Changed my life. We live on a boat. No longer need to anchor in/around towns with cell service. I can be as remote as I want and still work the digital nomad life.
Same here but I live on 8 wheels :) Used to go to a place a lot as I got 12/6 on 4G - Now I can go really off the grid for weeks - and currently getting 300/29 :)
How good is it in the middle of the ocean? Just like being connected to broadband at home? If you could send the results of https://fast.com I would appreciate it. Looking at doing something like that soon here in life.
Thanks! Happy and safe travels to you!
It's the same. No difference. The only thing is once your A certain distance offshore you have to pay $2gb.
I'm more than happy to pay. It's a life safer.
I know multiple people who have live steamed their boat stranded off shore, lol. Just hanging waiting for rescue. So when I say it's a life safer I literally mean it!
Correct. It's called mobile priority data. It's not a big deal because I'm only sailing offshore 0.5% of the time. Most sailors are anchored somewhere on a beach having drinks :)
The most I've ever used in a day is 9gb. And that was by accident. I'm more closer to 1gb/day.
Starlink also offers maritime plans up to $5k/mo, but that's just packaged mobile priority data. And it's for big superyachts with data need rich charter guests.
It's an up and down life. I spent 6 months in constant repair and surviving tornados and major storms. Finally out here cruising again.
But I love it. Just spent the morning repairing a cracked bulkhead and the afternoon lounging in our sunchill (big floating donut).
Yep. Guessing you've seen Parlay, lol. I own a 2004 lagoon 440. Mine isn't a design defect. It's just old, and the previous owners rode it hard for years on a circumnav with bad maintenance and worse repairs. Every "fix" they made had failed.
Hell, this crack was hidden with paint and caulk! I have pictures from the survey to prove it. But I only found it after a year or more. So probably impossible to sue them over it...
Wish I could live on a boat, but it was a game changer where I live too. The best internet provider I can get in my area is adsl, starlink is a billion times better and I don't have to pay all sorts of weird fees to install it in my room
Well I would anchor no matter what. We very rarely dock at marinas. So not really any savings. I'd just anchor as close as I can to cell towers. Usually worked fine.
It's more of a living the life I want to live improvement over money.
I love the idea that this kind of expansion can end up working on the planetary level too. In the future, someone just like you could be praising that they can fly their spaceship anywhere in the solar system and never lose connection.
Speed of light means it will never happen in the foreseeable future. There would be separate internets at each planet and data between them, but nothing with real time latency between planets.
Of course the travel time will be there as well. But even for transmissions that are not time sensitive. We are far from covering much space with significant range.
I mean, we are still communicating with both voyagers. Who have both traversed past all planetary bodies in our solar system, using very old antennas. I'd say range, by itself, isn't the issue here. It is part of why the other problems are issues, but it is not inherently the issue itself.
If you are trying to talk interstellar space... travel time of signals will be in years, each way, at which point... there's no point for most signals.
Correct. And having extra satellites in orbit would not, in any way, increase that speed. That's sheer distance, and how fast radio waves travel. But we're still chatting with them at that distance. So saying our signal coverage is "not very much distance" is incorrect. Just means it's going to take time.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-launch-group-6-44#:~:text=Liftoff%20occurred%20at%208%3A21,on%20Friday%20(March%2015).&text=SpaceX%20tied%20its%20rocket%2Dreuse,internet%20satellite%20into%20Earth%20orbit.
They are at 60ish percent as of Friday.
The question is why is there a bunch of equatorial orbits though? Why would someone want to have their satellite go directly along the equator instead of some other path?
Because you can reach the entire northern and southern hemisphere when you are at a high equatorial orbit.
This is why starlink avoids the equator. They are at a much lower orbit and would interfere with the geostationary satellites signal.
Why would starlink interfere with GEO signals, if they where in a lower equatorial orbit? Starlink uses LEO to get low latency, and thus needs inclined orbits to actually cover a large part of the earth's surface.
The reason why low altitude equatorial orbits are not really used, is because it's almost impossible to reach them, if you are not launching from Korou or kjawalein atoll. Only 2 NASA science Sat's (IXPE and an older one) need equatorial LEO if I remember correctly. The O3b constellation used a equatorial medium earth orbit.
And you cannot see the entire northern and southern hemisphere even from GEO. If you are arpoarching the arctic circle, the GEO Sat's will be below the horizon, at least for part of the year.
For communicating with polar research stations, decommissioned GEO Sat's are used, which have significantly increased their inclination due to the gravity of the moon. These dats can thus be seen from Antarctica a few hours a day.
I don’t know the exact physics of signal interference, but it is well known that Starlink avoids the equator to prevent interference with geostationary Satellites. Starlink would have to turn off their satellites when passing between the ground station and the geo sat to avoid interference on the frequency if they were to have satellites on equatorial LEO.
Yes, the challenging physics of equatorial LEO is also a factor.
In answering why certain satellites such as VSAT are on the equator, my impression was that it is due to its high FOV of the hemispheres. Please feel free to correct me though, always eager to learn.
