Starlink direct-to-cell enabled for hurricane helene emergency messaging

https://twitter.com/spacex/status/1842988427777605683

by nynx • 2 years ago

147 140 2 years ago

caseyy2• 2 years ago

This is what the future of communication looks like. It's really a massive step forward. No one will have to die from exposure when their cars break down, no planes will go missing, and no more black spots in natural disasters. It is also quite dignified and civilised that we are using this technology first to help the most vulnerable.

Communication is and has always been an important element in human organisation. Imagine if corrupt governments could no longer shut down the internet and cell service. Even a world war probably wouldn't disrupt this. People will be really empowered by this technology, we just need more competition in this space. But one step at a time.

Also: simmer down Elon fans and haters, this is not only about Elon. Look at the bigger, global picture.

asynchronous• 2 years ago

I agree with the sentiment but LEO constellations like Starlink can and have been disrupted, via sub-orbital jamming. Not to mention that in actual large conflict surface to LEO missiles will simply destroy large amounts of satellite constellations.

panick21_2• 2 years ago

No government currently exists that has nearly enough rockets to impact Starlink. There is a big difference between doing individual tests and taking down a constellation of 1000s.

dotnet003• 2 years ago

Starlink is supposedly harder to jam than typical satellite comms due to its use of phased array communication. IIRC you need to either be flying overhead or putting out a ton more power in a ground based jammer to be effective.

And as the other user mentioned, no country at the moment has the kind of stockpile of ASAT weapons needed to wipe the constellation (plus, due to orbital dynamics, there's a limit to how quickly they can take out satellites).

Between trying to wipe the constellation and jamming it, it'd be far more cost effective to jam even accounting for the higher power requirements/lower jamming range.

There would also be other interesting options like capturing and using enough terminals to force the entire cell to be disabled. That has been one of the challenges SpaceX has had to deal with near the frontlines in Ukraine.

acidburnNSA• 2 years ago

Agree with all of that, except the world war part. Satellites will definitely be fair game in world war 3... probably one of the first targets.

Ham radio will live on!

caseyy2• 2 years ago

I don't know – would we risk Kessler Syndrome for a war? Win a piece of land and doom humanity for a hundred years of regress in space? Maybe, probably can't be ruled out.

As for jamming, is it feasible or practical to jam very large parts of the world? I can't imagine it would be. It seems to me like jamming would probably be used for specific military purposes and people would be left alone to communicate with each other otherwise.

It's not that I'm saying this could not be done. It could. But this is not the most likely scenario in my head. The immense benefit to all humanity is a very likely scenario, in contrast.

LoRa is another equally exciting technology that has a lot of potential in all the spaces I mentioned. I just can't currently imagine a reason it would go mass-market.

croes2• 2 years ago

Satellites can be hacked, jammed or destroyed

LEO satellites need constant replacement.

wkat42422• 2 years ago

Planes have had access to sat Comms for decades. MH380 had it but it was deactivated. Most likely by a suicidal pilot. The engines had their own uplink that was still active. But Starlink isn't going to solve that kind of problem.

acover• 2 years ago

Drones staying connected in enemy territory.

akira25013• 2 years ago

Imagine if corrupt governments could no longer shut down the internet and cell service.

Even in the parts of the world where this occurs it has been shown to be nothing more than a surface level inconvenience.

Communication is and has always been an important element in human organisation.

Precisely. We don't exactly need the internet or cell service. We've got techniques and historical methods going back to the beginning of, unsurprisingly, recorded history.

People will be really empowered by this technology

They're already empowered. This will mostly just convenience them.

gruez2• 2 years ago

> Imagine if corrupt governments could no longer shut down the internet and cell service.
Even in the parts of the world where this occurs it has been shown to be nothing more than a surface level inconvenience.

"Internet shutdowns" like the ones in Kashmir involves all internet being shut down, not just a few sites being blocked on the ISP's DNS servers. That's hardly a "surface level inconvenience".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India#I...

throwaway484764• 2 years ago

The aircraft body attenuates the signal. That's why all the antennas are placed outside.

numpad0• 2 years ago

Why does this exact word "hate" always appear in the top comment on Musk related topics? Is someone grepping this string for some purposes?

hcarvalhoalves• 2 years ago

Imagine if corrupt governments could no longer shut down the internet and cell service. Even a world war probably wouldn't disrupt this.

