SpaceX Gets FCC Approval to Sell Wireless High-Speed Home Internet from Space

https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/spacex-gets-fcc-approval-to-sell-wireless-high-speed-home-internet-from-space/

by hsnewman • 7 years ago

797 523 7 years ago

carlisle_• 7 years ago

Who else besides the FCC needs to approve SpaceX launching over 4,000 satellites into space? That seems like a fairly significant number of satellites, but admittedly I am a layman in this area.

rayiner2• 7 years ago

FAA: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...

DeonPenny2• 7 years ago

Space is pretty big

jcims• 7 years ago

Until it’s not - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision

gjhan• 7 years ago

The ITU as well. Part of their proposal involves reuse of spectrum currently allocated to geostationary satellites, and the mechanism for noninterference is physical separation: while they may transmit on the same color as a GEO-sat, they won't be simultaneously visible from a normal antenna for GEO use as they will point in a different direction. The GEO-sats (and their spectrum allocation) is confined to the ecliptic, while these LEO-sats will be transmitting from any direction except overlapping the ecliptic.

Rebelgecko6• 7 years ago

Each country more or less is responsible for regulating itself. The International Telegraph Union sometimes comes into play for spectrum issues, but I think most of their influence is in GEO since they handle slotting there.

gpm13• 7 years ago

It is a pretty significant number of satellites. For whatever reason the FCC has taken up the role of regulating satellite collisions and such, and if you go dig up SpaceX's fillings you can see them discussing mitigating issues related to this (keeping probability of a collision for the entire constellation less than the acceptable number for a single satellite, making sure the satellites burn up on re-entry to mitigate "a satellite fell on my head" risks, etc).

elihu• 7 years ago

I'm curious specifically about the prospect of circumventing firewalls in China or other places where internet access is heavily restricted and censored. I imagine that China could tell the US government to tell SpaceX to cut it out and cite various relevant international treaties, but in a lot of ways it's more of a political question than a legal one. I doubt many people outside the North Korean leadership would object to providing Internet access to North Koreans, for instance.

derekp75• 7 years ago

China has the ability to shoot satellites out of the sky. Now if they have the political will to do so remains to be seen. But they can also easily jam them in their own backyard.

andrewstuart• 7 years ago

Isn't space based Internet really second rate due to latency?

Of course its great if there's no other Internet access, like rural areas, but it's a really poor service isn't it?

Happy to be corrected.

akcreek• 7 years ago

Last I read the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) systems will have fiber-like latency and gigabit speeds as they are ~200 mi away from Earth where Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) systems are 20K+ mi away.

_Microft2• 7 years ago

That's definitely true for solutions in geostationary orbit where the signal needs to traverse 36000km twice between two ground stations, adding about 0.2 seconds delay for the request and again for the response.

SpaceX is planning a constellation in low earth orbit, that is supposed to route the traffic around the globe and down to a ground station near the point where the server is. That's saving the delay from having to go through an optically dense medium (fiber, speed of light is there about 200000km/s) and taking advantage of the much higher speed of light in vacuum.

Scaevolus• 7 years ago

I'm very skeptical that satellite-to-satellite connections have sufficient bandwidth to make that more effective than downlinking to base stations.

intrasight3• 7 years ago

My understanding is that satellite-to-satellite is not legal.

reustle2• 7 years ago

Why only wireless internet from space? Will they provide a wired option in the future too?

(Edit: this was a wires to space joke)

DeonPenny2• 7 years ago

Less infrastructure. Why build towers when you can buy internet from space. Also you can sell world wide in seconds. You can sell it in china behind the firewall. In india in the middle of nowhere. In south america. All with no towers or wires.

gpm13• 7 years ago

You can sell it in china behind the firewall.

That sounds like a stellar way to get your satellites shot down.

vkou• 7 years ago

You can sell it in china behind the firewall.

Yes, because the police can't figure out how to raid someone who puts a satellite dish up on their roof.

azeotropic2• 7 years ago

Please tell me you're joking.

These satellites are 100km up, moving at 8km/s. You're not going to be able to run a cable from them to your house.

BeefySwain2• 7 years ago

550km

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MVorlm2• 7 years ago

The op clearly means a traditional wired service like Google Fibre. E.g 'SpaceX Fibre'

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artursapek• 7 years ago

Not with that attitude

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tlrobinson• 7 years ago

SpaceX has a competitive advantage because they own the (reusable) rockets. I mean, it's in their name...

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bamboozled• 7 years ago

How do clients retransmit data without extremely high latency? Is it just that LEO satellites aren’t high enough for it to be a problem anymore?

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Rebelgecko6• 7 years ago

The satellites are only a few hundred miles away, and light travels faster through the atmosphere than it does through copper or fiber.

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loeg7• 7 years ago

Yes. LEO is a lot lower.

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slg• 7 years ago

EDIT: I was wrong here to criticize the latency since SpaceX's implementation will attack the problem completely differently than traditional satellite internet which has has latency numbers measured in hundreds of milliseconds.

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gpm13• 7 years ago

The latency numbers due to the laws of physics through space are lower than the latency numbers due to the laws of physics through fiber when talking about reasonable distances (e.g. new york to london stock exchanges).

Light travels faster in space than fiber. SpaceX's satellites (unlike existing constellations) are low enough that that benefit makes up for the small of extra distance.

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BeefySwain2• 7 years ago

To expand on this further, current "satellite internet" offerings are through the use of geostationary satellites 22,236 mi above the equator. The latency to the satellite and back to earth, plus whatever the latency is to get to wherever you are actually trying to go, is significant.

In contrast, the offering that SpaceX has just gotten approval for would use satellites that are about 342 mi above, and the network of satellites would be used to route the connection to a hop close to the destination.

The result of the above is latencies that are actually lower than even a direct fiber connection if the haul is long enough, because connections across Starlink would be at the speed of light (minus the amount of time it takes to process packets at each hop), and the speed at which data is transferred over fiber is some fraction of the speed of light.

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_ph_• 7 years ago

For intercontinental routes, the satellite based connection might be noticeable faster even.

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mikeyouse• 7 years ago

SpaceX's satellites are going to be in low-earth orbit, on the order of hundreds of miles -- you're thinking of traditional satellite internet which is typically in geosynchronous orbit 25,000 miles away. Depending on the number of hops, latency for these new constellations should be in the low milliseconds.

Since they're flying so low, they'll need thousands of satellites to provide wide coverage (instead of one super high satellite that can see half the earth at the same time), but they should be quite high performing.

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notimetorelax• 7 years ago

Looking at latencies here [1], it’s not that bad. LEO orbit is under 1500 kilometers, adds a bit of lag, but may be compensated by a better route on the other end.

[1] https://www.google.ch/amp/s/www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/11/sp...

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dstaley• 7 years ago

Most satellite internet deployments are in geostationary orbit (at 35,786km above the earth), which puts ground-to-satellite latency in the hundreds of milliseconds. Starlink will operate at just 550km, puting the theoretical latency at just 1.8ms. Even if the latency is 30x the theoretical, that's still in line with the latency of copper-cable deployment.

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tqkxzugoaupvwqr• 7 years ago

The satellites are in Low Earth orbit, not in geostationary orbit, thus signals have to travel at most 2,000 km, possibly only 400 km.

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SimbaOnSteroids• 7 years ago

The Verge article claims 15ms latency, which honestly is really good, even if that's in addition to what you'd get if you were using a traditional internet connection.

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new_realist3• 7 years ago

TinTin A and TinTin B are at a similar altitude and achieve a reported 25 ms. That's a bit of an unexplained disconnect.

