particularly useful if you are inside. And very much not useful in tunnels/subways etc. We might see a reversion to an old cell concept where the antenna is on your car and your car is your own personal cell tower for your phone. Would not be surprised at that. Also existing cell providers have supported relays in subterranean spaces for a while and I would not be surprised to see SpaceX join them in doing that.

s3p 3y ago
Really interesting points. About this one: > Phone providers (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Etc.) who are still paying off huge debt for the billions they paid for cellular spectrum in various regions will mount a political attack on the effort. I expect submarine campaigns suggesting that Starlink defrauded the FCC with its original spectrum licensing requests etc. Didn't TMobile work with Starlink on a product that covers the entire US? How would they be against this?
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  Yes, T-mobile was part of their announcement. The only similar situation I can relate it to from my personal experience were the co-operation with Google and Facebook by Newspapers to get engagement only to have the newspapers feel like they had been duped and turning on their former partners. As the player's get squeezed it is going to get ugly, it always does.
orangepurple 3y ago
If a communication technology is banned by a country and you circumvent the ban you better be prepared to deal with the consequences. If you don't believe me, fly to India with a satellite phone and turn it on after you land.
- plumeria 3y ago
  Please finish the story, what would happen?
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  It's a fair point. My impression is that people who are willfully circumventing communication infrastructure restrictions put in place by the government understand there are risks. Even things like circumventing the firewall in China for example. The geopolitical risk is that someone can circumvent and the government will typically go after the company that provides that capability (or the country where that company is headquartered).
  - variadix 3y ago
    It is much easier to locate someone (physically) transmitting RF signals illegally than someone using a VPN illegally.
- jancsika 3y ago
  > fly to India with a satellite phone and turn it on after you land. I'm going to rankly speculate you don't know what happens, because if you did it would have been to juicy too withhold. Or, if I'm wrong-- what in the world are you doing refraining from just saying what happens? Give us the link! I can Google and see they are banned, but I guarantee nearly nobody reading this knows what would actually happen by just turning one on when on Indian soil.
  - gpm 3y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but google tells me that some British oil executive was arrested for this a year ago https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/25/india-british-oil-exec-jailed-for-carrying-satellite-phone-at-yoga-retreat-17630034/ https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/25/india-british-oil-exec-jailed...
haspok 3y ago
> The radio aspects are straight forward. (...) People have had Iridium satphones from even in the last century Sorry, but this whole thing is about your regular mobile phone transmitting a signal to a satellite, which was NOT designed to do that. To call this "straightforward" sounds a bit of an oversimplification to me.
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  Disclosure here, I know a lot about radio, less about the implementation in current mobile handsets. Mobile handset signals reach space. There are satellites in orbit that, amongst other things, look for them. It is just one of the ways an agency with space assets can use them to surveil places. Mobile handsets are programmed with a certain expectation about how cell towers will present themselves to the phone (I know this from working with early Android builds inside Google). They make choices about which tower to use on a moment by moment basis. They also have code that tries to keep them from "annoying" cell towers when people forget to switch them off on planes. Basically heuristics around how often cell towers are showing up, what is their signal level, how is it changing over time, what's my GPS altitude and velocity, etc. My understanding from an engineer who worked at Qualcomm with T-mobile on their Starlink demonstration[1] (the modem stuff mostly) was that primarily the changes were around cell tower policy not around changes in the signal. (yes, the radio was updated to tune to Starlink's uplink/downlink frequencies as a possible cell tower). His summary was the effort was zero hardware changes, just updates to the software on the phone modem/radio and the Starlink hardware in space. If there are HW changes that will make it work better, I expect we will see phones marketed as "satellite ready!" in the future. Apple has already started doing some of that with the iPhone. [1] I met this guy at a swap meet selling test equipment so I could not swear to his bonafides but he certainly understood the radio concepts.
  - haspok 3y ago
    Thank you, very insightful.
Tuna-Fish 3y ago
4) No they won't, because having this available is actually good for them. The bandwidth you can get from satellite to a handset with a tiny antenna is puny. Everyone is going to want to have a proper data plan instead. But having this as fallback means that you can get some baseline service anywhere (outdoors). And this will actually be amazing for the existing operators, because many of them have service availability requirements for emergency operation, and they have to spend a lot of money maintaining cell towers with no users in remote locations. Starlink as a backstop means they can tear those down.
- drekipus 3y ago
  Companies will only want something if they can profit from it, governments: if they can control it
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
schiffern 3y ago
> My hunch is that if Elon keeps pushing it this direction it will be nationalized in order to bring it under government control. Absurdity. Governments have plenty of ways to bring companies under control short of nationalization. "Nationalize SpaceX" is a fantasy engineered in a clickbait lab to exploit the Rocket Man Bad hype.
- thih9 3y ago
  The fact something is fantasy today doesn’t mean it won’t happen - as recent years have shown. Elon is actively working against his own PR. Fantasies like this one are one of the consequences.
  - thejackgoode 3y ago
    this and capability to launch ICBMs that return the launchers!
    - ChuckMcM 3y ago
      I sometimes speculate on what some weapon designer has up on their whiteboard using an F9 booster as a weapons platform. What is the range of a Tomahawk launched at 80,000' and Mach 3? Or a cluster of 9? Kind of scary when you think about it.
      - meepmorp 3y ago
        Tomahawks have air breathing turbojets that wouldn't function at 80k feet nor at speeds much above 5-600 mph. They're also not stealthy - they're designed to fly low to evade detection, and have conventional warheads. IMO, SpaceX rockets don't really have,any advantage for delivery of ordinance vs existing systems, and using them for attacks in anything less than a full on world war just makes every civilian launch into a potential flashpoint for war.
- ternaus 3y ago
  Yes, there are many tools to get company under control, but US Government is not shy about doing forcing the change of control for the sake of national interests. Example: > The U.S. government has requested that Max Polyakov, a wealthy Ukrainian tech entrepreneur, sell his stake in the rocket company Firefly Aerospace Inc., citing national security concerns. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-29/firefly-owner-max-polyakov-to-sell-stake-in-rocket-startup?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-29/firefly-o... Book: "How Heavens Went On Sale" by Ashlee Vans talks in details about the raise of commercial space in recent years and ways government deals with the corresponding issues.
546754543 3y ago
Nation-states usurp control from citizens. You got it very wrong.
wmf 3y ago
1) Starlink has only "gone rogue" in Iran; they're following local laws in all other countries. I assume Elon really really does not want to get nationalized and he should be smart enough to know who he can't mess with.
546754543 3y ago
[flagged]
panick21_ 3y ago
> or denying service to an ally the US is trying to assist Its amazing that Musk and SpaceX delivered Starlink to Ukraine in record time and for unbeatable price while taking loses. And despite that still get shit on for 'denying' things to Ukraine. What an unbelievable spin has been achieved here, its almost Trumpian. > My hunch is that if Elon keeps pushing it this direction it will be nationalized in order to bring it under government control. If Elon keeps providing amazing service to US allies? This being nationalized would be basically a total reverse of US policy that it currently has. Their policy is literally to relay on MORE private suppliers. And they are also doing some of their own in addition.

