Starlink

[brucehoult]

This doesn't make sense, dated Feb. 9, 2022 and the birds are already up there, or this is 49 additional ones:
"...Elon Musk’s firm said it expects as many as 40 of the 49 brand-new Starlink satellites deployed in a launch last Thursday were destroyed. The cosmic storm struck just one day after a Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched the costly satellites into orbit."
https://nypost.com/2022/02/09/a-geomagnetic-storm-had-disastrous-consequences-for-spacexs-latest-effort-to-launch-starlink-satellites-into-orbit/

49 brand new ones. They are launching a batch of 49 satellites approximately every two weeks.

It was 60 at a time before, with the first gen sats going into the first shell, but that's complete now. The gen 2 sats with sat-to-sat laser links are heavier, plus they are being put into orbits 20 miles higher (no big deal) and I think also some into higher-inclination orbits, not the most efficient 53º (from Florida) of the first shell.

SpaceX knew the solar storm was forecast before the launch -- I believe the event had already happened at the Sun but the effects hadn't gotten to Earth yet. They just may not have been sure of how serious the effects were, and decided to do the experiment. They can well afford to, and if it turned out to be no big problem then that would be good information for next time.

Note that a lot of the news sources don't make it clear the affected sats were not in their final ~500 km high orbits. When they are launched they go into elliptical orbits with a much lower perigee, with an explicit goal that any satellites that fail to check out correctly will deorbit quickly.

CNBC projected the firm could lose $50 million in the incident, based on SpaceX’s previous acknowledgement that launches costs about $30 million and the estimated cost to construct each satellite.

Less. The first stage rocket was on its 6th flight. It's long since paid for. Elon has publicly said marginal cost of a launch with a reused booster and fairing halves can be as low as $15m. The actual fuel and oxidiser used cost around $200k.

These are the perfect launches for experiments. It's not some $2 billion satellite that people have spent 20 years of their lives building. There are no humans on board. The Starlink satellites cost something, but the only practical lower cost payloads would be taking water or fuel to an orbital depot (which doesn't exist yet).

Some of the boosters being used have done 10 or 11 flights now. One day soon, a booster on its 12th or 15th or 20th or 50th flight will blow up. That will be good data to have too.

[bw2341]

From what I've read, SpaceX aren't calling the laser satellites gen 2. That refers to upcoming much larger satellites that can only be launched by Starship.

I'm not sure if the laser satellites are heavier, but I do remember that this particular launch is in the southerly direction. Launches to the north or south shouldn't differ much in propellant usage, but the southerly direction needs "dogleg" manoeuvres to avoid populated areas. This does consume extra propellant. This would be a contributing reason for fewer satellites onboard. According to the webcast presenter, the descending node launch is preferred to reduce weather constraints at this time of year.

[bw2341]

Speculation on my part.  There are several possibilities here.  A software bug.  Damage from the solar storm.  Batteries ran dry before solar cells could be re oriented for better power.  And several more.  It will be interesting to see how much effort Starlink puts into figuring out.  I can see arguments for everything from nothing on up to a full on NASA human safety type analysis.

https://www.spacex.com/updates/

SpaceX's updates page has a detailed answer. The solar storm warmed the upper atmosphere enough to increase atmospheric drag by 50%. Maybe the onboard thrusters are not powerful enough to overcome the drag or the control software was not designed for this condition.

[brucehoult]

From what I've read, SpaceX aren't calling the laser satellites gen 2. That refers to upcoming much larger satellites that can only be launched by Starship.

I could have got that wrong, I don't know.

There shouldn't be any satellites that can *only* be launched by Starship. Even if they were 50x heavier, they can still do them one at a time with Falcon 9. The reason for Starship, as I understand it, is just to get more satellites up more quickly to expand coverage and the business as fast as possible. Not because any individual satellite is sooo much bigger.

[Psi]

There shouldn't be any satellites that can *only* be launched by Starship. Even if they were 50x heavier, they can still do them one at a time with Falcon 9. The reason for Starship, as I understand it, is just to get more satellites up more quickly to expand coverage and the business as fast as possible. Not because any individual satellite is sooo much bigger.

I think he means. "Can only be launch by Starship in a quantity that makes sense given how many need to be launched in a reasonable time frame."
It will be a numbers game. etc.  Need to launch 30k of them within 10 years.  If we use falcon9 it will take 30 years. etc..

Remember, Starlink is supposed to pay for all the mars stuff, so it needs to be up and running and raking in ridiculous amounts of cash by the time they're ready to build 100's / 1000's of starships for building the mars base.

Even if you disagree with that happening, that's the plan. So decisions are made with that in mind.

[wraper]

All satellites which are launched since November 2021 (a few v1.5 launches happened earlier) are v1.5 and have laser interlinks. V2 will be larger and will provide much larger bandwidth per satellite.

[tautech]

It seems your speeds are pretty respectable Bruce and so they'd wanna be for the price although giving the coverage Starlink offers would be in no way cheap.
I'm still surprised the little ISP's haven't gained the traction in the NZ market with the big boys are still pissing around improving the nationwide network and completely losing their focus on the end user. 

