
Starlink Is a Big Deal - sneak
https://sneak.berlin/20200129/starlink/
======
modeless
Just going to plug my Starlink tracker here:
[https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink](https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink)

It tells you when to go outside and look up to see the satellites as they pass
over your house. It's a cool sight to see because there are up to 60 of them
crossing the sky at the same time in a line.

~~~
sprash
Oh that's great. Now I can better aim my Elon-Sattelite-fryer device.

I already collected 25 old microwave ovens which I plan to operate as phased
array to produce a collimated beam of microwaves directed at the satellites to
fry their electronics. I might have a better chance If know the exact
frequency their receivers are tuned to. Does anybody know more?

The reckless littering of our precious LEO must end here!

~~~
zaroth
The FCC would like a word.

Damn those billionaires and their... global high speed satellite internet
access, right?

~~~
Consultant32452
I work remotely and would love to live in a rural area but I'm largely
tethered to suburbia for the internet speeds. I can't express how excited I am
at the possibilities coming from satellite internet.

------
Barrin92
> _" Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but
> previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red
> to green on the map once Starlink goes live."_

this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a
single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly
is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming you
offer everyone a 100MB/s connection, that's... one city? And that doesn't
account for transmission between the satellites or satellites not in range and
so on, and the fact that those satellites are short-lived and need to be
replaced.

How is this supposed to be economical or scale compared to regular terrestrial
networks?

And one point on the social impact. We have heard this idea that you just need
to 'connect people' over the internet to somehow give every disadvantaged
place economic opportunity for decades now. This isn't how the real world
works. Everyone still runs to California/their national equivalent You can
count the areas where the VC money goes on one hand. Putting a satellite in
the sky over Siberia isn't going to upend the social realities of geography.

~~~
fragmede
There are scant details about what the launched product will look like in
practice, but keep in mind that urban and suburban areas are spoiled by high-
speed 4G LTE and wired gigabit. The vast majority of the US, by land area, has
to chose from dial-up and very expensive pre-Starlink satelite Internet
service. Even 1 Mbit is a _huge_ improvement over 56 kbps.

I'm haven't looked into the economics of running fiber _everywhere_ , as
compared to launching an extensive constellation of satellites but I will note
that SpaceX has the competitive advantage of having at-cost access to reusable
rockets, compared to an outside party paying SpaceX market rates for transit
to space.

~~~
swiley
The pre-starlink stuff isn’t _just_ expensive. It’s slow, has crazy high
latency, and low transfer caps (the biggest you can get for geosynchronous
might be 20GB a month no matter how much you want to pay.)

Really anything is better than what’s currently available in the rural US.
Having grown up there I’m kind of mad that we give so much spectrum to cell
companies who block people from setting up terrestrial radio networks in
places like this.

~~~
shaklee3
That's completely false. Several providers have over 100GB/mo plans.

~~~
baq
Latency is completely true. Can’t be otherwise because speed of light is a
thing.

~~~
shaklee3
The latency part is true, but the cap is not:

[https://www.satelliteinternet.com/resources/unlimited-
satell...](https://www.satelliteinternet.com/resources/unlimited-satellite-
internet/)

We can argue about whether latency matters for most people, but it's not going
to go anywhere.

~~~
DangitBobby
Whew $150/mo for 100 GB of data

~~~
alasdair_
That actually doesn’t seem that bad, especially for the middle of nowhere.

------
apatters
Is the optimism about being able to bypass censorship really valid? SpaceX may
be resistant to the censorship demands of _some_ governments, but a lot of
other things need to happen to get someone online.

To begin with you need to acquire Starlink's receiver, which probably makes it
inaccessible to North Koreans for example, and difficult to acquire for
citizens of any country that has efficient import controls.

Then you have to use it without being detected. I have no idea whether that is
easy or hard -- can you put the receiver in a covert location? Can the
government drive a van around your neighborhood and detect signals going to
and from the receiver, or triangulate it in some other way?