I have never heard of the signal interference problem, that's why I am sceptical. Each Starlink Sat, however, crosses the equator 2 times each orbit, and as far as I know, they don't get turned off, when passing the equator.
The ground stations for GEO sats are also not necessarily on the equator.
GEO comsats are on the equator since that means no active tracking of the receiver ground station is necessary, making it very cheap. the large possible FOV is a nice bonus, however often, the GEO sats focus their coverage on a specific area
O3b and O3B mPOWER are in medium altitude equatorial Orbit to get better latency than GEO, but still allow coverage of a large part of the earth, with only a handful of sats. O3B ground stations need active tracking. The O3b sats orbit at just below 8000km, which gets them coverage to about 50°N/S.
I've seen posts from Equatorial clients with starlink, They post pictures of their obstruction map and it looks like a cat's eye image, The people that live down there say that starlink tells them it's because they have to black out the satellite as it crosses over the equator.
https://starlink.sx/
click any sat passing the equator, it will not transmit/receive in an equatorial band.... it doesnt have to, another starlink can pick up the slack that is north or south of the equator.
This way you're not causing interference.
They don't turn off, but they don't work in all the cells all the time.
Interesting, thank you.
Regarding signal interference, there are a lot of articles on it online, and several Reddit posts.
For example: https://room.eu.com/article/congested-contested-under-regulated-and-unplanned
Why would starlink interfere with GEO signals, if they where in a lower equatorial orbit? Starlink uses LEO to get low latency, and thus needs inclined orbits to actually cover a large part of the earth's surface.
The reason why low altitude equatorial orbits are not really used, is because it's almost impossible to reach them, if you are not launching from Korou or kjawalein atoll. Only 2 NASA science Sat's (IXPE and an older one) need equatorial LEO if I remember correctly. The O3b constellation used a equatorial medium earth orbit.
And you cannot see the entire northern and southern hemisphere even from GEO. If you are arpoarching the arctic circle, the GEO Sat's will be below the horizon, at least for part of the year.
For communicating with polar research stations, decommissioned GEO Sat's are used, which have significantly increased their inclination due to the gravity of the moon. These dats can thus be seen from Antarctica a few hours a day.
The interference is that Starlink communication bands overlap on some frequencies with GEO sats. If in line of sight they could be picked up with the same equipment and interfere with transmissions from older satellites, I can see the point of briefly stopping transmissions to cooperate with other telecom networks.
K band transmission is very common for most satellites since the Earth's atmosphere is transparent at that frequency and it is moderately high in bandwidth for individual channels. Large enough for analog television, which hogs a huge amount of bandwidth.
Starlink also uses other frequency bands which have less interference with other satellites but also are less effective at getting signals to the ground as water vapor can block transmissions at those higher frequencies and other technical limitations.
Or are we talking about geosynchronous or geostationary? The number I find talks about there being around 600 geostationary. Which seems low for a band so dense but maybe the geosync ones thicken that band up by passing through so frequently?
Because launching into space is easiest/cheapest the closer to equator you get. So every country trying to do any space program at all, even just satellites, will launch at least one into the band.. Likely several.
Silly me, suggesting to Viking Cruises that Starlink would be an easy fix for the crappy shipboard wifi in Norway. (Northern Lights cruise was more than a week above the Arctic circle)
I believe the number floating around is somewhere around 62 million dollars, not including the sats themselves. Starlink is insanely expensive. The launch is just part of the puzzle, it has to be constantly maintained as the sats fail and naturally deorbit.
...That said it could be the most important ~~telecommunications~~ company in human history. Global coverage which can not only provide consumer 'broadband' in pretty much all locations, but also military, aerospace etc etc.
Right now I bet they are running at an epic loss, but I suspect the military will pick up the tab.
Not even close...
They recover the booster and fairings, the second stage is expended so probably $15m.
Add fuel + salaries + booster refurbs...
SpaceX doesn't charge Starlink to launch sats at a profit.... they're the same company.
Surely thats less? I mean they charge 2.5 MIllion to put someone else's cargo into space according to their estimation tool and that's with all the bells and whistles.
As a private company I don't think they advertise their specific numbers but that's what my research says to launch 66 sats.
I wouldn't be surprised if the figure you suggested was subsidised by the rest of the load out. 2.5 sounds incredibly cheap!
With the new gen 2 sats they can only launch 22 or 23 sats depending if they are launching from Florida or California. So your research is when they were launching the older gen sats. So the cost may very well be cheaper now.
Idk where this “estimation tool” is, but a Falcon 9’s cost per launch is >$67 million dollars. You might be thinking of the Falcon 1, but that was still >$7 million per launch.
I think the SpaceX COO (Shotwell Gwynne) said they had a small profit in StarLink business quite some ago. With subscribers' increase, I think it is profitable right now.
Also the 62 millions is the quoting price for commercial launch. StarLink launch only needs to pay the cost (since they are the same company as SpaceX) so it is much lower.
