News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by lettergram on Saturday October 08, 2022 @08:12PM (#33137227)
While awesome they should really note the CPU usage upfront before linking to the site lol

My phone feels like it may catch fire

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by walterbell on Saturday October 08, 2022 @08:21PM (#33137276)
> The calculations required to run a single snapshot can become massive, taking up considerable CPU resources from your computer, and locking the browser for a long time. A large country with 30k cells, served by 150 satellites, each with 48 spot beams, could require up to 216 million calculations.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by lettergram on Saturday October 08, 2022 @10:16PM (#33137749)
That section was after the link to the site, but sure.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by jiveturkey on Saturday October 08, 2022 @10:18PM (#33137760)
> 216 million calculations

Is that a lot?

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by nawgz on Saturday October 08, 2022 @10:29PM (#33137799)
216 million functions involving a few FP operands is going to take multiple seconds of CPU compute if the entirety of the CPU cycles were efficiently dedicated to said compute, due to the single thread nature; so I would guess yes, it's a fair amount of compute for a phone or something that will use loads of cycles on other scheduled topics
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by pixelpoet on Sunday October 09, 2022 @05:27AM (#33139372)
It's a tiny amount of computation for any processor of the last two decades. How well those resources are used is another question...
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by jsjohnst on Sunday October 09, 2022 @09:07AM (#33140625)
> My phone feels like it may catch fire

Sounds like a design defect of your phone. Might consider getting something which isn’t a fire safety hazard just by visiting a random website.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by NotYourLawyer on Saturday October 08, 2022 @08:35PM (#33137345)
> I explicitly do not authorize any organization or entity to cite this article, or the results obtained by the simulation, for inclusion in filings with any regulatory body under any jurisdiction.

Interesting. I wonder if you’d actually need the author’s authorization to cite his work in such a way.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by m463 on Saturday October 08, 2022 @08:48PM (#33137399)
it seems to be on medium.com so they could do all they could probably do what they want with it.

Also, I thought the court said linking to something was ok, no matter what the content.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by yokem55 on Saturday October 08, 2022 @09:02PM (#33137462)
Sure, but an opposing party could then easily call it out as bad evidence. "Commissioner/your honor, the author themselves didn't this was any good for use in court".
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by wpietri on Saturday October 08, 2022 @09:47PM (#33137634)
I get where he's coming from. There's a maritime protocol for ship location, AIS, mainly meant so ships can all have nice radar-like displays of the ships around them. I wrote a decoder for it for an art project, the Twitter bot @sfships. I was very concerned that somebody would take it too seriously, so I wrote:

"I needed a simple AIS decoder for a small art project. I couldn’t find one, so I’m making something minimally adequate for my needs. Decoders are generated automatically from public protocol documentation, but since I use few of the fields myself, I haven’t verified much of the decoding. This code is rough and doesn’t worry much about correctness, and so shouldn’t be used for anything that matters. It especially shouldn’t be used for ship navigation." -- https://pypi.org/project/simpleais/

I can't really stop people, but at least I tried!

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by bombcar on Sunday October 09, 2022 @12:08AM (#33138191)
Similarly you see disclaimers on various softwares that they shouldn’t be used for life support or nuclear facilities.

I use them anyway wheeeeee

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by fragmede on Sunday October 09, 2022 @02:13PM (#33143780)
How many nuclear facilities are you involved with running!?
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by dzhiurgis on Sunday October 09, 2022 @03:22PM (#33144344)
Successfully?
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by SahAssar on Wednesday October 12, 2022 @11:38AM (#33178592)
I think the life support is for legal CYA and the nuclear stuff is because of laws regarding export for such purposes.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by sangnoir on Sunday October 09, 2022 @03:46AM (#33138961)
If feels a lot like those YouTube uploader disclaimers to me: makes the author feel good, but probably won't mean much in a court of law - if it comes to that. IANAL
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by adastra22 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @06:34AM (#33139721)
You don’t and that restriction is toothless.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by icegreentea2 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @07:36AM (#33140084)
You don't need the author's authorization. However, any regulatory body reviewing your filing and following up on your sources might find your choice questionable.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by Rygian on Sunday October 09, 2022 @07:41AM (#33140112)
You don't need it. You can go ahead and use without authorization.