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bsmith2• 7 years ago

Can we update to the original source? https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/27/18519778/spacex-starlink-...

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sigstoat• 7 years ago

folks, the latency of other space-based internet services is because you're talking to satellites out at geosynchronous orbit. starlink is low orbit, and depending on the route your packets need to take, might be lower-latency than ground-based links.

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reasonablemann2• 7 years ago

So many latency questions. Do a basic search: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellat...

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smuser• 7 years ago

Yupp relevant bit from there:

Internet traffic via a geostationary satellite has a minimum theoretical round-trip latency of at least 477 ms (between user and ground gateway), but in practice, current satellites have latencies of 600 ms or more. Starlink satellites would orbit at 1⁄30 to 1⁄105 of the height of geostationary orbits, and thus offer more practical Earth-to-sat latencies of around 25 to 35 ms, comparable to existing cable and fiber networks[51] (although transmitting a signal halfway around the globe takes at least 67 ms at the speed of light).

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zachrose• 7 years ago

Is your single page app not yet designed to be satellite compatible?

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hsnewman• 7 years ago

It looks like they are quoting "as low as 25 ms".

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johndubchak• 7 years ago

Regardless of latency, I’m signing up. Anything’s better than Comcast!

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keyle2• 7 years ago

This right here is what they're banking on :)

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avmich3• 7 years ago

And they have plenty of reasons to bank of that ;) .

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umvi6• 7 years ago

High latency satellite internet already exists (re: HughesNet)

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avmich3• 7 years ago

I'm genuinely curious, can you have it without your landlord (if you rent) approval and also install the ground transciever without HughesNet technicians? Sometimes they refuse to install in particular locations on the grounds of perceived landlords disapproval (?)

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unityByFreedom6• 7 years ago

Interesting, I see reports of latency of 60ms on average [1]. Starlink claims it will offer as low as 25ms [2]

Is 35ms a significant value proposition, considering 5G is on the horizon?

As of March 2019, HughesNet's average download speed is 11.04 Mbps. Throughout their coverage area, the average latency on HughesNet Internet speed tests is 61.87ms. For context, wired terrestrial Internet connections usually output latency results in the 5–70ms range. [1]

[1] https://broadbandnow.com/HughesNet-speed-test

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/spacexs-starlink-takes-a-big-s...

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unityByFreedom6• 7 years ago

The solution to that problem is to get municipalities to exit their monopoly agreements with broadband providers.

Spending more tax dollars on satellites isn't helpful. That just gives your representatives an easy way out in the near-term, and probably results in everyone getting upset over wasted money in the long term.

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m0zg2• 7 years ago

What "tax dollars" are we talking about here? It's a private system.

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m0zg2• 7 years ago

Heck, I already have FIOS, but if it's reasonably priced I'll subscribe just to support it (and to have a backup). Musk is basically the closest thing we have to Tony Stark. If that's not worth supporting, then I don't know what is.

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dzhiurgis6• 7 years ago

Everyone is super excited about this and I am sure its going to capture a significant market, but you have to realise what are alternatives and how much they cost.

I expect them to be utterly unaffordable at least for first half of decade.

Their biggest competitor is Iridium which offer similar service at $150 per 2kbps. I will let you extrapolate real life prices from here.

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breakyerself2• 7 years ago

SpaceX should be able to undercut that some since they can launch their satellites at cost and using a booster that's already been up once or twice really brings that cost down.

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vermontdevil• 7 years ago

Iridium is not their competitor. Different market. Even the CEO of the company said so.

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reasonablemann2• 7 years ago

If Starlink can provide 4g quality service to Canadian cell subscribers at a reasonable price, they would have millions of users in months.

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mrep9• 7 years ago

It requires a receiver about the size of a pizza box so it is not intended for cell phones.

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elcritch• 7 years ago

Then again based on the trajectory of phone sizes the past few years, it might not be too far off in a couple of years. ;)

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gpm13• 7 years ago

It can't. The size of a receiver is that of a pizza (this is the only way I've ever seen it described, I wonder if there is a more precise description somewhere) not that of a cell phone antenna.

It might contribute to providing backhaul services making cell-towers cheaper to deploy, and it might enable things like sticking an antenna in a vehicle, but it can't provide 4g style cell phone service.

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rococode• 7 years ago

Would it be feasible for them to build standalone cell towers of their own that connect to these space networks? So rather than "no cell towers at all", the benefit they provide is "no cables at all". They would just go around to remote areas and build towers without needing to lay down the cables. (disclaimer: basically don't understand this stuff at all haha)

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munk-a6• 7 years ago

Sure - but unfortunately Rogers/Bell/Telus will be sure to embargo any such customers as "likely spammers" to keep their ridiculously high prices up.

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mayneack• 7 years ago

Looks like they've got the pair from the "distracted boyfriend" meme in their stock image: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/distracted-boyfriend

https://i.imgur.com/KYkIKbg.png

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tempestn2• 7 years ago

Ha! Since it's SpaceX I wonder if that was an intentional Easter egg.

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giarc• 7 years ago

That's not a SpaceX page though.

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Strom• 7 years ago

That pair is apparently pretty popular in stock images. I saw them just the other day in a local newspaper. [1]

[1] https://sobranna.postimees.ee/4460337/kolm-sodiaagimarki-kes...

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omarforgotpwd• 7 years ago

why link to this low quality scammy page instead of the original source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/27/18519778/spacex-starlink-...

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oska• 7 years ago

I agree.

I wonder if this is a situation where flagging the submission helps attract the attention of the mods, so they can consider changing the link?

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itsangaris• 7 years ago

This page is awful, here's the article's content:

"SpaceX just received approval from the FCC to launch 4,425 satellites into space to build a low earth orbit network of satellites to sell home Internet.

Unlike current satellite Internet, these devices will be in a far lower orbit and offer far faster speeds without the data caps current satellite systems use.

The goal is that this new system will offer robust high-speed Internet, especially in developing countries and rural parts of developed nations like the United States. While you may not be running out to buy this if you have fiber Internet, it could bring true wireless Internet options to Americans who currently have no real options.

“This approval underscores the FCC’s confidence in SpaceX’s plans to deploy its next-generation satellite constellation and connect people around the world with reliable and affordable broadband service,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement.

SpaceX has already launched several test satellites to prove the system works. Now they have permission to move forward with a larger rollout of 4,425 satellites.

The system also promises to help relief efforts that currently spend hundreds of dollars a day for 5 Mbps Internet. With this system, relief workers can access high speed Internet even in areas hit by a major disaster."

source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/27/18519778/spacex-starlink-...

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bracobama• 7 years ago

Kudos for the text.

This would be truly remarkable if this comes to fruition as it has many applications for those parts of the world without ubiquitous access presently.

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dzonga• 7 years ago

the biggest win here are productivity gains. After high speed internet is available, you'll be able to work in the bush with a laptop. away from ridiculous rents and rent-seekers.

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sneak2• 7 years ago

Yes, this is going to change the world in a big way. High speed global communication is a paradigm shift. If SpaceX cheap reusability and Tesla all-electric really end up doing the things they promise on a huge scale, then Elon will be 3 for 3 on truly world-changing advancements.

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shaklee325• 7 years ago

There are at least 5 competing constellations that will be higher throughout and/or out first. Spacex's is not new.

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dzhiurgis6• 7 years ago

Internet was supposed to change everything yet we are stuck in cesspool of misinformation.