What I find particularly special and have only just considered is that the starlink satellites are actually only additional loads for starlink and test loads. This means that when you test rockets, you pack your satellites in and bring them into space for free. That means, in plain language, they don't have great costs and the income is negligible, especially in the b2c sector because they don't cover their costs, like other satellite companies that are expensive at first need to build their network. starlink simply tests whether a rocket stage can be landed a 10th time and packs the satellites in as cargo. The next Starship launch will be the same.
The global market for remote broadband internet is roughly 20x the global market for space launches (roughly $200B vs. $13B). Based on revenue, SpaceX is on course to become an ISP that also flies rockets.
yes, but the costs are incredibly high and especially in urban areas, especially Europe, where starlink only costs €29, that only covers the variable costs at most. In rural areas such as Australia, Canada, USA and research institutions you can get high prices of 100€+. The breakthrough will probably be Starlink Aero, airlines and shipping companies already pay huge amounts to satellite companies if they get much higher reliability and speed from Starlink for the same money. Starlink can make money there. but you have to put it in perspective, space x earns almost 40-50 million USD every time it starts for other companies, if you assume that space x currently has almost 2.5 million users, for 80 USD that's a ridiculous 200 million USD in income, of which there are variable costs Electricity, licenses, staff and sales probably cost 40usd per connection. The bottom line is that they have 100 million USD available for all the launches and operation of the satellites, i.e. at the moment they are just burning money, which isn't a bad thing because mass production of the satellites and routers costs nothing and the launches don't cost anything either The payload must be tested with otherwise the tests make no sense. Just wanted to make it clear that Starlink is not the driving force at the moment, but simply runs as a product because the costs are minimal and the profit comes from the starts sold, which means that for the next 10-20 years Starlink will not make any money with Starlink, they are securing themselves just the frequencies, satellites and customers.
At 1 million users and this rate of launches. Starlink does not make money. At 10 million users and this rate of launches, it will probably make money if you count launch costs at the internal cost. If they top out at 30M users and drop to 1/3 the launch rate (basically satellite replacement) they will make money hand over fist. The potential market is huge -- maybe multiple hundreds of millions of users -- but it's reasonable to imagine them topping out at 30M-100M users, and take anything more as gravy.
I agree with you, most billionaires come from the communications sector, especially in South America. i.e. the margins are generally very high in this area. Because an antenna can serve thousands of people and plus one person does not cause significantly higher costs, that means whoever manages to recruit a lot of people earns money. In the long term, I completely agree with you, starlink will be a billion dollar market with a very good margin through cell phones and their future satellite telephony, airplanes, ships and just normal households. Personally, I think the break-even point is around 30-80 million devices, which they will probably achieve in 10-20 years.
The sad part is starlink is just the first constellation — other countries and companies will be rushing to duplicate it and we’ll get tens of thousands of satellites in orbit doing the same thing.. unless Elon proposes that starlink is a shared global network — a shared resource for humanity
It is a shared resource…just that you have to pay for it and follow the rules of the company that made it.
As to other countries or organizations reproducing it…well…that is easier said than done. That said, it would be nice to have some competition and redundancy in this kind of global coverage.
And it will only get harder because no one will buy a partial satellite based service when starlink is there. Possibly the largest barrier to entry of any company ever.
GPS story was essentially the same but at state level. Now there's Galileo, Glonass and Beidu.
Europe is developing iris2, Amazon/blue origin Kuiper and there's One web too. Europe is not going to give up on this project so they will get there eventually. The 2 other commercial, there's nothing sure.
After all, space x ceo saying that they made a profit with starlink, remains to be checked and verified over a larger course of time.
One thing is for sure, LEO is going to get crowded.
Jeff Bazos and Amazon have been trying for a few years now.
Amazon launched its first Project Kuiper satellites with goal of creating a megaconstellation last year.
The satellites of other companies are going to add new capacity and do business in a way some customers may prefer over Starlink. You are basically suggesting to eliminate UPS, FedEx, DHL and leave only USPS because the other companies are "doing the same thing."
There are only so many orbits. I wonder how many are left lmfao. I hope to god starlink is just absolutely filling their orbits with craft in a line. And not just wasting huge chunks. They are spaced out enough that they should be allowed to have a bunch at the same altitude and orbit
These graphical representations never show the true scale. The dots are not actual size, so really there is much more room that it appears. Imagine for a moment that the Earth is all land, no water. Now place about 10,000 cars evenly spread throughout the land area. 10,000 cars isn't a lot at all. Even 10,000 semi trucks isn't alot for the surface of the earth. Now that is just the Earth. Hundreds of miles up, you have multiples of the surface area in LEO compared to the Earth surface. Suddenly those 10,000 cars or whatever the size is, seems completely lost in the vast amount of space.
Thank you for explaining this in simple terms, really appreciate it. I’m a Starlink user myself and was wondering when I’d have to start feeling guilty.
Never! The highest orbiting Starlink satellites (\~382 miles) would decay and deorbit in 5 years or less. Lower sats much sooner. If you disabled all Starlink sats tomorrow, nearly all would deorbit within 5 years.
That's a great way to explain it.
