They have to deliver the base stations for this to be useful, parent post is just saying 2-day air FedEx is not happening
I would suppose they would go across the border to poland along with all the NATO weaponry, but its still quite a logistics feat, I don't know that musk can snap his fingers and consider it done
Plus I'd be surprised if they had base stations in stock just sitting in a warehouse when they could already be in revenue service.
SpaceX did deliver Starlink to Tonga, rural parts of Texas, Chile, and several Indian reservations. Some of those projects were at no cost for limited time, others were discounted.
Saving children from a cave wasn't empty promises, it's just a hard problem that actually requires product development and testing in more real environments than SpaceX had easy access to. They did indeed deliver a prototype-level product.
Good on Elon/SpaceX for pointing more satellites at Ukraine (is that even how this works?). But do we know if they have enough kits to use it, I hope they're also working on getting more into Ukraine.
The starlink satellites are in low earth orbit and fly-over coverage varies only by latitude.
They do have the ability to ‘point’ service with electronically steerable antennas, but at ~50 degrees N, Kyiv is actually in a very good place for Starlink support.
The main question is where Starlink will have ground stations and how vulnerable they might be to attack. A single ground station can service users within 3-4 hundred mile radius. In addition, the terminals require zero local infrastructure beyond basic power and can sole m supply 200+Mbps down, 40+ up.
The details are not going to be published for security reasons, but have a look at the map of military actions. Central/west Ukraine is still very open and trains were running quite recently (not sure today). For now, there shouldn't be too much problem for protected transports.
But the problem with logistics is real in the actual war zones. See reports of Russian forces being impacted by Ukraine attacking not the incoming armed vehicles, but the support groups behind them.
I think there's a lot of stuff here depending on who is the target user, but some ideas to think about:
- distributed the same as other equipment - loaded up on transports coming from the west
- war zone moves - what is accessible today may not be accessible tomorrow, so setting up backup access in nodes currently not affected is important
- ISPs could use them as emergency down/up link when international cables are cut
- military actions are very unevenly distributed - you can literally drive past a column of invading army forces because you're not relevant (see lots of civilian videos)
You don't hold a Starlink dish to your ear, instead you place the thing in some unobstructed area and connect to it through (long-range) Wifi. If the dish draws in a missile that's a net-loss for the aggressor since that missile will cost a lot more than the dish.
What is the impact of Russian military signal jamming on the starlink satellites and receivers? I assume the receivers transmit fairly narrow beam, can the satellites winnow out the signal from the jamming? Ditto the receivers.
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[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] threadI would suppose they would go across the border to poland along with all the NATO weaponry, but its still quite a logistics feat, I don't know that musk can snap his fingers and consider it done
Plus I'd be surprised if they had base stations in stock just sitting in a warehouse when they could already be in revenue service.
Forgive my cynicism of musk's grandiose gestures
Not being critical of this, just curious.
They do have the ability to ‘point’ service with electronically steerable antennas, but at ~50 degrees N, Kyiv is actually in a very good place for Starlink support.
The main question is where Starlink will have ground stations and how vulnerable they might be to attack. A single ground station can service users within 3-4 hundred mile radius. In addition, the terminals require zero local infrastructure beyond basic power and can sole m supply 200+Mbps down, 40+ up.
I'm just genuinely curious about wartime logistics.
But the problem with logistics is real in the actual war zones. See reports of Russian forces being impacted by Ukraine attacking not the incoming armed vehicles, but the support groups behind them.
This a feel-good measure on both sides for the most part. It takes time to ship all the hardware.
- distributed the same as other equipment - loaded up on transports coming from the west
- war zone moves - what is accessible today may not be accessible tomorrow, so setting up backup access in nodes currently not affected is important
- ISPs could use them as emergency down/up link when international cables are cut
- military actions are very unevenly distributed - you can literally drive past a column of invading army forces because you're not relevant (see lots of civilian videos)
(Dragon's return payload mass is 3000 kg, and the mass of the terminal kit is ~15 kg, so 200 tops - through probably couldn't fit that many inside)
Will Russia point their anti-satellite capability at it?