SpaceX Successfully Launches 60 More Starlink Satellites as it Continues Towards 2020 Service Debut (techcrunch.com) 98
SpaceX has launched another big batch of Starlink satellites, the low Earth orbit spacecraft that will provide connectivity for its globe-spanning high-bandwidth broadband internet network. This brings the total number of Starlink satellites on orbit to 422, though the company plans to de-orbit two of those (the first two prototypes launched) shortly. From a report: Already, SpaceX is the largest private satellite operator in existence -- by a wide and growing margin. It's also managed to keep up the frequent pace of its Starlink launches despite the global COVID-19 crisis, with its last launch taking place March 18. In total, it has flown four such missions since the start of the year, just four months into 2020. The company has good reason to want to keep up that aggressive pace: Each launch brings it closer to the eventual launch of the Starlink broadband service that the satellites will provide the network backbone for. SpaceX wants that network to be live with coverage available in Canada and the Northern U.S. by sometime later this year, and because of the way its approach works, with small satellites orbiting much closer to Earth than traditional geostationary internet satellites and handing off the connection to one another as they pass the coverage area, they need a whole lot of them to provide stable, reliable, low-latency connections for consumers and businesses.
Elon Musk (Score:3)
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I thought we already established that he's from the future (so he already knows what's going to happen) and/or a parallel universe (so he knows what's possible) and/or another solar system (he's just building all the tech needed to go back home).
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I think we can eliminate the "from the future" alternative so he must be from a parallel universe instead.
If he was from the future, he would have perfect estimates on delivery timeframe and usefulness of cave submarines, self driving cars, any model of car Tesla makes, the effects of violating SEC rules, and the negative publicity arising from him accusing someone who was regarded as a hero around the world of being "pedo guy".
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Knowing what's possible in one parallel Universe does not guarantee that he can also make it happen in this Universe.
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Pretty sure if I went back in time to the 1900 I might be able to "invent" some things, or use my knowledge to make enough money to profit early off of advances I knew were going to come.
But that wouldn't make me a finance expert, a lawyer, or curb my propensity to make stupid comments.
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He's Space-Jesus.
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LOL, nice first post. There hasn't been an old-school trolling FP in a while on Slashdot, just the occasional shitpost. Thanks Futurepower(R), nostalgia-ing hard.
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Actually, not trolling, but should read: Why is SpaceX CEO Elon Musk so much smarter than the average Slashdot poster?
He's probably not, but he has a lot more energy to put his plans into action than I do. And let's face it, he got a bit lucky on PayPal (although he worked hard there, too).
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I like you, but I think that you are giving yourself way too much credit
Not unusual since at some level just about everybody dunning-kreugers themselves
I tested at IQ of 140 when I was about 10, only missed one question on my SAT, have worked at some of the premier tech companies on the planet and I can freely admit that Musk is just waaaaaay beyond me.
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I tested at IQ of 140 when I was about 10, only missed one question on my SAT, have worked at some of the premier tech companies on the planet and I can freely admit that Musk is just waaaaaay beyond me.
OK, that's cool, but you wrote all those words and didn't give a reason to believe that Musk is beyond you. Maybe you meant to say he is beyond you because he wouldn't leave the reason off if he wrote the post?
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I will leave it to the gentle reader to review the creation of X.com. the takeover of PayPal from within, the reinvestment into Tesla, and finally taking over the bulk of the commercial launch services. Hell, any one of those things is a great accomplishment, but pushing out and delivering one great idea after another... You tell me if that is exceptional or not
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Can lead a horse to water but can't make them drink. Your Dr Banjo act is tiresome [youtube.com]
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Have you met the average person?
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In fact I have and it is both sobering and a bit depressing.
You see in Finland we have mandatory military service and thus people of all levels of smartness, all social levels and so on have to thus serve together.
Only the most physically or mentally incapable were excludes, so I saw most of the range, and as it ia fairly Gaussian curve most such things, near the middle there was likely near the middle of the general population, with slightly higher average there I guess as the most hopeless cases are cut o
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Of course I was joking. It's important not to underestimate the average person, because we usually don't get a good sample of their true abilities.