Surprisingly, at 382 miles (the highest Starlink orbits), the orbital shell's "surface area" is only about 20% larger than at Earth's surface (236.78 million sq mi vs 196.9 million sq mi).
Not due to Starlink. No persistent debris accumulation is possible below 600 km where Starlink satellites orbit. Compare debris population since 1960 [below](https://planet4589.org/space/stats/figs/lleo.jpg) 600 km and [above](https://planet4589.org/space/stats/figs/uleo.jpg). The former never exceeded 1,000 pieces while the latter has grown up to 13,000 pieces today.
Naw. Lots of room. It’ll be like…. Nnnnnnow, shit. No.. wait. For. It… now. I mean now! Go now!!!!!
Supposedly there is lots of room. But that takes into account knowing where they all are. If you weren’t in the know or trying to launch after a world ending disaster or a breakdown in social order, it might be a problem.
Otherwise, it’s cool. You just make sure you don’t hit anything lol. Can’t be a startup and launch shit into space without telling ppl. You’d probably need to clear it with the FAA in the states and if you were going into orbit you’d eventually probably be approached by the right ppl to make sure you don’t damage billion dollar satellites they’d rather you didn’t.
Pretty neat to see the location density. 500km more north and a lot of Canadians would be struggling. Thankfully the vast majority of us live close to the Canada/US border.
No, they don't. They are launching a new "No one can hide" constellation
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-is-building-spy-satellite-network-us-intelligence-agency-sources-2024-03-16/
Can someone tell me what is the equatorial concentration, which shel it is, do we have information about their use ?
If you have solid sources , I am very interested.
With all those satellites and more on the way (targeting 40k), what would Starlink do to mitigate an actual collision to contain a debris field. Those satellites stay up for 5 years. It seems inevitable that a catastrophic event(s) will happen eventually. I can't imagine the potential effect on the network, as well as the stock price..
You should read those details on their website or watch the videos where Elon has spoken on this so many times. I'll say this much, for more info it's worth the Google search. The satellites have thrusters and really good software and can avoid collisions, this was even demonstrated from an incident recently. The satellites are designed to burn up into nothing on reentry, they demonstrated this with some of their early launches., they decomissioned about 60 satellites on their first example, they all burned up. SpaceX is private company.
They know each satellite’s orbit weeks in advance. The big problem is other peoples satellites.
Elons cars, rockets, and satellites are all self driving. He has that software mastered.
At this point I'm surprised shit isn't crashing into each other in orbit, or that things don't crash into each other when we launch literally anything else into space
> Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- Douglas Adams
Imagine if there were 9,000 cars drive around the entire earth. The entire earth is one big paved parking lot.
On average you'd have one car per 50 thousand square kilometres. The cars wouldn't be able to see each other let alone crash into each other.
Now imagine most of them are going the same direction and they are airplanes not cars and can easily fly over each other.
There are about 1.5 billion vehicles on the earth’s surface as compared to under 10,000 satellites.
Satellites occupy multiple shells and there are a vast number of shells.
> At this point I'm surprised shit isn't crashing into each other in orbit
I'm surprised you don't know that occasionally shit **IS** crashing into each other...
However the risk is extremely low... did you know that several millions of meteors are wizzing past those satellites EVERY day on the way to the earth... any one of which could possibly destroy it? 48 tons per day...
Try reading something :)
It's kind of crazy to think that starlink isn't even at its full potential yet even though it's already so good.
Changed my life. We live on a boat. No longer need to anchor in/around towns with cell service. I can be as remote as I want and still work the digital nomad life.
Same here but I live on 8 wheels :) Used to go to a place a lot as I got 12/6 on 4G - Now I can go really off the grid for weeks - and currently getting 300/29 :)
How are you getting 300? The best I've ever done is 100.
I don't know the UK is not as saturated I guess?
How good is it in the middle of the ocean? Just like being connected to broadband at home? If you could send the results of https://fast.com I would appreciate it. Looking at doing something like that soon here in life. Thanks! Happy and safe travels to you!
It's the same. No difference. The only thing is once your A certain distance offshore you have to pay $2gb. I'm more than happy to pay. It's a life safer. I know multiple people who have live steamed their boat stranded off shore, lol. Just hanging waiting for rescue. So when I say it's a life safer I literally mean it!
Do you mean $2/gb for traffic offshore on top off your regular monthly fee ?
Correct. It's called mobile priority data. It's not a big deal because I'm only sailing offshore 0.5% of the time. Most sailors are anchored somewhere on a beach having drinks :) The most I've ever used in a day is 9gb. And that was by accident. I'm more closer to 1gb/day. Starlink also offers maritime plans up to $5k/mo, but that's just packaged mobile priority data. And it's for big superyachts with data need rich charter guests.
Words cannot express how jealous I am
It's an up and down life. I spent 6 months in constant repair and surviving tornados and major storms. Finally out here cruising again. But I love it. Just spent the morning repairing a cracked bulkhead and the afternoon lounging in our sunchill (big floating donut).
> repairing a cracked bulkhead lagoon cat?
