[HN Gopher] Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
___________________________________________________________________
Live Starlink Satellite and Coverage Map
Author : rvnx
Score : 369 points
Date : 2023-04-29 01:33 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (satellitemap.space)
(TXT) w3m dump (satellitemap.space)
| kylecazar wrote:
| Seeing this visualized makes it more impressive...
|
| I'm not a user though, so I can't testify to the problems people
| have been having.
| praveen9920 wrote:
| I'm curious about how can they ensure connectivity for a
| particular area. Is it just that they place a bunch of satellites
| in orbits and hope that they have enough density? Or is there a
| method to the madness?
|
| I am assuming a single satellite covers very small area, in this
| case a single hexagonal area
| crote wrote:
| The orbits are designed in such a way that the satellites are
| uniformly spread across the earth, with each part of the earth
| having at least one sat covering it at all times. That's the
| easy part: just launch enough satellites for your orbit
| altitude.
|
| The tricky part is ensuring sufficient bandwidth. You either
| have to launch additional satellites so that there are 1/2/3/4
| sats above every location at the same time, or increase the
| per-sat bandwidth. The former is probably a good idea anyways
| for redundancy, but costs a lot of money.
|
| Increasing the bandwidth per sat is _reasonably_ easy. They use
| phased antenna arrays to send a highly directional signal back
| to earth, which reduces congestion between different areas
| covered by the same sat at the same time. The limiting factor
| is probably the downlink back to earth via a ground station -
| there is only so much data you can reliably pump through a
| single connection. Their initial set had a 20Gbit downlink[0],
| but their newest ones can do 4x as much[1]. This bandwidth has
| to be shared by all people covered by the same sat.
|
| So yeah, launch more sats and upgrade the downlink as required.
|
| [0]: http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=1026762698
| [1]:
| https://www.satellitetoday.com/broadband/2023/02/27/spacex-s...
| praveen9920 wrote:
| So, I guess it would become a tricky thing for Starlink if
| there are a high number of customers around the same location
| and network congestion becomes a real issue similar to mobile
| data networks.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The satellites are in constant high speed motion, this is not
| like geostationary at all. Coverage is a factor of simultaneous
| density of satellites over an area at my given moment in time,
| beam forming, and trunk link to earth station capacity.
| wmf wrote:
| The orbits are designed to maximize coverage; it's clearer if
| you look at the orbital parameters instead of a globe, where
| you can see that satellites are evenly spaced:
| https://imgur.com/a/aReh0EQ The details are complicated, but
| each satellite can see quite a large area and any given spot on
| the ground is within range of 3-4 satellites.
| jessriedel wrote:
| That's not what that chart shows. The satellites are not
| evenly spaced over the globe. Most of the satellites are in
| 53 degree inclination orbits: those orbits have zero coverage
| at greater than 53 degrees latitude, and they have non-
| uniform coverage of smaller latitudes. (To see this, consider
| a constellation of 90 degree inclination polar orbits: the
| poles clearly have a higher density of satellites than the
| equator. Similar is true for lower-inclination orbits, albeit
| to a less extreme degree.)
| lutorm wrote:
| _those orbits have zero coverage at greater than 53 degrees
| latitude_
|
| That's not actually true -- the horizon distance at those
| altitudes is several thousand km, and one degree of
| latitude is about 100km, so the satellites are actually
| visible quite far to the north of there. Of course, they'll
| be increasingly far away and close to the horizon, so not
| optimal for reception.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Agreed
| praveen9920 wrote:
| This makes sense. Thank you for the image
| botanical wrote:
| In South Africa we have the Square Kilometre Array in the Meerkat
| National Park; I sincerely hope it doesn't come here. We don't
| need it polluting our skies. Fibre should be rolled out for
| internet access, not another unsensible Musk dream
| SECProto wrote:
| That really isn't how orbits work... At any given time, there
| are as many starlink satellites overhead at Meerkat National
| Park as there are at any other point in the world around 30*
| north or south.
| botanical wrote:
| There's currently one in the vicinity. It would get worse as
| demand rises
| hnau wrote:
| Starlink is already wreaking havoc on the night sky for every
| part of the planet inhabited by humans and it is only going to
| get worse. Unfortunately this is not getting much attention
| from anywhere besides the astronomy community and they are
| largely ignored because their funding is dwarfed by venture
| capital funds.
| ben_w wrote:
| The main reason it's mostly astronomers who care and they're
| being ignored is that it's not even close to "havoc".
|
| I grew up near Portsmouth in the UK. Most nights, the stars
| were hidden by the kind of orange glow that a political
| cartoonist would use for Donald Trump's face, thanks to all
| the sodium vapour street lamps.
|
| Things are so much better than they used to be (also I've
| moved) but that childhood memory? Most don't even think of
| _that_ as "havoc".
| ghaff wrote:
| No, they're ignored because people who can't otherwise get
| decent Internet want it.
| kortilla wrote:
| Bad news, it's already over "your sky" because it's how LEO
| works.
|
| > Fibre should be rolled out for internet access, not another
| unsensible Musk dream
|
| You want to roll fiber through national forests and parks to
| serve a few rural people? How do you prefer the ocean faring
| population to get access?
| botanical wrote:
| Why does it have to go through the parks? And radio towers
| work just as well, it doesn't have to be a satellite hundreds
| of kilometres up in the sky. Ships already have access to
| internet through satellites already, there doesn't have to be
| even more
|
| EDIT. I meant why does the fibre have to through parks as a
| reason for having starlink
| ben_w wrote:
| Other satellites and ground-based radio towers do as much
| damage to the abilities of the Square Kilometre Array and
| other radio astronomy as Starlink.
| defrost wrote:
| The constallations are spread for coverage and are in low
| earth orbits for signal strength, like sharks they have to
| stay in motion .. and many of the orbits are "precessing"
| .. they go about the earth and that great circle "ring"
| itself is turning - physics dictates that they go over all
| the surface sooner or later.
|
| The SKA proposal is that comms constellation satellites
| switch themselves off (stop transmitting) when over the
| S.African and W.Australian SKA exclusion zones.
| jrockway wrote:
| > How do you prefer the ocean faring population to get
| access?
|
| Just get one of those big rolls of fiber they use to lay
| undersea cables and let it unwind as you sail. Mmm, terabits
| per second!