If it bypasses existing censorship infrastructure in a given country and
Starlink refuses to comply with censorship, you can guarantee that country
_will_ make it illegal, and in some cases introduce some scary penalties for
using it (i.e. prison).

~~~
tachyonbeam
So, I think you're mostly right, but not for these reasons. People have been
sneaking forbidden things past borders for a long time. Think of the drug
trade. Every country has a chemical drug trade it seems, even countries where
the penalty is death such as Thailand. Then you also have to think that
countries like China... Will be the countries making those Starlink receivers,
so Chinese people looking to bypass the firewall may not have to get the
equipment around any borders. They might be able to pick them up at the back
of the factory, or when they "fall off a truck".

I also think it might be somewhat difficult to detect and track receivers
down. You need specialized equipment to triangulate receivers, multiple
vehicles. AFAIK Starling satellites use phased array antennas, which, if I
understand correctly, might mean that they can sort of direct a beam towards
you, and your dish will be pointed at the sky, not wasting power directing
waves in every direction. That makes triangulation significantly harder than
it would be for a cellphone.

That being said, Elon Musk can't just enable Starlink everywhere. China has
enormous political leverage and a powerful military, and Tesla just finished
building a new factory there. He can't just give them the middle finger. The
official policy will be to either comply with the Chinese filtering rules, or
not offer Starlink in China. Still, if Elon does care about censorship, maybe
he will leave some kind of backdoor... Maybe it will be surprisingly easy to
"crack" your Starlink receiver and set it to a fake country code, and suddenly
have access to unfiltered US-region internet from anywhere (think mod chips).
Then, China and other countries may not care enough to crack down. People
routinely bypass the Chinese firewall using VPNs, and as far as I know,
they're not going to prison for it. Hopefully it remains that way.

~~~
esjeon
> You need specialized equipment to triangulate receivers, multiple vehicles

It's not "specialized", more like just dedicated, because those devices are
pretty simple to create. Also, mathematically, one "running" vehicle is
enough, but two is minimum for the sake of precision and efficiency.

> AFAIK Starling satellites use phased array antennas,

Phased arrays do leak signals all over the place ("side lobe"). If transmit
power is high enough, this can be detected miles away. Say, during military
exercise, activating phased-array based FCR randomly rings RWRs of nearby jets
(if the signal is not whitelisted beforehand).

> maybe he will leave some kind of backdoor... Maybe it will be surprisingly
> easy to "crack" your Starlink receiver and set it to a fake country code,
> and suddenly have access to unfiltered US-region internet from anywhere

I don't get where people get this kind of blind optimism. The reality is that
traffic control can be imposed based on physical location of satellite. Plus,
VPN is cheap and works just okay, except occasional take downs. This new
internet won't cause any kind of paradigm shift that some people desperately
try to push.

~~~
tachyonbeam
> Phased arrays do leak signals all over the place ("side lobe")

I would expect the intensity of those signals to be constantly varying, given
that multiple satellites are moving in the sky on different orbital planes.
I'm also assuming that said "side lobes" are not equal in intensity in every
direction. That has to be significantly more difficult to triangulate than a
cellphone or an AM radio emitter. In other words, you would need trained crews
specifically trying to locate Starlink users.

> The reality is that traffic control can be imposed based on physical
> location of satellite.

Satellites don't have enough fuel to constantly dodge specific countries.
We're talking about low earth orbit satellites, that's one orbit every _1.6
hour_. You could adjust your orbital planes to optimize coverage for some
countries and not others, but once the whole Starlink fleet is up there, you
will still have coverage basically everywhere.

> This new internet won't cause any kind of paradigm shift that some people
> desperately try to push.

Probably not, but it will be one more means of global communication, with more
coverage than anything we've seen before.

~~~
esjeon
> I would expect the intensity of those signals to be constantly varying

The problem is mostly with the frequency band, because it's regulated (or
should I say pre-allocated for certain purposes). It's just too easy to notice
if someone is using satellite communication, how many and where.

> Satellites don't have enough fuel to constantly dodge specific countries

I'm not saying they should avoid certain countries. It's just about network
policies - routing and filtering - which happen on software level.

> Probably not, but it will be one more means of global communication, with
> more coverage than anything we've seen before.

True. This is a progress. What I'm saying is that this is just one step, not a
leap by itself.

I just can't stand people's indistinction b/w progress and paradigm shift,
because it's the major source of hype. You know, it takes so many steps for
technology to become magic, so why can't we just sit tight and watch, instead
of going full frenzy every time something happens. I mean, that's how I see
all those futurology stuffs.

------
Havoc
>access to the global network, intelligent and resourceful people located
virtually anywhere can operate on substantially similar footing to anyone else

Great article, but this part is just false.

