Wow, I knew Starlink had an enormous constellation, but visualizing it like that really empathizes the scope. Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world, without bothering about new contracts, moving cities or country borders.
They're not mutually exclusive as far as cost goes - quite the opposite (hence all the talk about "synergy" and "vertical integration" in enterprise spaces) - but you're right about consumer prices. I think what's keeping the consumer prices for Starlink down is that for the vast majority of its coverage it does have competition.
Much like how it's in Tesla's best interests for the US not to invest in high-speed rail (hence Musk's "Hyperloop" stunt to prevent an infrastructure investment), it's in Starlink's best interests for countries not to invest in broadband technologies (whether it's mobile networks or fiber). I'm not aware of any plans to dissuade governments from those investments yet but I wouldn't be surprised to see it. Presumably Musk is too busy with Twitter at the moment.
> Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world, without bothering about new contracts, moving cities or country borders.
AFAICT that's exactly what Starlink is trying to do. Their satellites are in a low enough orbit to provide sufficient bandwidth for light web browsing, and they certainly have enough satellites to provide reliable coverage (by satellite standards).
Thing is, satcom is still much more expensive, much slower, and much more power-hungry than what folks have gotten used to with broadband home internet, LTE, and 5G. I have the feeling that it will always be that way - it takes a lot more power to blast a signal into space than it does to send it to a tower down the street, or to the router in your living room. The section of the general population that is willing to make such huge tradeoffs in exchange for truly global coverage is quite small. Militaries and certain types of businesses love it, though.
Elon has already stated that Starlink is not a replacement for a quality wired/fiber connection. His goal with Starlink is to cover areas that aren't covered by ISPs for whatever reason.
I once read about a gas station chain that used VSAT for credit card processing because it's faster than POTS and they didn't have to deal with different local telcos/ISPs. I'm not sure how true that is, but for some low-bandwidth uses I can see the appeal of having a single national/worldwide ISP.
> Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world
You already can.
Tons of people driving the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Argentina are using Starlink now - it works flawlessly no matter what country you're in.
Same for people driving around Africa, across Central Asia, etc.
Pro Tip - order it in a country like Mexico and the monthly fee is way lower.
I'm wondering it this is even technically possible because of bandwidth? There is many more mobile cell towers worldwide - all they are big, connected to power grid, connected internet with fiberoptic, much closer to users but such one tower can still struggle to handle traffic during peak times when many users are connected.
Density, I'd imagine. Some cell towers are serving hundreds of thousands of people individually. It seems on average the satelites are serving 400-500 on average.
Sounds interesting, but it appears to be available only in the US, and the international roaming only works for 90 days, so I don't think it really qualifies for "without bothering about new contracts, moving cities or country borders"
I live abroad for long periods of time, and went from T-Mobile to Mint for my US number. It's $75 per 3 months once you pass the discounted intro period. I also get a local SIM card, and I just use Mint via WiFi calling. It has been working well for me.
>>Would be cool if one day you could get your connectivity needs handled by a single company cheaply, almost anywhere in the world
That sounds like an absolute distopian nightmare and the last person on earth that I want to be running this service is Elon Musk. In general I find it horrendous how a single american company can pollute the night sky for every human being in the world, whether they can use their services or not. Technologically I'm in awe of what Starlink achieves, it's an incredible feat - and yet I still think it's a travesty that it's allowed to exist at all.
> I find it horrendous how a single american company can pollute the night sky for every human being in the world
Except of course that with the visible eye you never even see Starlink and 99.99% of humanity has never seen a single sat, and don't notice it. And of those who have most have seen a short bus of sats for a few seconds. And somehow those people are still alive.
The sky is fine and not polluted.
There are some concerns about earth based astronomy but they are often overblown. And sats are just one of many things humans do that make astronomy harder.
More regulation to take into account astronomy make some sense, but SpaceX has been a model citizen in that regard.
>That sounds like an absolute distopian nightmare and the last person on earth that I want to be running this service is Elon Musk.
Given that Musk was the only person with the ambition, capital, and ability to deliver such a project, you're basically saying that you'd rather have Starlink not exist at all than to have Musk in charge.
