Starlink

[Gale Hawkins]

The plan is for 40,000 Starlink satellites. Since Sputnik, humans have launched 9,000 satellites. 5,000 are still in orbit, 2,000 are still operating. While I appreciate getting internet access to remote places, I have to think there is a better and cheaper way to do it. The satellites are visible with the naked eye and already are interfering with astronomers. Several of the Starlinks have stopped working and are already space junk. I personally don't want to see my beautiful night sky taken over by satellites that will be orbiting junk after a few years. Hope there is a better answer.

I am a fan of Musk, and SpaceX. Love how they land their rockets back on the launchpad. Makes a ton more sense than NASA's way of dropping them in the ocean. But launching 40,000 satellites for internet access may not be worth it in the long run.

This should be great for many areas of the country. While now they can launch 60 at each launch they are planning to launch 400 at a time with a larger rocket. I did not know about Elon Mush until I saw they could reuse their rockets. Now I am a fan of Elon Musk many talents.

 

[flusher]

The plan is for 40,000 Starlink satellites. Since Sputnik, humans have launched 9,000 satellites. 5,000 are still in orbit, 2,000 are still operating. While I appreciate getting internet access to remote places, I have to think there is a better and cheaper way to do it. The satellites are visible with the naked eye and already are interfering with astronomers. Several of the Starlinks have stopped working and are already space junk. I personally don't want to see my beautiful night sky taken over by satellites that will be orbiting junk after a few years. Hope there is a better answer.

I am a fan of Musk, and SpaceX. Love how they land their rockets back on the launchpad. Makes a ton more sense than NASA's way of dropping them in the ocean. But launching 40,000 satellites for internet access may not be worth it in the long run.

Elon has tweeted a few days ago that the reflected sunlight problem has been solved. This twinkle comes from the side of the comsat with the phased array antennas that have to be pointed at the surface of the Earth during the entire orbit in order to establish and maintain a communication link with the ground. And the solar panels reflect sunlight in a mirror-like way (specular reflection). This reflected sunlight happens twice per orbit for about 5 minutes each when the comsat passes through the penumbra of the Earth's shadow.

Elon's engineers have come up with an easy fix for the first problem--a thin black foam sunshade that covers the entire side of the comsat with the antennas and that is highly transparent to microwaves in the 7-30 GHz range. And the reflection from the solar panels is mitigated by rotating the comsat slightly around the Z-axis of the satellite ( the axis perpendicular to the plane of the antennas and which points toward the center of the Earth) so that specularly reflected sunlight is directed away from the surface of the Earth.

I'm pretty sure that a few of the Starlink comsats launched last Wednesday have the black foam sunshade and that the comsat rotation maneuver will be tested soon. Elon has tweeted that all 60 of the comsats in the 9th launch will have the sunshades.

 

[Diggin It]

Thin black film is not a cloaking device. It might make them less likely to reflect Sunlight, but it doesn't make them invisible or keep them from blocking views beyond them with telescopes. Or keep stuff from crashing into them. Or keep them from crashing into our barns/sheds/houses ....

He can't even keep his cars from crashing into other stuff.

 

[rekees4300]

Elon Musk says Starlink internet private beta to begin in roughly three months, public beta in six TechCrunch

SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk has shared more details about when in 2020 we can expect the companyç—´ Starlink low-latency, high-bandwidth satellite internet service to actually be available to customers. He said on Twitter that a private beta for Starlink would begin in around three months, with a public beta to kick off roughly three months after that.

The initial beta test will apply to those located in å¡—igh latitudes, Musk added. To date, SpaceX has said that Starlink service will initially be made available to customers in Canada and in the northern United States in 2020, with additional service expansion to follow to other parts of the world throughout 2021. On Twitter in response to a question about whether Germany counts as å¡—igh latitude, Musk said that it does, indicating beta service at least may be available in more markets than the U.S. and Canada ahead of next year.

The article is confusing so we'll just have to wait and see what happens. It refers to "private beta", "public beta", and "initial beta". So what do those mean? I assumed "private beta" (3 months) means testing by SpaceX and/or other experts and "public beta" (6 months) means testing by John Q. Public and "initial beta" means the same as "private beta"? :confused2::confused3:

 

[rekees4300]

This should be great for many areas of the country. While now they can launch 60 at each launch they are planning to launch 400 at a time with a larger rocket. I did not know about Elon Mush until I saw they could reuse their rockets. Now I am a fan of Elon Musk many talents.

The guy is a genius but hopefully a Starlink subscription will cost less than a Tesla.

 

[rekees4300]

Sunday SpaceX plans to launch first Starlink satellites testing 'VisorSat' to block sun. A set of darkened shades that can be deployed to keep the sun from glinting off the bright parts of each satellite that threatens to interfere with the observations of astronomers and other scientists.

SpaceX to launch first Starlink satellites testing 'VisorSat' to block sun - CNET

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Sunday SpaceX plans to launch first Starlink satellites testing 'VisorSat' to block sun. A set of darkened shades that can be deployed to keep the sun from glinting off the bright parts of each satellite that threatens to interfere with the observations of astronomers and other scientists.

SpaceX to launch first Starlink satellites testing 'VisorSat' to block sun - CNET

It was a fast fix and hope it works out well. I know the Air Force is excited over Starlink to go live for some reason.

 

[kcflhrc]

That's always been the problem with HSI in rural areas, everyone wants it but no one wants to pay for it. You can bet this will be no different.