That’s quite naive, to believe a private company is not under political influence.

https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-inf...

delfinom• 2 years ago

Eh? Planes going missing is because operators don't want to buy into satcom systems or the pilot pulled the fuses. Most US airlines fully know where their plane is at all times , complete with plane internal telemetry beamed to an engineering department at the airline.

ActorNightly2• 2 years ago

Look at the bigger, global picture.

Global picture doesn't work with people in charge of this. If someone shows substantial evidence of mental decline, would you want them anywhere near anything that has to do with global communications?

tzs2• 2 years ago

This is what the future of communication looks like

Is there sufficient capacity?

For broadband Starlink has an upper limit on the density of its customers. By density I mean number of customers per km^2 rather than some prohibition against dumb people using Starlink :-)

Estimates of this limit vary. When I did a back of the envelope calculation a couple assuming all 12000 planned satellites get deployed I got 4.4 simultaneous people doing full speed downloads per km^2. I had to make some guesses for that, in particular the number of satellites visible. If the satellites were spread uniformly around the Earth then at any one time about 360 would be visible from any given location. But they aren't uniform. They have orbits that favor spending more time over the mid latitudes than the high latitudes. That increases the number visible from the mid and low latitudes and lowers the number visible from high latitudes. I just assumed an even 1000 at any one time in mid latitudes.

Others estimates are as high as 30 simultaneous people using full speed per km^2.

This is why providers of wired/fiber or terrestrial wireless broadband in decent sizes cities aren't worried about Starlink.

I'd expect Starlink LTE to have the same kind of limitation, albeit with very different numbers. The bandwidth needed for one 100 Mbps download would be enough for at least 1000 telephone quality voice streams, but I doubt the satellites have the same amount of bandwidth available over LTE as they do over whatever they are using for the internet stuff, so I don't see any way to get a good estimate.

bigfatkitten• 2 years ago

no planes will go missing

This doesn't change anything for aircraft because aviation has had this capability for decades.

Even light aircraft have ELTs and ADS-B, and larger aircraft operating in oceanic airspace also have real time position reporting via datalink over VHF radio and SATCOM.

Imagine if corrupt governments could no longer shut down the internet and cell service.

Satellite operators will continue deny service to particular areas whenever they're told to, just as they do today.

lopkeny12ko• 2 years ago

Off topic: what is up with the persistent anti-Musk crusading in this thread (and on HN in general)?

erichocean• 2 years ago

He bought Twitter. The hate precisely coincides with that event.

ausbah• 2 years ago

he had to buy twitter

concordDance• 2 years ago

Predates it by many years. It actually even predates the cave submarine, but strongly intensified then and increased roughly constantly until the present day.

Jtsummers3• 2 years ago

If you look at the kidme5, samegene321, and george23 accounts in this discussion you'll note that they predominantly comment about Musk in Musk-related threads (usually SpaceX, it seems), often sporadically with large delays between when they make comments (weeks and months). They also post the same things as each other (though this is non-obvious, kidme3 deleted the content of one of their dead comments, but it's verbatim what samegene321 posted). It's either an individual or a coincidentally very narrowly-focused group of people who not only think the same, but write the same.

akira25013• 2 years ago

or a coincidentally very narrowly-focused group of people

Yea, coincident with money.

93po• 2 years ago

I feel like I can spot musk-bashing astroturfing a mile away because they repeat the exact same criticisms that made big headlines but aren't actually true, but there's maybe like a tiny nugget of nuance to the topic, and it's repeated forever and ever like it's fact and Elon is literally hitler and tesla doesnt actually exist and space isn't real too and elon is just lying to you.

but also he's a xenophobic, transphobic asshole who supports politicians eroding really basic rights and liberties for people, so fuck em

perihelions• 2 years ago

There's a much stronger correlation: these accounts (plus a couple others—who are also active in this thread) all comment about one highly specific, niche topic which absolutely no one else on HN does. It's the claim that the Bush-era NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin, is a unrecognized key figure behind SpaceX' founding.

Just query "spacex mike griffin", and it's exactly these accounts (and people who reply to them).

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=spacex%20mike%20griffin&type=c...

seniorivn• 2 years ago

he involved himself in politics, so everyone who have strong feelings against his "side" or for his opponents, project it on him in a form of hate.