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yet starlink is available where broadband sometimes isn't, so
| the insensible dreams seem to be coming from those who expect
| broadband to be deployed even in the most remote parts of the
| world (not necessarily talking about the place you mentioned,
| but I certainly wouldn't expect broadband in places like a
| remote cabin in the woods here in Quebec, or in a lake hunting
| station).
|
| Who cares if Elon is beyond this? I remember thinking how
| ridiculous it was that everything he did was overhyped and
| treated as the next revolution. But in a lot of ways discarding
| an amazing technology like starlink and being against it to own
| the musk is somehow even weirder to me. It's such a
| profoundly... online (terminally online perhaps?) outlook at
| things.
|
| Like some people are unironically not buying Tesla's and openly
| saying that they went for a car they liked less just because
| the guy is a clown on twitter. Reminds me of conservatives who
| spite themselves just to own the libs in a weirdly self
| defeating way
| botanical wrote:
| Why are you framing it as a hate Musk endeavour? So weird.
| It's pollute the sky because some people are on the hype
| train. The answer is already radio towers, they can be
| installed anywhere.
|
| We have cheap fibre rolled out throughout South Africa, but
| now the Square Kilometre Array (which previously had complete
| radio silence) must deal with this nonsense flying overhead.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| But it does not pollute the sky. I don't think my issue
| about people hating Elon! That's more than fine. It's just
| that he is polarizing, so it seems like misconceptions and
| immaculate info about stuff he is involved in are believed
| very fast and spread very wide. In this case I don't think
| starlink satellites ever caused long term light/space
| population and even first gen sats (that didn't get any
| "cloaking" to avoid reflecting light) aren't visible after
| they reached their long term orbit.
|
| Even for space debris, I've not seen any credible source
| that argues the satellites won't easily re enter the
| atmosphere when they reach their end lives. Leaving little
| space junk behind.
|
| Fwiw for the most part, i don't really care about the cool
| stuff Elon gets to put his "brand name on" I just find
| starlink super neat! Especially since they actually managed
| to get the inter satellite laser "fabric" working well
| which which is a concept that I find extremely neat. That's
| probably the extent of my biais.
| devit wrote:
| Radio towers are at much lower altitude, so you need way
| more of them than satellites to cover the whole planet.
| Also you need permission on land and you need a boat in
| addition to the tower on the sea. Plus always having line
| of sight to the tower is harder unless you make them extra
| tall. I assume that makes them much more expensive and is
| why cell phone coverage is not global.
| defrost wrote:
| Also here in Western Australia - as the SKA is a widely
| distributed radio array and sits here in the Murchison
| exclusion zone [1].
|
| The _hope_ is that _all_ constellation satellite operators (not
| just Starlink) will adjust their reflective profile to reduce
| the visual spectrum noise pollution _and_ honor an agreement to
| shut down all comms when passing over radio astronomy exclusion
| zones.
|
| [1] https://www.industry.gov.au/science-technology-and-
| innovatio...
| charles_f wrote:
| I never realized how many of these buggers there are. It's just
| impressive of how much a quasi-disposable-commodity small
| satellites these are.
|
| What is the data source?
| stainablesteel wrote:
| idk any sources but i've always seen it as a weapon
|
| enemies of the us will not be able to turn off the internet in
| their own countries if the us wants it, giving power to rebels
| to coordinate outside of government-controlled connections
| walrus01 wrote:
| NORAD publishes orbit element data for everything launched.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=norad%20tle&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-...
| ldng wrote:
| Before the Dyson sphere, the Musk sphere ?
| daneel_w wrote:
| Is this accurate? Starlink has since a while back offered service
| in most of Sweden, but that doesn't align with this map.
| kalefranz wrote:
| Starlink's own map of world coverage availability is at
| https://www.starlink.com/map
| VadimPR wrote:
| Not much coverage for the Nordics which is interesting.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| amir734jj wrote:
| I did something similar for my SpaceX interview:
|
| Website: https://threejs-earth-
| satellites.vercel.app/05_equatorial_pl...
|
| Github: https://github.com/amir734jj/threejs-earth-satellites
|
| Beam Planner: https://github.com/amir734jj/beam-planner
| tornato7 wrote:
| Pretty neat - did you get the job?
| amir734jj wrote:
| I didn't like the company culture but loved the engineering
| behind the scene. Awesome company.
| bhaney wrote:
| It never stops surprising me how quickly satellites in LEO move
| ineedasername wrote:
| If they didn't move so fast then the Great Filter would catch
| them.
|
| _#downvoteswelcomethestupidjokeisworthit_
| itsyaboi wrote:
| Asking a redditor to abstain from shitty jokes is like
| expecting Pavlov's dog to not drool at the sound of a bell.
| mikekij wrote:
| As impressive as the number of Starlink satellites is, the
| service has become unusable for me in Southern California,
| particularly for video calls. I've been told that the bottleneck
| is land stations, not satellites. Either way, I've had to cancel
| my Starlink service both at home and work.
| George83728 wrote:
| SpaceX have sought approval for 12,000 satellites, with a
| possible extension to 42,000. Right now they have less than
| 4,000. I think they have substantially fewer satellites than
| they believe they require, and the service is probably doomed
| in the long run if they can't get Starship flying.
| fooker wrote:
| It's not really a service meant for SoCal, but I'm sure they
| see it as a valuable stress test.
| noncoml wrote:
| Every time Starlink comes up it's the same argument. "It's
| not meant for high population density areas"
|
| Without the "high population density areas" it is simply not
| economically viable
| ryzvonusef wrote:
| > Without the "high population density areas" it is simply
| not economically viable
|
| That's their headache, and does not negate the previous
| point.
| randomcarbloke wrote:
| Yeah, I guess "it's not meant for high population density
| areas" argument would work if rurals didn't also have
| garbage service on Starlink.
| TinkersW wrote:
| I have used it regularly in a rural area, it works
| amazingly better than what was available prior, and keeps
| improving as more satellites are launched.
| ghaff wrote:
| If nothing other than 1 Gbit fiber will satisfy you I
| guess Starlink isn't that great. But, honestly, my wired
| broadband 50 miles outside of one of the largest cities
| in the Northeast isn't 100% reliable and near-infinitely
| fast either.
|
| As in your case, my brother's house basically didn't
| really have Internet before though was finally get able
| to get a Verizon hotspot which "worked" but you couldn't
| really stream video, for example, because of data costs.
| Now, it's completely practical to work from there as well
| as have access to Internet entertainment etc. options
| which simply wasn't the case before.
| 7952 wrote:
| But it doesn't necessarily need high subscriber rates in
| any one place to make lots of money. If you just focus on
| those high population areas, 1.7 billion people live in
| cities. If you can sell to a few in a thousand then you
| will have several million subscribers across the world and
| they will likely be wealthier people. And then there are
| cruise ships, airliners, oil rigs, ski chalets, military
| compounds, backhauling WiFi for musical festivals, and
| millions of people living in the woods with rubbish DSL.
| ghaff wrote:
| Furthermore, a lot of people seem to think the world is
| divided into Manhattans and log cabins in the woods
| someplace. In fact, a huge number in the US and
| presumably elsewhere live nearby small cities etc., have
| electricity and maybe other utilities, but don't have
| what most people would consider decent Internet access.
| kortilla wrote:
| Based on what? What user count do you think Starlink needs
| to be economically viable?
|
| Napkin math time because the economics for satellites are
| not intuitive compared to stuff where density is better.
|
| 10% of the surface of the earth is inhabited by people. 510
| million square kilometers * .1 is 51 million square
| kilometers. At a service density of only one user per
| square kilometer, that's 51 million users for regular
| service.
|
| Setting that aside, do you care to guess how much an oil
| rig in the North Sea will pay for Internet? And that user
| will put roughly the same load as Ted in SoCal will on the
| network.
|
| Satellite Internet is not for people in cities, period.
| Starlink, viasat, whatever.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I have no idea, but this company has subsea cables across
| many North Sea oil rigs. Maybe they are laid as part of
| the pipelines.
|
| https://www.tampnet.com/oil-gas
| twosdai wrote:
| I agree with you, and your 2nd point about the b2b areas
| being important.