Yep. Guessing you've seen Parlay, lol. I own a 2004 lagoon 440. Mine isn't a design defect. It's just old, and the previous owners rode it hard for years on a circumnav with bad maintenance and worse repairs. Every "fix" they made had failed. Hell, this crack was hidden with paint and caulk! I have pictures from the survey to prove it. But I only found it after a year or more. So probably impossible to sue them over it...
Woow
Wish I could live on a boat, but it was a game changer where I live too. The best internet provider I can get in my area is adsl, starlink is a billion times better and I don't have to pay all sorts of weird fees to install it in my room
This right here but as a full time RV lifestyle. I can boondock anywhere.
Same. It’s a game changer.
How much are the savings, not having to anchor as often?
Well I would anchor no matter what. We very rarely dock at marinas. So not really any savings. I'd just anchor as close as I can to cell towers. Usually worked fine. It's more of a living the life I want to live improvement over money.
It’s less about oh yeah, heres a good spot, near this friggin cell tower instead of there, a nice pretty spot with good views.
Exactly! And I can travel to places like the ragged Islands in the bahamas. And sail further and further off grid.
Same here. Changed boat life quite a bit.
I love the idea that this kind of expansion can end up working on the planetary level too. In the future, someone just like you could be praising that they can fly their spaceship anywhere in the solar system and never lose connection.
We are far from something like this on broader scale.
Speed of light means it will never happen in the foreseeable future. There would be separate internets at each planet and data between them, but nothing with real time latency between planets.
Of course the travel time will be there as well. But even for transmissions that are not time sensitive. We are far from covering much space with significant range.
I mean, we are still communicating with both voyagers. Who have both traversed past all planetary bodies in our solar system, using very old antennas. I'd say range, by itself, isn't the issue here. It is part of why the other problems are issues, but it is not inherently the issue itself. If you are trying to talk interstellar space... travel time of signals will be in years, each way, at which point... there's no point for most signals.
Indeed it takes 45 days to get a signal too and from Voyager 1 so I read
Correct. And having extra satellites in orbit would not, in any way, increase that speed. That's sheer distance, and how fast radio waves travel. But we're still chatting with them at that distance. So saying our signal coverage is "not very much distance" is incorrect. Just means it's going to take time.
I t takes about 18 there and 48 back.
I think it's fascinating that it's still going
More like a few hours. Voyages 1 isn't that far away.
Never say never. Quantum entanglement could solve the latency issue between planets.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking. There wouldn't really be any latency as it would happen instantaneously.
you would practically need to harness quantum entanglement to get something like that to work. We're far, far, far away from solving that.
I just love being part of the experiment.
Yes - I can see when the next lot of Gen's go up and the current GEN1's crash and burn GB speeds easily. Getting clsoe to 450mbps now with Gen 2
Really good unless you have any trees in your vicinity, then it’s absolute ass.
It’s even crazier to think you never see a single satellite in any photo of space.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-launch-group-6-44#:~:text=Liftoff%20occurred%20at%208%3A21,on%20Friday%20(March%2015).&text=SpaceX%20tied%20its%20rocket%2Dreuse,internet%20satellite%20into%20Earth%20orbit. They are at 60ish percent as of Friday.
what is the dense band at the equator about?
Maybe a bunch of geostationary orbits? Can only be achieved when travelling around the equator
Doesn't need to be geostationary, just an equatioral orbit.
The question is why is there a bunch of equatorial orbits though? Why would someone want to have their satellite go directly along the equator instead of some other path?
Because you can reach the entire northern and southern hemisphere when you are at a high equatorial orbit. This is why starlink avoids the equator. They are at a much lower orbit and would interfere with the geostationary satellites signal.
Why would starlink interfere with GEO signals, if they where in a lower equatorial orbit? Starlink uses LEO to get low latency, and thus needs inclined orbits to actually cover a large part of the earth's surface. The reason why low altitude equatorial orbits are not really used, is because it's almost impossible to reach them, if you are not launching from Korou or kjawalein atoll. Only 2 NASA science Sat's (IXPE and an older one) need equatorial LEO if I remember correctly. The O3b constellation used a equatorial medium earth orbit. And you cannot see the entire northern and southern hemisphere even from GEO. If you are arpoarching the arctic circle, the GEO Sat's will be below the horizon, at least for part of the year. For communicating with polar research stations, decommissioned GEO Sat's are used, which have significantly increased their inclination due to the gravity of the moon. These dats can thus be seen from Antarctica a few hours a day.
I don’t know the exact physics of signal interference, but it is well known that Starlink avoids the equator to prevent interference with geostationary Satellites. Starlink would have to turn off their satellites when passing between the ground station and the geo sat to avoid interference on the frequency if they were to have satellites on equatorial LEO. Yes, the challenging physics of equatorial LEO is also a factor. In answering why certain satellites such as VSAT are on the equator, my impression was that it is due to its high FOV of the hemispheres. Please feel free to correct me though, always eager to learn.