>it's an incredible feat - and yet I still think it's a travesty that it's allowed to exist at all.
Confirmed: You'd rather have every Starlink customer go dark than have someone you've been told to dislike provide those customers with a service they willingly sign up for.
I've been confused why our Starlink coverage is so good in rural Manitoba, Canada. On HN and elsewhere I heard complaining from Americans about how the service is over-subscribed and over-saturated, but everyone I talk to here raves about the service. I assumed we simply had less subscribers.
This visualization has revealed another reason to me: the satellites hit the northern extent of their orbit and dwell over our province. Who knew orbital mechanics would work out in our favour.
I don't quite understand your second reason. Could you elaborate what you mean by "dwell over our province" which would explain improved coverage beyond the fact that there are as you said probably fewer subscribers the satellites are visible from?
Starlink has a lot of (most?) satellites at an orbital inclination of 53 degrees to avoid "wasting" time over the poles where few people live while still providing coverage at most other latitudes. This means that at any time there's a higher density of satellites above that latitude than at the equator.
I think you misinterpreted. Parent poster probably was thinking "fewer subscribers per Earth sq km", but mostly it turns out to be "more satellites per sq km".
Similar, with a slightly different goal: https://starlink.sx/
It was designed more with the intent of evaluating coverage of Starlink, especially in the early days when coverage was more sparse, but it also shows the satellites in orbit. The total numbers do have a slight mismatch between the sites.
I made a version of whatsoverhead.com but for satellites: You could ask it, "Hey, Siri, what's overhead…in space?" and it would tell you what the nearest satellite to you was. It was an attempt to help situate yourself in the invisible world of spacecraft flying overhead all the time. The thing is, 70-90% of the time the answer is "STARLINK-1234". It was shocking to me. The app achieved the goal I intended, and the answer was a surprise–it was a more visceral way of understanding the fact that there are a lot of Starlink satellites, for sure.
Part of that is because starlink shells are lower down than many other satellites. You are never going to have a GPS satellite or a GEO stationary one be the nearest to you because there is always going to be lower satellites nearer.
Yes, I eventually had it give answers for each of LEO, MEO, and GEO just because it got extremely boring having "STARLINK" almost always be the answer.
This is wild. I had no idea of the scope of Starlink satellites in orbit. What is the life cycle of one of these satellites? How long do they last in orbit? Can they be controlled where they crash land down? How many different versions of the satellites are in orbit? I wonder how often they have their software updated and what happens in the failure state of an unsuccessful update?
They have a lifespan of about 5 years, the limit is the amount of maneuvering propellant to compensate for atmospheric drag they have on board. Next gen, which will be launched by the much larger Starship, may have a lot more propellant.
Most are in a five year orbit. This means that if SpaceX loses control of the satellite it will deorbit in five years due to atmospheric drag. Under control they deorbit within hours. They plan on switching to a one year orbit in the future.
They have purposefully deorbitted hundreds of satellites. They had a couple of early satellites deorbit naturally without control, but all starlinks currently orbiting are under control.
Starlinks are designed to burn up in atmosphere. On deorbit they do not reach the Earth.
I imagine Starlinks are like other Musk products and get updates multiple times per month, but that's a guess.
Hey bryanlarsen, as a request could you not post things like this that are confidently incorrect?
> They had a couple of early satellites deorbit naturally without control, but all starlinks currently orbiting are under control.
A trivial check at any online database would find that there are many not under control. And satellites also still deorbit naturally without control pretty regularly.
When I fullscreen this page the globe is 870 pixels wide, equating to about 9.1 miles per pixel. Each satellite is represented by a cube 3 dots on edge. This equates to 27 miles per edge or 19,683 cubic miles of volume for each square represented. That's approximately four times the total volume of the Great Lakes in the US.
Agreed. Internet to the whole world is a noble goal, but the internet provider in chief is, in my estimation, a ghoul. The gushing praise is a strange choice to be sure, considering how informative the rest of the site is.
