Starlink Public Beta About to Happen?!?!

He did publicly state that 60 satellites had over 1tb/s total, so... At least 17gb/s per satellite. Don't believe some random guy on the internet claiming 500mb/s, that would make zero sense.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.te...ellite-upgrade-more-bandwidth-more-beams/amp/

If I could get >5mbps during slow periods, I'd be ecstatic. Anything else is just icing on the cake. I think a lot of people who have access to good internet fail to see how under server did areas are. They talk about nobody being happy with 10mbps... I'd be grateful for 10mbps. That's about 10x faster what I can get now.


Hey man, hope you don't mind, but I posted your link in the Original post. However I gave credit where credit is due by mentioning that you posted this link. 👍
 
He did publicly state that 60 satellites had over 1tb/s total, so... At least 17gb/s per satellite. Don't believe some random guy on the internet claiming 500mb/s, that would make zero sense.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.te...ellite-upgrade-more-bandwidth-more-beams/amp/

If I could get >5mbps during slow periods, I'd be ecstatic. Anything else is just icing on the cake. I think a lot of people who have access to good internet fail to see how under server did areas are. They talk about nobody being happy with 10mbps... I'd be grateful for 10mbps. That's about 10x faster what I can get now.

I was skeptical, hence my question about actual specs - I am lucky to get 3mb/s at my location. My ISP provided me with a cell tower service that initially gave me ~15mb/s the first couple months (great, right?), until they oversold in my area and the speeds went to crap. And then COVID tanked everything with the tower being bombarded by everyone staying home.
 
I was skeptical, hence my question about actual specs - I am lucky to get 3mb/s at my location. My ISP provided me with a cell tower service that initially gave me ~15mb/s the first couple months (great, right?), until they oversold in my area and the speeds went to crap. And then COVID tanked everything with the tower being bombarded by everyone staying home.
Yeah, I am lucky to load pages when it gets really busy, lol. They timeout and I have to refresh. I was trying to run speed tests for the ISP but I couldn't run one as it kept failing :p. I almost started looking for dial up, had better pings, then I realized there is only a single company that serves this area and they want $45 for a single, local call only line. I wonder if I would even have had good enough quality connection to get the full 56k, lol.
 
Yup, Musk doesn't do anything "for the betterment of humanity" unless he can find a way for someone else to pay for it, whether it's the US Gov't or private investors.

Hes done more for humanity than you ever will.

It takes a special type of a-hole to hate on others who just want to make the world a little better and the future more exciting
 
Can't say I'm a fan of this for messing up the night sky with garbage so more people can watch youtube cat videos...
 
Can't say I'm a fan of this for messing up the night sky with garbage so more people can watch youtube cat videos...

Try living in a country with no access to internet and see how you feel then. Too many people take it for granted these days. You would be shocked at how much of the worlds population doesn’t have it.

Starlink is a non issue in the sky once they spread out, orbit rise and orient correctly. All the people bitching are the ones seeing a train of them 2 days after launch. There are over 700 up there now and you dont see any other than the very recent launches.
 
Starlink is a non issue

Not sure i'd say non issue completely. But once in their final position the orbit can be precisely calculated and astronomers can add software to work around the flyovers. Will take some work on their part but internet for all is well worth it.
 
Not sure i'd say non issue completely. But once in their final position the orbit can be precisely calculated and astronomers can add software to work around the flyovers. Will take some work on their part but internet for all is well worth it.

Wut. Isnt there literally thousands upon thousands of pieces of space garbage/abandoned satellites?
 
Hes done more for humanity than you ever will.

It takes a special type of a-hole to hate on others who just want to make the world a little better and the future more exciting
Who's hating, I'm just telling things very truthfully, he has great ideas I'm sure, but he's not going to pay for everything his biggest skill is convincing others to pay for his ideas so he doesn't have to. And yeah, if he doesn't get investors than these ideas just die and go away.
 
Who's hating, I'm just telling things very truthfully, he has great ideas I'm sure, but he's not going to pay for everything his biggest skill is convincing others to pay for his ideas so he doesn't have to. And yeah, if he doesn't get investors than these ideas just die and go away.
That's kinda how corps work. You present an idea to the board; if it's good, they present it to investors; if it's good, they invest. If not, they don't. And I'm not talking about the stock market–that's a whole other animal.