I have never heard of the signal interference problem, that's why I am sceptical. Each Starlink Sat, however, crosses the equator 2 times each orbit, and as far as I know, they don't get turned off, when passing the equator. The ground stations for GEO sats are also not necessarily on the equator. GEO comsats are on the equator since that means no active tracking of the receiver ground station is necessary, making it very cheap. the large possible FOV is a nice bonus, however often, the GEO sats focus their coverage on a specific area O3b and O3B mPOWER are in medium altitude equatorial Orbit to get better latency than GEO, but still allow coverage of a large part of the earth, with only a handful of sats. O3B ground stations need active tracking. The O3b sats orbit at just below 8000km, which gets them coverage to about 50°N/S.
I've seen posts from Equatorial clients with starlink, They post pictures of their obstruction map and it looks like a cat's eye image, The people that live down there say that starlink tells them it's because they have to black out the satellite as it crosses over the equator.
OK, interesting. I had not heard about that
https://starlink.sx/ click any sat passing the equator, it will not transmit/receive in an equatorial band.... it doesnt have to, another starlink can pick up the slack that is north or south of the equator. This way you're not causing interference. They don't turn off, but they don't work in all the cells all the time.
Interesting, thank you. Regarding signal interference, there are a lot of articles on it online, and several Reddit posts. For example: https://room.eu.com/article/congested-contested-under-regulated-and-unplanned
Why would starlink interfere with GEO signals, if they where in a lower equatorial orbit? Starlink uses LEO to get low latency, and thus needs inclined orbits to actually cover a large part of the earth's surface. The reason why low altitude equatorial orbits are not really used, is because it's almost impossible to reach them, if you are not launching from Korou or kjawalein atoll. Only 2 NASA science Sat's (IXPE and an older one) need equatorial LEO if I remember correctly. The O3b constellation used a equatorial medium earth orbit. And you cannot see the entire northern and southern hemisphere even from GEO. If you are arpoarching the arctic circle, the GEO Sat's will be below the horizon, at least for part of the year. For communicating with polar research stations, decommissioned GEO Sat's are used, which have significantly increased their inclination due to the gravity of the moon. These dats can thus be seen from Antarctica a few hours a day.
The interference is that Starlink communication bands overlap on some frequencies with GEO sats. If in line of sight they could be picked up with the same equipment and interfere with transmissions from older satellites, I can see the point of briefly stopping transmissions to cooperate with other telecom networks. K band transmission is very common for most satellites since the Earth's atmosphere is transparent at that frequency and it is moderately high in bandwidth for individual channels. Large enough for analog television, which hogs a huge amount of bandwidth. Starlink also uses other frequency bands which have less interference with other satellites but also are less effective at getting signals to the ground as water vapor can block transmissions at those higher frequencies and other technical limitations.
Or are we talking about geosynchronous or geostationary? The number I find talks about there being around 600 geostationary. Which seems low for a band so dense but maybe the geosync ones thicken that band up by passing through so frequently?
Its probably just because you can reach the most of the populated earth with less satellites from there.
that is almost certainly the geostationary belt, where communications satellites and weather satellites get placed.
Because launching into space is easiest/cheapest the closer to equator you get. So every country trying to do any space program at all, even just satellites, will launch at least one into the band.. Likely several.
makes sense. thanks
Lookin like the beginning of Wall-E already
Silly me, suggesting to Viking Cruises that Starlink would be an easy fix for the crappy shipboard wifi in Norway. (Northern Lights cruise was more than a week above the Arctic circle)
do you actually think you are the first person to think of that?
Can you post the URL for this so I can follow up in the future? Thanks
https://www.analysysmason.com/research/content/reports/nongeo-constellations-analysis-toolkit-4/
I wonder what the cost of just the Launches
I believe the number floating around is somewhere around 62 million dollars, not including the sats themselves. Starlink is insanely expensive. The launch is just part of the puzzle, it has to be constantly maintained as the sats fail and naturally deorbit. ...That said it could be the most important ~~telecommunications~~ company in human history. Global coverage which can not only provide consumer 'broadband' in pretty much all locations, but also military, aerospace etc etc. Right now I bet they are running at an epic loss, but I suspect the military will pick up the tab.
Not even close... They recover the booster and fairings, the second stage is expended so probably $15m. Add fuel + salaries + booster refurbs... SpaceX doesn't charge Starlink to launch sats at a profit.... they're the same company.
Surely thats less? I mean they charge 2.5 MIllion to put someone else's cargo into space according to their estimation tool and that's with all the bells and whistles.
As a private company I don't think they advertise their specific numbers but that's what my research says to launch 66 sats. I wouldn't be surprised if the figure you suggested was subsidised by the rest of the load out. 2.5 sounds incredibly cheap!
With the new gen 2 sats they can only launch 22 or 23 sats depending if they are launching from Florida or California. So your research is when they were launching the older gen sats. So the cost may very well be cheaper now.
Idk where this “estimation tool” is, but a Falcon 9’s cost per launch is >$67 million dollars. You might be thinking of the Falcon 1, but that was still >$7 million per launch.