For example, take remembering and following directions. Some people have better memories than others, but nobody can remember things they aren't paying attention to. Motivation has a significant impact on all kinds of cognitive performance. That's why the best evidence-supported nootropics are stimulants like caffeine.
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Musk certainly didnt design any Tesla, where maybe the only meaningful decision (aside from who to hire) that he made himself was which chassis (the choice was a Lotus chassis) to start with, after being presented with a narrow set of choices. It was certainly his engineers that had the idea to start making batteries.
Musk certainly didnt design any rockets, where
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Why is SpaceX CEO Elon Musk so much smarter than the average person?
He's not. He's just smarter than the average rich person (Gates, Trump, Zuckface). The world is full of people who, with Musk's money, would be doing what he's doing and more. Wealth is largely a matter of luck, no matter what the wealthy tell you.
A few simple questions (Score:2)
Surely it will require an satellite dish, how big will it be and how much will it cost?
How much will the service cost per month?
What will be the bandwidth?
Will there be monthly data quotas?
What will be the latency?
I get that this is for people who have poor/no service from the usual ISPs, but still those questions are quite important. Even if it's the only option available, at ex: 1000 dollars per month not many people will pay for it.
Does not seem to require a dish (Score:3, Informative)
Surely it will require an satellite dish, how big will it be and how much will it cost?
Although there are scant details at the moment, it seems like there is no dish - this article [spacenews.com] notes it comes with "a user terminal and a cord", unknown as to where in the house that terminal is placed... but no dish needed. Part of that is the Starlink satellites being so much lower than something like a Dish Network satellite.
As for cost, this site estimates $80/month [reviews.org] - I don't know what kind of bandwidth that would get
Re:Does not seem to require a dish (Score:4, Informative)
There is a receiver, it's just not dish shaped. It won't have to be carefully aimed at a satellite, obviously, but I'm sure it will need to see a good chunk of sky if you want reliable bandwidth. As soon as you have to affix something to your house, it might as well be a dish. Still, I want one.
I suspect the bandwidth will be saturation-dependent. Probably great bandwidth if you're rural and have shit internet today.
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The fact that it requires decent horizon (to reach more than one satellite and avoid drops) and can get saturated in dense areas makes SkyLink's main markets suburban to rural environs
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I for one absolutely cannot wait for this service. I'm about 12 miles away from the nearest 'town' and our options are either
cellular
exede/viasat.
Both are terrible. Cellular due to carrier limitations (multiple devices, throttling, low caps etc etc) and being fuckasses in general. Viasat is terrible due to the low cap and throttling, and the 590ms ping round trip (best case).
Both are barely usable, and both are egregiously expensive.
So if nothing else, Starlink will cause cellular and current sat provide
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They've said that from the start: even with tens of thousands of satellites, the geographic bandwidth density is not high enough to target urban centres. Boats, aircraft, rural, suburban, remote. Those are the target markets. There are a huge number of customers out there that fall into those categories. HughesNet alone has 1.3 million subscribers, and Starlink's going to be an attractive proposition pushing into denser areas (like, suburban) than geostationary broadband satellites do.
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Yes, Iridium satellite phone system was also waaaay oversold, and it didn't help that TV shows kept sticking Iridium phones into story lines set in cities....
I had the distinct pleasure of watching Iridium sales people doing all of their calls on Iridium phones as a way to let their customers know that the phones really did work. What the customers did not know was that the sales people were all walking around a fake lake a quarter mile from the nearest building to get clear connections while making their c
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I'd imagine that's sort of the point.
Yeah, if I'm in a dense population center, I have tons of options for Internet. When I'm out in a more rural area, my choices usually come down to wired phone or cellular, neither being particularly fast (maybe 5G). So something like this, if it's effective, could be a pretty good option. At the very least, more choice is good, whether you're in a dense population center or in a rural area.
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Sadly dense population centers in the US frequently have just one ISP option. The good old telco monopoly is back.