100% sure Tesla will either apply great firewall in China or just shut sats down while they are there, because China will threaten shutting gigafactory.

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make3• 7 years ago

and with 600 ms ping you can't game, so that's even more productivity right there

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avmich3• 7 years ago

600 ms is for those with geosats Internet. Low flying constellations offer 10-100 times lower latency, see other comments here.

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heavenlyblue2• 7 years ago

Are you implying your laptop is going to have a phased array antenna mounted on top of it?

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toomuchtodo4• 7 years ago

They already make Inmarsat (BGAN)/Iridium WiFi hotspots. This would be no different. Power and view of sky go in, Internet comes out.

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beenBoutIT• 7 years ago

This could pipe unfiltered Internet into places like China/NKorea/Iran.

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JohnJamesRambo2• 7 years ago

One of my favorite features of it. No one can stop the dissemination of a free internet then.

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intrasight3• 7 years ago

Sure - if the want to risk China/NKorea/Iran shooting those satellites out of space. Seems a bad gamble so I doubt they'll provide service to those countries.

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mortenjorck2• 7 years ago

While the DPRK would have no means of doing this, the PRC could quite plausibly launch its own jammer constellation if it became enough of an issue.

The most interesting aspect is that an import ban on LEO satellite modems becomes exponentially harder to enforce when you’re the only country that can manufacture them at scale in the first place.

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nradov5• 7 years ago

Repressive regimes will ban importation and possession of the antennas, and will prevent citizens from paying for services. A few courageous dissidents will defy the bans but not enough to matter.

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wuunderbar2• 7 years ago

What's going to be the power and size requirements of the ground transceiver? Do we have details on that?

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dmix2• 7 years ago

I'm curious if this will become an ideal service for hackers or others seeking to hide identity to use as a random and mobile location from which to operate? Assuming it becomes ubiquitous as there are multiple companies racing to offer these "constellations".

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whenchamenia• 7 years ago

You are triangulating yourself, while broadcasting kinda loudly to the sky. So not directly. This is no hackers pancea. But a network of them hidden on rooftops connected via side channel may find effective use.

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topspin7• 7 years ago

Every story about SpaceX satellite Internet (Starlink) is plagued by questions about high latency. I think Elon needs to plan on spending a lot of marketing money to overcome this specific misconception.

Starlink latency is quite good. LEO is a lot closer than GEO (less than ~1000 km* vs 35786 km.) SpaceX actually intends to compete with terrestrial systems on latency; many important routes will have significantly lower latency than any feasible terrestrial system.

Remember, fiber isn't latency free. It isn't even speed of light. It's about 70% SOL. Radio, on the other hand, is SOL (or so close it doesn't matter.) So there is a cross over point where the latency of a LEO satellite system is actually superior despite the uplink/downlink path.

*depending on which orbital "shell" is involved. figures range from 340 km to 1200 km.

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stcredzero7• 7 years ago

SpaceX actually intends to compete with terrestrial systems on latency; many routes will have significantly lower latency than any feasible terrestrial system.

I would like to see a framework, where the backend of a cloud system can migrate opposite to the direction of orbit, so the same virtual cloud server could remain (by 'hops' where it serializes a copy of itself, then fails over to the copy) more or less geostationary. Such migrations would happen as seldom as once per 10 minutes.

My game server cluster isn't too far away from having such a capability. (I was planning a variety of capabilities, such as using cheap GCP "ephemeral" instances by quickly failing over to such copies.)

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jtchang• 7 years ago

This is basically vmware's vmotion feature.

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smachiz2• 7 years ago

Why would you need to do this? The constellation still needs downlinks - and the downlink nearest the physical location of the user should always be where that traffic pops back onto the Internet.

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wbl• 7 years ago

If only there was a large mass of rock and mud that was geostationary.

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TeMPOraL4• 7 years ago

Wait, what? Are you planning to put your game server in orbit? Because otherwise I don't understand what you're asking - a server on the ground will always be "geostationary" - it's the satellites it talks to that will change.

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starpilot• 7 years ago

He's halving altitude to 550 km, in ideal cases bringing latency to 15 ms. Some satellites will be even lower, 350 km, for populated areas. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/spacex-changes-b...

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jayess• 7 years ago

I presume that's just one direction?

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RHSeeger3• 7 years ago

Is it 15ms to the satellite? If so, that's like 30ms to land, which would negatively impact gaming if it still needs to travel from where it lands to the end goal (via normal pathing?)

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nradov5• 7 years ago

Has anyone published the expected lifetime of those satellites? At the lower end of that altitude range the drag is going to be pretty severe.

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shaklee325• 7 years ago

The high latency questions are only from people who really don't understand the industry. The question most analysts in the industry ask are about how they plan to be profitable.

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rurp• 7 years ago

"People who don't understand the industry" describes nearly all potential customers. I don't think this refutes the GPs point.

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JohnJamesRambo2• 7 years ago

Yes people have been burned by HughesNet and garbage like that. But it won’t take much to educate them, people can understand the difference. A simple graph showing the ping times and people will get it.

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RHSeeger3• 7 years ago

Is there a writeup anywhere what the bandwidth and latency is likely to look like? I assumed the latency would be worse that that of a land line.

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drivingmenuts• 7 years ago

Being profitable is their problem (I can purchase a connection from someone else), but latency is something I have to worry about.

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imtringued5• 7 years ago

High latency has been the dealbreaker for satellite internet. No one wants to use satellite internet if they can avoid it.

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tomjakubowski2• 7 years ago

How badly does "weather" affect TCP latency over an LEO satellite internet pipe?

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oh_sigh3• 7 years ago

Depends on the frequencies being used. Starlink is in the ku and ka band so it will be affected by weather, especially heavy rain or snow(called rain or snow fade in the field)

Standard solution to rain fade is to make sure you have a power budget and can ramp power when heavy rain starts.

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shookness• 7 years ago

Here is a neat simulation of a proposed network: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIUdMiColU

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sprigyig• 7 years ago

Admittedly I haven't researched it that well, but I'm curious how often they would have to aim their sensors at the sun to receive from a neighboring satellite. I'd have to assume those links would need to be subtracted from the system, which could slightly drive up latency around sun up and sun down for a part of the planet.

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marcell• 7 years ago

Could you define the acronyms you use please? LEO, GEO, SLO

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FlyingAvatar• 7 years ago

LEO - Low Earth Orbit

GEO - Geosynchronous Earth Orbit

SOL - Speed of Light

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munk-a6• 7 years ago

I believe:

LEO - Low earth orbit (close to the earth)

GEO - Geostationary equatorial orbit (further from the earth, more efficient in terms of energy required to maintain a fixed position[1])

SOL - Speed of Light (a limiting factor in fiber optic communications - and over the air communications as well)

[1] From reading a bit, maintaining a fixed position relative to the ground at lower altitudes involves a constant velocity adjustment in the form of fuel expenditure - the equilibrium for each orbital period corresponds to a single altitude, so different orbital periods (when minimizing fuel usage) imply different distances.

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isignal• 7 years ago

The problem I have heard isn't so much latency but path to profitability. Unlike GEO satellites, LEO based internet is not going to be fully operational until a significant number of satellites are up there to provide continuous coverage at a single point on earth. Financially, this makes for a very front-loaded-capital / debt-intensive business which will falter unless subscriber numbers and technology all pan out exactly as estimated.

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munk-a6• 7 years ago

If you could actually compete against fiber I feel like the funding would be very easy to acquire if your first step was linking up the various stock exchanges - those guys pay up the nose for even slight latency decreases.