|
| However I think the general math you do needs a bit more
| nuance. You'd want to exclude all people living in cities
| so you'd need to exclude the land mass taken up by cities
| to get a more accurate estimate.
|
| Also I'm not sure where you get the 10% number from for
| people inhabiting the world. From this report they talk
| about humans impacting 15% of the landmass
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-human-impact-on-
| the-...
|
| Again, I agree with your point but I'm skeptical about
| your back of the napkin math.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| it's probably economically viable without selling to
| consumers at all. if they get planes boats and military,
| that on it's own would be plenty to sustain it
| Thlom wrote:
| I doubt it. The ongoing operational costs of a mega
| constellation like this is huge and I doubt they will be
| able to sell their services to maritime, aviation and
| military sectors at a much higher price than existing
| operators.
|
| They will also meet hefty competition the next few years
| from Amazon Kuiper, Oneweb and I assume existing
| operators are scrambling to meet the competition.
| Interesting times.
| 7952 wrote:
| But at this point in their plan it doesn't matter if they
| undercut existing providers. If the marginal cost of the
| extra client is small enough then it is just extra
| revenue. And you get the clients operations dependant on
| that extra bandwidth that they won't want to give up.
| mlindner wrote:
| They already sell it to maritime and aviation sectors at
| significantly less than existing operators, though
| significantly more than the regular service.
| fooker wrote:
| Most operating costs estimates assume that sending up
| more satellites is an expensive proposition.
|
| For starlink, its not. Maybe for the first time in
| history.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Like a planetary rash ... over the long term, the fever will get
| rid of this.
| zolosa wrote:
| Once China launches it's own 13000 satellite in the coming year
| then we will start hearing about Kessler syndrome.
|
| Till then it's a beautiful sight to behold.
| oittaa wrote:
| Why? Are they going to use higher orbits?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| First, I assume SpaceX Falcon 9 is the only large resuable
| rocket in the world. Without reusable rockets, how could any
| massive array of satellites be economical? (If for military,
| ignore this post.) Look at all the other big satellite arrays
| owned by private industry. The return on investment is awful.
| 2h wrote:
| > $120/mo for service and $599 for hardware
|
| Noope. no thank you.
|
| https://www.starlink.com/
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| This service is not for you if that is your reaction. Until
| recently I lived in a location where there is literally no
| other option capable of supporting Teams calls. Before Starlink
| I rented a second house in a "nearby" (49 minutes each way)
| town to use as an office. Comparatively, Starlink is a
| phenomenal deal.
| ghaff wrote:
| Frankly, Starlink seems underpriced for the people whose
| alternative is long latency, limited data, and itself
| expensive options.
| charcircuit wrote:
| What does competition look like for Starlink? Will
| competitors have to launch their own mesh of satellites? If
| you want to actually have your own IPv4 address you will have
| to pay $250 per month + $2500 for the terminal. This is
| despite the fact an IPv4 address only costs them a one time
| cost of about $40.
| [deleted]
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| For a slight latency cost, you could always VPN to an
| endpoint in the cloud with a routable IP address.
| charcircuit wrote:
| It's ridiculous to need to add that many hops just to do
| something as basic as receive a packet from someone else
| on the internet.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Well, as was said, you could just pay more for the
| service that includes a routable IP address.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I'm pointing out that there is a market inefficiency if I
| have to pay over $100 a month to be able to lease
| something that is worth only $40.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| It seems like it would cost about $10/month to set up a
| public IP address through a service like NordVPN. You
| would take a bit of a latency hit, but presumably on the
| order of milliseconds.
|
| If you're serving something latency sensitive, you can
| run your server in the cloud closer to the trunk of the
| internet, or you can pay SpaceX $100 month to shave off
| the latency.
|
| It seems like SpaceX probably doesn't want people running
| servers on the starlink network for no good reason. So,
| their pricing doesn't seem like market inefficiency to
| me. It just seems like them charging a fair price for
| their service.
|
| Hopefully they get IPv6 working soon? Then you'll at
| least be able to route your own personal stuff without
| NAT punch-through.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I think the closest they have to a competitor is oneweb,
| which hasn't completed the roll out for their first
| constellation yet. They are surprisingly close though, and
| could've been able to actually have an operational internet
| service if it wasn't for a scrapped launch related to the
| Russian invasion.
|
| I remember thinking they were basically dead, but they have
| recovered surprisingly well. Though their satellites are
| more likely to remain in space since they don't deorbit as
| easily as starlink. Otherwise the "traditional" satellite
| internet providers don't really even count as actual
| competitors.
|
| Also, I thought starlink didn't provide customers with IP
| addresses and that the whole thing was going through a
| CGNAT and the sats themselves used private internal
| addresses. Even starlink business users don't get a static
| IP, just a publically addressable one through DHCP that
| could in theory change at any time more or less. That means
| that the premium is most probably due to the added
| complexity that comes with making some of their network
| publically addressable rather than having anything to do
| with IPv4 costs. From what I'm reading they also seem to be
| working on ipv6 support (soon(tm)), which is hopefully
| going to make IPv4 pricing matter a lot less for users.
| Until then they are probably limited by their CGNAT
| architecture.
|
| I'll look it up since it could've been just some launch
| date speculation.
| charcircuit wrote:
| IPv6 is not a solution when there still is a lot of
| people whose networks don't support it. Making the
| network publicly routable shouldn't be any more complex
| than any other ISP which seem to do this just fine.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wait, I don't know tons about networking but my
| impression was rhat CGNAT basically does not allow your
| users to be publically addressable? Have I misunderstood
| what CGNAT does, or it just that they should've used a
| publically addressable architecture in the first place?
| charcircuit wrote:
| CGNAT has multiple users share a single IP address which
| means that there needs to be some logic to know which
| user an incoming packet should go to which is why they
| are normally not publicly addressable. Not all ISPs use
| CGNAT though.
|
| >just that they should've used a publically addressable
| architecture in the first place?
|
| I would be okay if there was a way to get assigned a
| dedicated, though not necessarily a static one, IP
| address that was not at a massive margin.
| ben_w wrote:
| IPv6 is 24.5 years old.
|
| When there's enough time for you to conceive a new child,
| send them through school, then university, then most of a
| PhD program...
|
| If your network equipment supplier doesn't support the
| tech, demand better of them rather than blaming the ISP
| that's specifically intended for people who weren't being
| properly served until now anyway.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >IPv6 is 24.5 years old.
|
| And Chinese is hundreds of years old and I still don't
| know it. People don't invest into supporting things the
| instant they release.
|
| >If your network equipment supplier...
|
| In this hypothetical my network supplier would, but
| someone who is trying to connect isn't. IPv6 isn't even
| at 50% support in the US. That means if you want your
| friend group to all connect to your server there is a
| very good chance that some of them will not be able to.
| What are you supposed to tell them? That they should
| complain to their ISP?
| ben_w wrote:
| > People don't invest into supporting things the instant
| they release.
|
| Virtually every other aspect of the tech world, including
| networking, has managed to update multiple times in the
| intervening years.
