I long for much more detail about the engineering of this project, in particular the traffic engineering and routing aspects. Theres so many interesting possibilities there.
The FCC filing has a lot of good technical details on the deployment and frequency usage. Additionally, Mark Handley has a good primer on it. It may kill actual east-west terrestrial traffic due to latency improvements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIUdMiColU
I believe the 35 ms latency number is on top of any required routing latency, either on the ground or in space. I'm curious how much each satellite hop will add.
this guy made an excellent youtube video modeling and visualizing the satellite orbits, the network routing paths across them, and the resulting latencies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIUdMiColU&t=4m
NYC to London on the current internet is 76ms, he shows it across starlink's updated plans as working out to around 46ms.
Later in the description he points out a mistake in his own math and says that starlink paths should be 8.7% faster than the video shows, so really jfk<->lhr ~ 42ms.
Nope, regular falcon 9. However, this is predicted to be one of they heaviest loads they have ever done (15-16 tons) considering how far down range the drone ship is going.
With more fiber being laid every day, increasing wireless deployments, and technologies like AirGig in the horizon, is Starlink launching into a shrinking market?
Further, as SpaceX is having trouble raising the needed funds, is this launch simply a fundraising exercise?
If all the constellation + GEO systems proposals end up being launched, there will be an oversupply of capacity from space.
Rural areas are a viable market only in the US and Canada, where people can afford to pay $50+/month for connectivity. Elsewhere in the world, they are not going to sell to any end-users.
The 4,425 and the 7,500 satellite constellations proposed by SpaceX are way oversized and simply put, a waste of money and efforts.
There are essentially no variable costs for the satellites, and since they will be in LEO, a satellite to supply rural US also supplies everywhere in India. So SpaceX can sell their services for $5/month (or less) to people in India and $50/month to people in the US. Everyone (within certain longitude bounds) is a possible customer.
The mesh of satellites favor the northern hemispheres, you have a much lower density in lower regions, so you could charge less for them.
And they could stop launching them if they don't see a supply, basically just matching their registration numbers and launching more when the bandwidth/users require it.
Those numbers seem to just be a target for an ideal completed system, not for it to become operational.
At $10 billion to deploy and lets assume 5 years satellite lifetime and $1 billion a year to operate, this is $3 billion a year or $250 million / month. You would only need 5 million subscribers at $50 / month to break even.
Seriously. I’ll switch just so I don’t have to pay Comcast.
Now I just need some Tesla solar panels and a couple powerwalls, and betweeen that, a well, my septic system, I can cut every cable coming into my house.
Well, I do use natural gas for heating and I love my gas stove, but nearly there!
If only the receiver and the power requirements were small enough to fit in my cell phone!
Don't forget the US DOD who spent $300 million per satellite for 10 geostationary communication satellites that each have 2.4 Gbit/s of capacity [0]. That's $3 billion dollars on just the satellites and Starlink is being designed to have orders of magnitude more capacity (21 Gbit/s per satellite * 12,000 satellites vs 2.4 Gbit/s * 10 satellites), lower latency (LEO vs GEO), and way more redundancy.
They've also already awarded spacex a $28.7 million dollar contract for "experimentation in the areas of establishing connectivity, operational experimentation, and special purpose experimentation. Experimentation will include connectivity demonstrations to Air Force ground sites and aircraft for experimental purposes" [1] so they are definitely eyeing it.
> With more fiber being laid every day, increasing wireless deployments, and technologies like AirGig in the horizon, is Starlink launching into a shrinking market?
What you are describing sounds like a rapidly expanding market, not a shrinking market, though, right?
> Further, as SpaceX is having trouble raising the needed funds, is this launch simply a fundraising exercise?
What do you mean? SpaceX is not having trouble raising their needed funds. Do you have a citation for that? This is the first I'd be hearing of it and would be surprised. Also, needed for what? Are you referring to Mars colonization?
> is this launch simply a fundraising exercise?