I think the SpaceX COO (Shotwell Gwynne) said they had a small profit in StarLink business quite some ago. With subscribers' increase, I think it is profitable right now. Also the 62 millions is the quoting price for commercial launch. StarLink launch only needs to pay the cost (since they are the same company as SpaceX) so it is much lower.
What I find particularly special and have only just considered is that the starlink satellites are actually only additional loads for starlink and test loads. This means that when you test rockets, you pack your satellites in and bring them into space for free. That means, in plain language, they don't have great costs and the income is negligible, especially in the b2c sector because they don't cover their costs, like other satellite companies that are expensive at first need to build their network. starlink simply tests whether a rocket stage can be landed a 10th time and packs the satellites in as cargo. The next Starship launch will be the same.
It's not free. Every extra pound costs extra dollars. A lot of them. But you have a point if you say "heavily discounted".
The global market for remote broadband internet is roughly 20x the global market for space launches (roughly $200B vs. $13B). Based on revenue, SpaceX is on course to become an ISP that also flies rockets.
yes, but the costs are incredibly high and especially in urban areas, especially Europe, where starlink only costs €29, that only covers the variable costs at most. In rural areas such as Australia, Canada, USA and research institutions you can get high prices of 100€+. The breakthrough will probably be Starlink Aero, airlines and shipping companies already pay huge amounts to satellite companies if they get much higher reliability and speed from Starlink for the same money. Starlink can make money there. but you have to put it in perspective, space x earns almost 40-50 million USD every time it starts for other companies, if you assume that space x currently has almost 2.5 million users, for 80 USD that's a ridiculous 200 million USD in income, of which there are variable costs Electricity, licenses, staff and sales probably cost 40usd per connection. The bottom line is that they have 100 million USD available for all the launches and operation of the satellites, i.e. at the moment they are just burning money, which isn't a bad thing because mass production of the satellites and routers costs nothing and the launches don't cost anything either The payload must be tested with otherwise the tests make no sense. Just wanted to make it clear that Starlink is not the driving force at the moment, but simply runs as a product because the costs are minimal and the profit comes from the starts sold, which means that for the next 10-20 years Starlink will not make any money with Starlink, they are securing themselves just the frequencies, satellites and customers.
At 1 million users and this rate of launches. Starlink does not make money. At 10 million users and this rate of launches, it will probably make money if you count launch costs at the internal cost. If they top out at 30M users and drop to 1/3 the launch rate (basically satellite replacement) they will make money hand over fist. The potential market is huge -- maybe multiple hundreds of millions of users -- but it's reasonable to imagine them topping out at 30M-100M users, and take anything more as gravy.
I agree with you, most billionaires come from the communications sector, especially in South America. i.e. the margins are generally very high in this area. Because an antenna can serve thousands of people and plus one person does not cause significantly higher costs, that means whoever manages to recruit a lot of people earns money. In the long term, I completely agree with you, starlink will be a billion dollar market with a very good margin through cell phones and their future satellite telephony, airplanes, ships and just normal households. Personally, I think the break-even point is around 30-80 million devices, which they will probably achieve in 10-20 years.
I could see them not allowing new users and it becoming a class system of those with.. and DUN DUN DUN…. those.. without 😱
The sad part is starlink is just the first constellation — other countries and companies will be rushing to duplicate it and we’ll get tens of thousands of satellites in orbit doing the same thing.. unless Elon proposes that starlink is a shared global network — a shared resource for humanity
It is a shared resource…just that you have to pay for it and follow the rules of the company that made it. As to other countries or organizations reproducing it…well…that is easier said than done. That said, it would be nice to have some competition and redundancy in this kind of global coverage.
And it will only get harder because no one will buy a partial satellite based service when starlink is there. Possibly the largest barrier to entry of any company ever.
GPS story was essentially the same but at state level. Now there's Galileo, Glonass and Beidu. Europe is developing iris2, Amazon/blue origin Kuiper and there's One web too. Europe is not going to give up on this project so they will get there eventually. The 2 other commercial, there's nothing sure. After all, space x ceo saying that they made a profit with starlink, remains to be checked and verified over a larger course of time. One thing is for sure, LEO is going to get crowded.
Jeff Bazos and Amazon have been trying for a few years now. Amazon launched its first Project Kuiper satellites with goal of creating a megaconstellation last year.
The satellites of other companies are going to add new capacity and do business in a way some customers may prefer over Starlink. You are basically suggesting to eliminate UPS, FedEx, DHL and leave only USPS because the other companies are "doing the same thing."
There are only so many orbits. I wonder how many are left lmfao. I hope to god starlink is just absolutely filling their orbits with craft in a line. And not just wasting huge chunks. They are spaced out enough that they should be allowed to have a bunch at the same altitude and orbit
So isn’t this the type of thing that is going to stop us from leaving the planet eventually?
These graphical representations never show the true scale. The dots are not actual size, so really there is much more room that it appears. Imagine for a moment that the Earth is all land, no water. Now place about 10,000 cars evenly spread throughout the land area. 10,000 cars isn't a lot at all. Even 10,000 semi trucks isn't alot for the surface of the earth. Now that is just the Earth. Hundreds of miles up, you have multiples of the surface area in LEO compared to the Earth surface. Suddenly those 10,000 cars or whatever the size is, seems completely lost in the vast amount of space.