|
| We don't (mostly) use dialup; we switched from 2G to 3G
| to 4G and now to 5G mobile telephony since then; HTTP has
| been mostly deprecated for HTTPS and the cryptography
| standards for the latter have changed; etc.
|
| > What are you supposed to tell them? That they should
| complain to their ISP?
|
| Yes.
|
| I mean, what, is their ISP also using Windows 98 on a 486
| chip running at 75 MHz with 8 meg of RAM and a 500 meg
| hard drive, and software patches being passed around on
| floppy disks? Because that's what the tech world looked
| like when we should've started refusing to buy products
| and services that were IPv4-only.
|
| Today?
|
| Today, this kind of nonsense has gone on _far too long_.
| It was obvious even during my degree ~20 years ago that
| IPv4-to-6 transition should have already been finished by
| the time I even learned about it. As there are now far
| more devices on the internet than IPv4 addresses, I would
| go further and say that _normal ISPs should be banned by
| law from using IPv4_ -- if we 're going to do that for
| which type of USB connector personal electronics use, why
| not this?
| charcircuit wrote:
| >has managed to update multiple times in the intervening
| years.
|
| Not fully though. There is typically some amount of
| people who still haven't updated and at name point you
| just end up ending support for them.
|
| >we switched from 2G to 3G to 4G and now to 5G mobile
| telephony since then; HTTP has been mostly deprecated for
| HTTPS
|
| These solves real problems for consumers. IPv6 doesn't.
| CGNAT has turned out to be good enough for most people.
| ben_w wrote:
| > These solves real problems for consumers. IPv6 doesn't.
|
| Apart from the problem of "we _literally_ can 't have all
| of you online at the same time in v4, y'all have too many
| devices".
|
| Not that normal people should have to care about CNAT vs
| IPv6, but you act like the correct solution is an
| unacceptable horror story and the sticky plaster is
| panacea.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >"we literally can't have all of you online at the same
| time in v4, y'all have too many devices".
|
| CGNAT solves that problem. The issue is more that all of
| your devices can't act as servers on the internet. Most
| people on the internet don't have a desire to run a
| server. So really the 4 billion cap of IPv4 is more about
| 4 billion different servers than 4 billion client
| devices.
|
| >but you act like the correct solution is an unacceptable
| horror story
|
| No, I am acting like the correct solution doesn't have
| any incentives to be implemented.
| genewitch wrote:
| I lost where someone mentioned ipv6, but I get a 2605:
| ipv6 address on starlink, so it already exists and works
| fine.
| ghaff wrote:
| $120/month is about what I pay for wired Internet about 40
| miles outside of a major metro in the US) and about half what I
| pay for electricity.
|
| It hardly seems excessive to get Internet where the alternative
| for a lot of people is nothing or at least nothing that lets
| you stream video, music, etc.
| diimdeep wrote:
| Now do live map with latency measurement through Starlink
|
| New York City - New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ Stock
| Market
|
| Tokyo - Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE)
|
| Shanghai - Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE)
|
| Hong Kong - Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX)
|
| London - London Stock Exchange (LSE)
|
| Toronto - Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX)
|
| Mumbai - Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange
| of India (NSE)
|
| Frankfurt - Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FWB)
|
| Paris - Euronext Paris
|
| Sydney - Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)
| ezconnect wrote:
| That's a lot of junk orbiting earth.
| K5EiS wrote:
| I think you would be surprised if you saw how much debris there
| is up there. These satelites are at least providing value to
| people.
| pjscott wrote:
| Those are functioning communication satellites, not yet junk.
| At the end of their (fairly short) planned lifetimes, they will
| use their maneuvering thrusters to de-orbit. And even if that
| fails, they're in a low enough orbit that they'll naturally
| fall out of the sky and burn up in the atmosphere about a
| decade after launch. Do you have any further objections?
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| The future is now!
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| There's a bunch of Starlink coverage maps like this; the most
| useful one (IMHO) is Mike Puchol's at https://starlink.sx/
|
| The nice thing about that Mike's is you can see exactly where you
| are in relation to nearby satellites and base stations. And get a
| pretty good guess as to where your packets are going to go. It is
| all guesswork - SpaceX only shares what they are required to by
| the FCC. But it's been pretty accurate in the way I can test it.
|
| (Also try clicking the little ringed planet icon in upper right
| to get an orbital chart.)
|
| In the early days there would only be 1 or 2 satellites in range
| of my house sometimes and I could feel the lag as the dish
| switched. Back then it only switched every 15 seconds whether a
| tree was about to block the view or not. Now there's regularly
| 10+ satellites to choose from and a smarter algorithm for
| switching to maintain signal. There's still significant problems
| compared to a wired connection or even fixed wireless but
| Starlink has definitely been a big improvement for my life.
| virtuallynathan wrote:
| I really like Mike's version. If anyone has perf tips, I'm
| happy to pass them on. It's a little out dated, we have a big
| update coming in the near future to add support for E-Band
| simulation, etc.
| Aeolun wrote:
| The big problem with this one appears to be that it doesn't
| load.
| skrowl wrote:
| [dead]
| mgiampapa wrote:
| Works great in the current firefox.
| tornato7 wrote:
| It loaded after about 5 mins for me, but runs extremely slow
| still, and seems less intuitive than the OP.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Mike Puchol's at https://starlink.sx/
|
| With an 8 core cpu, 2060rtx graphic card, 32gb of ram, this
| thing runs at like 2.5 fps (if even) on chrome and firefox
|
| What we did with web tech is truly amazing
| itsthecourier wrote:
| Dominican Republic has coverage, but doesn't appear in the
| visualization
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Very cool visualisation, but my phone is getting very hot!
| 101008 wrote:
| Wow, this is incredible. Why the GPS satellites are far away from
| the planet, compared to the other ones?
| renjimen wrote:
| I thought the answer to this would be simple but it's pretty
| complex! From a Quora answer:
|
| > They are in 12 hour orbits because that is the result of
| optimizing the number of satellites needed to cover the Earth,
| plus having at least 4 satellites visible at the same time from
| a spot on the earth, with the satellites being spread out
| across the sky. It also helps that they move fairly slowly, so
| the Doppler is changing slowly during the PN code acquisition
| phase. Remember that this system was basically designed in the
| late 1970s, and we didn't have 2 GHz processors in wristwatches
| - a GPS receiver had to acquire and process the signals to get
| a fix, and it had to be something that a single person could
| carry.
|
| > If you go lower, you need a lot more satellites (see, e.g.,
| Iridium or Teledesic with 77 and hundreds, respectively), and
| they move faster across the sky. Each GPS satellite carries an
| atomic clock (Cesium or Rubidium, depending on the batch) and
| they're not cheap to build. The fast motion also makes
| acquisition harder, and low orbits are more affected by the
| imperfect Earth's gravity - in order to calculate your GPS
| position, your receiver needs to know EXACTLY where the
| satellite is - that's harder in a low orbit.
|
| > If you go higher, 3 satellites in GEO will cover the
| equatorial earth, but you also need satellites in inclined
| orbits - you want your satellites to be spread across the sky,
| so your position accuracy isn't degraded because they're in a
| line or a clump. I think it actually takes more satellites to
| get the required coverage from GEO height (think about needing
| to cover the polar regions) - you could probably do some
| Molniya orbits, but that makes things more complex for other
| reasons.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Why-are-GPS-satellites-placed-below-ge...