The regulator will then simply dismiss your filing for using unacceptable sources.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by jxf on Saturday October 08, 2022 @09:34PM (#33137577)
This is some really fantastic, detailed analysis. I'm almost always impressed by the synthesis of knowledge required to be authoritative on expansive topics like this one.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by sebsebmc on Sunday October 09, 2022 @12:19AM (#33138236)
Outstanding work, I wrote an incredibly naive simulator of Starlink coverage using H3 over a year ago before we even knew that Starlink was using H3 internally. The community over in r/Starlink wrote some other simulations too and we all stopped short of actually calculating based on gateway reachability and ISLs weren't in use yet either.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kanbara on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:30AM (#33138496)
i love H3 and got my last company to use it internally for _something_, will try to use it again now
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by ge96 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @12:31AM (#33138279)
This looks great, glad there is that listen feature.

I'm interested in the subject but it's a good read.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by cycomanic on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:02AM (#33138408)
Something not covered in the article, but I have wondered about. How does Starlink do the handover? The satellites are in Leo and thus have orbit times of around 90min or so (not sure about the exact number), so every cell must be served by several satellites at the same time no? Otherwise we would see significant interruptions at the handover.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by wmf on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:38AM (#33138525)
I assume the satellites are synced so the handoff could be scheduled in advance and done in milliseconds. All you'd notice is some jitter.

I don't think it's any harder than driving on a highway where you'd do a cellular handoff every two minutes or so.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kanbara on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:30AM (#33138491)
well, some (or all?) have laser links now, so as another sat gets covisibility with a ground station and user terminal, it can just instantly pass the traffic off

without laser link, it's looks to me that most of the time in populated latitudes, there will be more than one sat's beams covering a cell, and if not then there would be interruption in coverage

the terminal should handle transmitting to multiple sats that are close by, but i dunno how omnidirectional the dishy is

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by viczsaszbo on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:55AM (#33138578)
The beam hopping (TDM) part of the article is similar to satellite handover. There's a lag before a beam returns to a location or a new beam is over a location, and the beams can't overlap (nco=1).
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:30AM (#33138494)
Funny people think Starlink is mainly a commercial enterprise. Since Teledesic in the 90s, these low earth orbit constellation projects have always been about stepping towards the real goal, which started with Strategic Defense Initiative and now embodied in the Space Development Agency
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by wmf on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:40AM (#33138534)
If it's not really commercial, why go to the trouble of supporting a million customers for a mere ~billion per year of revenue?
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by tsimionescu on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:41AM (#33138538)
To extract more value from this military operation is what they're hinting at.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by cowtools on Sunday October 09, 2022 @03:28AM (#33138906)
It would certainly make it easier to disguise the space platform
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by bitcharmer on Sunday October 09, 2022 @02:32AM (#33138716)
There might be something to it. I work for a fortune 500 company and we've been trying to get in contact with them about a project we're working on for the last 12 months.

Firstly getting any contact details like a phone number or email is close to impossible. Then you just don't get any response from them anyway. It just looks strange.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by seydor on Sunday October 09, 2022 @04:25AM (#33139097)
Judging by the valuation of Elon's companies, crowdfunding
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by mlindner on Sunday October 09, 2022 @07:10AM (#33139935)
Crowdfunding a non-public company how exactly?
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @12:02PM (#33142483)
Elons wealth is liquid and he leverages SpaceX's image to drive public Tesla investment. When you invest, you invest in "Elon".
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by AtlasBarfed on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:23PM (#33143288)
This is a hilarious characterization given his companies actually manufacture physical goods and capabilities, revolutionary ones at that, while most of the people here work at funny money companies moving bits around to achieve unicorn valuation via hype and "exit".