Africa is blanketed with internet access already - often way ahead of 1st
world (I recall reading an article about Seattle getting LTE-A and
thinking...wait...got that a year ago). It doesn't quite create the magic the
author implies. A bit like writing code doesn't mean you can create the next
big app. A lot of ingredients go into it

~~~
djannzjkzxn
Do you have any data on the true prevalence of cell data coverage in Africa? A
coverage map would be cool, but an estimate of the % of people who live in a
covered location would also be useful.

~~~
martinald
To take a random example I'm familiar with Uganda has 97%+ LTE-A population
coverage, which is as good if not significantly better than the US.

External bandwidth costs are also coming down massively as loads of new
submarine fiber cables are connecting africa.

However, even a basic smartphone will cost 400%+ of many people's monthly
income. Penetration of feature phones is high though as they are so cheap.

Starlink imo will not be transformational for these places. It will be
extremely useful for somewhat niche cases like rural broadband in the US,
cruise ships and planes. It won't work well in cities or even suburban areas
(20gigabit per sat is only 2,000HD video streams - which a small city of 100k
will completely swamp).

~~~
denni9th
Uganda is much smaller than the USA, and more densely populated. Country-wide
LTE makes a lot more economic sense there, especially when you consider that
mobile internet is the primary way of connecting to the Internet in Africa.

------
rsync
"HFT firms will be the first customers, seeking a few-millisecond reduction in
the transmission of realtime data between markets. Starlink has already said
as much, and I think they rely on this as their first and primary source of
revenue."

I am not sure this is a good prediction ... the shaving of milliseconds that
has been pursued by HFT firms (and other such actors) has progressed to the
point where they are measuring cable lengths _inside the datacenter_.

Even at a greatly reduced orbit, I can't believe that bouncing up and down via
satellite as part of your link could be any part of a time-arbitrage recipe in
2020 and beyond ...

~~~
twic
> I am not sure this is a good prediction ... the shaving of milliseconds that
> has been pursued by HFT firms (and other such actors) has progressed to the
> point where they are measuring cable lengths inside the datacenter.

You're conflating optimisation of latency within a colo - how quickly can you
send an order in response to seeing an event on that exchange - with latency
between colos - how quickly can you send an order in response to seeing an
event on _another_ exchange.

Within a colo, latency is measured in microseconds and fractions of a
microsecond. Between colos, it's milliseconds. Some random source here has
4.13 ms for New York - Chicago:

[https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/final-
frontie...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/final-
frontier-500-microseconds-between-wall-street-and-chicago/)

At the moment, to play that game, you need to build a microwave network.
Someone needs to build towers in a line between your two exchanges - buy the
land, get planning permission, placate the locals, build the tower, install
microwave antennas, hope the weather is okay. That's expensive!

With Starlink, there will be a reasonably direct path between any two points
on earth - on demand! The path will be longer than a dedicated microwave
chain, although some of it will be in vacuum, which will save some time, but
_it will cost the end user no money and no time to build_. If you come up with
a trade idea that needs a low-latency path from Moscow to Stockholm, you can
send a request to the Starlink API and just get one in moments. You can be up
and running with your trade months or years before a tower-building competitor
even joins the game.

~~~
rtkwe
The thing is people have already built most of those microwave tower paths
here on earth and in addition SpaceX probably isn't going to set it up as a
mesh where intra-Starlink traffic stays goes directly. And even if they do you
have to go up then across (probably in a zig zag) then back down which will
always be higher latency than the point to point microwave distance.

~~~
desdiv
>people have already built most of those microwave tower paths here on earth

I can assure you that lucrative paths like New York-London and New York-Tokyo
have not been built yet. In fact, the vast majority of lucrative trading paths
have not been built yet due to geographical restrictions. Yes, fiber optic
links exist, but those only go up to 0.7c.

To a trading firm, the choice between a satellite link that does ~0.9c and a
fiber optic link that does <0.7c is obvious.

~~~
rtkwe
That all depends on Starlink supporting point to point inside their network.
Also that path will be more zig-zaggy than the great circle fiber path and
importantly will vary during the day as the satellite tracks shift relative to
earth. [0]

[0] Unless their in a harmonic orbit I guess not 100% sure abou that one.
There should always be some jitter in the connection time just from the
satellites moving even if their ground tracks are very stable.

------
mch82
To me the article misses the bigger deal: SpaceX launched 60 satellites in a
single launch & ~250 in ~8 months! Under 9000 satellites have ever been
launched in 756 months, since 1957. That’s a launch rate increase from
12/month to over 31/month.