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ethagknight3• 7 years ago

No consumer will worry about latency or any other component of the physical feat of delivering internet via Starlink. Consumers are currently buying downstream bandwidth by the mbps from one or maybe two providers with no other options. Only technology oldheads who remember satphones and Hughesnet will worry, then research, then try it out for themselves. Starlink has the added benefit of being very easy to give a “consumer trial period.” It will sell itself, in the USA at least.

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peteretep2• 7 years ago

No consumer will worry about latency

I think this would only be true if internet gamers weren't a thing, but they are, and they'll care.

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jgowdy• 7 years ago

What do you mean remember HughesNet? People are still on it. Some of those people are young. All of them have been taught what latency is by having satellite internet.

There are plenty of non-technical consumers who have had a very unwilling education in what latency is and how it differs from speed.

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topspin7• 7 years ago

I don't think you're allowing for the the temerity of terrestrial services. They will conflate the poor performance of legacy satellite systems with this system. They will exaggerate the latency deficit over short paths and allow people to think this is the general case. They will do this to leverage the preexisting perception of poor satellite service performance that so obviously prevails.

Only a solid marketing campaign can deal with this problem.

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what_ever4• 7 years ago

Consumers are currently buying downstream bandwidth by the mbps from one or maybe two providers with no other options.

Isn't this going to improved with 5G? Verizon already has plans to offer 5G internet at homes in 10 cities by end of this year.

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vl• 7 years ago

Another thing is jitter. By design flying satellites are going to create jitter, and even with good latency, it can be bad for stable video streaming, video calls, etc.

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stcredzero7• 7 years ago

No consumer will worry about latency or any other component of the physical feat of delivering internet via Starlink.

Gamers and nerds of various kinds will worry.

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Zombiethrowaway• 7 years ago

VOIP. 150 ms max recommended, noticeable degradation of UX at 250ms. Many phone operators use wifi to connect when they can. If people's phone does not work well, they'll complain.

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chimi• 7 years ago

To get better than 10mb down and 2mb up, I'd have to buy it from another country. Please let me be the first customer.

How can it be worse than literally all I can get?

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drewmol2• 7 years ago

It will sell itself, in the USA at least.

Sorry for this shallow comment but I've read the title several times now, my mind races to the same thought:

...to sell wireless high-speed internet from space!

"I wish them wild success, it's promising to see the opportunity for disruption of our telcom mafia as wireless comms tech evolves, but selling internet from space... total horseshit! Success or not, most space internet subscriptions will be sold from a call center in India." /s

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rlonn• 7 years ago

That's true and bandwidth is actually something I've been wondering about: what kind of bandwidth can an inexpensive ground-based system get, reliably? Sending bits in a fiber is famously free of interference, while hundreds of miles of atmosphere is notoriously bad as a transmission medium. I haven't seen any kind of calculations around this. How many clients can hook up to one satellite concurrently, what kind of bandwidth will each get, realistically (theoretical max bandwidth is not so interesting). Without more information, my first thought has been that Star link sounds like an excellent, satellite-based internet technology ideal for connectivity in isolated places (far from urban areas, on ships and airplanes, etc) but which may not really be competitive for consumer internet access in urban areas. Hope I'm wrong.

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lanevorockz• 7 years ago

I think that the key competitive advantage is exactly how cheap it is to acquire new users. Anyone that is off the main grid can still get decent internet without signing up to a long term landline contract. This removes one of the big barriers to entry and changes the industry as a whole.

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fragmede2• 7 years ago

I am excited about the possibility and think it will (eventually) sell itself though word of mouth (how exactly do you advertise better Internet access to a market with poor Internet access? Billboards and USPS mailers?). I doubt most consumers have the background to know difference between latency and bandwidth, so hopefully this is price competitive with HughesNet!

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munk-a6• 7 years ago

Elon should really do a John Henry if he can afford to set it up. Run a head-to-head data-transmission with checksum validation in some theatrical setting. For bonus points he could (if it's possible) run a self-driving car demo where the computation is being done and relaid by a LEO uplink.

Also, I hear what you're saying but... Right now the Algorithmic traders all use fiber and new fiber is constantly being rolled out to support even lower latency connections so I'm skeptical - if it was competitive wouldn't G&S be using it to contact the London stock exchange? Or, is it that fiber can produce lower latency in idyllic scenarios but that congestion pushes the latency beyond that accomplishable by an LEO setup for us plebs?

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nitrogen• 7 years ago

I remember reading about line-of-sight microwave links being used for trading here on HN. I think line of sight is the key difference between fiber and radio.

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tlb• 7 years ago

Serious algorithmic traders use point-to-point microwave links, because the speed of radio waves in air is about 50% faster than light in a glass fiber.

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JabrZer0• 7 years ago

As far as I'm aware, there aren't any LEO satellite internet providers at the moment (a few in GSO, but the latency there is probably too long to make it relevant for trading), so I think that it just isn't an option. It'll be interesting to see what happens when the first LEO constellations come online.

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maccam947• 7 years ago

if it was competitive, wouldn't G&S be using it to contact the London stock exchange?

They will, but no such satellite network currently exists. Right now, all of the satellite internet services are using satellites in high orbits. That means they can cover more of the Earth's surface per-satellite, and the satellites last a long time. This was necessary when rocket launches cost >$10,000/kg.

SpaceX is drastically lowering the prices of launching satellites ($1k-$2k/kg, Starship will probably be <$500/kg), and they are taking advantage of that by launching thousands of satellites into LEO (Low Earth Orbit). These satellites will have a 5-7 year service life, which will reduce the cost per satellite and allow for regular upgrades via replacement.

Newer hardware and lower altitudes means less latency and more bandwidth than previous satellites. It will definitely beat transatlantic fiber on latency, but bandwidth will be more limited.

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drb912• 7 years ago

Not everyone has realtime needs. If you're not voice chatting or playing realtime games it's not that bad.

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BinaryIdiot• 7 years ago

Even in voice chat's case latency isn't a huge issue until you get really high numbers. But you're right, even higher latencies can fit the 80% or even the 90% use case.

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nsilvestri• 7 years ago

A misconception probably due to an overestimation of how far away space really is; the ISS only orbits at roughly 240 +/- 30 miles, and the (admittedly arbitrary) boundary of space is at 60 mi (100 km).

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KeenFox• 7 years ago

The boundary of space varies depending on who you ask.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line

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dragonwriter4• 7 years ago

So there is a cross over point where the latency of a LEO satellite system is actually superior despite the uplink/downlink path.

There is, but given the rise of the use of edge caching and edge compute for latency-sensitive applications, with edge locations located to optimize access to masses of users, that crossover is unlikely to be actually reached in many of the cases where latency is actually a concern, and Starlink is going to be stuck behind unless it is able to both get edge caching and edge compute on its satellites and get content/service providers to use it, and comsats aren't exactly optimal locations for that.

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drb912• 7 years ago

Latency is also much less important with highly cacheable content. At least, I can’t really think of examples to the contrary. My patience for loading pages browsing is many orders of magnitude higher than realtime uses. Bandwidth seems to dominate in this context.

Latency of multiple seconds, like you can see in some places around the world, is much more frustrating than the kind of latency discussed wrt Starlink.

The lack of a close edge node is kind of interesting, though, so i’m not trying to dismiss your comment in the least.

Edit: wording

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inflatableDodo2• 7 years ago

many important routes will have significantly lower latency than any feasible terrestrial system

Is that accounting for recent developments in hollow core fibers?