NZ rural connectivity is mostly shite away from the cities so their are many possibilities to swipe the bread and butter from under the big boys noses so a few years back we went and cut our copper and went with a 5GHz P-P link from a small mom&pop ISP for data and phone over the same link.
Now with a good personal relationship with them we also beam our link to more of their customers as our residence is on relatively high ground and as reward we now get their services for free. 

Using off the shelf simply configurable HW available today is were it's at for a value packed solution if the ISP has access to decent fiber near an elevated site and then bouncing it even 100km is quite straightforward.
We also provide another more elevated high site with a 1 GB/s 11 GHz backhaul link to bounce connectivity to other high sites, some up to 25 km away.

So Bruce, this ^ maybe an option to reduce your Starlink costs if you can spare some BW to close by locals.

[brucehoult]

It seems your speeds are pretty respectable Bruce and so they'd wanna be for the price although giving the coverage Starlink offers would be in no way cheap.

It's not cheap, but it's not outrageous compared to other fast internet options in NZ -- or to *any* kind of internet for rural users.

Sure, if I lived in a city I could get fibre comparable to Starlink (but lower ping) for $85 per month. But I'm not in a city.

In December and January before I found this place, I was staying with relatives on the outskirts of Whangarei, 7 km by road from the Kamo traffic lights. In early 2018 I'd upgraded them from DSL that on their shitty phone line was giving under 1 Mbps to Spark 4G that gave around 30 down and 10 up. They were most pleased. I don't remember the price, but the first time their daughter and grandkids came to stay they upgraded from 120 GB to 300 GB and were paying $160/month. Unfortunately 300 GB wasn't going to be enough with me there, so I investigated the options. It turned out that Spark now has a plan they could change to that is $70 a month for UNLIMITED. It's still the same slow(ish) speed but, yes, cheaper.

Neither Spark nor Vodafone would do 4G home internet at my location. It seems uber.nz is an option. They have an unlimited plan for $120, but the speeds are only apparently never more than 50 Mbps and could be quite a bit lower depending on obstacles, other nearby users etc.

None of this compares to the 450 rubles (US$6) a month I paid for unlimited 100/100 internet in Moscow in 2015-2018.

NZ rural connectivity is mostly shite away from the cities so their are many possibilities to swipe the bread and butter from under the big boys noses so a few years back we went and cut our copper and went with a 5GHz P-P link from a small mom&pop ISP for data and phone over the same link.
Now with a good personal relationship with them we also beam our link to more of their customers as our residence is on relatively high ground and as reward we now get their services for free. 

Using off the shelf simply configurable HW available today is were it's at for a value packed solution if the ISP has access to decent fiber near an elevated site and then bouncing it even 100km is quite straightforward.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to do this stuff. Back in 2005 some friends and I were thinking about doing a community WIFI network around Wellington. Some of us lived in houses with good views, and we knew some other people. We went as far as driving up for example Wright's Hill in Karori and Newlands with small dishes hooked to WRT54's powered by inverters and seeing how easy it was to get a connection (it was easy). That never came together as the community thing, but maybe a year later I got a couple of the then new Meraki units and set up a link between my house (with cable) and a friend a couple of km away across a valley who could only get original DSL. A couple of years later we upgraded to Ubiquiti Nanostation units and had a reliably 70 Mbps between our houses. I supplied him with internet for about ten years until I went to Moscow and he moved elsewhere too.

So Bruce, this ^ maybe an option to reduce your Starlink costs if you can spare some BW to close by locals.

It was fine for me to share my cable connection with my friend because while it was reasonably priced, I did have to pay for every GB (and I charged my friend for what he used). The more internet we used, the happier the cable company was.

It's different with "unlimited" service such as Starlink. Such providers don't tend to take kindly to sharing connections.

I was cruising around on my motorcycle a few days ago and saw a Starlink dish on a "neighbour"s roof, 2100 meters from me. I should go and introduce myself and see how long they've had it. They're two ridges over. I think there's juuust LoS between our road gates over the ridge between, but the houses are both down the hill a little on the "wrong" side.

[tautech]

Bruce, I was up past Kamo a few days ago and the son's inlaws live around another 20km further north. Maybe we should share details and catch up sometime.

All the HW we use is Ubiquity excepting these snazzy little DC POE switches that we use for solar powered remote high repeater sites.
https://www.gowifi.co.nz/power/ws-8-150-dc.html

Karori is where our daughter is and sure is a good high site location for P-P links.

It's different with "unlimited" service such as Starlink. Such providers don't tend to take kindly to sharing connections.

Done with care to a low GB user how could they know ?

[brucehoult]

Bruce, I was up past Kamo a few days ago and the son's inlaws live around another 20km further north. Maybe we should share details and catch up sometime.

Sure thing! I'm now 27 km up SH1 from the Kamo lights, and then 1 km down a gravel road. That's 90 km south of where I was until the end of November (which also could have gotten Starlink, but there was just fine 100/30 VDSL there).