Nobody is forcing them to invest, either way. You put your money where you want, and it may or may not pay off, but it was your decision. If it doesn't pay off, you hold the corp responsible, or it happens again. But so far it's been working pretty well (even if the spacex thing isn't paying off yet). I say give it 5-10yrs and it might be profitable. 50+ yrs to pay back debts.
 
I think Musk -as an offer of goodwill to the astronomical community- offer them a few freebie rocket launches to make up for polluting the sky.
There are several space telescopes sitting in storage that were donated by the NRO. Launch them!!
 
  • Like
Reactions: ~CS~
like this
I have similar thoughts to others as well as some of my own insights.

This technology is exciting. I've considered doing "van life" for a little while now (it lowers the cost of living by a massive amount and it's likely I'll never be able to afford a house). With this tech it will be possible to literally be anywhere and get signal. One of the major problems with van life is driving around anywhere that isn't a major city - cell tech drops out. If this even allows for 1Mb upload/download it will be possible essentially to be anywhere on the planet and reasonably get work done. I could spend a week in Yosemite while still doing uploads. Then do the same in Bryce or rural TX or anywhere. I also do a fair bit of international travel, often times to third world countries or otherwise places with crap internet. This could fix a lot of my issues - especially if whatever receiving device is battery powered and portable.

This also has interesting implications for communist countries. The very simple idea of: "you can't stop the signal". For all that China has done to firewall itself from the outside internet this is a signal from the sky that can't be blocked regardless of where you are geographically. I imagine this will also create issues for the US potentially diplomatically. If Starlink decides to "ignore" China's censorship rules, what recourse will they have? Essentially "dissidents" (as China labels them) will be able to discuss anything they want about the Chinese government freely, circumventing both the firewall and the tracking associated with it. That also means they'll be able to see the news from external sources not controlled by the communist party. With all of the consequences that that implies. All of these exact same things will of course also pertain to North Korea.

Exciting times to be sure.
 
I'm still waiting just so I can pull more then 30KB/s while downloading at my house. If he released it with 75ms pings and 5mb/s (megabit) I would be happy to pay $100 a month. Sadly, it's starting in the North (smaller circumference for the satellites to cover) and I down in SC... so it'll probably be a while before I have any real options.
 
Our current cable internet isn't bad (100/10) but we're planning on moving north in the next 1 to 5 years where we anticipate being rather far away from fast (let alone stable) internet. The existence of LEO satallite internet is very intriguing from that standpoint.
 
Not sure i'd say non issue completely. But once in their final position the orbit can be precisely calculated and astronomers can add software to work around the flyovers. Will take some work on their part but internet for all is well worth it.

It's a non-issue. The best astronomy is from space-based telescopes and always will be.
 
He did publicly state that 60 satellites had over 1tb/s total, so... At least 17gb/s per satellite. Don't believe some random guy on the internet claiming 500mb/s, that would make zero sense.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.te...ellite-upgrade-more-bandwidth-more-beams/amp/

If I could get >5mbps during slow periods, I'd be ecstatic. Anything else is just icing on the cake. I think a lot of people who have access to good internet fail to see how under server did areas are. They talk about nobody being happy with 10mbps... I'd be grateful for 10mbps. That's about 10x faster what I can get now.
It’s called being jaded and spoiled.
 
Someone invent a subspace transceiver. Those go faster than lightspeed iirc.
 
yes, but starlink sats produce light, which mucks with telescopes. Abandoned junk is generally powered-off.
That isn't true. The issue with Satellites in general and Starlink in particular is that they reflect light. It's compounded by being in low Earth Orbit and the sheer number of satellites necessary to blanket the Earth's surface.

This has been talked about at least to some degree and is getting address at least partially by using matte finishes on all the parts of the satellite they can and also positioning the solar arrays away from the Earth (the most reflective surface) away from the ground on the night side of the planet. As well as other solutions such as giving astronomers real time information on the position of said satellites. It will be interesting what combination of solutions SpaceX comes up with. Obviously they're going to have to do something to ameliorate the problem as there are too many interests on the ground that are affected if up to 30k Starlink satellites get put into orbit and none of these problems are addressed.
 