And even more hilarious that this comment is a garden variety take from armies of anti-Elon posters that are astroturfers. The word "Elon" is an internet lobbying battleground (and there are likely armies of pro-Elon roboposters). Armies driven by, at least initially, by funny money hedge fund bets. Bets that would have come true about 5 years ago if Tesla/SpaceX were pure hype/bullshit.

SpaceX/Tesla are tremendously high valued because they still have an order of magnitude or two of readily apparent growth. And a CEO's job of growth companies is to hype that growth, to drive investment/stock price, which drives the scaling and R&D.

Uber: well. they do provide a physical service. It's just a taxi company at an app with google maps, but, I guess it is a physical service.

Meta: once a monopoly, only exists due to ad fraud, and turnkey Big Brother infrastructure

Google: still a monopoly, but also only exists due to ad fraud, and also provides turkey Big Brother infrastructre

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by idiotsecant on Sunday October 09, 2022 @06:52PM (#33146089)
You seem very emotionally attached to what people think of Elon Musk.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by AtlasBarfed on Monday October 10, 2022 @02:00AM (#33148251)
What about my comment struck you so deep to the bone that you wondered what my "emotional attachment" to the media construct of Elon Musk is? Did I make it seem like I love Elon Musk and wish he'd return my phone calls? LIke I have some fucking shrine with his awkward mug on it? I do, but it's from when he was balding.

How about you, 'idiotsecant', you seem emotionally invested to some pointless deep thread on something with the keyword "Elon Musk", what motivates your subconscious after spending 10,000 hours deep in social media and speculating on crypto?

God forbid someone tries to apply some rational thought to "Elon Musk is the WORST" twitterlogic grouphate. The ISSUE IS that the entire world's panties are in a bunch over Elon being the "worst person ohmygod" when if you rank him in "worst CEOs in the world" he's probably about #20,000 after mining execs, petroleum companies, bankers, pharmaceutical companies, automotive execs, amazon execs, facebook/google, sweatshop manufacturers, meatpackers, pesticide makers, plastics companies, Xe, security companies, shipping, defense contractors, firearms manufacturers ... It shows a complete lack of understanding of the world and the serious shit we are in.

Of course this manipulative bullshit you just posted means you're equally ignorant, even if you think you're not. Christ, and your day job is in alternative energy, you should know better. That's depressing.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by idiotsecant on Monday October 10, 2022 @11:41AM (#33152803)
I think the fact that you spent your free time digging way into the post history of some stranger and writing this wall of text in response to a one sentence long throwaway comment that wasn't even from the person you were originally arguing with proves my point.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by tra3 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @02:35AM (#33138721)
I’m not in the know…can you ELI5?
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @02:48AM (#33138763)
https://youtu.be/KsPLmb6gAdw?t=55m47s

But a historical prerequisite is understanding https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative unless you're old enough to remember.

Then carefully read Mike Griffin's career history: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by xwolfi on Sunday October 09, 2022 @04:06AM (#33139021)
You're unable to summarize ? How d you explain to a child who cannot yet google ?
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by diimdeep on Sunday October 09, 2022 @04:31AM (#33139117)
This is eye-opener, OMFG
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by irthomasthomas on Sunday October 09, 2022 @05:38AM (#33139421)
That whole spacex origin myth is ridiculous. Musk goes to Russia to buy an ICBM? Right. Then, having never touched a rocket, Musk is given $400M to start spacex? Ok.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by adastra22 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @06:33AM (#33139712)
Musk wasn’t given $400M to start SpaceX. What are you talking about?

He self-funded with money from PayPal until the first successful Falcon 1 launch.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by irthomasthomas on Sunday October 09, 2022 @07:36AM (#33140080)
Read the links.

"In 2002, Griffin was President and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia where they attempted to purchase ICBMs. The unsuccessful trip is credited as directly leading to the formation of SpaceX.[11] Griffin was an early advocate for Musk calling him a potential “Henry Ford for the rocket industry".[12]

After In-Q-Tel, Griffin served as Chief Engineer and Associate Administrator for Space Exploration at NASA Headquarters.