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There is a receiver, it's just not dish shaped. It won't have to be carefully aimed at a satellite, obviously, but I'm sure it will need to see a good chunk of sky if you want reliable bandwidth. As soon as you have to affix something to your house, it might as well be a dish. Still, I want one.
Funnily enough, the latest descriptions we've heard say it's dome shaped. Apparently they were never able to resolve the cost problems in assembling a proper flat phased array antenna grid and have instead gone with a smaller array of antennas arranged in an arc and more traditional reception techniques.
And yes, it does have to go outside, attached to the house. We need to keep reminding people that the frequencies being used don't go through walls or ceilings for crap. I want one too. I know just where
Re:A few simple questions (Score:5, Informative)
Some of these are answered on the Starlink Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org].
Surely it will require an satellite dish, how big will it be[?]
[T]he size of a pizza box[.]
What will be the bandwidth?
In 2019, tests by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) demonstrated a 610 megabit per second data link through Starlink to a Beechcraft C-12 Huron aircraft in flight.
You get the idea. Scan through the rest at your leisure.
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In 2019, tests by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) demonstrated a 610 megabit per second data link through Starlink to a Beechcraft C-12 Huron aircraft in flight.
Wow, that's a huge red flag. Thanks for pointing that out.
So they have just 610 megabit from a single client that was thousands of meters off the ground. Add the extra distance and atmosphere in, divide by the number of clients per satellite...
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Problem with that analysis is how much of the limitation is the client?
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Re:A few simple questions (Score:5, Informative)
Goodbye Astrophotography (Score:4, Informative)
These Starlink satellites are going to mean the end of astrophotography as we know it.
https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=161494/ [spaceweathergallery.com]
Stacking should be able to clean that out. (Score:2)
That photo was built using a lot of stacked images - why would stack included processing include data from elements that moved between exposures? That seems like it's something software processing stacked images could easily filter out, since the trail would only be in place for a few images at most and would shift quite a bit between exposures.
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That may work now, but when there are thousands more of these satellites in orbit, every image in the stack may include one or more satellite trails.
Re: Stacking should be able to clean that out. (Score:2, Informative)
Even if that weâ(TM)re true, the satellites would all appear in different orbital planes, at different positions, travelling in different directions. Thatâ(TM)s still trivial for the processing software to filter.
But itâ(TM)s not true. The eventual density of these satellites will be such that if you were to point a telescope at the sky looking at an area the size of the moon, you could expect to see one satellite transition every 12 hours on average. Typically telescopes taking composite
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It doesn't work now. Stacking in an attempt to remove satellite trails introduces all sorts of artifacts where the satellite was, or massively reduces stacking performance. It's easier to throw out an exposure than deal with this shit. Fortunately at the moment the problem isn't too bad and image analysis can easily automatically reject such exposures.
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https://www.iau.org/public/ima... [iau.org]
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Perhaps you should have read the note that Lowell Observatory added to the linked image:
Although this image serves as an illustration of the impact of reflections from satellite constellations, please note that the density of these satellites is significantly higher in the days after launch (as seen here) and also that the satellites will diminish in brightness as they reach their final orbital altitude.
Re:Stacking should be able to clean that out. (Score:5, Informative)
More than that. The fact that there were so many parallel ones in a single shot shows that these were satellites immediately after they were launched, when they're clustered together, and vastly more visible than when they're in their final orbits. The odds of any random shot containing that is extremely low, but of course, anyone who takes a picture like that is going to want to share it. Pointing to the visibility of Starlink satellites during this phase is kind of pointless, as there will only ever be a couple dozen satellites in this phase.
Even the first Starlink satellites were not that visible in their final orbits, and they've been refining the design for lowering albedo ever since (not just in the final orbit, but also for during the orbit-raising phase). Not simply "painting them black", but to the point that starting with the next launch, all Starlink satellites will come with a deployable sunshade.
There's already thousands of objects in orbit. If you can't handle them at any magnitude, then you can't do anything related to space. If you can handle them at a sufficiently low magnitude, then what matters is albedo-reduction. Which is what SpaceX has been doing.