| alsaffar wrote:
| As far as I know, the GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, etc) satellites
| needed to have more of Earth visible at all times, so they are
| farther away. Not an expert, just very interested.
| numbol wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit
| renjimen wrote:
| I thought the same, but they're actually below geostationary
| orbit. They have 12 hour orbits. Also, they don't orbit the
| equator, which is required for a geostationary orbit. See my
| comment above with more details.
| numbol wrote:
| wow that is cool! Thank you for that clarification looks
| like geostationary used for stuff like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-Zenith_Satellite_System
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I think this article, that most here have probably read or
| heard about considering how popular it was on HN, explains
| why quite well! It is a very long article though (which is
| awesome, imo!). The whole thing is an incredible primer on
| GPS .
| crote wrote:
| Geostationary orbit wouldn't work for a GNSS: all satellites
| would be in the same plane, so it would be impossible to
| distinguish between the northern and southern hemisphere.
| This would render it inconvenient in most countries and
| unusable anywhere near the equator.
| danw1979 wrote:
| Related: an inclined geosynchronous orbit uses similar
| altitudes to GEO, allowing focussed coverage on specific
| longitudes, as seen with QZSS -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-
| Zenith_Satellite_Syste...
|
| (albeit these are slightly elliptical)
| disillusioned wrote:
| No better explanation on the planet than Bartosz
| Chiechanowski's: https://ciechanow.ski/gps/
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This guy! Nerd sniped again.
| modeless wrote:
| Frequently Commented Questions:
|
| Yes, space looks crowded in these visualizations. But the size of
| the satellites is exaggerated here by thousands of times. Space
| is huge and the collision risk is extremely low. If displayed at
| their true size the satellites would not be visible, and indeed
| the vast majority are not visible in the real life night sky. The
| exception is recently launched satellites that are still in
| transit to their final orbits, but even those are only visible
| sometimes and generally only within an hour or two after sunset
| or before sunrise.
|
| No, Kessler Syndrome is not a realistic concern for satellites in
| these orbits. Satellites here experience atmospheric drag and
| fall out of orbit in five years or so. Collision debris has a
| higher surface area to mass ratio due to the square-cube law and
| deorbits faster than that. And it takes a lot less than five
| years for debris to fall below the orbits of other satellites
| where it no longer poses any threat of a chain reaction. And no,
| a collision between two satellites in circular orbits cannot
| throw debris into much longer-lasting orbits, due to how orbital
| mechanics works. And even if Kessler Syndrome did somehow happen
| despite all that, it wouldn't trap us on Earth even for the five
| year period; a debris cloud would still be quite sparse and
| launching rockets through it would be no problem since the time
| spent in the cloud and thus probability of collision would be
| negligible.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I took a screenshot of the default view on my web browser. The
| satellites appear to be around 100km in diameter, but they are
| in reality 7m wide, so they are 14,000x larger on the map than
| in reality. The entire constellation would fit within 0.2% of
| one of the white dots as they appear in the map.
|
| Then you need to remember that the space is 3D, unlike road
| surfaces (ignoring bridges etc.)
| gibolt wrote:
| Put another way, it is like there are 10,000 fish equally
| spaced around the ocean. One could swim 100 lifetimes and
| never see another fish.
| walrus01 wrote:
| As the surface area of a theoretical 3 dimensional
| spherical shell at earth diameter plus 550 km is
| considerably larger than the oceans, more like having
| 10,000 tiny anchovy sized fish, swimming a hundred
| lifetimes and never seeing one.
| samstave wrote:
| I found this helpful, to illustrate how massive the orbital
| 'spheres' are
|
| https://i.imgur.com/zGaLWDg.jpg
| Veedrac wrote:
| Space is not really 3d in the intuitive sense from a packing
| perspective, because satellites take up orbits rather than
| stationary points and orbits don't pack densely. It's more
| like an embedded 2d space, the intuition for that being that
| a ring, think Saturn's, is 2d and intersects any orbit.
| [deleted]
| lutorm wrote:
| Yes, the key is that all circular orbits at the same
| altitude must cross, and if the orbits cross there is a
| potential collision. Satellites at the same altitude can
| only avoid collisions by controlling the position in the
| orbit.
|
| Also, mean free path in a particle cloud depends on number
| density, cross sectional area _and speed_. The cross
| sectional area is small, but relative speed is also very
| high, which makes collisions more likely than one would
| think just based on their number density.
| mlindner wrote:
| Though note: SpaceX does exactly that. They passively
| position the positions of the satellites along their
| orbits so that Starlink satellites don't need to avoid
| other Starlink satellites in orbital operation.
| godelski wrote:
| Bullshit. Space is definitely 3D and has 3D packing.
| Starlink is at about 550km. That has an orbital period of
| 1.5917hrs. Satellites are 7m (as suggested above, but this
| sounds large). So let's space the next group by 10km. Now
| the orbital period is 1.5952hrs. We have to go to 580km
| (+30km) to get to 1.6hrs, which is a difference of 37
| seconds. So you got 60km (520km-580km) where you have an
| error rate of under 1% (0.65%). That drift per day is
| easily accounted for and you're not going to have a
| destructive resonance event during the lifetime of the
| satellites.
|
| For comparison, the ISS (~420km orbit) has a natural decay
| of 2km per year. It's safe to say that you can pack these
| satellites <1km in orbital height without realistic risk of
| them running into one another. The real problem is tracking
| everything and we often have large margins of safety. Sure,
| you won't pack them like you would oranges, but even
| several kms apart that can create a pretty dense coverage
| map. Gravitational orbits aren't electron orbits and don't
| need to be quantized (at least on the tens of km level).
| Veedrac wrote:
| I'm not considering such concerns at all; my comment
| holds even considering perfect orbits followed by
| frictionless point objects of zero mass. You can of
| course pack into the height-dimension trivially when
| using circular orbits; the issue then is how many orbits
| you can pack into an orbital plane. I contend it scales
| with radius, not radius squared.
| [deleted]
| about3fitty wrote:
| Also, it is kind of like an extreme version of the risks
| of flying cars. One hubcap/collision can mean
| catastrophic downstream effects.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Comparing our terrestrial notion of 2 or 3d space with
| orbital positions doesn't solve much. Low orbit is a very
| different area requiring we drop traditional notions of
| size and speed.
| chaboud wrote:
| Huh. I wasn't worried before reading this thread. Now I'm
| a little more worried.
|
| 1. We don't need to worry about Kessler syndrome, as the
| orbits of Starlink will decay in five years (from 550km).
| 2. ISS is at 420km.
|
| Has anyone else ever worked with something dangerous
| dangling over their heads? It's kind of nerve wracking,
| even if you know that there's very little chance of it
| falling and hitting you.
| gpm wrote:
| There's no real chance of starlink satellites falling
| _and hitting you_.
|
| They're designed to fall out of orbit at the end of their
| lifespan (or whenever something goes wrong), _and fully
| burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground_.
| chaboud wrote:
| I'm talking about them hitting ISS.