In 2005, he was appointed NASA Administrator where he conceived and introduced Commercial Resupply Services and crew transportation services for the International Space Station.[13] Twenty aerospace companies applied to the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, but only SpaceX was selected and given $396 million--a surprising bet given the new company had never flown a rocket.[14] In December 2008, with SpaceX again on the verge of bankruptcy, Griffin awarded SpaceX along with his own Orbital Sciences company each contracts with a combined value of $3.5 billion.[15] Elon Musk credited the NASA contract as saving his company.[16]"

If Musk can be said to have founded Tesla because he was an early investor, then the same logic must apply here. Musk was given $400m by the government before ever flying a rocket.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by Retric on Sunday October 09, 2022 @08:53AM (#33140526)
That’s mangling the timeline a little. SpaceX was founded in 2002 and started launching rockets in 2006, it also received the NASA contract in 2006.

SpaceX didn’t have a successful launch at the time let alone a proven system, but they had plenty to show. Further they where one of 2 winners splitting the initial 800M budget for COTS with Rocketplane Kistler. They are remembered because Rocketplane Kistler failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketplane_Kistler

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by adastra22 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @05:42PM (#33145597)
Also the COTS award was delivery-based. They didn't get paid unless/until they delivered a working rocket. Had SpaceX failed on their first 4 attempts, which was paid for almost entirely with Musk's initial investment, then they wouldn't have seen enough of that COTS contract award.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @06:33PM (#33145959)
According to Mike Griffin who gave them the money,

  Substantial amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, are being provided to the private companies. If SpaceX continues on along its current path, it will have received approximately $1.2 billion in government money from the collective programs. I’m rounding, but with this recent $400-plus million award under CCiCap [Commercial Crew integrated Capability], that brings the total SpaceX funding to something around $1.2 billion, maybe a little more.
  That’s—I will only say in my view—excessive, especially since in testimony last year the SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, indicated that the private funding involved was not more than $200 million. $100 million of his own money that he had brought in from a prior enterprise, and then he alluded to the fact—I’m trying to recall the testimony on an ad hoc basis, but the point is that there’s less than $200 million of private capital in SpaceX and $1.2 billion of government capital.
https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist...

(Michael Griffin worked closely with Elon before SpaceX was founded at the Mars Society and worked on Brilliant Pebbles and DC-X which the Falcon 9 was based upon)

Given all that government money, it was a low risk private investment for Elon.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by Retric on Sunday October 09, 2022 @09:34PM (#33146953)
The government contracts wasn’t free front loaded money, it was a maximum possible fee for services rendered. And frankly the R&D NASA paid for was largely stuff like the capacity to dock with the ISS and deliver cargo which was only relevant to them

Fix cost government contracts can look really awesome when they work out, but they are not a 1:1 equivalent to private funding. Essentially what you need to look into is what percentage of that money was profit and assuming say a ~20% profit margin it works out to something like 200 million from the government and 200 million from private investments.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Monday October 10, 2022 @09:41AM (#33151288)
Out of curiosity, I read through the actual COTS Space Act Agreement. It is a pretty good deal for SpaceX. They get their first $56 million just for doing a presentation to the government and writing down requirements. That seems pretty front-loaded because that's enough to actually build and launch the entire rocket with, even though the qualifying milestone is a PowerPoint presentation.

See appendix 2: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/189228main_setc_nnj...

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by adastra22 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @11:48PM (#33147566)
As the sibling comment mentions, these were not front-loaded contracts. There were some initial payments made for Falcon-9 feasibility studies and stuff related to ISS rendezvous and docking. It basically paid for spinning up a small team of engineers to work on those issues specifically. But the actual rocket development was 90% paid for by Musk, and no more than 10% paid for by early customers like Malaysia and the Air Force Academy. By the time of the 4th Falcon 1 launch they were out of money, and the COTS award was entirely inaccessible to them unless they managed to make it to orbit, which they did.