~~~
stillwater56
As someone with very little background (but a lot of interest) in space tech,
could you share a little about what results that growth in launch rate will
have?

~~~
nexuist
Not OP but basic economics dictates that high demand = high supply (i.e. low
prices). The entry barrier to launching a satellite is lower today than it
ever has been before. Civilian entities from private companies to high school
clubs have successfully launched cubesats from SpaceX rockets.

We will basically see what happened to computing happen to space. Remember the
mainframes of the 70s that cost millions and only governments and megacorps
could afford? Remember how those gave way to the personal computer, the
laptop, and eventually the smartphone and tablet?

Now, it's pretty unlikely that every citizen in the country will get their own
cubesat, but what is more likely is that if you are a normal private citizen
who has an idea predicated on having a satellite overhead (think: localized
aerial surveys, more accurate GPS, real time weather updates), you will be
able to put together the capital needed to get that satellite launched.

Personally I'm excited to see the rise of satellite "cloud" services, like
AWS, in which one satellite can use its sensors and cameras to serve hundreds
of thousands of customers at once. How cool would it be to spend $20/mo to
host a global satellite based chat service for you and your friends?

------
allears
I have heard wildly differing estimates of the potential bandwidth Starlink
will offer to individual consumers, at what prices, and how
efficient/effective their mesh networking and ground station strategy will be.
I'm taking a wait and see attitude, but it would be very cool if they actually
came up with a telecom killer.

~~~
pwthornton
I don't think the purpose is to battle fiber and copper being laid on the
ground. There are a lot of places where that is too expensive too do or the
situation is not politically stable enough to do so.

Land-based solutions are going to be cheaper and faster for many situations
and people, but this gives us another tool to expand connectivity.

------
chrispeel
I'm not convinced that Starlink will provide access to the "half of the human
beings (who) are not online yet." Of course that would be good, yet my guess
is that Starlink will target people in developed nations who are in rural
areas, or people who want low latency.

Maybe Starlink could serve people w/o internet if a whole village buys a
subscription, or if a cell provider uses Starlink as backhaul for voice? Still
seems expensive for the third world that the author is talking about.

~~~
pkolaczk
Unless you mean a village with just two houses, typical villages are covered
by cellular networks just fine. Starlink looks like a system for people in
deserts or people in third world where LTE doesn't exist. Not sure if this is
big enough market.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The US DoD has paid SpaceX to proof of concept having hundreds of Mb/s of low
latency connectivity in fighter aircraft. Lucrative market based on historical
DoD satellite communications contracts.

~~~
dzhiurgis
It's gonna be great for their drones too. Perhaps for whole EVTOL market.

------
gitgud
> _Billions of people, blocked from accessing the Internet due to lack of
> infrastructure or local greed or fraud related to same, are presently kept
> from participating in the global knowledge economy. Starlink will remedy
> this, to some extent._

Isn't covering the world in a blanket of satellites from a single company the
epitome of a global Monopoly?

I'm worried about such a future controlled by SpaceX...

~~~
retrac
There are multiple competitors with similar plans on the drawing board
already. And unlike with geosynchronous orbit, there's no practical limit to
the number of satellites in very low-earth-orbit.

If Starlink is profitable, I would fully expect multiple competing networks
before long.

~~~
dzhiurgis
Competitors won't achieve until there's competition for SpaceX launch service.
Bezo seems to be most ahead, but also super far from offering commercial
launches.

------
pmontra
> SpaceX will be pressured by the governments in the jurisdictions where their
> staff reside (where their physical threats of enforcement can be carried
> out) to selectively censor/blackout or otherwise wiretap use of the system,

It's easier than that.

To provide a low latency service satellites can't just forward the signal to
other satellites and beam it down to a base station on the other side of the
planet and back. It would take too long.

StarLink needs base stations (on Earth) close to the terminals of their users:
terminal -> satellite -> base station -> internet -> base station -> satellite
-> terminal

So if a country doesn't want its citizens to use StarLink it only has to deny
permissions to build base stations there. Of course that's useless for small
countries with a base station in a nearby country, but it's OK for large
countries. Or they could welcome a base station: it will be connected to the
local internet and be subject to all the usual monitoring and censorship.