s3p 3y ago

Really interesting points. About this one: > Phone providers (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Etc.) who are still paying off huge debt for the billions they paid for cellular spectrum in various regions will mount a political attack on the effort. I expect submarine campaigns suggesting that Starlink defrauded the FCC with its original spectrum licensing requests etc. Didn't TMobile work with Starlink on a product that covers the entire US? How would they be against this?

ChuckMcM 3y ago
Yes, T-mobile was part of their announcement. The only similar situation I can relate it to from my personal experience were the co-operation with Google and Facebook by Newspapers to get engagement only to have the newspapers feel like they had been duped and turning on their former partners. As the player's get squeezed it is going to get ugly, it always does.

orangepurple 3y ago

If a communication technology is banned by a country and you circumvent the ban you better be prepared to deal with the consequences. If you don't believe me, fly to India with a satellite phone and turn it on after you land.

plumeria 3y ago
Please finish the story, what would happen?
ChuckMcM 3y ago
It's a fair point. My impression is that people who are willfully circumventing communication infrastructure restrictions put in place by the government understand there are risks. Even things like circumventing the firewall in China for example. The geopolitical risk is that someone can circumvent and the government will typically go after the company that provides that capability (or the country where that company is headquartered).
- variadix 3y ago
  It is much easier to locate someone (physically) transmitting RF signals illegally than someone using a VPN illegally.
jancsika 3y ago
> fly to India with a satellite phone and turn it on after you land. I'm going to rankly speculate you don't know what happens, because if you did it would have been to juicy too withhold. Or, if I'm wrong-- what in the world are you doing refraining from just saying what happens? Give us the link! I can Google and see they are banned, but I guarantee nearly nobody reading this knows what would actually happen by just turning one on when on Indian soil.
- gpm 3y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but google tells me that some British oil executive was arrested for this a year ago https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/25/india-british-oil-exec-jailed-for-carrying-satellite-phone-at-yoga-retreat-17630034/ https://metro.co.uk/2022/10/25/india-british-oil-exec-jailed...

haspok 3y ago

> The radio aspects are straight forward. (...) People have had Iridium satphones from even in the last century Sorry, but this whole thing is about your regular mobile phone transmitting a signal to a satellite, which was NOT designed to do that. To call this "straightforward" sounds a bit of an oversimplification to me.