"The researchers successfully demonstrated the first high-capacity, low-latency data transmission experiment performed using a hollow-core fibre. In this, they found that light propagated 31 per cent quicker than in a solid core fibre, increasing from 70 per cent of its full speed in a vacuum to 99.7 per cent. To put this in context, this means that data propagating in this fibre would arrived 1.54 microseconds/per km earlier that it would in an equivalent length of conventional solid fibre. Not only did the light almost travel at its fastest possible speed, but it did so with a very low loss of 3.5 dB per kilometre."

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2013/04/speed-of-light-fi...

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topspin7• 7 years ago

Is that accounting for recent developments in hollow core fibers?

No, it doesn't.

You're citing a story from 2013. Has this seen deployment in the field? I haven't found any evidence of this. That makes me wonder what is missing in this story.

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dreamcompiler8• 7 years ago

Latency's not going to be a problem. What is going to be a problem is what nobody is talking about: LEO satellites move. This means the downlink antenna has to have motors and move too, or it has to be a phased array and be expensive.

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diminoten6• 7 years ago

That's the innovation this is taking advantage of -- the downlink antenna will be tiny and can be embedded.

This is a new market, not entering into an existing market.

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topspin7• 7 years ago

phased array and be expensive

There isn't any question about the type of antenna. The details have been filed with the FCC. The antenna will be phased array.

Obviously there is a high front loaded capital cost to developing a phased array transceiver for this system. The scale of the market, however, is vast; hundreds of millions of units. I believe the per unit cost of manufacturing these transceivers will be low due to this scale.

I can't know that however, so we'll have to wait and see.

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PaulHoule4• 7 years ago

Latency does not worry me, but the economics do.

An LEO satellite constellation has a bad urban/rural problem because most of the Earth's surface is ocean, uninhabited or uninhabitable. In the meantime, people from New York City and Detroit who hate their cable company will compete for network resources for people in the middle.

To take advantage of those thousands of satellites, subscribers will need to install high-performance phased array antennas that will probably cost at least $6000. There will be the capital costs for the space segment, also since the system is just a bent pipe to Verizon, AT&T or whoever your local rent-seeker is, they will take a cut.

Thus it is likely to be a very expensive service.

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brianwawok• 7 years ago

Any source on needing a $6,000 antenna to get spaceX internet? That would be a deal killer but haven't heard that.

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coralreef• 7 years ago

Why do you think people who live in cities will want satellite internet?

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topspin7• 7 years ago

will probably cost at least $6000

What is your source for that figure?

If it's military/aviation/naval phased array radar this is a very different use case. The targets are transceiving from well known locations, not maneuvering to reduce signature. The orbiting target is well above the horizon, not hidden in clutter. There are well defined frequency bands so high frequency agility is not necessary. There are no purpose built enemy jammers to overcome so extraordinary power levels or heroic filters aren't necessary. There are no afterburners or naval catapults to withstand.

About the worse case I know of with the bands involved in this system is rain fade or snow cover.

We already have MIMO beamforming transceivers at nearly disposable prices in the form of wifi routers. I think it's entirely feasible to develop a fixed function civilian phased array at a reasonable cost.

Anyhow, with any luck we'll know soon.

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maccam947• 7 years ago

at least $6000

SpaceX is working on making a low-cost phased-array antenna the size of a pizza box, targeting $100-300.

Direct source is a presentation Elon Musk made in 2015, video linked in this faq: https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/ayec7p/starlink_f...

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broabprobe• 7 years ago

I feel like a majority of people falsely think the cell phone in their pocket talks to satellites anyway. So a space delivered ISP might not be a big shock for people.

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sbr4642• 7 years ago

As someone who has run a tiny ISP in a tiny town, I assure you “people” are much more knowledgeable than you assume. I was actually able to disable all monitoring systems, since I would get a phone call, immediately following any event that caused high latency, or any kind of internet disturbance. I learned that people who live in smaller rural towns are in some way much more dependent on the internet to provide things like entertainment, news, info, media, since there are fewer social events, theaters (etc, etc).

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KajMagnus• 7 years ago

"I would get a phone call, immediately following any event that caused high latency"

Also at like 04:00 in the morning? :- )

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dehrmann• 7 years ago

fiber isn't latency free. It isn't even speed of light. It's about 70% SOL.

There's use cases (high-frequency trading) where maintaining faster-than-fiver microwave links makes a lot of sense.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/priva...

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grahamburger• 7 years ago

It will only take a few real customers talking about the latency being fine to make this a non-issue. It's very easy for people to test on their own. I doubt they'll have to do much specific marketing about this issue.

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7e4• 7 years ago

Why do you think that satellite to satellite routing will be particularly fast? There are a lot of hops, some satellites are moving relative to one another, and the satellites are power and bandwidth constrained. It sounds like a latency nightmare.

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greglindahl• 7 years ago

Consumer connections will use bent pipes. Satellite to satellite links are limited and will be mostly used by high paying customers like high frequency traders.

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analog31• 7 years ago

I wonder if this is a temporary software design problem. I mean, we have response time to burn these days, so we design with that in mind. If latency became a fact of life due to demand for a better deal on Internet access, maybe people will figure out how to make software that doesn't depend so much on a tight server loop.

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divbzero• 7 years ago

Given that speed of light is ~3×10⁸ m/s an additional ~1,000 km (10⁶ m) up and down and back again would increase latency on the order of ~10 ms (10⁻² s).

~10 ms of additional latency isn’t wildly out-of-sync with real world latencies of ~40 ms within North America and ~70 ms across the Atlantic. [1] And if we factor in the ~30% reduction of speed of light in fiber, the delta might actually be less than ~10 ms.

[1] https://enterprise.verizon.com/terms/latency/

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acchow• 7 years ago

Most people think their cell phone signals go to space.

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blotter_paper• 7 years ago

many important routes will have significantly lower latency than any feasible terrestrial system.

Neutrinos brah.

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mmaunder• 7 years ago

Sorry no offence but why is this even a conversation? I use Hughes which is geostationary. 600 to 900ms latency. That is around 35000 km altitude. These will be hundreds of km altitude. Kinda basic math to get the answer here.

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Scoundreller2• 7 years ago

And Ground infrastructure doesn’t exactly take a straight path either. Add 5-10% slack in the line for loops/splice trays/pole movement, and then going around artificial and natural barriers...

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Corrado• 7 years ago

When AWS introduced Ground Station [0] I was unsure as to their motivation. Looking back on it, this kind of endeavour might have been the impetus for the service. In fact, given how much of the "Internet" depends on AWS, SpaceX using Ground Station might actually lower latency to your favorite website.

[0] https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/

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fxfan• 7 years ago

I don't know about the LEO numbers but quick back of the envelop calculation assuming 1000 km means this latency would be nearly 3 ms.

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sametmax• 7 years ago

Honestly I will be fine with bad latency if I can get reliable wireless internet anywhere on earth. If I need good latency, like for playing games, I will go to a location with fiber.

I really, really think SpaceX Internet can do a lot of good. It may force competition. It may give internet access to many countries where it's not an option. It may even help fight censorship, or open the door to an alternative to the current internet network.

Lots of potential.

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Shivetya• 7 years ago

Reminds me of the story recently which mentioned Grace Hopper and her famous visual representation of how far information could travel in a nanosecond when answering a question about why satellite communications takes so long.