This also doesn't make any sense. This launch is a groundbreaking event that begins a 12,000 satellite network deployment. This is a very cost-intensive thing and not exactly a 'fund raising exercise'; it's intended to provide early service to internet customers.
SpaceX's last few raises did not perform well with the last two raising $43 million out of $400 million offered (2019) and $250 million out of $750 million offered (2018).
I searched for this for the last 5 minutes but couldn't find any info about it online. Do you have any links or citations? I think it is false info.
Edit: Based on the info I was able to find, it looks like this is indeed false information and not true at all.
I can find no evidence that SpaceX is having trouble raising money or that their recent raises have gone poorly. No evidence. But I can find a lot of people explaining why these numbers are incorrect and why it is false to say that SpaceX is having trouble raising money. A lot. Here are a few.
Not OP but: This is the 2019 raise they were referring to [1].
I don't know much about SEC regulations - they're required to file info about who has invested in the first 15 days - and rumours used that to say they couldn't sell all they offered. Other rumours said that they don't have to file to say they sold it all. Would appreciate clarity from someone who knows SEC regulations.
View it this way: SpaceX is not planning to lay a high-speed connection to one town but to all towns at once.
It is going to be a money-printing machine if that works out. No matter how deep in the desert someone is, they can have the same connection as someone much closer to a city. Granted, it is not going to have fiber-bandwidth but it's fast enough and everywhere between 53° of latitude north and south.
So it is again a long term gamble to maybe make one day a load of money. So again one of Elon Musks enterprises is promising a long term success story.
Before they get there they have how many satellites to build and launch? Before space link is profitable and cash positive all that cost has to off set by profit and positive cash flow. Looking at it from that perspective, the idea that this is some kind of fund raising exercise isn't to far fetched. Personally I doubt that SpaceX is cash positive and profitable as their funding rounds just match too nicely their losses if you assume that real SpaceX launch costs are somewhere near the commercial costs of their competition.
Honestly, I almost expected something like that after their capsule blew up.
The saddest element of both SpaceX and Tesla is that all the successes and cool stuff these companies do just gets drowned in all the Musk hype and BS. An I seriously doubt that it does any good.
> So it is again a long term gamble to maybe make one day a load of money.
No, that's not what this is. The comment above you said nothing about this anyway, it seems to be off-topic? The entire point of this launch is to reduce the risk, assess potential problems early, and find paying customers quickly to prove the market demand before and their ability to handle it, before scaling up and launching more.
> So again one of Elon Musks enterprises is promising a long term success story.
There is no way to make the world better without trying to do it. And that takes time. Why would you have a problem with someone trying to make the world better on a long-term scale? And also, nobody is promising anything, especially as SpaceX is not a public company and has no public investors.
> Before they get there they have how many satellites to build and launch?
Like, 60? And just this launch? I believe they intend to be revenue-generating from this very first network launch? This isn't some long-term gamble, they are testing the market quickly for acceptance of their tech and business model.
> Before space link is profitable and cash positive all that cost has to off set by profit and positive cash flow
It's called Starlink. And, okay..?
> Personally I doubt that SpaceX is cash positive and profitable
Oh. You are directly stating that the CFO, CEO and President of SpaceX are liars? If that is your position I don't think much that I say will ever change your understanding of this. You are mired in conspiracy theories and not listening to the facts in the world.
The first pint was referring to the comment stating that the service, when live, will generate a load of money. Maybe it will, maybe not. I can't tell. But it will for sure have to, simply due to the fact that putting the service up is extremely expensive.
Long term stories are great. And yes, everything that makes the world a better place is welcome. But considering the state of things in less developed countries, I assume space born Wifi is not the top priority. But hey, if investors are buying into I won't complain.
The whole service is planned to have around 12k satellites (another comment, did check primary sources myself yet). So still way to go.