I remember this quite well--I was at NASA at the time of this contract award. It is also written up in the book Liftoff if you want to see for yourself.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Monday October 10, 2022 @09:58AM (#33151479)
That's simply incorrect, see the COTS Space Act Agreement above. Those "initial payments" to SpaceX totalled $200M just to do presentations to NASA (more than double what Elon's total investment ever was).
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by adastra22 on Monday October 10, 2022 @10:58AM (#33152173)
Those presentations required actual trade studies which take significant work to prepare. It’s not a matter of just showing up and winging a PowerPoint presentation, lol. By that metric a PhD is just a PowerPoint presentation.

They were weeks away from not making payroll before they received customer down payments and bridge financing following the successful launch of Falcon 1.

This is all covered in Liftoff. It’s a good book; I recommend reading it.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by wazer5 on Monday October 10, 2022 @10:35AM (#33151917)
COTS wasn't delivery-based, they got most of the funding in the concept phase, way before a working rocket.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by AgentME on Sunday October 09, 2022 @06:57AM (#33139860)
Starlink satellites are going to be missile defense satellites? I'm really not following.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by Retric on Sunday October 09, 2022 @08:40AM (#33140460)
Don’t worry you tried to look too closely at a conspiracy theory and it fell apart.

A good conspiracy theory is basically conformation bias run wild. So someone thinks “thousands of satellites must be useful for X” but never really look into just how tiny each individual satellite is and how much of that must be used to fulfill it’s cover story.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @10:24AM (#33141387)
> how tiny each satellite is

You're talking about the v1 satellites, but the v2 (launched with Starship) are huge. Its open knowledge that SpaceX is building these custom military satellites for the military (Space Development Agency) not a secret.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by Retric on Sunday October 09, 2022 @10:46AM (#33141664)
I can see why you would get confused, this is using elements from Starlink satellites the so called “Starlink bus” not the constellation.

-The Space Development Agency awarded $193.5 million to L3Harris and $149 million to SpaceX to build four satellites each to detect and track ballistic and hypersonic missiles.“

-“We want to show that we can take commoditized commercial components and perform a DoD mission,” said Tournear.

https://spacenews.com/spacex-l3harris-win-space-development-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_bus

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @12:07PM (#33142524)
It's only four satellites until it isn't.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by Retric on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:03PM (#33143013)
Sure when the military wants more they have no issues building and launching satellites.

The point still stands, it’s clear the Starlink constellation is independent. They are simply reusing a useful platform the same way the DoD buys PC’s etc.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:47PM (#33143537)
Starlink has a separate military division led by a four-star general (Terrence O'Shaughnessy). They're not exactly making PCs.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by Retric on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:58PM (#33143656)
Former general, and the military is a huge potential market for Starlink’s network or as he proposed in 2019 possibly a new DoD specific constellation.

The issue with Starlink’s network is they don’t have polar coverage which is needed due to nuclear subs in the Arctic Ocean.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @02:41PM (#33144017)
They already added polar orbits for the military.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by Retric on Sunday October 09, 2022 @05:22PM (#33145466)
You can see the satellites here: https://satellitemap.space/?constellation=starlink

Coverage of the Arctic Ocean is insufficient for ground observation. It could change but would be really obvious as you would have polar orbits through the Pacific Ocean which would be really wasteful for their business model.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by kidme5 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @06:27PM (#33145917)
not continuous yet but there are plenty of satellites shown there in the Arctic for partial service and demonstration already.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by dzhiurgis on Sunday October 09, 2022 @03:33PM (#33144430)
If new sats can use t-mobile LTE network what stops them from being used as global Stingray/IMSI-catcher? At the very least they will be wardriving, but thats likely been done ages ago by several operators.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by yencabulator on Sunday October 09, 2022 @08:48PM (#33146742)
Stingray is based on overpowering the real local tower. Good luck doing that from orbit.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by dzhiurgis on Monday October 10, 2022 @03:16AM (#33148672)
Good point. Might still work in rural areas with no signal at all.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by AtlasBarfed on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:33PM (#33143392)
The biggest driver of weaponization of space is Putin's nuclear saber rattling, space companies have always been in service of defense contracts. You want to see a real budgetary boondoggle? I give you the United Launch Alliance.