Inevitable consequence of the two party system and/or fptp election system

ta1243• 2 years ago

If you tie yourself to a specific politician, especially in a massively polarised environment, you're going to alienate many people, and it's hardly like Musk wasn't controversial before twitter and his swing to MAGA.

madeofpalk3• 2 years ago

Musk is, to say the least, polarising, and thus attracts a lot of people who take either highly favourable or intensely sceptical stances on everything he says. These two groups then feed off each other - those critical of Musk often feel compelled to counterbalance what they see as overly charitable interpretations of his statements or the actions of companies associated with him, and vice versa I guess.

In this particular topic, Musk has a history of being... opportunistic to disasters and tries to 'help out' to various degrees of success (see his weird mini-sub saga for the thai cave rescue, and Starlink's involvement in Ukraine/Russia war).

Personally, I think he's a terrible human being who uses his platform to spread vile hate which is incompatible with a modern world, and I tend not to separate the art from the artist (if you could call either of them that). But otherwise I'm not brigading out here.

kortilla4• 2 years ago

and Starlink's involvement in Ukraine/Russia war

Why is that in the same statement as the sub thing? Starlink has been absolutely instrumental to the success of Ukraine.

bloopernova• 2 years ago

Musk is backing the republican party of the USA, using the reach of twitter and the power of his fortune.

The GOP has destroyed the trust involved in elections, purely on the ego of trump, and thrown away the peaceful transfer of power.

GOP state members have stated that they will discard the result of the election, sending their own picked electors. That will inevitably fall under the purview of the supreme court of the USA, who have shown themselves to be partisan and who will hand the election to trump. What happens after that is anybody's guess. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republicans-set-stage-... + https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/08/supreme...

Musk is also spreading the "this might be the last election you ever vote in" meme, which is pure projection from the extreme right wing that has taken over so much of the USA. So I have a large amount of derision for provocateurs like Musk, who can simply fly his private jet to another country if the USA becomes embroiled in civil war. https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-claims-during-trump-081...

I utterly loathe the people that would cause violence and stolen elections, and musk is one of them.

And, to the people that would back the extreme right: they will turn on you the very nanosecond it becomes convenient to them.

ralfd• 2 years ago

"this might be the last election you ever vote in" meme

To be fair the left is saying the same, because Trump will end democracy, this time for real.

I am not American, so often only the crazy/extremist views reach me over the ocean, but I did read over the past years the hope in leftist circles, that migrants will make Florida and Texas first a purple and then blue.

shrubble2• 2 years ago

California is basically a single party state at this point; something that Musk would be aware of; it seems that is what he is referring to.

kortilla4• 2 years ago

Musk is also spreading the "this might be the last election you ever vote in" meme

It’s hilarious that you’re spreading the left version of that meme and can’t even tell.

mensetmanusman3• 2 years ago

Wouldn’t everyone have more trust with paper and ID?

jrflowers2• 2 years ago

It’s probably because of the stuff he says and does OP

https://www.vice.com/en/article/twitter-elon-musk-dom-lucre-...

https://www.salon.com/2024/09/27/misinformation-superspreade...

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-...

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/18/media/elon-musk-trump-rally-b...

For less-polarizing examples: https://elonmusk.today

neaanopri• 2 years ago

I believe it's fair and based on recent changes in musk's political outlook which many disagree with. His public persona really didn't used to be like this, and he never would have been so popular in the first place if that was the case.

ActorNightly2• 2 years ago

The issue is, while the haters do seem like they are the standard outrage machine, I dont think people who are not into politics realize how batshit insane the Republicans side has gotten, which Musk is solidly a part of.

We are used to living this relatively cushy life, where we think that everyone is entitled to the political opinion, and we seem to take it for granted like its never going to change. But in reality, if Trump wins, it may very well be the end of American democratic experiment, and set us on the path towards a much lower standard of life. If EU and other markets start losing faith in US economy because we have a dictator in power, you better believe you are going to feel that, cause nobody will give a shit about the tech sector.

Like, its REALLY fucking bad right now with how close the polls are, and its scary that many peoplendont realize this fact.

So I dont think that at this point and time, its wise to chalk up all the hate rhetoric as just online outrage. People should be outraged. Vote blue downballot in November, and maybe once MAGA movement dies, we can go back to some form of normalicy.

bamboozled4• 2 years ago

I almost wonder if the parent is asking in good faith, like, “oh thanks, I didn’t notice…” ?

mrguyorama• 2 years ago

Women are dying because of anti-abortion positions being espoused by these republicans.

