
Starlink is a big deal - martythemaniak
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/starlink-is-a-very-big-deal/
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shaklee3
This article seems to be trying to get to a conclusion without a lot of
support.

>This works out to be around $100k per satellite, more than 1000 times cheaper
than a conventional comsat launch

A standard comsat satellite can potentially cover 1/3 of the globe with
hundreds of Gbps of bandwidth. Starlink covers a tiny area with much lower
bandwidth. Strength in numbers.

> 100MB per second using advanced coding such as 4096QAM

QAM isn't used in satcom, and certainly nowhere near 4096. Why the assumption?

> Each Starlink satellite includes all the complicated electronic switching
> gear found linking optical fibers together

Nope. The first batch likely had a problem and won't have inter-satellite
links (per the hint from shotwell)

> All up, 2500 channels each supporting 58 Gbps is a staggering quantity of
> data, roughly 145 Tbps

The MIT study showed simulations that was about 20x less than that, so I'm not
sure where these numbers are coming from without doing a proper simulation.

The piece that was left out, and possibly the most important, is user terminal
cost. It will certainly be more expensive than a GEO antenna, and you need to
recover that cost from the user. So far, there have been no practical, cheap,
high-performing phased array that I know of.

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HeadsUpHigh
The antenna cost has been confirmed to be targeting a price of 300$ per unit.

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shaklee3
Right, so targeting is one thing, and $300 will certainly be a good price
point. But we'll have to see if they hit it. Many, many others have tried and
failed.

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avmich
What are physical limitations? With phased aperture array we have 1)
individual antennas 2) individual electronics for each antenna. Which of them
is expensive?

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shaklee3
To the best of my knowledge, they can make cheap phased array antennas that
have poor performance. Poor performance can cut substantially into the overall
satellite capacity, so the only way to make up for that is to charge more
money. Then your service is less attractive, and people won't sign up. So you
really need really well performing, and inexpensive.

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pdq
How can this be cost competitive against cell towers connected to fiber
backbones? This seems like the obvious future, as towers are already being
built, upgraded, and replaced due to the explosion in data demand for mobile
phones.

For Starlink, launching satellites are both incredibly expensive and hard to
maintain. And likely they will have much lower bandwidth than cell towers, and
the uplink hardware will be much more expensive than cellular hardware.

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kiba
Google suggests 150K minimum for a cell tower. Another search suggests that a
Starlink satellite costs one million dollars, based on the assumption of a
Falcon 9 launch and does not include any improvement in costs.

So, it's an order of magnitude increase in costs if we assume that a cell
tower have the same capabilities and do the same thing as a starlink
satellite, which it does not, since a cell tower is just a structure you can
lease to host equipment on.

I wonder how much is the capital expenditure is for infrastructure spending
versus the number of cell towers?

According to google, there are 307,626 towers in the United States. Another
source gave me 55.71 billion expenditure for calendar year 2018 which also
includes maintenance. Divide the expenditure by towers gives me 181,096 USD
spent per tower.

So, 350,000 dollars versus 1,000,000 dollars. Hmm.

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crb002
That cell tower only covers a small geographical area, and you have to
physically maintain it along with paying property taxes. Also, that cell tower
can't peer with other cell towers to route trans continental packets.

Not to mention how much will DOD subsidize their own sub-constellation for
SkyNet to prime the cashflow? I'm guessing at least $50 billion.

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shaklee3
A starlink satellite only covers a small area. That's why they need 4,000 just
to provide bare minimum service.

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zaroth
Google says there are ~300,000 cell towers in the United States. Napkin math
says the satellites appear to cover about an order of magnitude more ground.

But more accurately, it’s a question of how many birds are in the sky above
you at a given moment, and how narrowly you want to focus their antenna based
on the desired bandwidth availability per square mile. It’s the same idea with
place cell sites closer together at lower power, except I imagine the
satellite constellation design can’t be tailored around specific dense
environments, and rather will provide a relatively constant global density, or
constant bandwidth densities at certain latitudes.

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shaklee3
Cell towers aren't a great comparison. They tend to heavily lump them in dense
areas, and you have many companies who've built infrastructure in the same
place to get to that number. SpaceX doesn't have as much control over covering
more dense areas, short of launching more satellites.