Regarding finances, as SpaceX is a private company reliable numbers are hard to come by. All I have is what little went public a couple of years ago, benchmark numbers from other launch companies and the public parts NASA contracts. But I should have been more precise: my cash and profitability remark concerned their operative launch business excl. NASA dev contracts and the like. I suspect that their development is financed by external funding while their government contracts are cross-financing their low commercial launch costs. Nothing wrong with that as everybody else in that industry is doing the same thing. Everybody else isn't SpaceX, so.
Just one last thing, I am happy to discuss SpaceX. Because new facts and view points are how we develop. Implying that I call people I don't know liars and that I am full of conspiracy theories is not helping in that regard. Just saying.
What possible reason would you have for personally believing that SpaceX is not cash-flow positive, when the exec teams says that it is, if you are not reading conspiracy theories? Where are these ideas coming from then? We have real legal facts here. Real people in charge of the real company saying real numbers to us, but you're not going to believe them? I'm just not sure how else to talk about this stuff. When the exec team is a proven group of people with a solid track record and a recent history of accomplishing goals, meeting expectations and producing record-breaking technology and revenues - and they tell us facts about being profitable - it's definitely a conspiracy theory to state that they are secretly not profitable.
SpaceX is profitable.
> But considering the state of things in less developed countries, I assume space born Wifi is not the top priority. But hey, if investors are buying into I won't complain.
Reliable and fast access to information improves quality of life, even in places with other problems. Much of the USA is like a developing nation itself, with population-scale problems of getting access to clean water and having basic food security. But still, reliable network access can also improve both of those things too - the internet is backbone infrastructure just like the water pipes, and is needed for a developing country - or a developed one - to grow economically.
> I assume space born Wifi is not the top priority.
Countries, organizations, investors, businesses can all work on more than one thing at once. Something need not be 'top priority' for it to be worthy of investment and continuing to do at break-neck pace.
> my cash and profitability remark concerned their operative launch business excl. NASA dev contracts and the like
Do you mean that you are excluding a primary revenue source from their finances in your calculations? I just don't get it.
Hey, you don't have pitch this thing to me, ok? I. don't have the cash make the smallest imaginable difference in any space-born venture! :-)
I tried to explain my line of thought. You disagree, fine. It is just that when I developed an interest in the financial aspects of the launch business around end of 2018 and early 2019, I wasn't the only one with doubts in that regard. I'm no expert on either aspect, so if there facts out there that proof me wrong just share them. We are all hear to learn, right? Just do me a favour and don't cite reddit, ok?
> It is just that when I developed an interest in the financial aspects of the launch business around end of 2018 and early 2019, I wasn't the only one with doubts in that regard. I'm no expert on either aspect, so if there facts out there that proof me wrong just share them.
Here's what the parent comment was getting at:
> SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Tuesday that the privately held Hawthorne space company is valued at almost $28 billion based on recent funding rounds, and that it is profitable.[1]
That’s what happened with Iridium in the 90s. By the time they launched, cellular coverage had greatly eaten into their market and they went bankrupt. (Having disposed of the enormous capital costs, they went on to become profitable and are doing quite well today.)
A major difference is that Iridium service was (and still is) extremely expensive. Nobody used it unless it was the only choice. Out in the middle of the ocean? Iridium is great. At the end of a long country road with nothing but a POTS line that can barely accommodate a 14.4k modem? Use that modem, it’s way cheaper and faster.
SpaceX hopes to provide pricing and speeds that are competitive with terrestrial options in many places. They’re not just trying to serve an ever-shrinking customer base that can’t get any connectivity otherwise.
Teslarati is reporting that these satellites will not yet have the laser interlinks. I guess that means they can't route traffic from satellite to satellite; they can only bounce data traffic back down to a base station.
I saw an unsourced comment on reddit that claimed they would have a microwave interlink instead of the laser interlinks, which would give several orders of magnitude lower bandwidth (although still better than nothing).
Either way, I think that these are mostly being put up to serve two important purposes: testing various technologies with enough test vehicles to get strong(ish) statistics, and working their way to the thousands of deployed satellites the FCC will require them to have deployed if they don’t want to lose their frequency allocation.