A different take to the same issue: probably StarLink has to apply as an ISP
in every country they want to service (take money from people there). This
means a base station there or not.

From [1]

> 2019 April - SpaceX files for 6 base stations for Starlink. Locations: North
> Bend WA, Conrad MT, Merrillan WI, Greenville PA, Redmond WA, Hawthorne CA,
> Brewster WA

> 2020 - Service to be offered across the contiguous United States and Canada

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/wiki/index#wiki_what_kind_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/wiki/index#wiki_what_kind_of_latency_is_expected.3F_isn.27t_satellite_internet_latency_very_high.3F)

~~~
dzhiurgis
On long distances it's faster via Starlink than fiber.

Also, Starlink gonna use p2p, so perhaps your solar roof can make extra $$ by
providing internet for the rest of the planet.

------
pwinnski
I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything
like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems
like a good thing.

Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.

~~~
genzoman
Giving up some of the night sky for the billions of humans that live in rural
areas, or live in countries where the physical internet is controlled by
oppressive governments hellbent on withholding information from its citizens
is worth it. The trillions of dollars it would take to build out
infrastructure (and maintain) in Africa and India is worth it. In fact, even
20 Mbps would be life changing in bringing information to ~10-15% of humans is
worth it.

~~~
TheCraiggers
I'm glad you think it's worth it. I'm not as sure, personally. Especially
since your examples don't hold water with me.

Oppressive governments that don't like the internet aren't going to just allow
the transceivers. They need line of sight to the sky and even if you hide
them, detecting them would be trivial. Super rural areas and 3rd world areas
have their own set of problems. I'm thinking of the OLPC type issues here. I'm
all for spreading knowledge, but these areas have far bigger issues than
internet access.

Personally, I view this as just another bulldozing a place of nature to build
a hospital or something like that. Is that hospital useful? Undoubtedly. Is it
worth having one less place of nature? Debatable.

The only difference is scale. We're talking about the destruction of a place
of nature for the entire world. Over dramatized? I don't think so- there are
many examples of people talking about looking up at the stars in wonderment,
driving them to great things. Maybe that will still happen when there are
thousands of satellites streaming by, but nobody has that foresight.

~~~
Trombone12
Yeah, all that talk about free internet for all the poor and oppressed sounds
pretty suspicious set beside the claims that starlink is supposed to make
money too. How will a rural Guatemalan farmer that cooks on a three stones
fire provide any sort of profit?

~~~
wmf
He'll pay for Starlink using a microloan and pay back the loan using online
gig work or influencing, obviously. :-/

~~~
Trombone12
Another poster pointed out that he will obviously pay it back by investing in
bitcoin!

------
cyounkins
Even in small areas we have CSMA (listen before talk) collisions in 2.4/5G
bands that create high latency variance [1]. You can only have one transmitter
per channel.

With Starlink there will be many ground-based transmitters that can't do CSMA
(because they are directional). How many channels are available could depend
on the dedicated bandwidth, but I have a hard time believing we won't see
significant transmit collision issues.

[1] [https://blog.parsecgaming.com/how-your-wifi-band-impacts-
low...](https://blog.parsecgaming.com/how-your-wifi-band-impacts-low-latency-
connections-9f1e538a63dd)

~~~
wahern
Starlink will use something like OFDM. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-
division_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-
division_multiplexing#Space_diversity)

From the famous IEEE article at
[https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/the-end-of-
spectr...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/the-end-of-spectrum-
scarcity):

> Moreover, interference is not some inherent property of spectrum. It's a
> property of devices. A better receiver will pick up a transmission where an
> earlier one heard only static. Whether a new radio system "interferes" with
> existing ones is entirely dependent on the equipment involved. Consequently,
> the extent to which there appears to be a spectrum shortage largely depends
> not on how many frequencies are available but on the technologies that can
> be deployed. Many regulations intended to promote harmony of the airwaves
> have instead, by putting artificial limits on technology, created massive
> inefficiency in spectrum utilization.

------
pier25
> _For reference, my last flat in Berlin (the capital of the largest economy
> in the EU), on the ground on a main street in the city center, was serviced
> with approximately 14MBps ADSL, and this was the fastest offering available
> from any vendor._

14Mbps in Berlin? How is this possible?

I had 20Mbps in Mexico City almost a decade ago. A family member who lived in
the same building at the time had 100Mbps symmetrical.