Yeah, I am lucky to load pages when it gets really busy, lol. They timeout and I have to refresh. I was trying to run speed tests for the ISP but I couldn't run one as it kept failing :p. I almost started looking for dial up, had better pings, then I realized there is only a single company that serves this area and they want $45 for a single, local call only line. I wonder if I would even have had good enough quality connection to get the full 56k, lol.
unlikely, most areas intentionally limit dialup to 33.6k and have been for 20+ years because they don't want to spend the money upgrading it.
 
My ISP charged me $500 for the install/lease of my equipment (simple roof mounting with an ethernet run), and I'm being charged $140/mo to get 3mb-6mb on a good day.

Based on the article:
“Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system.”

The 500 dollar up-front is WELL worth it to get these speeds in my location.

Still haven't got an email from them... :(
 
My ISP charged me $500 for the install/lease of my equipment (simple roof mounting with an ethernet run), and I'm being charged $140/mo to get 3mb-6mb on a good day.

Based on the article:
“Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system.”

The 500 dollar up-front is WELL worth it to get these speeds in my location.

Still haven't got an email from them... :(
Yea i agree, this seems for the rural-est of the rural.

Have a friend that was interested because he can only get 12mbit dsl, but it's 39/mo. He'll probably just wait.
 
E
Basically. You can emulate by using a smartphone with a 2/3g connection.
Emulate? I'm in the single digits KByte/s range pretty often (double digit kbit/s)... It's not hard to imagine when you see it often ;).
 
E

Emulate? I'm in the single digits KByte/s range pretty often (double digit kbit/s)... It's not hard to imagine when you see it often ;).
I canceled my home internet, so mobile is all I got. Typically spend about half a billing cycle throttled back to the AOL days or earlier, depending on how much they hate me.
 


Yep, here is a Reddit users take:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/

It's called the Better Than Nothing Beta.

  • Estimated speeds 50Mbps to 150Mbps
  • Estimated latency 20ms to 40ms
  • Some interruptions in connectivity to be expected
  • $499 for the phased array antenna and router
  • $99 per month subscription




Then he went on to state a link to the email that he got:

1603889383941.png
 
As much as the gut reaction is "Wow that's expensive" it's actually not. I regularly rip on musk but in this case for North Americans this isn't poorly priced.
Provided they can actually make those latency gains and speed improvements if this eventually settles into the 50-70 USD price range it will out perform most physical coax services in rural America and rural Canada.
If it handles bad weather better than current satellite technology it would become a no brainer solution especially if its not geolocked. Hell the ship industry alone would murder for this kind of worldwide access. Cruise ships by themselves would make it an automatic billion dollar industry.

Of course it depends on what happens when the network hits capacity for the first time and what its maximum design limitations are. If it cant handle city traffic its going to be DOA in the long run because those people are going to be the earliest adoptors.
 
As much as the gut reaction is "Wow that's expensive" it's actually not. I regularly rip on musk but in this case for North Americans this isn't poorly priced.
Provided they can actually make those latency gains and speed improvements if this eventually settles into the 50-70 USD price range it will out perform most physical coax services in rural America and rural Canada.
If it handles bad weather better than current satellite technology it would become a no brainer solution especially if its not geolocked. Hell the ship industry alone would murder for this kind of worldwide access. Cruise ships by themselves would make it an automatic billion dollar industry.

Of course it depends on what happens when the network hits capacity for the first time and what its maximum design limitations are. If it cant handle city traffic its going to be DOA in the long run because those people are going to be the earliest adoptors.

It's really not too bad. My parents are in a rural area and the only "broadband" they can get is through a Verizon Hotspot or the standard awful satellite internet. They're currently spending $200 a month for 2 phones and the hotspot through Verizon and we all know how their "unlimited data" is so if they can drop that they're not really spending any additional cash on a monthly basis. $500 is a bit of an outlay but it sounds like it will be worth it.
 
Back
Top