I have also heard that they are having some trouble with the laser interlinks and alignment as well as the cost of them at this point, so they are starting with the microwave interlinks. They still plan on doing the laser interlinks eventually, but they weren't reliable or cheap enough by the time they wanted to begin launching, so they are being left off this first batch.
All of that is completely unsourced and heard through anonymous sources that have posted on various forums, so take it with as much salt as you need.
Oh, microwave links effectively nothing compared to the laser ones. Terrible news. So I guess marketed bandwidth will never be delivered within the first generation of the network.
To use microwave inter-satellite links, SpaceX would have needed to file for frequency allocations. As far as I know, they have not done so - they only have frequency allocations requested (and approved) by the FCC for the up and downlinks. I think this largely rules out microwave ISLs on this batch of satellites.
What laser interlinks are the planning to use anyway? Do they plan on making their own, or to buy them?
I've helped with EDRS [1] and I can confidently assert that these things are everything but trivial to get to work well. The technology is so highly sophisticated on so many levels that I was quite literally shocked more than once during that time.
If there’s one thing that SpaceX/Tesla seem to universally excel at it is their electronics / board / chip design.
Listening to Sandy Munro rant about so many things he doesn’t like about how Tesla builds their cars, one thing he is awed by is their electronics.
I will say that they fucked up the eMMC chip in their first gen MCU though, people are out there unsoldering, cloning, and replacing the chip to try to bring back their cars from the dead to avoid paying ~$3k for a whole new MCU.
One satelite only seem to be able to handle 20Gbit meanwhile a single fiber can handle 20Tbit and you get a lot of fiber cables for $10 billion. One advantage with satellites thoug are that there's nothing for warlord or censoring states cut off. Time to re-watch the movie "enemy of the state" ...
It's operated by a single company which cares about profit. You can't tell me that the US government isn't capable to pushing Tesla to censor something they don't like or that Tesla will do it willingly to enter a market like China.
Get rid of this idea that satellite internet is somehow more resistant to censorship or control than wired internet, it’s totally false. In censorship-minded countries, this service will be completely illegal, and it will be enforced on both the client-side (the necessary tech to communicate with the sats will be impossible to acquire legally) and server-side (SpaceX will be forbidden from doing business in the country, and banks and payment processors will be forbidden from having anything to do with them).
This isn't meant to replace fibre (except maybe for some high speed intercontinental trading purposes). This is high speed Internet for people in rural areas, where they'll pay for the bandwidth and latency improvements.
This isn't going to let them jump past national regulatory agencies. It will help them avoid local regulations and right-of-way issues that helped kill Google fiber.
I just want to know where that estimate comes from - as far as I know, any estimate of cost is a WAG. For example, my WAG with today's new info:
- 167k per sat construction cost
- 20 mill per launch (at-cost WAG)
- 333k launch costs per sat
- 500k per sat total cost
these numbers give a final 12000 sat constellation cost of 6 billion. The initial 1600 sat constellation comes to 800million
But if my assumptions are off, it could be way less or more. If they make the satellites even cheaper, or at cost launches are less, or they end up being able to launch on Starship, it's significantly less. If sats cost more, or launches are more, then the cost goes through the roof.
I searched for a while to try to find stats on Comcast's aggregate network capacity, either in amount of data transmitted or the peak/average bandwidth utilization. I'd be curious to compare this to theoretical capacity of the SpaceX network.
When there are 12,000 of them deployed wouldn't there be more than one above you all the time? Couldn't the connection from Earth spread the traffic among multiple satellites?
Note that these are going into a low orbit that requires regular boosting, otherwise they’ll fall back into the atmosphere within a couple of years at most. There’s no long term space junk threat.
They’ll have thrusters to keep them aloft longer than they would otherwise last. But the whole constellation will have to be refreshed every five to ten years. The whole project depends on cheap launches, which fortunately SpaceX is able to provide.
It was an off hand remark considering the cost of replacement satellites and the running costs to keep the existing ones up there and running. Launches are only a part of the equation.