People aren't just outraged. Millions are terrified.

There's a 50% chance come November 9th that my girlfriend and I have to have a very serious discussion about how we will protect her rights and literal safety, that we have to make serious sacrifices to go somewhere safer, including leaving family.

I have friends that would have to go into literal hiding, living fake lives to not get systemically harmed and targeted.

Project 2025 damn near calls for my execution, and the execution of people I love, for things that no well adjusted people consider wrong.

America had a blatant and clear taste for actual full blown Nazism in the early 1900s, and people don't seem to realize that it was never rooted out, just made quiet for a few decades. We LOVE eugenics.

bamboozled4• 2 years ago

Because Musk as a person is a huge liar, fraud and a major disappointment with a messiah complex to boot ?

We could be looking at these developments with excitement, instead many of us think about how he is going to use this tech to fuck more things up and justify more immoral behaviour. He is a real life Bond villain.

Read this case document by Aaron Jacob Greenspan, it’s fascinating and a good read: https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/download.html?id=332879335...

5. Defendant Musk has openly admitted that his leadership philosophy is that the ends—here, Tesla’s mission of “accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy”—justify the means, or fraudulent and unlawful business practices, so long as they keep a company afloat.

He also tweeted this two years ago…

For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally Apr 28, 2022

It makes me nervous such a guy is in control of so many things…

Russia having starlink to use drones to bomb Ukrainian soldiers, for example. Buying Twitter to spread lies and conspiracies is another. Calling a hero a “pedo guy” because he didn’t agree with his approach.

The guy is an asshat, period.

inemesitaffia6• 2 years ago

Russia and starlink?

And writing a lawyers opinion as fact?

JaimeThompson2• 2 years ago

Some are bothered by his positions that explicitly want to roll back rights for people while others are bothered by his current "government aid is bad" position given how much such aid he has received.

I'm guessing if he actually lived the beliefs he said he used to have more people with support him.

__MatrixMan__• 2 years ago

I wonder what the user experience was like. Did they have to select "Starlink" instead of "T-Mobile"?

If not, was there some kind TMobile-signed-starlink's-key situation?

It's an interesting interplay between preferring user consent versus wanting things to just start working when they need to.

wmf3• 2 years ago

Roaming is generally automatic with no "consent" involved.

beeflet• 2 years ago

True. This vid was a major eye opener for how insecure the current staus quo is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVyu7NB7W6Y

lxgr2• 2 years ago

Your phone provider definitely has to have a roaming agreement. Without that, your phone won’t attach to any 3G network and beyond (3G introduced mutual authentication).

GSM remains vulnerable to all kinds of bad things since it only authenticates the phone/SIM to the network but not otherwise).

diebeforei485• 2 years ago

This is for where there is no T-mobile coverage, so there is no need to choose satellite over a terrestrial station.

ggreer• 2 years ago

I was curious why direct-to-cell hasn't been enabled everywhere, and it looks like it's because AT&T claims it would cause them an 18% decrease in network throughput/capacity. AT&T petitioned the FCC to block direct-to-cell rollout because of this.[1] SpaceX responded that AT&T's estimates of interference are incorrect, and that AT&T fails to account for many factors. Also, SpaceX argues that the public good of having cell phone access in remote areas outweighs the slight reduction of network capacity in areas with existing coverage.[2]

My guess is that the truth is somewhere in the middle. All else equal, adding more cell towers to an area will increase interference and decrease performance for existing networks, but I doubt it will be as bad as AT&T claims. Also T-Mobile made a deal with SpaceX to be the sole network with direct-to-cell for the first year after rollout. It seems more likely than not that AT&T is trying to hurt their competition using the FCC. If a different cell network had gotten an exclusive contract, I'm sure it would be T-Mobile petitioning the FCC to block direct-to-cell rollout.

No branch of the US government keeps statistics on how many people get lost in the wilderness and die each year, but it's definitely in the hundreds and possibly over 1,000.[3] Considering how often a working cell phone could save them, I think it's worth enabling direct-to-cell everywhere.