| godelski wrote:
| (Main body) Size matters a lot. That 7m estimate above is
| with a solar array unfurled and is much larger than the
| main body, which is about 3.2m x 1.6m x 0.2m[0]. These
| will burn up in the atmosphere, and actually are designed
| to do so.
|
| Are you afraid of airplanes flying overhead? Probably
| not. These don't burn up in the atmosphere and when they
| fall they do a ton more damage than satellites that
| don't. A big reason you're not afraid is because the
| chance of you (or any person) being hit is pretty small
| because the object is so small compared to the potential
| falling area. Now we're talking about objects that are
| significantly smaller than airplanes and with a potential
| "falling area" (if somehow something doesn't burn up) is
| magnitudes larger and into an area that is basically
| empty (humans don't even occupy 15% of the surface).
|
| You shouldn't be worried. Even if parts of these things
| were hitting the ground they wouldn't be that dangerous
| just due to the statistics of being hit. Odds get even
| better when we talk about typical orbits.
|
| [0] https://lilibots.blogspot.com/2020/04/starlink-
| satellite-dim...
| chaboud wrote:
| The point isn't that I should be worried. The point is
| that folks in ISS should be more worried than if they
| were, say, at 600km...
| modeless wrote:
| The satellites can't just fall out of the sky suddenly
| like something hanging above your head. That's not how
| orbital mechanics works. ISS would have warning of any
| threat long in advance, plenty of time to make an
| avoidance maneuver or return to Earth in their lifeboat.
| chaboud wrote:
| Is ISS between satellites that are expected to de-orbit
| and the Earth, or is it not?
|
| I'm well aware of tracking and avoidance mechanisms, but,
| up until now, I hadn't considered the orbital planes in
| use.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The moon seems pretty stable up there. Doesn't rattle my
| nerves on iota that it is overhead.
| chaboud wrote:
| The moon is slowly getting farther away. Starlink
| satellites are expected to relatively quickly return to
| earth.
| Retric wrote:
| The moon is gaining velocity from earth's rotation which
| is a finite energy source, given a long enough timescales
| it would collide with earth. However, the sun is going to
| consume the earth before that happens.
| chaboud wrote:
| I'll put $10 up against that bet. In a few billion years,
| one of us is going to look pretty stupid!
| Retric wrote:
| The problem with your model is all orbits at a given
| altitude intersect. You can orbit at the equator, or
| orbit above and below the equator thus crossing the
| equator. There's nothing special about the equator here.
| All polar orbits meet at the poles, and any non polar
| obit is forced to cross all polar orbits etc.
|
| In practice this is not be a significant problem because
| you can pack a great deal of satellites at a given
| altitude and moving to a slightly lower or higher orbit
| works just fine.
| godelski wrote:
| > The problem with your model is all orbits at a given
| altitude intersect.
|
| > In practice this is not be a significant problem
|
| Which is really why I didn't bring it up. We didn't even
| talk about eccentricity. My model is simple but this is
| HN, so I added magnitudes of error.
| mgoetzke wrote:
| Over all of Germany there where 6 when I looked just now. So
| yeah, not really crowded :)
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Space is huge and the collision risk is extremely low._
|
| See also: "We'll never run out of IPv4 addresses."
| gpm wrote:
| No.
|
| We all know that we can fill it up.
|
| But every launch the FCC requires you do calculations to show
| that the chance of collision is below some threshold. I.e.
| that it (the orbit you are in) isn't full yet.
| dmbche wrote:
| "The bubble is never gonna pop!"
| ck2 wrote:
| There's several more startups filing to launch their own
| 10,000+ satellites.
|
| The sky is going to be trashed like the scooters littered
| across every major city's sidewalks, seemed like an acceptable
| idea on paper by the eager governments beforehand but in
| reality it just makes an absolute mess that no-one seems to
| take responsibility for or ever fixes.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| > _no-one seems to take responsibility_
|
| No profit oriented corporation will ever _take_
| responsibility for downsides of their business that can be
| pushed onto others as externalities. The answer is to force
| them with regulations.
|
| _(This is the general rule, exceptions do exist like brands
| or product lines that cater to the niche of people especially
| conscious of a particular issue. The food sector is a good
| example. Note how those who do tend to create self-regulation
| with certifiable standards and that, strictly speaking, they
| can not externalise that specific issue so they don 't)_
| RedCondor wrote:
| 100%.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| It's worth noting that the only reason that
| megaconstellations even work as a business model is thanks to
| telecom giants refusing to develop infrastructure everywhere
| it's needed, despite making promises and taking government
| handouts to do so for decades, as well as being monopolists
| and obstructing competition where competitors _were_ trying
| to make good on development promises.
|
| This left a vacuum which is now being filled since LEO is a
| place where incumbent telecoms have little power to obstruct
| (though this hasn't stopped them from trying).
|
| So in my mind, if we want to curb megaconstellations, the
| best way to do that is to strip telecoms of their monopolist
| powers and mandate development of fiber infrastructure in the
| ground, which even the best LEO constellations don't have so
| much as a hint of hope of competing with. The economics will
| cease to make sense and the constellations will be canceled
| and decommissioned.
|
| We can't just leave that open vacuum.
| tenpies wrote:
| It does seem like we need a term for a civilisation that
| decides that serving internet is more important than its
| ability to observe the universe.
|
| Then, in that pursuit, they completely miss an otherwise easily
| detectable near earth object and become extinct, but the
| satellites will continue happily beaming internet to a user
| base that no longer exists.
|
| Then again, it's probably a non-issue. Not because the
| satellites impede our ability to observe, but because we
| observe so little to begin with.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That and our current ability to detect and do anything about
| a civilization ending asteroid is pretty nonexistent at the
| moment.
| lionkor wrote:
| just dont look up
| crispinb wrote:
| > a civilisation that decides that serving internet is more
| important than its ability to observe the universe
|
| It's slightly worse than that. Starlink is only viable
| because of huge gaps in planned provision of what is now a
| basic utility (even government services in many parts of the
| world are hard to access without the internet).
|
| We're actually giving up our inalienable and multimillenial
| rights to a real night sky in order to leave gaps in utility
| provision for greedy wanker billionaires to make money and
| gain power filling.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Starlink sats don't stick around for multiple millennia.
| Their orbit degrades quite fast. You need much higher
| orbits for such longevity.
| crispinb wrote:
| No wasn't suspecting nuisance-satellite of being near-
| eternal!
|
| I mean we have had a real night sky for millenia, and now
| a handful of men are being permitted, with hardly any
| communal discussion or decision, to expunge it. Many
| won't notice, of course, having been denatured by
| suburbia.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Ah now I understand. Sorry for my misunderstanding.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| You can't see the satellites with the naked eye when they
| are in their target orbit.
|
| You can occasionally see them as they are advancing to
| their orbit, and they look no different than an airplane
| at night looks. Except cooler.
| ghaff wrote:
| Let's ban commercial aviation at night too. Though I'm
| not sure why the night sky enjoys special status over the
| day sky. The rich people wouldn't be getting paid money
| if lots of people who couldn't otherwise get it weren't
| happy to pay for Internet.
| crispinb wrote:
| [flagged]
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| People like you said the same thing when we built roads,
| bridges, steam ships, aircraft, and now spacecraft.