~~~
iagovar
Mostly policy. Spain deployed a lot of fiber in the las 10 years that we've
got little towns with multiple symmetric 600mbps offerings. If it can be done
in Spain, it can be done in Germany.

~~~
pimterry
+1 on Spanish internet, there seems to be fast (100Mbps+) internet available
pretty much everywhere.

EU-wide, the official goal ([https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-
market/en/broadband-euro...](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-
market/en/broadband-europe)) is to have 100Mbps available to every EU
household by 2025, with 1Gbps & 5G in all major cities.

------
partiallypro
I am actually pretty excited for it. My parents don't have access to high
speed internet (that is reliable) outside of 4G (which is either very
expensive or has tight data caps,) so finally they might be able to get
themselves Netflix, etc.

------
ogre_codes
What this article didn't mention is the potential for this to significantly
disrupt commercial internet monopolies in regional markets. If service is $45/
month for 100GB, a lot of people will drop Comcast in a hurry.

~~~
shaklee3
It didn't mention it because that's not true. This is targeted for enterprise,
and there are no plans to sell cheap internet at the price the antenna costs.

~~~
ogre_codes
My understanding is that this would become more widely available as it rolls
out, and the article supports this idea as well:

> This is not just a game changer for people like you and I, living in
> relatively populated places _struggling against greedy last-mile
> monopolists_

So I was wrong that it was omitted, the article explicitly makes it clear that
it's going to be a game changer even for people with existing internet.

Also it makes it pretty clear that the service is going to affect individual
users and not just enterprises:

> Starlink means that you can go live in the woods in Siberia if you like

> some automakers will likely build them into the roofs of cars or trucks

~~~
shaklee3
The article uses no factual basis to back it up, though. In order for it to be
competitive against existing internet, it needs to be as cheap. Their current
pizza-box phased array antenna was likely too expensive, so now they have a
motorized hybrid that moves the phased array on top. That will be
significantly more money and less reliable than your existing cable.

There are existing solutions, like o3b to cover underserved areas with high
speed internet. They pivoted to cruise ships because the equipment is too
expensive. If you have a link other than this blog showing otherwise, please
provide it.

------
buboard
Yet people flock to cities en masse and in acceleration. The most technically
educated/capable flock to even fewer cities, even where connectivity is
terrible. Centralization of technology is a reality and what could be more
centralizing than a single-interest entity controlling the global satellite
network. Starlink is surely a big deal, but of limited applicability.

~~~
Jamwinner
Odd, most of the smartest tech people I know fled the cities years ago. The
city is where you go when you arent the brightest, because all the easy jobs
are there.

------
ex3ndr
Comparing speed to ADSL is ridiculous. Slow ground internet is not a
technology issue, it is a political issue.

Even in russia in most major cities everyone (!) have optical (!) fiber
directly (!) in their apartment (!).

If you want you can get 10GB in your average home. In USA in SF in Bernal
Heights i can get RF link with 30mbits at best for ~5x price.

~~~
sneak
The nice thing about global systems is that they short-circuit all local
issues, both tech and political.

As someone else pointed out, I anticipate Starlink will benefit even non-
subscribers by motivating other providers to minimally compete.

------
kahnjw
>Connectivity will be the great equalizer in the future.

These words could have come from an article about: the internet, mobile
phones, telephones, morse code

With minor modification also: automobiles, the printing press, the steel plow,
airplanes, the cotton gin, antibiotics, etc.

None of them were true equalizers, they were incremental steps forward at
best.

~~~
nexuist
They are not equalizers, they are amplifiers. The steel plow fed a man, the
cotton gin clothed him, antibiotics cured his cough and an airplane took him
from his old country to a new one where he learned how to drive so he could
deliver the morning paper.

The goal should never be to lower the ceiling. The goal is to raise the floor.

------
gumby
In the middle of this document is a reference to Joseph Nacchio who appears to
be a rare CEO who was punished for respecting his customers' civil rights. Up
until that moment he was lauded as a go-getter CEO.

I remember my impression of him at the time was that he was simply a tough CEO
who could also be a bit of a jerk to his team. But he refused a government
request to break the law and shortly thereafter was arrested. I don't know the
merits of the government's case, but it was suspicious that nobody else in his
notoriously corrupt industry ever got into trouble for their quite blatant
corruption.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio)

~~~
sneak
He’s out of jail now. I have always wanted to interview him.