I’m a bit worried about how we’re throwing stuff at space as fast as we can afford it without any legitimate way to clean it up after it becomes garbage. This project intends to have interlink based on 7k+ satellites and they will undoubtedly become outdated in about 20 years and will have to be replaced by next generation. This is tons and tons of useless metal and silicon orbiting Earth colliding with other useless silicon forming a layer of very high-energy fragments that will destroy everything they come in contact with. And we currently don’t know how deal with it.
It feels uneasy especially when you recognize parallels with climate change in how we’re creating a problem for future generations chasing shorter-term goals.
From a bit of research on Internet, the satellites will re-enter into atmosphere after end of operation, because they are sent to relatively low orbits. There is no garbage involved here.
> This project intends to have interlink based on 7k+ satellites and they will undoubtedly become outdated in about 20 years and will have to be replaced by next generation.
They'll deorbit long before 20 years are up. The ISS requires regular boosts to stay in orbit, due to atmospheric drag. SpaceX's satellites will last probably ~5 years at most.
Starlink will make camping, cruises and air travel over oceans and non civilized land a lot more tolerable. You could even setup a small city of boats in the middle of the ocean. The market for remote internet will be a lot bigger than it is now as it removes our inhibition in traveling to disconnected areas.
I'm waiting for one of these projects to succeed so I can move out of the city. I'm 90% remote and the only thing stopping me from moving back to a rural area is reliable high speed internet.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadNorth-South will still be terrestrial.
* Total deployed size will be ~12K satellites and take a decade or so. Will be operational in a reduced capacity as early as next year.
* Since they're in low earth orbit, latency could be in the 35ms range.
NYC to London on the current internet is 76ms, he shows it across starlink's updated plans as working out to around 46ms.
Later in the description he points out a mistake in his own math and says that starlink paths should be 8.7% faster than the video shows, so really jfk<->lhr ~ 42ms.
You must be a Tesla stock holder...
"Could be 35ms" will always be right even if it is 300ms...
Also, I didn't even see that quote on the Wikipedia page.
This breaks the site guidelines. Could you please review them?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Further, as SpaceX is having trouble raising the needed funds, is this launch simply a fundraising exercise?
Rural areas are a viable market only in the US and Canada, where people can afford to pay $50+/month for connectivity. Elsewhere in the world, they are not going to sell to any end-users.
The 4,425 and the 7,500 satellite constellations proposed by SpaceX are way oversized and simply put, a waste of money and efforts.
And they could stop launching them if they don't see a supply, basically just matching their registration numbers and launching more when the bandwidth/users require it.
Those numbers seem to just be a target for an ideal completed system, not for it to become operational.
Now I just need some Tesla solar panels and a couple powerwalls, and betweeen that, a well, my septic system, I can cut every cable coming into my house.
Well, I do use natural gas for heating and I love my gas stove, but nearly there!
If only the receiver and the power requirements were small enough to fit in my cell phone!
They've also already awarded spacex a $28.7 million dollar contract for "experimentation in the areas of establishing connectivity, operational experimentation, and special purpose experimentation. Experimentation will include connectivity demonstrations to Air Force ground sites and aircraft for experimental purposes" [1] so they are definitely eyeing it.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_Global_SATCOM
[1]: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2018/12/27/spacex-receives-287-m...
What you are describing sounds like a rapidly expanding market, not a shrinking market, though, right?
> Further, as SpaceX is having trouble raising the needed funds, is this launch simply a fundraising exercise?
What do you mean? SpaceX is not having trouble raising their needed funds. Do you have a citation for that? This is the first I'd be hearing of it and would be surprised. Also, needed for what? Are you referring to Mars colonization?
> is this launch simply a fundraising exercise?
This also doesn't make any sense. This launch is a groundbreaking event that begins a 12,000 satellite network deployment. This is a very cost-intensive thing and not exactly a 'fund raising exercise'; it's intended to provide early service to internet customers.
Edit: Based on the info I was able to find, it looks like this is indeed false information and not true at all.