|
| Instead of bothering those who are building the future,
| you're welcome to run off in the woods and LARP as ted
| kaczynski. It's certainly preferable to moaning on the
| internet about how others are "denatured".
| crispinb wrote:
| That's an absurd response. You don't need to carry
| today's dominant political manichaeanism into every
| aspect of your responses to events. Making decisions
| about what to do (whether to build, mine, manufacture) is
| all about making distinctions. I'm not against all new
| developments, and it's barely intelligible to be for all.
| But I am (like nearly everyone in the world outside of
| the US-based libertarian contingent) against tiny numbers
| of people (literally a handful of billionaires) making
| decisions for the entire planet.
| edgyquant wrote:
| I disagree with that poster as well, but this is a bit of
| an immature response. People are welcome to have worries
| about this stuff and it's better to argue for their
| arguments being misguided than tell them to go live in
| the woods if they don't like it.
| evandale wrote:
| At a certain point the only way to get through to people
| is to respond in a way that matches their maturity level.
|
| When people are saying ridiculous things like "You will
| be as insouciant, and as clueless, when your much-admired
| billionaire masters destroy the last remaining living
| ecosystem" about satellites in LEO you're not dealing
| with a person with adult emotions.
|
| For one, the last time I checked LEO isn't an ecosystem
| with living things in it and I can't think of a single
| ecosystem out there we could destroy. Whatever
| "ecosystem" that exists in LEO is an ecosystem _we_
| created. I guarantee good old "nature" won't be creating
| life there anytime soon if you're excluding humans from
| nature.
| crispinb wrote:
| If it's "mature" to disregard basic values, then we're
| stuffed. Attitudes and values cluster. People who care
| about night skies also care about ecosystems. Denatured,
| psychologically-damaged people who value neither, destroy
| both. There is no distinction between "nature" and
| anything else. There is only the real physical world.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is such a bad take. How would you get internet to the
| deep Amazon or the middle of the ocean without satellite?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| They're more-or-less invisible in all but the darkest
| skies.
|
| I've seen a freshly-launched train of the very early ones
| from a quite light-polluted city sky in Glasgow, but even
| going deliberately looking for Starlink sats in properly
| dark skies I've never seen any.
| crispinb wrote:
| If we allow billionaires to just chuck up what happens to
| suit their whims, there won't be night skies for long.
| sudhirj wrote:
| This sounds backwards. Inside the atmosphere is a shitty
| place to observe from, and the cheap launch capacity here can
| throw up hundreds of Hubbles and James Webbs. We could also
| fit optics and radar on the Starlink constellations.
|
| The idea this cheap satellites will somehow restrict our
| ability to observe anything seems odd.
| [deleted]
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| Extremely short-sighted opinion.
|
| With this capability we can observe better than ever before,
| and soon regular people will be able to afford at least a
| ride to LEO via ICBM-turned-airline
| rlt wrote:
| Yes, space is huge, however offsetting that a bit is satellites
| in LEO orbit at something like 20,000 MPH, so reaction time for
| collision avoidance is lower than you might expect, and impact
| velocity will result in a very large debris field.
| la64710 wrote:
| But the question is who gave this one guy right to surround our
| earth like this? As the power of individuals grow is there
| going to be any oversight to ensure a consensus is reached
| collectively before someone decide to do something like this? I
| agree that technically it may not be as bad as it looks but
| just in principle one cannot fathom the level of reach that
| modern civilization allows to just one person that this map
| demonstrates.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Do you think China or Russia would ever agree to a global
| satellite internet connectivity initiative that allows anyone
| to easily bypass their information control mechanisms?
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Even without notoriously disagreeable players like China
| and Russia at the table, reaching consensus becomes almost
| impossible past a certain number of parties involved. If
| global consensus were required for anything almost nothing
| would ever get done, and what little _did_ happen would be
| design-by-committee'd into ineffectiveness.
|
| That's not to say that individuals should necessarily be
| able to do whatever they please on things of this scale,
| but trying to make everybody happy is a great recipe for
| endless stagnation.
| dgoodell wrote:
| Do you really think Spacex required no permission at all for
| this? It certainly required approval from the FCC & FAA to
| launch this so I think you could say that US government gave
| him the right to do this.
|
| Then you could ask: "Why does the US government have the
| right to do this?" I think the answer to that is probably the
| Outer Space Treaty which is signed on by most countries
| including all major spacefaring nations.
|
| This may have been stopped (and still can be) if there was
| major uproar among the US populace or by other countries. I
| don't recall hearing much about that.
|
| In any case, I'm not sure there is a sufficient reason to
| stop it. The biggest issue that I have heard about is the
| potential for a negative impact on ground-based astronomy.
| That's obviously not good, but I'm not sure it's a sufficient
| reason to stop this.
| gondaloof wrote:
| Can someone explain what is the point of having long lines of
| satellites traveling on the same path?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| The closely packed dots you see are a train of satellites just
| after launch. They'll spread out over a couple of weeks.
| crote wrote:
| The ones really close together are freshly launched and still
| being moved into their final position.
|
| However, all satellites are by design placed into a small
| number of orbits, see [0]. For example, phase 1 consisted of 72
| different orbits with 22 sats each, so each sat would be 1/22th
| of an orbit behind the previous one - and the orbits are
| shifted in a similar fashion around the earth. This ensures
| that there is a uniform global coverage, as a new sat will move
| over an area right when another one moves out.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#/media/File:Starlink_...
| teleforce wrote:
| Can someone tell how to interpret this global coverage map?
|
| The legend and the help sections are not very helpful.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| the one thing i think I figure out, is that you right click and
| set a home, and that will give you real time triangulation as
| to how many satellites your signal is bouncing off as they move
| in orbit at any given time.
|
| The more satellites linked to your home base, the better your
| latency and/or bandwidth. So with this you can see your
| location's service quality ahead of time.
| sagarpatil wrote:
| This looks beautiful.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Would polar coverage require satellites that move north to south
| from pole to pole?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Iridium uses that kind of orbit so they have excellent coverage
| over the polar areas. With the few customers in that area (all
| commercialor institutional so they can afford it) they pretty
| much have that market covered.
|
| Ps talking about the real polar areas here, not Alaska, Nordics
| etc.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Yes it does. Most of the Starlink satellites are in 53-degree
| inclination orbits, but there is a shell of satellites in polar
| orbits to ensure polar coverage. (The commercial market for
| polar internet access is minimal, but the military is willing
| to pay a lot for it.)
| hammock wrote:
| Alaska isn't in the mesh, how is it in the coverage zone?
| JerryB77 wrote:
| Seems available: https://www.starlink.com/map
| kieroda wrote:
| The connectivity was pretty terrible in Alaska, at least as of
| November of last year when I cancelled and returned Starlink.
| jccooper wrote:
| They have a certain number of near-polar orbit satellites.
| There's not yet the same level of coverage as inside 57
| degrees, but they do have ground stations and offer coverage,
| though it seems to be of the "just barely" sort. The polar
| orbits are rapidly filling in, however, so it should get better
| before too long.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Does anyone have experience streaming with Twitch using Starlink?
|
| I have a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) that works
| fairly well with occasional issues.
|
| I'm consisdering Starlink but heard there may be issues with
| latency and dropped frames, and it is around 60% more expensive.