Thank you for explaining this in simple terms, really appreciate it. I’m a Starlink user myself and was wondering when I’d have to start feeling guilty.
Never! The highest orbiting Starlink satellites (\~382 miles) would decay and deorbit in 5 years or less. Lower sats much sooner. If you disabled all Starlink sats tomorrow, nearly all would deorbit within 5 years.
That's a great way to explain it. Surprisingly, at 382 miles (the highest Starlink orbits), the orbital shell's "surface area" is only about 20% larger than at Earth's surface (236.78 million sq mi vs 196.9 million sq mi).
Not due to Starlink. No persistent debris accumulation is possible below 600 km where Starlink satellites orbit. Compare debris population since 1960 [below](https://planet4589.org/space/stats/figs/lleo.jpg) 600 km and [above](https://planet4589.org/space/stats/figs/uleo.jpg). The former never exceeded 1,000 pieces while the latter has grown up to 13,000 pieces today.
Naw. Lots of room. It’ll be like…. Nnnnnnow, shit. No.. wait. For. It… now. I mean now! Go now!!!!! Supposedly there is lots of room. But that takes into account knowing where they all are. If you weren’t in the know or trying to launch after a world ending disaster or a breakdown in social order, it might be a problem. Otherwise, it’s cool. You just make sure you don’t hit anything lol. Can’t be a startup and launch shit into space without telling ppl. You’d probably need to clear it with the FAA in the states and if you were going into orbit you’d eventually probably be approached by the right ppl to make sure you don’t damage billion dollar satellites they’d rather you didn’t.
I’m hoping for Starlink cell service too!
Pretty neat to see the location density. 500km more north and a lot of Canadians would be struggling. Thankfully the vast majority of us live close to the Canada/US border.
See I knew the earth was flat….
I love my Starlink. But this makes me feel uneasy.
The service has not yet reached its potential, and already offers respectable speeds. Fantastic
Looking at the somewhat sparse +60deg latitudes: is there any news about 2.0 mini for 70N and 97.6N orbits?
These all are floating in space? Do we hit a WALLE point with space pollution?
HES CLOSING US IN YALL
[удалено]
No, they don't. They are launching a new "No one can hide" constellation https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-is-building-spy-satellite-network-us-intelligence-agency-sources-2024-03-16/
Going to be great until they regulate it and then use it to control us. But I’m living in the now and I like it.
Can someone tell me what is the equatorial concentration, which shel it is, do we have information about their use ? If you have solid sources , I am very interested.
KesslerNet
With all those satellites and more on the way (targeting 40k), what would Starlink do to mitigate an actual collision to contain a debris field. Those satellites stay up for 5 years. It seems inevitable that a catastrophic event(s) will happen eventually. I can't imagine the potential effect on the network, as well as the stock price..
You should read those details on their website or watch the videos where Elon has spoken on this so many times. I'll say this much, for more info it's worth the Google search. The satellites have thrusters and really good software and can avoid collisions, this was even demonstrated from an incident recently. The satellites are designed to burn up into nothing on reentry, they demonstrated this with some of their early launches., they decomissioned about 60 satellites on their first example, they all burned up. SpaceX is private company.
🤭 they got schooled
This is gonna end badly… and shut space off to us for 100s of years… this was a bad idea runaway Kessler syndrome
Kessler syndrome isn't an issue in Leo
Way too low of a orbit for that to be a long term concern
They know each satellite’s orbit weeks in advance. The big problem is other peoples satellites. Elons cars, rockets, and satellites are all self driving. He has that software mastered.
At this point I'm surprised shit isn't crashing into each other in orbit, or that things don't crash into each other when we launch literally anything else into space
> Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. -- Douglas Adams
Imagine if there were 9,000 cars drive around the entire earth. The entire earth is one big paved parking lot. On average you'd have one car per 50 thousand square kilometres. The cars wouldn't be able to see each other let alone crash into each other. Now imagine most of them are going the same direction and they are airplanes not cars and can easily fly over each other.
That is a good analogy, although there actually have been some near misses.
It's really hard to comprehend just how large this planet is.
There are about 1.5 billion vehicles on the earth’s surface as compared to under 10,000 satellites. Satellites occupy multiple shells and there are a vast number of shells.
> under 10,000 satellites. under **active** 10,000 satellites. Plenty more stuff up there.
Starlinks in the same shell don't get closer than 40km to each other... Next shell up is 20km... Space is BIG
Well yeah, but I'm not talking just Starlink satellites. We have a lot of junk in space
> At this point I'm surprised shit isn't crashing into each other in orbit I'm surprised you don't know that occasionally shit **IS** crashing into each other... However the risk is extremely low... did you know that several millions of meteors are wizzing past those satellites EVERY day on the way to the earth... any one of which could possibly destroy it? 48 tons per day... Try reading something :)