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roca
More ISP competition would be a good thing, especially outside cities. But
it's hard to see how Starlink's costs, even with cheap SpaceX launches, could
ultimately be lower than land-based ISPs where last-mile fibre is already
installed. I guess Starlink might be successful in markets where last-mile
fibre is not available. So it seems like a good thing but Starlink making a
lot of money will depend on land-based ISPs being useless.

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owaislone
I know ISP will use the Starlink network and then resell to consumers but I
really hope over time there is some commodity hardware that people can use to
directly access the network. It is very unlikely and would probably never
happen but I can't help but think if people can use this somehow to bypass
Government censorship like in Iran/China or use it to just get online in the
face of complete internet suspension like in Kashmir.

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avmich
Government will ban the use of such technologies.

And they will deploy technological means to ensure you're in compliance.

Perhaps.

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zaroth
I’m a huge fan of Tesla and SpaceX but I’m not sure Starlink is a “big deal”
the same way that Starship is a Big Deal.

Starlink isn’t a paradigm shift unless the receiver can fit in the cell phone
form factor.

In the meantime, Starlink is a great way for SpaceX to print money using the
same infrastructure and expertise they needed to build anyway.

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diminoten
It's a Big Deal for folks who are behind Internet censorship, isn't it? No way
for the various country firewalls to prevent these devices from working in
their countries, is there?

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jedieaston
Elon has said that they'll allow Starlink partners to censor when they resell
the service in their local market. Probably the only way that they'd be able
to sell their service in that market.

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kresten
I'll get excited about fast broadband when it's actually available and
delivered to me and I do the speed test and it's as fast as promised.

There's so much talk about broadband and its potential and so little actually
delivered.

Show me the speed test. Everything else is just vaporware.

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gibolt
We already have satellite internet. It is 100x further from earth and using
ooooold technology, compared to the Starlink fleet.

The scale of satellites planned for Starlink is nearly 2 orders of magnitude
more than all satellites ever launched. Current count of everything humanity
has sent up is less than 2000, 40,000 is planned for Starlink.

The change in viable throughput and what it means to a globally accessible,
high-speed network is worth discussing.

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shaklee3
This is completely false. Which new technology do you think starlink satellite
have that others don't? They're actually significantly less sophisticated than
many older satellites. The only difference is they're planning to launch such
a large number of them, but that has nothing to do with the payload
technology.

There are plenty of others that will/do give good throughout globally by that
time, or sooner.

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ben_w
Are the laser links used elsewhere yet? I remember reading about various
people being interested in them, but this is the first deployment I’ve heard
of.

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shaklee3
There have been many filings in the past to use them, but only iridium came to
fruition.

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JohnJamesRambo
I’m most excited about the prospect of things like this delivering the truth
via uncensored internet to places like China and North Korea. Am I naive to
think there is no way they could stop this and that the real internet would be
available world-wide?

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shaklee3
Yes, that's naive. You need landing rights in every single country you plan to
put a signal down in. There's nothing special about starlink; plenty of other
companies have satellites that could cover those countries, but are not
allowed to due to landing rights.

Here's some decent info:

[https://www.accesspartnership.com/navigating-through-the-
reg...](https://www.accesspartnership.com/navigating-through-the-regulatory-
channels-a-to-do-list-for-satellite-service-operators-and-end-users/)

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gbear605
Landing rights aren’t particularly relevant for NK, since it’s not like they
can fine or imprison SpaceX. China is more relevant since they could retaliate
at other US owned property or at specifically Tesla.

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shaklee3
Nk isn't even an issue since they won't let you buy the antenna. If you did,
you'd likely go to jail.

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baq
Black market exists, but NK isn’t far away from ASAT capability.

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shaklee3
Black market for something that is clearly visible on your dwelling and can be
seen by satellite is extremely risky. Black market for other things like
movies make sense, because nobody knows you have them.

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avmich
This is a great article. I don't think, though, that author adequately
estimates counter-monopolistic actions. Those actions, I think, will happen if
SpaceX even approaches the position which this article describes.

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avmich
> because only SpaceX had the vision to spend a decade struggling to break the
> government-military monopoly on space launch.

This is completely wrong.

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perseusprime11
Will Starlink used to power Tesla Internet?