1. https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/1081242986780/1

2. https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/1021391547062/1

3. https://nypost.com/2020/07/04/why-hundreds-of-people-vanish-...

dotnet003• 2 years ago

It also hasn't been enabled everywhere yet because the associated constellation is not complete yet. Current service is probably going to be intermittent. Basically, it's just better than nothing when in an emergency like this.

throwaway484764• 2 years ago

It's an excuse to establish 'facts on the ground' that the technology is useful which makes it harder to rollback via bureaucracy if it cuts into telco profits.

gosub1003• 2 years ago

This would be trivial to test via deployment to merchant mariners in vast swathes of empty, international waters.

yieldcrv• 2 years ago

ahahaha no no its more complicated than that

SpaceX lobbied for radio regulatory changes to hamper competitors, the competitors (AST Spacemobile) overcame that and has their own satellite system that comply with the agreed upon regulations, Verizon and AT&T are customers in the US, then SpaceX wanted its now non-regulatory compliant satellite cluster to do the same thing but the FCC just points to SpaceX’s own contribution to the standards as reason not to change it - which seem like good reasons, power level, interference, the usual

This emergency authorization is a raison d’etre to justify what SpaceX is now trying to do

I’m glad the infrastructure is there for the affected area, the politics behind it are amusing and should be scrutinized

mlindner2• 2 years ago

There's a lot of posts like this who are fans of AST Spacemobile because they own stock. SpaceX did not lobby for any radio regulatory changes to hamper competitors. Additionally Verizon and AT&T are themselves AST Spacemobile investors.

If you're going to write this type of post you should clarify whether you have stock ownership in the company as many people have HUGE conflicts of interest on this given ASTS's rapid rise and meme stock status.

For other readers I suggest looking at their subreddit to see the type of delusional post that is common. https://old.reddit.com/r/ASTSpaceMobile/

Salgat4• 2 years ago

Starlink is partnering with T-Mobile for this, so they're definitely going to be careful to only send signals to areas that are actually lacking in towers anyways. And this is great incentive for carriers to cooperate to make roaming cheap and preferable over satellite.

shaklee34• 2 years ago

That's not how satellites work. The beam is far larger than a cell tower, so they're absolutely going to be transmitting where there are towers.

stavros4• 2 years ago

Does anyone know how this works? Do the satellites speak LTE/5G? Can cell phones really communicate with satellites directly without larger antennas?

Jtsummers3• 2 years ago

They're using T-Mobile's 1900MHz 5G band for this.

ianburrell3• 2 years ago

It works with any phone with LTE.

It requires larger antennas. Starlink had to launch the V2 satellites which are larger and have new, big antenna for Direct-to-cell. They were meant for Starship, but that was delayed so they developed V2 Mini for Falcon 9. The version with antenna started launching beginning of year. My understanding is that are close to numbers for providing global coverage.

stavros4• 2 years ago

That's amazing, I'm having trouble believing that a mobile phone's antenna can talk to space, 500km away. Do you know what sort of bandwidth these will have?

dotnet003• 2 years ago

As far as I'm aware, the V2 minis are different from the DTC sats. V2 mini just has expanded network bandwidth. DTC are a specific variant of the V2 mini with the hardware needed for DTC. Not all V2 launches, even now, are DTC variants.

wkat42422• 2 years ago

Yeah and only a few of each launch are direct to cell capable. Probably until starship works.

jeffbee2• 2 years ago

Starlink is nice but does the US not possess an air platform that can loiter while providing mobile phone service? Seems like a useful thing to have for civil defense. Wasn't Project Loon supposedly capable of covering a state-sized area with 4G coverage?

inemesitaffia6• 2 years ago

Google replaced loon with starlink and point to point laser tech

jeffbee2• 2 years ago

I'm asking why the US doesn't own a blimp with a base station taped to the bottom.

kortilla4• 2 years ago

What weird phrasing. Loon just shutdown on its own and did not participate in any of the sat laser development for Starlink.

kylehotchkiss• 2 years ago

We know with certainty that major disasters happen like clockwork every year, but that would decrease the amount we can pay our carriers CEOs and it's not like there's any profit potential from this, carriers don't have SLAs where people impacted by outages are owed anything.

More practically for civil defense, national guard will have their own radios, and the amateur radio guys all said they've been prepping for this role? Have they succeeded in that goal?

tahoeskibum• 2 years ago

I'm not surprised that China, Russia & UK have plans for their own constellations, and eventually India too.

tremarley• 2 years ago

I think they would if they could.

They would need the funds and talent.

SpaceX have been able to do it on this scale due to reusable rockets

Starlink direct-to-cell enabled for hurricane helene emergency messaging

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