ChuckMcM 3y ago
Disclosure here, I know a lot about radio, less about the implementation in current mobile handsets. Mobile handset signals reach space. There are satellites in orbit that, amongst other things, look for them. It is just one of the ways an agency with space assets can use them to surveil places. Mobile handsets are programmed with a certain expectation about how cell towers will present themselves to the phone (I know this from working with early Android builds inside Google). They make choices about which tower to use on a moment by moment basis. They also have code that tries to keep them from "annoying" cell towers when people forget to switch them off on planes. Basically heuristics around how often cell towers are showing up, what is their signal level, how is it changing over time, what's my GPS altitude and velocity, etc. My understanding from an engineer who worked at Qualcomm with T-mobile on their Starlink demonstration[1] (the modem stuff mostly) was that primarily the changes were around cell tower policy not around changes in the signal. (yes, the radio was updated to tune to Starlink's uplink/downlink frequencies as a possible cell tower). His summary was the effort was zero hardware changes, just updates to the software on the phone modem/radio and the Starlink hardware in space. If there are HW changes that will make it work better, I expect we will see phones marketed as "satellite ready!" in the future. Apple has already started doing some of that with the iPhone. [1] I met this guy at a swap meet selling test equipment so I could not swear to his bonafides but he certainly understood the radio concepts.
- haspok 3y ago
  Thank you, very insightful.

Tuna-Fish 3y ago

4) No they won't, because having this available is actually good for them. The bandwidth you can get from satellite to a handset with a tiny antenna is puny. Everyone is going to want to have a proper data plan instead. But having this as fallback means that you can get some baseline service anywhere (outdoors). And this will actually be amazing for the existing operators, because many of them have service availability requirements for emergency operation, and they have to spend a lot of money maintaining cell towers with no users in remote locations. Starlink as a backstop means they can tear those down.

drekipus 3y ago
Companies will only want something if they can profit from it, governments: if they can control it
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

schiffern 3y ago

> My hunch is that if Elon keeps pushing it this direction it will be nationalized in order to bring it under government control. Absurdity. Governments have plenty of ways to bring companies under control short of nationalization. "Nationalize SpaceX" is a fantasy engineered in a clickbait lab to exploit the Rocket Man Bad hype.

thih9 3y ago
The fact something is fantasy today doesn’t mean it won’t happen - as recent years have shown. Elon is actively working against his own PR. Fantasies like this one are one of the consequences.
- thejackgoode 3y ago
  this and capability to launch ICBMs that return the launchers!
  - ChuckMcM 3y ago
    I sometimes speculate on what some weapon designer has up on their whiteboard using an F9 booster as a weapons platform. What is the range of a Tomahawk launched at 80,000' and Mach 3? Or a cluster of 9? Kind of scary when you think about it.
    - meepmorp 3y ago
      Tomahawks have air breathing turbojets that wouldn't function at 80k feet nor at speeds much above 5-600 mph. They're also not stealthy - they're designed to fly low to evade detection, and have conventional warheads. IMO, SpaceX rockets don't really have,any advantage for delivery of ordinance vs existing systems, and using them for attacks in anything less than a full on world war just makes every civilian launch into a potential flashpoint for war.
ternaus 3y ago
Yes, there are many tools to get company under control, but US Government is not shy about doing forcing the change of control for the sake of national interests. Example: > The U.S. government has requested that Max Polyakov, a wealthy Ukrainian tech entrepreneur, sell his stake in the rocket company Firefly Aerospace Inc., citing national security concerns. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-29/firefly-owner-max-polyakov-to-sell-stake-in-rocket-startup?embedded-checkout=true https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-29/firefly-o... Book: "How Heavens Went On Sale" by Ashlee Vans talks in details about the raise of commercial space in recent years and ways government deals with the corresponding issues.

546754543 3y ago

Nation-states usurp control from citizens. You got it very wrong.

wmf 3y ago

1) Starlink has only "gone rogue" in Iran; they're following local laws in all other countries. I assume Elon really really does not want to get nationalized and he should be smart enough to know who he can't mess with.

546754543 3y ago

[flagged]

panick21_ 3y ago

> or denying service to an ally the US is trying to assist Its amazing that Musk and SpaceX delivered Starlink to Ukraine in record time and for unbeatable price while taking loses. And despite that still get shit on for 'denying' things to Ukraine. What an unbelievable spin has been achieved here, its almost Trumpian. > My hunch is that if Elon keeps pushing it this direction it will be nationalized in order to bring it under government control. If Elon keeps providing amazing service to US allies? This being nationalized would be basically a total reverse of US policy that it currently has. Their policy is literally to relay on MORE private suppliers. And they are also doing some of their own in addition.