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new_realist3• 7 years ago

Local latency might be okay (worse then fiber, slightly worse than cable) but using space based routing is going to be a poor experience. There are a lot of latency-adding hops in space, and the terrestrial link bandwidth is so poor that popular destinations (LA or NYC) are going to be congested at their terminal endpoints, meaning you'll go the long way around and exit the satellites at a farther, more rural base station than is ideal, and use fiber for the final hops.

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umvi6• 7 years ago

LEO vs. GEO networks are like plutonium bombs vs. uranium bombs.

One is simple to engineer, but resources are limited and expensive. The other is extremely complicated to engineer, but resources are cheaper and more available.

In this case GEO systems are simple: satellite is stationary (ignoring slight drift which causes microsecond changes in latency), beams are stationary, antennas on people's roofs have no moving parts. However, the GEO satellite is extremely expensive, the spectrum it is using is expensive, and the GEO orbital slot is expensive. Also, it's so far away that it's high latency making online gaming nonviable.

LEO systems are extremely complex by comparison: satellites are moving, thus the beams are moving, antennas are moving (motor driven, unless using electronic phased array which are currently super expensive). With everything moving you have to do constant beam hand offs, doppler correction, etc. But, the satellites are much cheaper and the latency is much smaller.

Kudos to whomever can pull it off - there are several contenders other than SpaceX like OneWeb.

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gpm13• 7 years ago

I believe the plan is for phased arrays, at both ends, at substantially lower prices than are currently commercially available.

Since SpaceX has already built the "first batch" of satellites (delivered to launch site as of a few days ago), one has to imagine they've largely solved the manufacturing problem and reduced the cost from 250k per antenna.

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umvi6• 7 years ago

IIRC, OneWeb's initial plan was to use phased arrays as well, but it proved too expensive and they switched to mechanically steered antennas (at least for first gen).

Phased array is definitely the way to go if you can get cost down. No moving parts means fewer hardware/mechanical failures and less noise

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dreamcompiler8• 7 years ago

I can easily imagine economies of scale in MMICs (Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits) bringing the price down enough to make phased arrays affordable. I sincerely hope it happens.

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mises3• 7 years ago

Why are electronic phased arrays so expensive? I am no radio expert, but it seems that the pricey bit might be the engineering required rather than cost of production. From what I remember of my polar calculus, it sounds like a lot of painful calculus written once and fed henceforth into a computer.

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bsder• 7 years ago

Presumably you need a high-end FPGA or a custom VLSI chip to process the signals.

Both of these are very expensive in low-volume.

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dreamcompiler8• 7 years ago

The microwave devices are the expensive part. The signal processing and software are straightforward with modern components like DSPs and FPGAs.

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011000112• 7 years ago

Are hand-offs really all that complicated? Cell networks have to handle it.

I don't think you need to move the antenna, but you need a wide footprint and probably overlapping coverage between satellites.

How does Iridium work? I'd think this has already been done(quite a while back even).

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dreamcompiler8• 7 years ago

LEO satellite handoff is tough because you effectively need two antennas: One points at the "old" satellite while one points at the "new" one. You can achieve this with a single phased array antenna divided in half and controlled by software, but each half must still be large enough to give the needed S/N ratio.

Iridium uses an omnidirectional antenna which is fine if all you want is 1200bps. But if you want 5Mbps, you have to point the antenna. So Iridium is not applicable here.

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ncallaway• 7 years ago

Cell hand-offs don't happen nearly as frequently as they would for an LEO constellation.

The orbital period for a satellite at 550 km is ~01h 36m. That means any given satellite is going to be visible for a very short period of time, which means hand-offs will have to be extremely frequent.

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childintime• 7 years ago

Are hand-offs really all that complicated?

The fundamental problem is this:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Generals%27_Problem

Don't know how cellular handles this.

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petschge4• 7 years ago

I do wonder a bit why why they need THAT many satellites. Assuming an orbit at 200 miles altitude, we have a horizon distance of about 2000 miles. Comparing the area of that 2000 mile radius ground patches with the surface of the Earth, we need about 10 such patches. Filling in the gaps between patches might require 10 more satellites. Naively I would have assumed that orbital mechanics costs us another factor of two, so fourtyish satellites required. But they plan to launch more than 4400 satellites. More than 100 times the naive estimate. And at the cost involved they don't do it for fun. Where does that discrepancy come from?

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tnorthcutt• 7 years ago

Is your horizon distance calculation based on no obstructions? Most people don't live on the plains ;)

I am genuinely curious how you arrived at that number, FWIW – I don't know how to go about calculating something like that.

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petschge4• 7 years ago

That does indeed assume a sphere. If you are curious about the geometry, maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon#Distance_to_the_horizo... can help.

If you run the calculation the other way around, every satellite has to service a ground patch with about 380 miles radius. And your antenna has to swivel to a point that might be more than 60 degrees away from zenith. So every obstruction of more than 30 degrees above the horizon will lead to at least intermittent disconnects.

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travbrack• 7 years ago

Better to get approval for too many than not enough?

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pmorici• 7 years ago

More bandwidth and better resilience against loss of individual satellites? Similar rational to how when you install a wifi network in a high density usage environment you want to use a lot of lower power access points each covering a small area to get better throughput for a large number of users rather than trying to cover the whole area with a small number of higher power AP that each cover a wider area.

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petschge4• 7 years ago

I have thought about bandwidth, but that should only matter once you have a lot of customers.

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SiempreViernes• 7 years ago

You launch that many you expect a lot of them fall down I suspect. Probably some go into a higher orbit and serve as spares until they decay into some more appropriate orbit.

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ummonk2• 7 years ago

Area of earth is 170 million square miles. 2000 mile radius patches have 12.5 million square miles. Even assuming perfect tiling, 10 wouldn't be enough.

Throw in realistic angle limitations (not horizon) and coverage per satellite rapidly decreases

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petschge4• 7 years ago

Ok, make it 14 instead of 10 then. That's a small correction. Filling the gaps on the other hand does not require a factor of two, but only 2 \pi / sqrt(27) or about 1.21. Multiplying the 14 with that gives us 17 instead of the 20 I estimated. I don't want to squabble about 20% here, but ask about the factor 100 discrepancy between naive estimate and projected number.

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tzs• 7 years ago

This is just a guess, but maybe to simplify the tracking requirements on the ground?

With a minimal satellite system, your tracking needs to follow satellites all the way across the sky, and probably also needs to be able to rapidly make large changes in where it is aimed.

With a very large number of satellites, a ground station might be able to get by with only having to be able to track within a small part of the sky.

If you have enough that there are many of these small areas that always have a satellite in them distributed all across the sky, then even places that have a lot of buildings or trees blocking much of the sky should still have some patch they can view that works.

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shaklee325• 7 years ago

Two reasons: more bandwidth, and more coverage in a specific region. One of the biggest downside with a LEO constellation is that only a few satellites are covering a given area at a time. Most of them, by far, are over water, where there's likely little to no usage. So because of that design, do you have to launch a lot of satellites to make up for the lack of throughput in the single areas.

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Rebelgecko6• 7 years ago

Other people mentioned the issues with antenna obscura— buildings, walls, trees etc can all get in the way.

If you connect to a satellite at an oblique angle, it is also much further away. A satellite in a 500km orbit is 500km away from you when it's directly above you. But when it's on the horizon, it can be more like 2500km away.

This adds a little bit of latency (maybe 10-20 ms). It also hurts the signal, since going through atmosphere attenuates signals more than going through vacuum. Especially for Ka band signals, which particularly weakened by water vapor.