 

[riptides]

That's always been the problem with HSI in rural areas, everyone wants it but no one wants to pay for it. You can bet this will be no different.

It will be different. Vastly so. One grouping of satellites offers basic coverage vastly exceeding that of the current infrastructure, which has yet to be fully deployed. < and probably never will be.

 

[kcflhrc]

Time will tell I guess. You would have thought someone putting that much money into a project would have a sense of how long it would take to make his money back. I don't suspect we will know how vastly different it is until it happens. If it's affected by weather like all other satellites then that may be a real problem for people that need a reliable connection. I'm a little biased since I install fiber for a living. As long as you can keep the idiots from cutting it it is as reliable as anything and lightning fast.

 

[riptides]

Time will tell I guess. You would have thought someone putting that much money into a project would have a sense of how long it would take to make his money back. I don't suspect we will know how vastly different it is until it happens. If it's affected by weather like all other satellites then that may be a real problem for people that need a reliable connection. I'm a little biased since I install fiber for a living. As long as you can keep the idiots from cutting it it is as reliable as anything and lightning fast.

I wish the government would step in do something about replacing copper with fiber. Seeing how private industry just cannot seem to roll it out to the masses.

 

[cqaigy2]

Time will tell I guess. You would have thought someone putting that much money into a project would have a sense of how long it would take to make his money back. I don't suspect we will know how vastly different it is until it happens. If it's affected by weather like all other satellites then that may be a real problem for people that need a reliable connection. I'm a little biased since I install fiber for a living. As long as you can keep the idiots from cutting it it is as reliable as anything and lightning fast.

I use networks for a living and the best is dark fiber works flawlessly, until it doesn't. Had problem external fiber huts and aerial not to mention buried. Mouse chew thru one pair, had freezing temp damage another, two different trees somebody in the hut disconnecting wrong things and an earthquake. I won't go into all the damage earthquake caused but was months. I did see a demonstration showing theoretically, how Starlink would work and one thing that surprised me was showing the current latency of different fiber paths across the world and in some instances the Starlink was significantly less latency. In one of the paths mid African continent for locations in Europe was a large difference.

 

[kcflhrc]

I use networks for a living and the best is dark fiber works flawlessly, until it doesn't. Had problem external fiber huts and aerial not to mention buried. Mouse chew thru one pair, had freezing temp damage another, two different trees somebody in the hut disconnecting wrong things and an earthquake. I won't go into all the damage earthquake caused but was months. I did see a demonstration showing theoretically, how Starlink would work and one thing that surprised me was showing the current latency of different fiber paths across the world and in some instances the Starlink was significantly less latency. In one of the paths mid African continent for locations in Europe was a large difference.

Huh?? You use "Dark Fiber" ?? I'm guessing that is a Typo or something because Dark Fiber is fiber that is not in use or not lit up. There is single mode and multi mode fiber, maybe that's what you meant.

 

[kcflhrc]

I wish the government would step in do something about replacing copper with fiber. Seeing how private industry just cannot seem to roll it out to the masses.

It is very expensive, that's what most don't realize. The FED's are involved in the Connect America Project or CAF. Basically they subsidize the Telco's to build out broadband to rural areas. Typically fiber to a remote and then copper to the home with a minimum of 10 gig download. Here's the kicker though. The FED's tell you where to put the device and what homes it will feed. Were not putting in any new copper, just fiber, but we aren't over building the old copper areas with fiber either.

 

[RustyA]

1/2 mile from fiber at pedestal copper to us and six residents on private road. 0.8-1.5 Meg with lots of jitter and latency...currently paying over $50 per month to Centurylink. Starlink at $80 per month projected would be a real game changer for us all the way around. Currently unable to stream much so big Dish bill, high speed would help with that too!

 

[kcflhrc]

Just one of the pitfalls of living rural I guess. I can't get any wired DSL where I live but I'm close enough to a major highway to use the AT&T wireless plan and it typically runs 20 to 40 meg down. Originally had the SIM in a Mobley but have since moved it into a Netgear 4G LTE Modem connected to a Netgear wireless router and it works great.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I wish the government would step in do something about replacing copper with fiber. Seeing how private industry just cannot seem to roll it out to the masses.

I expect the plan is to skip the move to fiber to off earth systems due to cost. The Air Force recently was testing Starlink for their operations. The army wants the troops to have live data to their wrist computer in real time. So far in time Elon Musk typically delivers. Hope things so well for their live payload this Saturday.

 

[cqaigy2]

Huh?? You use "Dark Fiber" ?? I'm guessing that is a Typo or something because Dark Fiber is fiber that is not in use or not lit up. There is single mode and multi mode fiber, maybe that's what you meant.

Around here, dark fiber means not managed as in not buying capacity on managed fiber. So it's not used until we plug something into it. Most of the fiber we use and all of the fiber we install is single mode, i think 50micron.

 

[Jstpssng]

I wish the government would step in do something about replacing copper with fiber. Seeing how private industry just cannot seem to roll it out to the masses.

That would be nice in some ways, yet not the way that the free market system works. If you want all of the benefits of urban life that's the place to be... don't ask everybody else to subsidize your lifestyle.

 

[rekees4300]

I wish the government would step in do something about replacing copper with fiber. Seeing how private industry just cannot seem to roll it out to the masses.

Government keeps talking about it but significant actions never happen. Private industry can't do it because it costs too much in rural areas.