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There's already thousands of objects in orbit. If you can't handle them at any magnitude, then you can't do anything related to space.
We do handle them, by throwing out exposures. Stacking isn't something magical, and the science behind it can't perfectly eliminate the streak satellites leave. Its why all competent image processing software auto-detects a brightness deviation from average above a threshold and automatically removes the image from the stack.
It sucks losing 20min of data, but not as much as having a streak, and not as much as it will suck when Musk's silly internet project fucks up every exposure.
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Stacking reduces the problems but does not resolve them. Any data that needs to be removed from a stack results in a lack of data available for the the primary purpose of stacking which is to clean up an image. Additionally you need to set the stacking rejection parameters to an appropriate value which at some point will degrade your ability to reject noise from the stacked set, or result in a halo around where the satellite streak was.
I reject images with satellites completely. It's easier to handle the lo
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Indeed. Now those billion dollar ground telescopes are probably going to be garbage thanks to this. In the meantime the James Webber telescope is still grounded.
Re:Goodbye Astrophotography (Score:4, Insightful)
In the meantime the James Webber telescope is still grounded.
NASA's involved, so I suspect it will be done when the SLS is done, another $20-40 billion from now. Sigh, lots of science needs that boondoggle, but at this point I've given up hope.
However, once Starship is operational, launching large payloads will be dirt cheap, and with a 9m fairing, you can have a reasonably large reflector without the fancy folding.
ndeed. Now those billion dollar ground telescopes are probably going to be garbage thanks to this.
Nah, real telescopes won't even notice, as moving objects are trivially filtered. This affects amateurs using long exposures where a moving bright light is a problem, not digital image stacks with lots of software already.
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Nah, real telescopes won't even notice, as moving objects are trivially filtered.
Absolutely not. Objects are not trivially filtered, the entire data is simply tossed. The telescopes which fair best are those with really long focal lengths, but that is far from the only science that gets done in the night sky.
Please leave the opinion to actual astronomers who have weighed in on the issue with severe concern.
https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre... [ras.ac.uk]
https://aas.org/press/aas-issu... [aas.org]
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.109... [arxiv.org]
not digital image stacks with lots of software already.
Absolutely false. You can't properly stack out these issues, and if you did you sur
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If ground based telescopes can filter out the chaotic nature of atmospheric distortion I would thing that it wouldn't be all that difficult to filter out the predicable nature of these satellites. I am not an astronomer though so I could be totally mistaken.
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Not at all [bbc.com].
Short exposures on ESO's narrow-field observatories like the VLT and ELT should cope in this scenario.
"For a 100-second exposure time at twilight, we would lose 0.3% of the exposures. So, that means for every 1,000 exposures we take, three of them would be ruined by a satellite. And that number goes down as the Sun goes down," Dr Hainaut explained.
Astronomers were mostly concerned with the planned sats in 1000km orbits, but those would be deployed at 550km as well, so that is no longer an issue.
The Starlink sats will also feature sun-shades starting with launch 9 (in addition to other measures) and that will reduce their albedo greatly as well.
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The VLT and ELT do not do "astrophotography". They are multi-hundred million dollar scientific instruments and their FOV makes them far less exposed to the impact of satellites than general astrophotography satellites.
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"You can't build* a bridge to the future without breaking some fucking skulls." - Me.
Just be glad the skulls are only a hobby - and anyhow, your methods/equipment will adapt.
*This has both libertarian and commie elements to it; everyone should be happy.
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""You can't build* a bridge to the future without breaking some fucking skulls." - Me."
That's exactly how we got into the mess we're now in with respect to global warming.
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Global warming is a small price to pay for humanity transitioning from pre-technological agricultural existence to modern technology. Our diminishing continued reliance on fossil fuels is also the product of technology. The bridge to the future may be rocky, but it leads to a nice place.
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Actually, it leads nowhere when the petrol corporations actively suppress adoption of advancements in technology just to pad their bottom line. Just look at the damage that the Koch bros have done while attempting to gain greater riches
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They are just a bit late (Score:2)
If they had started service last fall, they can made huge profits now when everyone who can works remotely and need good internet connectivity.
