It is widely believed that a huge chunk of Starlink’s revenue, if not ~all of it, will come from leasing faster-than-currently-available low latency links to HFT companies for nyc-lon and such. This is why their first orbital planes being launched are for the north atlantic and CONUS.
Providing internet to the underserved areas is secondary; the cash will come from beating terrestrial fiber links (even idealized great circle ones) between markets that are already extremely well connected.
One such private low latency link between Seacaucus and LSEG will probably pay 2-5x what everyone else on the planet combined pays for internet access in underserved areas.
This is speculation. Without inter-satellite links the latency between New York and London on Starlink would be quite disappointing.
> This is why their first orbital planes being launched are for the north atlantic and CONUS.
A LEO constellation can only be targeted at specific latitudes (not longitudes). They're just targeting mid-latitudes because that's where potential customers live.
It does seem pretty convenient that the inclination they've chosen lines the satellites up nearly in a straight path from New York to London, but I imagine this would be relevant to many transatlantic communications.
You can't have efficient coverage of the whole planet without launching all of your satellites at fairly high inclination (>45°). There will be more satellites per area near the poles and so that's why Starlink will be available at very high (and very low) latitude before it's available at the equator.
True? I'd heard that the initial target market was passenger planes over the ocean, cruise ships, and similar maritime and aerial activity that has to use geosynchronous satellites at present.
Covid-19 has thrown a spanner into the works of that plan, for a while. I'm sure people with money won't be turned away.
Longer term, remembering that Musk hails from South Africa, I thought the plan was to bring internet to failed states or barely functional areas in Africa (outback Namibia/Zimbabwe/Tanzania etc) and possibly also the Americas and the Middle East).
While for airplanes I think the latency might not be that problematic (I think VoIP in plane package full of people would not be very welcome) you indeed want low latency connection on a cruise ship.
source: I know some of the people who built several of the Chicago-NYC links.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-plans-to-start-offering-starlin...
All that vs. laying down some concrete and a telescope in a remote location.
So, no.
If only there were launch platforms that could put up smaller telescopes (optical and radio).
I mean you can do a lot with telescopes that are much smaller than Hubble Class or JSW. A lot of people are doing work with telescopes that are much smaller. Also, as long as frequencies and locations are published, much of this noise (not all!) can be removed. Sure, the VLA is going to have a major headache, but LIGO wouldn't exist if we didn't know how to remove noise (LIGO had to deal with noise from cars many miles away and all kinds of vibrations because it is ridiculously sensitive).
Arrays like Starlink are a persistent foreground for the big radio telescopes. SKA and the like are in the Outback for a reason, but for this there is no escape.
I'm not saying it is easy, but it is definitely possible.
If only there was a space launch company bringing orders of magnitude reduction in cost.
JWST is 6500kg. Quick googling shows SpaceX costs about $3k per kg, so the launch cost is about $20M.
The total project cost for JWST is $10bn according to wikipedia.
Look at how, say, Planetary Resources was putting together their much smaller telescopes and you'd get an idea of how it could be done on the cheap. Then to scale up you'd focus on cost effectiveness instead of maximizing capability at all cost. Do multiple cheap launches ($100m each) instead of spending billions on a complicated automated unfurling mechanism, etc.
NASA is first and foremost our nation's science program. Everything from the network card driver your AWS instance is using to the planes flying into hurricanes to determine how strong they will hit was built with major contributions from NASA engineers.
LASIK eye surgery, the nutritional supplements in baby formula, solar panels affordable for consumers, OpenStack, even the BowFlex were all developed by NASA or under NASA funding programs.
You could at best say NASA is a jobs program for HN readers. :)
If suddenly launches only cost $50m then you might build a cheaper and slightly less reliable satellite as you know you can always launch another for only $50m
Starlink used that study to come up with the night shade idea to mitigate those impacts.
In that survey, radio telescopes were in the "minorly affected" list.
The severity of the noise for radio was not graded in the slightest, and the word "minorly" is never used.
It's really baffling how someone motivated and talented enough to make such a tracking site would have such an odd opinion section.
Obviously, Starlink is not the best choice in all situations, but it is so compelling on some dimensions that such a flatly negative opinion is bizarre for anyone with even a cursory understanding of what's going on.
For existing GEO satellites, the equivalent measurement is 600ms. That's the relevant comparison. With just 20ms added on top of regular internet latency it would still be usable for competitive gaming at all but the highest levels, as the tweet says.
Those are very easy numbers to beat. Yes it might not beat prices and latencies for a super competitive city with true competition, but those are honestly rare and few between. The majority of north american cities have shitty internet at high prices and high latency.
Also, slap this router on a Tesla car, allowing it to have connection anywhere it drives, and you're golden.
Starlink isn't designed to offer lower latency or lower prices than existing terrestrial wired or wireless ISPs (at least, decent ones). Instead it's designed to offer a low latency wireless service in places where that has never been available at all. Which is most of the land area of the Earth, and all of the ocean. It may also be cheaper and/or faster than some very bad terrestrial ISPs, because there are a lot of those out there, but that's not what it's designed for.
Impact on earth-based telescopes has been discussed endlessly, to the point where it seems like there's a law that you can't mention Starlink on the Internet without talking about it. And SpaceX responded by talking to the astronomers most affected by Starlink and adding a sunshade that should prevent the satellites from ruining their images. Which is more than any other satellite operator has ever done, AFAIK, and there are many satellites much brighter than Starlink in the sky today.
The Pentagon is certainly interested in Starlink, but commercial service has much higher revenue potential. There are several competitors planning to do roughly the same thing as Starlink, so the business plan is at least plausible.