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aerovistae
this was just posted the other day i believe

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sstanie
nope that was "SpaceX Starship is a very big deal", same author, same series
[https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/the-spacex-
sta...](https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/the-spacex-starship-is-
a-very-big-deal/)

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leecb
> There are only three trillion dollar industries in existence: energy, high
> speed transport, and communications.

I would suggest that housing is a 4th trillion dollar industry.

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robotresearcher
And agriculture.

[https://croplife.org/news/agriculture-a-2-4-trillion-
industr...](https://croplife.org/news/agriculture-a-2-4-trillion-industry-
worth-protecting/)

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mylons
and drugs

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chao-
And defense.

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buboard
and healthcare

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hisnameismanuel
travel

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avmich
Travel is, at least partially, transportation. But I'd add education.

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sudhirj
Maybe slightly off topic, but Musk’s companies are likely to be the biggest
human decentralizing force in history.

Leaving aside that Spacex is trying to decentralise at a planetary level, the
solar roofs and batteries allow you to live anywhere in the world without an
electric grid (water is generally easy to get with a borewell), Teslas will
drive you anywhere (mostly) by themselves, and Starlink will give you high
speed Internet. Given the way lifestyles are changing, I don’t actually think
people of the future will cluster in cities.

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navigatesol
> _but Musk’s companies are likely to be the biggest human decentralizing
> force in history._

Are you completely unaware that Musk and his family are being sued for self-
dealing and fraud? Are you not paying attention to what's happening to cash
bleeding companies?

> _the solar roofs_

The solar roofs that the CFO at the time they were demonstrated publicly
didn't think were real, or that the global sales manager for Tesla energy
didn't know if they sold a single one during his tenure? Those are changing
the world?

SpaceX can't go to Mars. Teslas don't drive themselves. The Solar Roof doesn't
exist. Starlink has yet to prove viable. Neuralink and The Boring Company are
jokes. These are money-burning "ideas" to get to the next funding round.

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mft_
It's easy to be a nay-sayer, when the subject of your criticism is taking on
long-term difficult problems.

I wonder whether, four years ago, you'd have written "SpaceX can't land or
reuse rockets - that's a pipe dream"? Or more recently "Tesla is a basket-case
that can't return a profit and will go bust"?

* SpaceX can't go to Mars... yet; but that's really hard, so they're working on it and are closer to it than anyone else

* Teslas don't drive themselves yet; but that's really hard, so they're working on it and are showing constant improvements to their software in pursuit of that end

* Solar Roof v3 probably does exist, and might be a viable product - let's see

* Starlink has yet to _be in a position to be proven_ viable; but that's a question of time

No doubt Musk over-promises and under-delivers (to the extent that it's a meme
at this point) but he has already delivered hugely in some areas, and I
suspect he'll prove you wrong time and time again over coming years.

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jjeaff
Waymo and others appear to be far ahead of Tesla in the self driving realm.

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mft_
Indeed; once again, Musk is making it hard in the shorter-term for
himself/Tesla by going a route based on a totally different vision (i.e.
eschewing LIDAR) to the rest of the industry.

Time will tell whether he'll win out in the long term; will this be another
landing and reusing rockets moment, or will his approach to self-driving cars
be a relative failure?

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jjeaff
Seeing as he has to know that the cost of Lidar will continue to fall
precipitously, I have to believe the only reason he is actually going all in
on cameras only is because he has to be able to continue selling the fantasy
that the Tesla you buy today will be fully autonomous with nothing more than a
software update.

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__sy__
"There are only three trillion dollar industries in existence: energy, high
speed transport, and communications"

I really love Casey's writeups, but I can think of quite a few more trillion-
dollar industries than just those 3 :)

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alehul
What are some?

Is there a definitive list of the largest industries in the world, when we
think in an abstract sense (i.e. energy, transportation, communications)?
Barring how challenging it would be to calculate, of course.

Or maybe a list that aims to encompass all major industries via abstraction?
i.e. WhatsApp and Starlink could be layers in the “communications” bucket.

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labster
According to some random article[1] I duckduckgoed, agriculture is a $2.4T
industry.

[1]: [https://croplife.org/news/agriculture-a-2-4-trillion-
industr...](https://croplife.org/news/agriculture-a-2-4-trillion-industry-
worth-protecting/)

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tasuki
As a non-native speaker, I have to ask: shouldn't that be "duckduckwent"? ;)

~~~
netfl0
Try DuckDuckGoosed.