On top of that, SpaceX needs to have redundant coverage over an area. You don't want your customers' internet to stop working because a bit got flipped on one of your satellites or a thruster blew up unexpectedly. Also, a single satellite may be able to handle Alaska or Siberia but have bandwidth issues handling the state of California.

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aiyodev• 7 years ago

I guess it's time to move onto the next shiny thing to keep the fan-investors entertained. I wonder how long they can keep this up.

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president• 7 years ago

Is snooping on satellite internet traffic a thing? Wonder what security implications this could have.

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loeg7• 7 years ago

It's a radio technology, so yeah. Similar problem space as WLAN, at least in the sat -> earth direction.

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robszumski3• 7 years ago

Oh it absolutely is. You park your collection satellite right behind the target satellite, so you soak up all the transmissions that overshoot.

http://spaceflight101.com/shijian-17-rendezvous-with-chinasa...

The NSA has been known to use their imaging satellites to find transmitters which they can then snoop on once they know where they are pointing.

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isthispermanent• 7 years ago

How does this work when things need to be launched into space? I get that 4,400 spread out over such a large area makes them minuscule but it's still something.

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gibybo• 7 years ago

They are tracked and avoided, just like all the other satellites already up there. Low earth orbit is a large place, you could increase that number by many orders of magnitude before you'd have to start worrying.

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cptskippy• 7 years ago

What are the odds that all Teslas magically get Starlink? Seems like a nice way for Musk to prop up one of his ventures with service fees from another.

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simcop2387• 7 years ago

I could see this actually reduce the costs in fact. Right now Tesla's all need gsm/lte support for updates. This would let the updates work anywhere in the world without the other infrastructure that's needed.

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unityByFreedom6• 7 years ago

Someone still needs to invest in Starlink and pay for upkeep.

Just because you own multiple companies doesn't mean one company can provide services to the other for free.

That would be like your family member working for you and you not paying them because they're family.

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ancientworldnow2• 7 years ago

Musk has specifically said that this is not a mobile solution and won't be used for his vehicles. The antennae is too large to be practical (the size of a pizza).

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gpm13• 7 years ago

Can you quote a source for that? I did a bit of searching and can't find one. I don't see why a pizza sized antenna is much of a problem for a car.

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mrep9• 7 years ago

SpaceX won a $28.7 million fixed-price contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory for experiments in data connectivity involving ground sites, aircraft and space assets [0] so they definitely are looking to put these onto vehicles.

[0] https://www.geekwire.com/2018/spacex-strikes-28-7m-deal-air-...

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electriclove2• 7 years ago

This is right on. And I suspect it will also be used for Tesla to Tesla communication so Tesla vehicles share information (slow down ahead, etc) with each other.

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unityByFreedom6• 7 years ago

How is it helpful for my car to send a message to space and back in order to communicate with the cars around me?

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neetdeth• 7 years ago

Fun idea: On-orbit CDN endpoints with predictive caching to warm up the next satellite before it passes overhead.

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robszumski3• 7 years ago

If you think of this as a graph database problem, it becomes pretty easy to solve. I'm sure this is how they will load balance between the satellites that you can see in the sky as any one moment.

Even better, you can pre-calculate this as long as you know where all the base stations are. Dynamic registration should be pretty easy to do too as it will need a GPS chip in it.

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bedhead• 7 years ago

Isn't this a solution in search of a problem?

I remember Robert Pera, founder of Ubiquiti Networks, poking fun at Facebook for floating [pun intended] the idea of a giant hot air balloon to provide internet access while pointing out that Ubiquiti is already bringing high speed internet to remote places all over the world. I agree - skip the satellites just buy some some Ubiquiti gear.

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wmf4• 7 years ago

Ubiquiti has made WISPs cheaper and easier yet there still seem to be plenty of places that aren't covered by WISPs.

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BenjiWiebe2• 7 years ago

And in my area a WISP would have a hard time getting it's upstream bandwidth because of no nearby large cities and therefore no high-speed fiber for a good distance.

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elamje• 7 years ago

Does anyone know the EE/physics of the signal loss over that kind of distance?

What kind of band can reliably transmit that far with low power and high SNR?

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pg_bot• 7 years ago

I hope they call it Skynet.

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jackfoxy• 7 years ago

How many of these satellites can they orbit with 1 Falcon launch?

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drexlspivey• 7 years ago

What are the implication with regards to space debris? I hear it's a very real, growing problem. Will those satellites be able to withstand hits? Will they produce a lot of debris (if 2 collide for example)?

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peteretep2• 7 years ago

There will be a more intensive commercial incentive to fix it, so that's presumably a good thing?

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mrep9• 7 years ago

1. Space is really big so the odds of anything hitting each other are low.

2. They are launching their initial satellites in extremely low earth orbit such that atmospheric drag will cause them to decay and burn up in the atmosphere within 5 years. They are also attempting to design their satellites such that every single part of them will burn up in the atmosphere so that there is no risk of any piece hitting someone.

3. The US government is also concerned about this which is why spacex is doing their initial launch into a lower orbit that guarantees their decay into the atmosphere. Their future launches into higher orbits with longer decays will have extra considerations for such problem and thus will be evaluated by the US government individually so I would not be too worried.

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Rebelgecko6• 7 years ago

They probably won't be able to withstand hits. However they have the ability to maneuver if necessary, and even if there's no maneuvering capability each one should deorbit on its own in less than a decade.

Probably the biggest concern (and this is still a very small concern!) is debris making it back to earth without burning up. The SpaceX FCC applications list some parts of the satellites that won't necessarily burn up on reentry, and some of them are large enough to ruin your day. That said, the surface of the Earth is really really big and unless something goes wrong with a satellite they'll intentionally deorbit it over the ocean so no one gets hit by space junk.

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flukus• 7 years ago

Is it time to seriously start worrying about Kessler Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)?

The individual satellites might degrade relatively quickly, but a collision cascade could make the system unfeasible for years at a time and a certain percentage of the garbage would be kicked into higher orbits.

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danielcampos933• 7 years ago

I have a friend who just started working on the assembling of these satellites and they are hiring like gangbusters. I was initially dubious that they would be able to make their number goal but they have people working 6 days a week 16 hour days to scale up to this goal. 4000 is a huge amount of things to build that you can shoot on top of a rocket. Not sure the longevity of the hardware.

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nradov5• 7 years ago

People working 96 hour weeks deliver shitty quality.

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mrep9• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure he meant the production line is running 96 hours a week. They probably have it split between 2 shifts so each person is only running the line half the time.

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wongarsu6• 7 years ago

I was initially dubious that they would be able to make their number goal but they have people working 6 days a week 16 hour days to scale up to this goal

If they have to make people work 96 hours a week isn't that evidence against them making their goal, not for it? If they were progressing according to schedule, with buffer for unexpected events, surely people would be working sane and sustainable work weeks?

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danielcampos933• 7 years ago

They started with this schedule even before they had full public approval.

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bob10292• 7 years ago

How would the Starlink solution compare to Iridium's NEXT? Is Starlink simply a larger-scale version of the same idea, or is there some special sauce in Starlink vs NEXT that would differentiate their potential use cases?

From what I can tell, they are both LEO solutions but Iridium is using far fewer satellites to achieve 100% global coverage. I assume there is some reliability metric or other more obscure aspect that would make someone want to choose one over the other for some particular application.

The only tangible differentiator I can come up with right now "in favor" of Iridium (aside from the fact that it's already up there and working) is the multi-mission aspect of the constellation - science experiments, DoD contracts, ADS-B for Aireon, etc. But, for someone who is seeking an affordable, satellite-bound 50+ mbps pipe to the internet, a 1000-10000 satellite constellation sounds like it's more appropriate.

