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The competition will get even stronger when SpaceX's Starship launches the next generation of Starlink satellites. More satellites with more capacity per satell
by modeless 2y ago
The competition will get even stronger when SpaceX's Starship launches the next generation of Starlink satellites. More satellites with more capacity per satellite and at lower altitudes could make Starlink a viable competitor even in some urban areas with crappy ISPs.
Also I hope Amazon succeeds with their Kuiper constellation. Imagine two competing global satellite ISPs!
- scotty79 2y agoYou mean Starship 2, right? Because Starship top capacity demonstrated was 1 banana. That's why Elon already started hyping how awesome Starship 2 is gonna be. Because it becomes obvious for everybody that Starship will perform below even most modest past predictions.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoStarship 1's LEO capacity has been stated to be 50 tons to LEO. Which is significantly below the goal of 100-150 tons, but absolutely massive compared to anything else. Starship 2 flies next week, so it's moot.
- scotty79 2y ago> Starship 1's LEO capacity has been stated to be 50 tons [...] absolutely massive compared to anything else. I don't really know much about rockets. Do I read here correctly tha Falvon Heavy has 63,800 kg payload to LEO capacity? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy > Starship 2 flies next week, so it's moot. So I guess the OP really meant Starship 2.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoFalcon Heavy can nominally do 64 tons to LEO, but it's volume constrained. It's really hard to fit more than 15-20 tons worth of useful cargo in the fairing. What the extra thrust is useful for is pushing 15 tons to beyond Earth orbit.
- zizee 2y agoYour dislike of Musk is clouding your judgement. They're not using semantic versioning. SpaceX hasn't even finished a production ready starship, they are still very much in the R&D stage. Just because the latest iteration is know as V2, doesn't mean much. The fact they haven't achieved the extremely ambitious goals doesn't reflect poorly on the engineering going into Starship, or that "V1" has failed to hit the goals.
- scotty79 2y agoWhy does every subsequent prediction of anticipated Starship capacity gets lower and lower over the years? You could draw a graph and bet if they manage to finalize the product before payload to orbit reaches zero.
- mmmlinux 2y agoYeah, Twice the space junk!
- gruez 2y agosuch constellations are in LEO, which means their orbits decay in years, not centuries. The satellites associated with "space junk" are in higher orbits like geostationary.
- varjag 2y agoGeostationary satellites are way too far and few in between to meaningfully present a problem. The majority of dangerous (in Kessler syndrome sense) junk is on higher LEO and eccentric orbits.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoCorrect. Most non-Starlink constellations LEO are going up around 800 - 1200 km altitudes. Those orbits have century to millenium level deorbit times and pose significant Kessler risk.
- ZFleck 2y agoI actually struggle to think of something "less-junk" than potentially providing tens of millions with cheap(er) access to the Internet. Who otherwise would be exploited for it. Or plain just wouldn't have it. Seems like one of the best-possible uses for orbit IMO. Plus (and I'm no expert), I believe that since these satellites specifically require a rather low orbit, they're by-design quick to de-orbit in the case of disaster or destruction.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoLess junk? Weather satellites, climate monitoring satellites. But also I don't think the internet has been a net-positive thing.
- 2y ago