Just like the biggest driver of EV car adoption at the policy level is Puting, current gas prices, inflaction, and OPEC trying for more profit mongering.

Frankly I'm mystified as to why Musk posted that weak tweet to ending the war. He's in the perfect situation to be a war profiteer, and he doesn't even provide weapons.

But to the conspiracy nuts out there, the constellation is perfect cover for a smart rock interception network.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by xt00 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @12:18PM (#33142621)
I think the idea would be you need to empower the network of satellites in the sky to react quickly to a nuclear attack from another country, so you need to allow this “sky-net” to launch nukes at a moments notice without human intervention.. it likely would need a human level intelligence to quickly asses the level of risk. And to avoid being hacked, you would want this AI to be able to protect itself under various circumstances. Sounds reasonable right?
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by elephant81 on Sunday October 09, 2022 @03:32AM (#33138917)
Look at Brilliant Pebbles. Starlink is just V.20 under the cover of Musk.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by medion on Sunday October 09, 2022 @03:19AM (#33138868)
Why do they need Elon part of it and why also commercialize it?
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by tsimionescu on Sunday October 09, 2022 @05:20AM (#33139343)
Because ballistic missile defense is an aggressive nuclear action, potentially allowing the country that has deployed such a system to launch a nuclear first strike without fear of retaliation. It would entirely destroy the "mutually-assured destruction" balance of power system, and would almost certainly be seen as an act of aggression by all other (non-allied) nuclear powers.

Also, why not also commercialize it, if it's simple? Just because you're being subsidized by tax payers doesn't mean you can't turn some extra profit.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by blobbers on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:59AM (#33138594)
This is an amazing simulation. It feels like the type of tool that would be used internally to monitor the entire system.

I'm truly impressed / shocked that people have the capacity and will to be build such amazing things as side projects!

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by comboy on Sunday October 09, 2022 @12:23PM (#33142672)
Mind boggling. If author is around here I'd love to know how much time did this project require. Everything seems so polished. Aesthetics alone are something that many big projects could learn from.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by aimor on Sunday October 09, 2022 @02:44AM (#33138751)
I'm not understanding why Starlink is limited in terms of how many cells it can serve by beam hopping. What's driving the analyst's choices for the different "TDM split" and "beam spread" values? I naively expected the system to have much more granularity than 10% TDM splits.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by wmf on Sunday October 09, 2022 @01:38PM (#33143450)
Beam hopping adds latency and jitter because packets have to wait for the beam to become available. For example if they use a ~1 ms superframe and they want to limit jitter to 20 ms they couldn't split more than 20:1.

Beam hopping also cuts available throughput. If they're promising 100 Mbps they can't slice things too finely.

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by aimor on Monday October 10, 2022 @10:27AM (#33151827)
Thanks for the explanation. It raises the next question about how small a superframe can be, which I imagine as they get smaller makes efficient scheduling a more difficult problem.
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by TruthWillHurt on Sunday October 09, 2022 @04:53AM (#33139207)
My brain melted. Amazing stuff!
Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by vanattab on Sunday October 09, 2022 @02:22PM (#33143865)
>I explicitly do not authorize any organization or entity to cite this article, or the results obtained by the simulation, for inclusion in filings with any regulatory body under any jurisdiction.

Would this be in anyway binding? Can you say someone is not allowed to link to my blog?

Re:Modeling Starlink Capacity by lazide on Monday October 10, 2022 @11:26AM (#33152583)
Probably not, but it does make it clear to anyone following references what was intended use or not. Which can be helpful.