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kirrent• 7 years ago

One big differentiator is the nature of the antenna needed. The phased array antenna for starlink is apparently the size of a pizza box. Iridium satphones are comfortably handheld.

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bob10292• 7 years ago

Is this a consequence of Iridium having L-band capabilities, or is it something else in the design?

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m3at• 7 years ago

Are there informations available on the estimated cost to consumers for this service? Would it even be directly purchasable by individuals?

Edit: rephrased to emphasise cost for consumers (not launch cost), an engine search didn't return an answer

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oh_sigh3• 7 years ago

Musk said $50 USD or less at one point, but I don't have a source for that at the moment

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WheelsAtLarge• 7 years ago

5G is going to kill any prospects this internet service will have in big cities within the next 5 or so years. That leaves the rural and less served areas. Can the service be cheap enough without subsidies when a big chunk of the population won't be using it?

10 years ago this would have been a great business. I suspect the business will end up being a place to sink money for Space X.

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s_y_n_t_a_x2• 7 years ago

I think you underestimate how much of America is "rural area" , that alone is a huge market that towers will never fill.

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unityByFreedom6• 7 years ago

A lot of area with few customers. Will this tech truly work well? I recall using a satellite dish for access to more TV channels years ago was never quite reliable enough to be enjoyable. One storm or decent cloud cover and it was out.

This feels like another of Musk's ideas that's like, "give me a ton of money and I'll make this happen, and it only works if I can launch 100 satellites which will cost a few trillion"

How many of these have panned out? When has Musk made a profit? Will investors do due diligence this time, or just throw money at him because they perceive him as successful, despite the fact that his only profit came from a lucky website sale just before the dot com bubble burst?

I guess banks will pump this so they can get the business, and the general economy will be left to absorb the blow when this fails to meet expectations, like the rest of Musk's promises.

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bsmith2• 7 years ago

To turn this idea on its head...maybe SpaceX will be able to compete with Verizon/AT&T etc. by providing a global Internet service that also has some way of connecting to phones. I'm imagining having an Internet and cell phone plan in one, all powered by Starlink, with no roaming or other B.S. to deal with.

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gpickett00• 7 years ago

Once there are space hotels, surely they’ll be the default internet provider

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syntaxing• 7 years ago

If their service is reliable, I would join right away. I'm in a populated area and our internet is absolutely terrible. My internet stops working at least 5 times a night. I called the provider numerous times and I plan on switching. The problem is that the competitor isn't much better. I can't wait until someone disrupts this POS industry.

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godelmachine• 7 years ago

For some reasons, I think underwater transoceanic cables are much more reliable for high speed internet that satellite based internet connectivity, for now at least.

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tardo99• 7 years ago

Do you have to have a clear view of the sky to access this, or would it work under a roof?

Also, what's the total bandwidth available?

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randaouser• 7 years ago

Starlink I think can consider heavily leveraging a multicast or hypercast protocol considering most bandwidth usage is related to video streams. Many downlinks can accept a broadcast level packet.

How does a system link Starlink handle channel and spectrum allocation?

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wuunderbar2• 7 years ago

Does anyone have more details about the ground transceiver? How large will it be? What are the power requirements? How much view of the sky does it need?

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chrisweekly• 7 years ago

How long till it's possible to deploy static content to "edge" nodes in LOA? Traditional CDNs typically advertise their geo-distributed POPs on a 2D map. I want my cloud provider to live above the clouds.

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evidencepi• 7 years ago

For all the chinese users behind the wall, latency is not a problem at all for all.

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Zenst2• 7 years ago

This could eventually open up other markets for SpaceX. A communication network with that density would be able to offer a better resolution than GPS and sets up SpaceX to be a key backbone service provider for autonomous flying vehicles in any form. Be that personal transports/air taxis or courier drones.

Whilst not the intended market initially and might be some design considerations that prevent that level of branching out. But certainly, something to ponder down the line.

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positr0n• 7 years ago

Offering a GPS-like service would require totally different hardware. Each GPS satellite has 4 atomic clocks. The StarLink satellites will basically be optical routers and their timekeeping needs can probably be handled by a cheap clock and NTP from the ground.

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Zenst2• 7 years ago

Could have multiple clock sources on earth that produce the clock signals for the satellites. So a satellite could get an accurate time if it locked onto a few ground based sources.

Just with that volume and density of satellites, kinda begs some lateral thinking.

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wittedhaddock• 7 years ago

if anyone here thinks this stuff is super cool and wants to figure out how to solve internet for the public, by making it as cheap and as fast as possible, while private, please shoot me a note at james@communityphone.org (it's my life)

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7e4• 7 years ago

The economics of megacities, 5G and fiber strongly disfavor Starlink for the world's richest urban populations. They will have a difficult time finding enough paying customers in the barren spaces of the world.

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nickysielicki• 7 years ago

If you have any interest in this sort of thing, get your amateur radio license and start making contacts on AO91/AO85. It's so much fun to talk to someone 500 miles away with a walkie talkie, through a satellite.

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sbr4642• 7 years ago

For the frequent commenters about people not understanding latency, or the differences in technical terms around bandwidth, LEO/GEO, etc, imagine this: You may not be an economics or fiat currency expert, but given a choice of US dollars or Mexican Pesos, which would you pick? How do you know this? Do you work for the government or post frequently on the currency version of hacker news? No. You learn from people around you pretty quickly. If you're in a small town, you have limited options for bandwidth. There's Hughes Net (Satellite crap (high latency), but works if the only option) there's a new small Cable provider, there's DSL (phone company), etc. People chat, they gossip, they figure out how to get the best connection, in some ways embodying things straight out of movies like Hackers/The Matrix, even though they may own the local feed store. It's interesting to see. Don't underestimate people.

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sidcool• 7 years ago

The sheer ambitions and speed of execution of SpaceX (and even Tesla) is exhilarating. I hope they make it happen and put a dent in the deeply entrenched incumbent monopolies who are abusing their position. I would buy the service in a heartbeat.

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robomartin• 7 years ago

The real end game has to be servers in space. Think about a potential extreme privacy model where servers exist outside the domain of laws on earth.

Of course, to be cynical, no earth-based company can escape being squeezed into doing what law enforcement agencies might need them to do.

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bleair• 7 years ago

I can see the appeal for customers who in rural areas with one or no real option for internet access, or if you like to vacation / travel via RV.

Will the SpaceX system use frequencies that allow decent reception and transmission (to the sats) if you're physically in a city? If you're indoors?

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vineshants• 7 years ago

Hopefully to see this wonderful innovations during my lifetime. I am 50 yrs old.

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FrozenVoid• 7 years ago

The question i'd like to have answered: How long the sattelites actually last, considered the amount of space junk in orbit and amount of sattelites? Do they intend to launch several sats/day? https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/9ud7s7/starlink_s...

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grey-area• 7 years ago

A really interesting side-effect of the mass production of thousands of satellites for this constellation will be to make spacex a player in the satellite building business, bringing satellite production costs down significantly, and thus boost demand for their launch business, it will also demonstrate a high rate of launches. The two businesses can feed off each other, along with the revenue from starlink. Interesting strategy.

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mnoah• 7 years ago

I love how they added “wireless” to the title, as if to imply there is a wired space internet.

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mr__y• 7 years ago

Couldn't the latency problem be at least partially solved by moving servers to LEO as well? At least as a CDN?

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krageon• 7 years ago

Servers break a lot, so no.

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