Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry

Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry by simiones on Thursday May 30, 2024 @05:39AM (#40521780)

Satellite internet is inherently a niche market. The physics simply don't allow for example good satellite coverage of even 10% of NYC, because you just can't get enough satellites flying over NYC at the same time to handle that much data. And there are limits to how much better you can make the individual satellites themselves, since you have a very limited heat budget in space, where you have to rely 100% on radiative cooling.

So, for any square mile of land, you can have at most some small number of subscribers. Sure, you can cover a huge surface, but only with a very low density. Conversely, the vast majority of the world's population lives in huge clumps in small areas.

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Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry by ethagknight on Thursday May 30, 2024 @08:38AM (#40522967)

Billions of people live in low density areas. Hundreds of millions live in NYC-type very high density areas. Satellite can still serve very high density, just at limited rates. Satellite internet is very far from niche.

Starlink should (annd perhaps anlready do) approach commercial high rises with a single uplink for the building, shared through the building network. Even as a backup data system, still very valuable system.

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Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry by Retric on Thursday May 30, 2024 @09:56AM (#40523779)

Satellites really can’t provide coverage at full 1 acre lot suburbs level density let alone NYC level density.

Starlink has ~1 million customers in the US from ~6,000 satellites so you’d think they could do 10x that with 10x the number of satellites. But much of the US is low enough density that their current constellation is already sufficient and effective bandwidth per satellite is maximum bandwidth * percentage of orbit in useful locations. Which means 10x satellites are closer to 3x useful bandwidth and it gets much worse the higher density you’re aiming for.

Ahh you might think just offer lower bandwidth per customer in urban areas, but people will pay less as the bandwidth drops and Starlink is already fairly slow.

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Re:Starlink's Disruption of the Space Industry by venusenvy47 on Thursday May 30, 2024 @09:54AM (#40523749)

I don't think satellite is cost effective for high density areas. If you have enough subscribers in a given geographic location, it makes more sense to put up some cellular towers, which can be maintained by people on the ground.

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