I can find no evidence that SpaceX is having trouble raising money or that their recent raises have gone poorly. No evidence. But I can find a lot of people explaining why these numbers are incorrect and why it is false to say that SpaceX is having trouble raising money. A lot. Here are a few.
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/bem0lr/spacex_only_...
I don't know much about SEC regulations - they're required to file info about who has invested in the first 15 days - and rumours used that to say they couldn't sell all they offered. Other rumours said that they don't have to file to say they sold it all. Would appreciate clarity from someone who knows SEC regulations.
[1] http://www.parabolicarc.com/2019/04/17/spacex-embarks-fundin...
Edit: you've found the discussion I read a bit ago. Good.
It is going to be a money-printing machine if that works out. No matter how deep in the desert someone is, they can have the same connection as someone much closer to a city. Granted, it is not going to have fiber-bandwidth but it's fast enough and everywhere between 53° of latitude north and south.
Before they get there they have how many satellites to build and launch? Before space link is profitable and cash positive all that cost has to off set by profit and positive cash flow. Looking at it from that perspective, the idea that this is some kind of fund raising exercise isn't to far fetched. Personally I doubt that SpaceX is cash positive and profitable as their funding rounds just match too nicely their losses if you assume that real SpaceX launch costs are somewhere near the commercial costs of their competition.
Honestly, I almost expected something like that after their capsule blew up.
The saddest element of both SpaceX and Tesla is that all the successes and cool stuff these companies do just gets drowned in all the Musk hype and BS. An I seriously doubt that it does any good.
No, that's not what this is. The comment above you said nothing about this anyway, it seems to be off-topic? The entire point of this launch is to reduce the risk, assess potential problems early, and find paying customers quickly to prove the market demand before and their ability to handle it, before scaling up and launching more.
> So again one of Elon Musks enterprises is promising a long term success story.
There is no way to make the world better without trying to do it. And that takes time. Why would you have a problem with someone trying to make the world better on a long-term scale? And also, nobody is promising anything, especially as SpaceX is not a public company and has no public investors.
> Before they get there they have how many satellites to build and launch?
Like, 60? And just this launch? I believe they intend to be revenue-generating from this very first network launch? This isn't some long-term gamble, they are testing the market quickly for acceptance of their tech and business model.
> Before space link is profitable and cash positive all that cost has to off set by profit and positive cash flow
It's called Starlink. And, okay..?
> Personally I doubt that SpaceX is cash positive and profitable
Oh. You are directly stating that the CFO, CEO and President of SpaceX are liars? If that is your position I don't think much that I say will ever change your understanding of this. You are mired in conspiracy theories and not listening to the facts in the world.
Long term stories are great. And yes, everything that makes the world a better place is welcome. But considering the state of things in less developed countries, I assume space born Wifi is not the top priority. But hey, if investors are buying into I won't complain.
The whole service is planned to have around 12k satellites (another comment, did check primary sources myself yet). So still way to go.
Regarding finances, as SpaceX is a private company reliable numbers are hard to come by. All I have is what little went public a couple of years ago, benchmark numbers from other launch companies and the public parts NASA contracts. But I should have been more precise: my cash and profitability remark concerned their operative launch business excl. NASA dev contracts and the like. I suspect that their development is financed by external funding while their government contracts are cross-financing their low commercial launch costs. Nothing wrong with that as everybody else in that industry is doing the same thing. Everybody else isn't SpaceX, so.
Just one last thing, I am happy to discuss SpaceX. Because new facts and view points are how we develop. Implying that I call people I don't know liars and that I am full of conspiracy theories is not helping in that regard. Just saying.
SpaceX is profitable.
> But considering the state of things in less developed countries, I assume space born Wifi is not the top priority. But hey, if investors are buying into I won't complain.
Reliable and fast access to information improves quality of life, even in places with other problems. Much of the USA is like a developing nation itself, with population-scale problems of getting access to clean water and having basic food security. But still, reliable network access can also improve both of those things too - the internet is backbone infrastructure just like the water pipes, and is needed for a developing country - or a developed one - to grow economically.