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If they had started service last fall, they can made huge profits now when everyone who can works remotely and need good internet connectivity.
I'm just glad their operational date did not coincide with the shutdown. The conspiracy nutballs would have had a field day. Make that a field decade. It would have been ridiculous.
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The good news would be that it's harder to blow up a satellite--at least compared to a 5G Tower [olneydailymail.com]...
Mobile network in the sticks (Score:2)
I hope cell phone manufacturers quickly add support for this service. I know it isn't intended for that purpose, and has poor building penetration, but it would be immensely useful to be able to know that even if you're in some national park(*) with no line-of-sight to a cell tower, you could at least go outdoors and get a signal no matter where you are.
(*) Also on cruise ships, airplanes, boats, etc.
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I hope cell phone manufacturers quickly add support for this service. I know it isn't intended for that purpose, and has poor building penetration, but it would be immensely useful to be able to know that even if you're in some national park(*) with no line-of-sight to a cell tower, you could at least go outdoors and get a signal no matter where you are.
(*) Also on cruise ships, airplanes, boats, etc.
https://www.iridium.com
https://www.globalstar.com/
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Iridium had a consistent customer base, they just couldn't deal with the launch costs. Starlink is borderline with existing launch costs. However, Starlink sats launched on Starship will be shockingly cheap, probably less than 1/10th the Falcon 9 cost. There's no way SpaceX is launching 30,000 sats on Falcon 9, so it's the Starship costs that will really matter.
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I hope cell phone manufacturers quickly add support for this service. I know it isn't intended for that purpose, and has poor building penetration, but it would be immensely useful to be able to know that even if you're in some national park(*) with no line-of-sight to a cell tower, you could at least go outdoors and get a signal no matter where you are.
(*) Also on cruise ships, airplanes, boats, etc.
Be careful what you wish for. Electromagnetic fields are going to be the next big pollution that we have to fix, and this wide it could be detrimental to plant life. Which would wipe -us- out when it goes.
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Be careful what you wish for. Electromagnetic fields are going to be the next big pollution that we have to fix, and this wide it could be detrimental to plant life.
Not at this constellation's power levels, they aren't. Using beamforming between multiple satellites, this constellation only produces -60 dBm [quora.com], which is like a decent cell tower signal (outdoors). Without beamforming, it's -160 dBm, which wouldn't even be usable outdoors without a directional antenna.
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Not at this constellation's power levels, they aren't. Using beamforming between multiple satellites, this constellation only produces -60 dBm, which is like a decent cell tower signal (outdoors).
That Quora answer looks suspicious. And wrong. It's describing the constellation in a way that demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of its architecture. It talks about the individual satellites acting as single elements in a phased array, which is not the case. Each Starlink satellite carries its own phased array antenna and does its own beam-forming. Even a charitable interpretation of that Quora answer can't explain how it's so completely wrong. Starlink has changed several times since S
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Be careful what you wish for. Electromagnetic fields are going to be the next big pollution that we have to fix, and this wide it could be detrimental to plant life.
Not at this constellation's power levels, they aren't. Using beamforming between multiple satellites, this constellation only produces -60 dBm [quora.com], which is like a decent cell tower signal (outdoors). Without beamforming, it's -160 dBm, which wouldn't even be usable outdoors without a directional antenna.
Note that the common tests for danger were originally used for radar and microwave ovens. They only measure the heating effects. I have not seen any test for Bioelectronic effects. And yes, the human nervous system (and in animals) is bioelectronic. Think "radio interference" with computers, only we ourselves don't have modern shielding... 8-}
Re: Mobile network in the sticks (Score:1)
You Russian troll much ? If not, how can you be commenting on a technical site and be so utterly, staggeringly, incomprehensibly dumb ?
Really, IQs below 90 don't belong here.
Re: Mobile network in the sticks (Score:1)
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Buy a satellite phone; they've been around for years.
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I think the big drawback here is that it requires a pizza box sized receiver. Good for an RV or a private boat, not for a cellphone.