------
macawfish
Right now there are only 60 and you can already see them? How about when there
are 12,000 or 30,000 or however many they wanna put up there? It's going to
cover the entire night sky.

I feel claustrophobic just thinking about it. I don't want this and I have a
feeling I'm not alone in that.

~~~
spectramax
Why? We are covered by thunderstorms, fog and rain; not a problem.

~~~
aylmao
I'm not. Climate is not global or permanent, but a constellation of satellites
like this pretty much is.

------
bryanlarsen
Given the title, I assumed this was a link to this awesome article:

[https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink-
is-a-...](https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink-is-a-very-
big-deal/)

~~~
dang
Discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21431717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21431717)

Another big deal discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397285)

------
coding123
Honestly I hope someone figures out how to shoot these down. I feel like the
planet isn't getting a say. In fact only a few people are getting a say that
this network should even exist. Astronomy is dead. A dark sky with just stars,
yeah dead.

~~~
jayd16
I really can't fathom the reasoning behind this much passion about astronomy
tied to this much hatred of putting things in space.

~~~
aylmao
I agree with the sentiment of the parent comment. Not because I have a huge
passion for astronomy, but because I think we're prioritizing things in a
wrong way.

We're prioritizing yet another billionare's networking business over the
capacity to study our night's sky. Much like other types of pollution, this is
something that could stick around for hundreds of years, even after all its
utility is gone.

Cell towers, like most structures, can be brought down, repurposed, updated
and altered. We can't do nothing about satellites, and don't know how to clean
space pollution.

~~~
modeless
Firstly, the satellites fall out of orbit automatically within 5 years even if
they break because they're in LEO. Secondly, again because they're in LEO they
are invisible for most of the night while they are in Earth's shadow, not
affecting stargazing or astronomy in the slightest during that time. It's only
an hour or so near dawn and dusk where the satellites are visible.

~~~
bzbarsky
Trying to match up that claim with the claim of
[https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink](https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink)
that satellites should be visible at 12:10am this Saturday over Boston.
12:10am is nowhere close to dusk in Boston this time of year.

~~~
modeless
12:10 AM Saturday in your device's time zone. 6:10 PM Friday in Boston's time
zone. It's on my to-do list to change the displayed time zone when you select
a faraway location instead of your current location, but just figuring out
which time zone a given location is in is a non-trivial problem. Time zones
are kind of bonkers, as I'm sure you're aware.

~~~
bzbarsky
> 12:10 AM Saturday in your device's time zone.

Oh, I see. That explains things, thanks!

And yes, time zones are not just one kind of bonkers; they're all sorts of
bonkers. :)

~~~
modeless
I just pushed a fix for timezones. It should convert to the local timezone if
you choose a faraway location, and show the correct timezone abbreviation.

------
mirimir
> SpaceX will be pressured by the governments in the jurisdictions where their
> staff reside (where their physical threats of enforcement can be carried
> out) to selectively censor/blackout or otherwise wiretap use of the system,
> ostensibly for military purposes, in another tragic case of stupid, outdated
> nationalistic thinking trying to force its way into outer space and
> cyberspace. They will comply, silently and without fanfare, as all of the
> other telecommunications carriers have, excepting with great recognition the
> brave Joseph Nacchio, because they don’t want to suffer the same fate he
> did.

Anyone remember the SWANsat project,[0] which was going to use a VPN
service[1] as its client gateway? They called it "SWANSAT LIBERTY™ Suite".

Somehow, I doubt that Starlink has anything like that in mind. But still, one
could use it with any anonymity network, unless that was somehow blocked.

0) [http://swansat.com/](http://swansat.com/)

1)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100813004230/http://www.swansa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100813004230/http://www.swansat.com/liberty.htm)

------
malux85
> For reference, my last flat in Berlin (the capital of the largest economy in
> the EU), on the ground on a main street in the city center, was serviced
> with approximately 14Mbps ADSL, and this was the fastest offering available
> from any vendor.

I have unmetered gigabit fiber (1G UP 1G DOWN) In london

------
specialist
The important question here is if Starlink will to generate enough revenue to
keep SpaceX solvent.

From an analysis I read, there isn't enough external demand for SpaceX to be
viable, profitable.

So they created their own internal demand as well as a potential alternate
revenue stream.