> I assume space born Wifi is not the top priority.
Countries, organizations, investors, businesses can all work on more than one thing at once. Something need not be 'top priority' for it to be worthy of investment and continuing to do at break-neck pace.
> my cash and profitability remark concerned their operative launch business excl. NASA dev contracts and the like
Do you mean that you are excluding a primary revenue source from their finances in your calculations? I just don't get it.
I tried to explain my line of thought. You disagree, fine. It is just that when I developed an interest in the financial aspects of the launch business around end of 2018 and early 2019, I wasn't the only one with doubts in that regard. I'm no expert on either aspect, so if there facts out there that proof me wrong just share them. We are all hear to learn, right? Just do me a favour and don't cite reddit, ok?
Here's what the parent comment was getting at:
> SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Tuesday that the privately held Hawthorne space company is valued at almost $28 billion based on recent funding rounds, and that it is profitable.[1]
[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-spacex-shotwell-20180...
A major difference is that Iridium service was (and still is) extremely expensive. Nobody used it unless it was the only choice. Out in the middle of the ocean? Iridium is great. At the end of a long country road with nothing but a POTS line that can barely accommodate a 14.4k modem? Use that modem, it’s way cheaper and faster.
SpaceX hopes to provide pricing and speeds that are competitive with terrestrial options in many places. They’re not just trying to serve an ever-shrinking customer base that can’t get any connectivity otherwise.
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-tease-r...
Either way, I think that these are mostly being put up to serve two important purposes: testing various technologies with enough test vehicles to get strong(ish) statistics, and working their way to the thousands of deployed satellites the FCC will require them to have deployed if they don’t want to lose their frequency allocation.
All of that is completely unsourced and heard through anonymous sources that have posted on various forums, so take it with as much salt as you need.
Sounds highly plausible to me, given [1]. I won't say that they won't eventually get there, but it's definitely not going to be a cakewalk.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19892265
I've helped with EDRS [1] and I can confidently assert that these things are everything but trivial to get to work well. The technology is so highly sophisticated on so many levels that I was quite literally shocked more than once during that time.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Data_Relay_System
Listening to Sandy Munro rant about so many things he doesn’t like about how Tesla builds their cars, one thing he is awed by is their electronics.
I will say that they fucked up the eMMC chip in their first gen MCU though, people are out there unsoldering, cloning, and replacing the chip to try to bring back their cars from the dead to avoid paying ~$3k for a whole new MCU.
[1] - http://teslaservicemanual.com/2019/01/18/replacing-emmc-in-m...
This isn't going to let them jump past national regulatory agencies. It will help them avoid local regulations and right-of-way issues that helped kill Google fiber.
Where did you get the $10 billion number from?
- 167k per sat construction cost
- 20 mill per launch (at-cost WAG)
- 333k launch costs per sat
- 500k per sat total cost
these numbers give a final 12000 sat constellation cost of 6 billion. The initial 1600 sat constellation comes to 800million
But if my assumptions are off, it could be way less or more. If they make the satellites even cheaper, or at cost launches are less, or they end up being able to launch on Starship, it's significantly less. If sats cost more, or launches are more, then the cost goes through the roof.
Comcast spends ~$8 billion on CapEx annually.
The cost of satellites will only go down as they make more, and it's relatively cheap for them to launch them.
Maybe put it in a spin and just let them go? (in a controlled release)
Elon said there’s no separate dispenser to deploy them. I really hope we can see them deploy, that would be an incredible sight.
Best of luck. They are expecting a lot will go wrong, but let’s hope they’re wrong about that!
It feels uneasy especially when you recognize parallels with climate change in how we’re creating a problem for future generations chasing shorter-term goals.
They'll deorbit long before 20 years are up. The ISS requires regular boosts to stay in orbit, due to atmospheric drag. SpaceX's satellites will last probably ~5 years at most.