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You'd use it for tower backhaul, not individual telephones.
Billionaire greed (Score:2)
You can't "stack" satellite trails out; the best you can do is take more and more exposures, hoping to get some lights without any streaking. With the Starlink grid proposed to be 42,000 satellites at about mag 6, good luck. The shot displayed appears to be a Starlink train launch, about mag 2. Once they reach their working altitude in a few months they will still be visible to the naked eye. This isn't just a problem for all the amateur astrophotographers, it's also going to impact the professional inst
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You can't "stack" satellite trails out
Tell that to the real astronomers, who stack satellite trails out. Also, there's no "trails", that's a thing of amateur long-exposure photography.
he best you can do is take more and more exposures
Which is how real telescopes work anyhow, so no problem.
Obviously, if you aren't an astrophotographer or visual observer, or don't give a damn about astronomy at all, you don't see the problem.
It's true I don't care if your hobby is sidelined by the inevitable march to the future and tehcnological progress. The sky is not your theme park.
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Your right, it's Elon Musk's now. Somehow 1 person now has all the rights to our view of the stars.
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It has been ever thus: economic growth come along and spoils your nice rural view. In another century, it will all be heavy industry and smokestacks. Progress, baby.
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What "right" is that Is it "inalienable" or part of the Constitution? In any case, if you want to see the stars, turn off the street lights.
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Do you shout at the thousands of birds and airplanes that go over your head every day?
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So in other words "Your right to a view of the stars is more important then the rights of others to fast internet?"
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https://www.iau.org/public/ima... [iau.org]
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You can't "stack" satellite trails out
Tell that to the real astronomers, who stack satellite trails out. Also, there's no "trails", that's a thing of amateur long-exposure photography.
Yeah, no. Most amateur photography is done with stacked exposures between 30 seconds to a few minutes.
he best you can do is take more and more exposures
Which is how real telescopes work anyhow, so no problem.
Again, no. "real" telescopes usually take very long (multiple hour) exposures over multiple days, not a bunch of very short exposures.
Obviously, if you aren't an astrophotographer or visual observer, or don't give a damn about astronomy at all, you don't see the problem.
It's true I don't care if your hobby is sidelined by the inevitable march to the future and tehcnological progress. The sky is not your theme park.
I'm glad to see that, after a 4 year absence, Slashdot is still filled with asshats who have no experience with a topic, but are willing to post BS anyway. Nice talking to you. Obviously, I have no need to bother with slash anymore. You've reminded me why I left. Enjoy playing with your tech toys.
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I'm glad to see that, after a 4 year absence, Slashdot is still filled with asshats who have no experience with a topic
Well in defense of Slashdot, lgw has been one of the long time original ignorant asshats. He's asshatted for so long I doubt he's going to stop anytime soon.
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Tell that to the real astronomers, who stack satellite trails out. Also, there's no "trails", that's a thing of amateur long-exposure photography.
They don't. They reject the frames outright. "Real astronomers" have narrow FOVs, are less impacted by passing satellites, and have the luxury of equipment that generally rejects few frames so they aren't impacted by the sudden loss of some subframes.
You can't "stack" satellite trails out. And "real astronomers" would be the ones most affected by the artifacts introduced by the pixel rejection process, which is why they don't actually reject partial data in the first place.
Which is how real telescopes work anyhow, so no problem.
No problem unless your telescope o
Garbage collection (Score:2)
How are these going to be disposed of when they die or are no longer used. Is the orbit low enough to allow them to burn up eventually?
Is the plastic problem in space terms?
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Yes, eventually, and IIRC they recently proposed moving all of their satellites into their lowest licensed orbit (improves performance but will require more satellites). They'll de-orbit themselves if they're able, and eventually get dragged out of orbit if they're not. They're supposed to be 100% demisable, though it's not clear that will still be the case if they ever put the inter-satellite lasers on them.
In the end (Score:2)
In the end, humanity might have had a chance, but they fucked up their view of the sky to satiate the ever increasing demand for Online Access.
The telescopes on the ground never even saw the asteroid coming. . . . . . . .