| ghaff wrote:
| Not Twitch, but it seems to work pretty well with video in
| general. Not as reliable as my wired connection at home but
| pretty good. Can't really speak to latency (though looked OK on
| a connection test) but I don't really do anything that's
| especially latency sensitive.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Note to self and others considering this:
|
| The dynamic bitrate setting in Open Broadcaster Studio could
| help smooth things out: https://obsproject.com/wiki/Dropped-
| Frames-and-General-Conne...
| oittaa wrote:
| The bitrate won't be a problem with Twitch since their
| maximum bitrate is super low. Just depending on where you
| live there might be outages every now and then if all the
| satellites are behind trees or buildings.
| herpderperator wrote:
| How long does Dishy communicate with one satellite before
| switching to another one? It looks like they move across quite
| fast.
| flangola7 wrote:
| They move across the sky faster than an airliner, so not long.
| irrelative wrote:
| Roughly 30 times faster than an airliner.
| genewitch wrote:
| In central Louisiana, between 15 and 60 seconds. It might be
| slightly longer but I have a tree in the FOV to the east, so I
| get drops on that timescale.
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| doubler wrote:
| check more stuff here:
|
| https://github.com/thedoubler/awesome-maps-data
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| No one in Asia or Africa or India seem to be using it. Are we
| just polluting LEO for the sake of a handful of Americans? I feel
| like in the US it's not even widely used...
| lionkor wrote:
| I believe so - its a very small niche. If I understand
| correctly, the target audience is:
|
| - remote places, with
|
| - people who need internet but dont have a wire or fiber
| running to them, and
|
| - who can afford a super expensive starlink (have disposable
| income), and
|
| - for who 3G/4G isnt good enough
|
| Thats not a lot of people outside the US
| sderfghionio wrote:
| [dead]
| ghaff wrote:
| You don't need to be in "remote" places for Starlink to be a
| big benefit. My brother lives about a 10 minute drive from
| about a 10K person city in coastal Maine and he could not get
| wired Internet at all and the other wireless options are poor
| and data limited. There are a ton of places like that. You
| could argue that there should be a program at the national
| level to get wired Internet to anywhere that gets electricity
| but, given the existence of Starlink, I'm not sure a many
| many billions of dollars program to do that makes a lot of
| sense and would have at least some people here throwing a fit
| about subsidizing rural residents.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| My topic was originally about users OUTSIDE the US.
| Everyone I meet in Asia is pretty OK with 4g, also home
| based internet is pretty good. It's important to understand
| the US is behind the rest of the world in many things,
| including this area.
| 7952 wrote:
| There is no reason why they would necessarily need to charge
| such high monthly prices in poorer countries. If the marginal
| costs can be kept low enough then it would be stupid to miss
| out on the revenue. A key to that is probably the inter
| satellite links to avoid needing so many base stations.
|
| Also, parts of Africa have pretty good cell coverage. So it
| may not be needed in a lot of areas.
| jen729w wrote:
| It's a lot of geographical Australia.
|
| Which isn't a _lot_ of people. A million, perhaps. Two at
| most.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| That's pretty ideal for satellite services. It doesn't cope
| well with large clusters of customers, having them spread
| out is pretty ideal.
| virtuallynathan wrote:
| It's only launched in a few African countries, see
| starlink.com/map
| wkat4242 wrote:
| In India satellite services are illegal except Inmarsat because
| they have a deal with them for surveillance. That's probably
| why. You can get in serious trouble there for carrying a
| satellite phone too.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| That's interesting-- I didn't know this.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I just know because I used to own a sat phone and I would
| bring it on business trips.
|
| China's another one that doesn't permit them. Which,
| together with India, means that the majority of the world's
| population lives in countries where they are (mostly)
| banned.
|
| I wonder what's going to happen now that sat features are
| becoming ubiquitous on mobile phones. Apple has it (with
| Globalstar), Motorola/Bullitt is introducing it right now
| (with Inmarsat), and Qualcomm is introducing the features
| in Q3 this year (with Iridium)
|
| This means that banning sat phones will no longer be as
| easy as it once was, as most visitors will carry one right
| in their pocket.
|
| https://blog.telestial.com/2017/11/countries-where-
| satellite...
| caskstrength wrote:
| > Are we just polluting LEO for the sake of a handful of
| Americans? I feel like in the US it's not even widely used...
|
| It is quite popular in Ukraine. Granted, Ukraine is neither in
| Asia nor in Africa.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| True, although their circumstances now might be quite
| exceptional?
| mlindner wrote:
| They've only just started expansion into those areas (so far 2
| countries in Africa). Here's the service map:
| https://www.starlink.com/map
| kmlx wrote:
| > No one in Asia or Africa or India seem to be using it
|
| from my understanding in order to provide internet services in
| any country you need to register with the authorities and get
| approval for providing those services.
|
| their map shows where they got approval so far and where
| they're still in the process: https://www.starlink.com/map
| enslavedrobot wrote:
| They will. This technology will do a lot to bring the internet
| to low index of development countries.
|
| It's pretty cool to think about the impact of all the kids who
| will go from no access to having the world at their fingertips.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Which is? Most of these countries have really strong 4g
| already...
| pier25 wrote:
| How come there are so many satellites all over the world but so
| little coverage?
|
| (I'm assuming the green hexagons it's the service coverage)
| virtuallynathan wrote:
| This maps coverage is not accurate.
| jrockway wrote:
| I believe the current implementation of the network requires
| the satellite to see both you and a ground station at the same
| time. So ground stations are the limiting factor.
| walrus01 wrote:
| It was this way until very recently, google "starlink
| lasers". The newer satellites have satellite-to-satellite
| laser links which can form a chain until they reach a
| satellite that is presently overhead of an earth station.
| SpaceX has now started selling the global ocean maritime
| product version of starlink which specifically advertises
| full ocean coverage worldwide. I recently saw a person's
| first hand experience of successfully using Starlink on a
| cross ocean voyage from Polynesia to Ecuador.
|
| Most starlink traffic still _is_ "up and back down again" to
| a satellite that's moving while simultaneously in view of the
| CPE and a starlink-run earth station.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Is the Starlink service geofenced to cutoff where Starlink
| doesn't have a telco license? Like if the maritime product
| finds itself sailing within the EEZ of a country that
| hasn't issued a telco operator license, will the service
| shut off?
| ianburrell wrote:
| There is Starlink Residential which only works in
| approved countries and can't move. There is Starlink Roam
| which works anywhere on land. They supposedly restrict it
| far from land but not sure if acutally limit it.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Starlink is live in all of terrestrial Iran right now if
| you can smuggle a terminal in, and have an accepted
| foreign method of billing. Whether they choose to
| geofence certain areas seems arbitrary right now.
| jrockway wrote:
| That's neat. I remember that being the original intent, but
| it wasn't quite working yet. I think there was a tech demo
| where they were talking about transatlantic FPS gaming, and
| how ground -> satellite -> straight line to satellite ->
| ground had less latency than the great circle path on the
| ocean floor? I never ran the numbers to see if that's true,
| but is that something customers have access to today? Or
| are they just using the intersatellite links to provide
| coverage to oceanic regions that are a couple of hops away
| from a ground station?
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