------
shkkmo
I am in the process of building out a boxtruck with solar panels and a big
batter and I am eagerly waiting for starlink to roll out public Access so I
can get an antenna and park my new home office in very rural areas and work
comfortablely.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
> * For reference, my last flat in Berlin (the capital of the largest economy
> in the EU), on the ground on a main street in the city center, was serviced
> with approximately 14MBps ADSL, and this was the fastest offering available
> from any vendor.*

That seems really low to me. I was under the impression that Europe had
generally better internet access than in the US. Comcast delivers much better
speeds than that even to boondocks cities, let alone major metropolitan areas?

~~~
tchocky
It has. I have 100mb/s in Berlin. Seems that his street is not connected well,
or he lives too far away from the distribution node, there is also 1gb/s cable
in some streets.

~~~
sneak
The location in question was in Skalitzer Strasse, only 50-100m from Lausitzer
Platz and Görlitzer Park.

I had better connectivity to Freifunk via their churchtower hub in Lausitzer
Platz than I did to the actual internet.

You'd think something that central would be better connected, especially
directly along the U1. Oh well.

------
mrfusion
I don’t understand how you can make functional satellites so small? That they
can launch 60 at once. Usually a launch just has one satellite.

~~~
akira2501
> can make functional satellites

By reducing their "function" until they're basically a battery with a radio
repeater strapped onto it. Obviously it's a bit more complicated, but there's
very little these satellites actually have to _do_.

~~~
sneak
The Starlink satellites additionally have krypton ion thrusters for
stationkeeping as well as to raise their orbits from their 290 km deployment
altitude up to the 550 km service altitude.

------
joak
For more technical information, I recommend reading this:

[https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/star](https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/star)
link-is-a-very-big-deal/

Strange enough the title is similar: starlink is a _very_ big deal

------
dls2016
> the hard work of SpaceX to make cheap, reusable rockets an everyday reality

Are they a reality?

~~~
bisby
The launch today happened on the 3rd flight of the booster. They have a few
cores now which have flown 4 times.

At this point, prices are a coming down, and it is effectively assumed that
any SpaceX core will fly at least twice. That covers cheap and reusable. Cheap
at least compared to the market (I still can't afford it), and 2 flights is
re-use.

"Everyday" might be a stretch by the literal definition. But "commonplace"
wouldn't be. No one gets super excited about re-flown cores anymore.

------
TheWoolRug
This author and many in the comments seem to have their bits and bytes mixed
up.

~~~
sneak
What did I mix up? I believe I quoted all transfer figures in bits/s, as is
custom.

Edit: oops, those Bs should be lowercase. Will update post soon. Thanks for
the bug report!

------
teeray
Honestly, I’m just excited for the more mundane future of having an
alternative to Comcast/Spectrum and the corresponding drop in prices that will
hopefully come along with it.

------
atatatko
I'm curious, how Great Chinese Firewall and Russian Censorship Agensy going to
fight this threat? Iron dome?

------
alexfromapex
Once Starlink is ready everyone needs to ditch Comcast and AT&T since they’ve
been screwing us for years

------
chasd00
hopefully it makes inet service on planes better

~~~
dkersten
Companies like Viasat are already offering that. A couple of years ago, they
were talking about how they wanted to offer free internet to all passangers
(with enough bandwidth that everyone could stream HD movies, thanks to the new
satellite they launched in 2017). I'm not sure how the rollout is going,
though, or if the airlines want to do this. I guess the airlines can make a
fortune overcharging passengers for internet.

~~~
h2odragon
I'm a viasat customer. Most days, github.com doesn't exist for me. Anything
using SSL is going to fail 30% of the time anyway, and 50%+ of the time after
they restrict our bandwidth for the month. Even if they _could_ provide better
service, I wouldn't hold my breath in expectation of it.

~~~
dkersten
When I was at Viasat, there was a difference between what was provided to
consumers (Exede) and what they were providing to airlines with their new
satellite. The new one has much higher bandwidth than their older one. I’m not
sure if the new satellites will service consumer internet too as I left the
company before Viasat-2 became fully operational.

------
Jemm
Light grey on white is horrible.

~~~
sneak
I am happily open to alternate suggestions. I am not a designer and my website
is a perpetual work-in-progress, so any guidance you can offer there is
helpful and appreciated. I used to never post because I didn’t think it was
“done” or “ready”, but I decided to ship regularly and work on it as I go.
Better is the enemy of good!

sneak@sneak.berlin