Readit News
Much like how it's in Tesla's best interests for the US not to invest in high-speed rail (hence Musk's "Hyperloop" stunt to prevent an infrastructure investment), it's in Starlink's best interests for countries not to invest in broadband technologies (whether it's mobile networks or fiber). I'm not aware of any plans to dissuade governments from those investments yet but I wouldn't be surprised to see it. Presumably Musk is too busy with Twitter at the moment.
is referring to the service area, not the number of competitors.
AFAICT that's exactly what Starlink is trying to do. Their satellites are in a low enough orbit to provide sufficient bandwidth for light web browsing, and they certainly have enough satellites to provide reliable coverage (by satellite standards).
Thing is, satcom is still much more expensive, much slower, and much more power-hungry than what folks have gotten used to with broadband home internet, LTE, and 5G. I have the feeling that it will always be that way - it takes a lot more power to blast a signal into space than it does to send it to a tower down the street, or to the router in your living room. The section of the general population that is willing to make such huge tradeoffs in exchange for truly global coverage is quite small. Militaries and certain types of businesses love it, though.
Dead Comment
You already can.
Tons of people driving the Pan-American Highway from Alaska to Argentina are using Starlink now - it works flawlessly no matter what country you're in.
Same for people driving around Africa, across Central Asia, etc.
Pro Tip - order it in a country like Mexico and the monthly fee is way lower.
That sounds like an absolute distopian nightmare and the last person on earth that I want to be running this service is Elon Musk. In general I find it horrendous how a single american company can pollute the night sky for every human being in the world, whether they can use their services or not. Technologically I'm in awe of what Starlink achieves, it's an incredible feat - and yet I still think it's a travesty that it's allowed to exist at all.
Being overly dramatic just makes you sound silly.
> I find it horrendous how a single american company can pollute the night sky for every human being in the world
Except of course that with the visible eye you never even see Starlink and 99.99% of humanity has never seen a single sat, and don't notice it. And of those who have most have seen a short bus of sats for a few seconds. And somehow those people are still alive.
The sky is fine and not polluted.
There are some concerns about earth based astronomy but they are often overblown. And sats are just one of many things humans do that make astronomy harder.
More regulation to take into account astronomy make some sense, but SpaceX has been a model citizen in that regard.
I look at the sky regularly in a low light area and I've not seen any "pollution", but maybe I don't know how to look?
That pollution is much much less than the light pollution from cities and aircraft (both visual and noise).
If we’re going to care about pollution of the night sky it seems more effective to take on those cases that are already very intrusive.
Given that Musk was the only person with the ambition, capital, and ability to deliver such a project, you're basically saying that you'd rather have Starlink not exist at all than to have Musk in charge.
>it's an incredible feat - and yet I still think it's a travesty that it's allowed to exist at all.
Confirmed: You'd rather have every Starlink customer go dark than have someone you've been told to dislike provide those customers with a service they willingly sign up for.
Dystopia, indeed.
This visualization has revealed another reason to me: the satellites hit the northern extent of their orbit and dwell over our province. Who knew orbital mechanics would work out in our favour.
Here's a map of the ISS orbit (similar inclination) over time which shows the effect: https://engaging-data.com/pages/scripts/iss/iss3.png
Most are in a five year orbit. This means that if SpaceX loses control of the satellite it will deorbit in five years due to atmospheric drag. Under control they deorbit within hours. They plan on switching to a one year orbit in the future.
They have purposefully deorbitted hundreds of satellites. They had a couple of early satellites deorbit naturally without control, but all starlinks currently orbiting are under control.
Starlinks are designed to burn up in atmosphere. On deorbit they do not reach the Earth.
I imagine Starlinks are like other Musk products and get updates multiple times per month, but that's a guess.
> They had a couple of early satellites deorbit naturally without control, but all starlinks currently orbiting are under control.
A trivial check at any online database would find that there are many not under control. And satellites also still deorbit naturally without control pretty regularly.
Or do satellites need some power to continue to stay in orbit?
If satellites can deorbit without power what forces would cause that?
You can see the base station locations there, which is helpful in visualizing how the system works in various locales.