It's different with "unlimited" service such as Starlink. Such providers don't tend to take kindly to sharing connections.

Done with care to a low GB user how could they know ?

If a light user then sure.

[Halcyon]

I know a few people who use Starlink in both rural Australia and metro Sydney. We also have a test dish/service at work that we're evaluating for some projects. From all reports, it works very well. Speed and uptime is generally excellent in the Southern hemisphere.

I did some testing with the placed dish just inside a commercial "garage" with the roller door up. Despite it having only limited view of the sky in one direction, it still maintained a solid connection for the most part. Our current equipment that uses Inmarsat doesn't even establish a connection at all (and is much slower and far more expensive).

[Psi]

Looking at Starlink with an eye for very very long term.  (Not current Starlink but what might exist 40 years from now)
I do wonder if we will get to the point where miniatured phased array antennas and future RF technology will allow cellphones to communicate with Starlink directly.  I think we maybe seeing a glimpse at the future where your cellphone may work anywhere on earth.

I called it, I just got the timeframe very wrong.

T-Mobile just announced they have partnered with SpaceX and will have mobile spectrum on Starlink V2.
Starlink V2 will have the hardware to talk to current cellphones anywhere in the world!
They've figured out how to put large enough phased array antennas on the sats that they can pickup and transmit to your phone in your pocket.

It's mainly to remove all the deadzones in the middle of nowhere for safety. You probably won't be watching YouTube on it, but sms and voice calls will work. And of course the cell area will be huge and each cell will only get around 2-4mbit to share. No plan info so far, but T-Mobile have said their top/most-popular plans will include it.

Timeframe is also unknown but SpaceX will be launching Starlink V2 soon using starship. Obviously going to take years to get enough V2 sats up there but not 40 as I estimated.

[Bud]

Starlink V2 will have the hardware to talk to current cellphones anywhere in the world!

That is a bit of an open statement... Talk to any phone that allows Starlink to talk to it , talk to any phone that Starlink allows to talk to, or what? Hardware is not sufficient typically. All is closed with cryptography.

[fourfathom]

Here's a fluffy video announcement about this: https://www.t-mobile.com/aboveandbeyond.html
I'm a big fan of Starlink and Spacex, "just because".

[Psi]

Starlink V2 will have the hardware to talk to current cellphones anywhere in the world!

That is a bit of an open statement... Talk to any phone that allows Starlink to talk to it , talk to any phone that Starlink allows to talk to, or what? Hardware is not sufficient typically. All is closed with cryptography.

Yeah, we don't have all the details, obviously it's a T-Mobile deal so its for T-Mobile customers on plans that support it.  But Elon said that any emergency calls will work once the network is online, so should benefit everyone in an emergency which is a big deal and will save lives.

And I imagine other carries will come on board too.
They can't let T-Mobile get all the glory for world coverage and I doubt SpaceX would sign an exclusive deal with T-Mobile that forbit them adding other carriers.

[fourfathom]

They can't let T-Mobile get all the glory for world coverage and I doubt SpaceX would sign an exclusive deal with T-Mobile that forbit them adding other carriers.

In the video I posted Elon mentions planning to sign up other carriers in other countries. 

BTW, that video is pretty stupid -- much of it is trying to show how much remote communications can be useful (!).  We get it, please move along.  But there's some good stuff in it.  I didn't watch the whole thing.

[Psi]

There is some wisdom to waiting until the system is actually working. but I think it's cool.

[BTO]

I'm in sydney, I install Starlink dishes for a living.
i saw you mentioned you want to get more height out of your installation

OK, here is what you do
1. No, you don't order the roof mount from starlink

2. Depending on the roof that you have
if it's a tin roof, Use the starlink provided bracket and you put teh screws in the holes at the tips of the bracket
(ensure they go into timber or something solid)

if it's a tiled roof
you want to choose either a TV Rafter mount (this will require you to cut a hole into your roof tile though and have a piece of lead
flashing to cover it
or
you can choose a standard Dual Leg Gutter mount (Satellite dish mount)

but of course, it's not compatible with the starlink dish

BUT.............HERE IS A SOLUTION

You want to use U BOLTS
Now   you have    U  part
and you have the JAW part
this forms a circle for one dish or antenna pole
and then you have the 2 nuts

BUT YOU WANT TO DO THIS
U BOLT----JAW---BACKWARD JAW----JAW-----NUTS

so you buy
1 U Bolt
3 Jaws
2 Nuts
and you arrange them so you end up with 2 holes
the hole between the U bolt and the jaw is for the pole on the gutter mount mast
the hole between the 2 jaws is for the starlink dish

YOU NEED 2 OF THESE SETS
1 goes higher up
the other lower down

Between these 2 holding your dish, it's not going to move
also... do not tighten the shit out of it , Just tighten enough to hold it , Remember, do not break the dish, ok

but yeah, do that and you'll have the mount on your roof