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Old November 18th 18, 11:07 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Fred J. McCall[_3_]
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Default SpaceX gets FCC approval to deploy thousands more internet satellites

JF Mezei wrote on Sun, 18 Nov 2018
15:53:56 -0500:

On 2018-11-18 11:42, Jeff Findley wrote:

Obviously BFR would be cheaper in the long run since it will be fully
reusable, so once that's up and running they'll surely prefer to use
BFR.


I know the concept of BFR/BFS is meant to be fully reusable. But in a
context of launcing satellites, doesn't BFR act as a Falcon 9 stage 1
and there is still some need for some stage 2 to move stallites into
position and jettison each at the right time ?


No.



I'm pretty sure if you read the FCC documents related to Starlink, you'd
fine information like this. As for Starlink ground stations, they won't
be anything like traditional ground stations. If you read a few
articles on Starlink, you'd know this.


The concept of satellites talking to each other to reach one with a
downlink is not new.


In other words, you can't be bothered to even marginally educate
yourself so that you can manage a semi-intelligent conversation on the
subject.


It expands on the spot beam principle by spreading beams over many
satellites that then "find" the one satellite nearest to them that
currently flying over a ground station. So the capacity from many
satellites is funneleed onto the nearest one with uplink connection to a
ground station, putting even more demand on capacity for that link which
is still limited by the allocated spectrum to that satellite operator.


Space side network is lasers, not RF. Only ground station
communication uses radio.


Where there is improvement is if someone in Resolute Bay sends data to
someone in Iqaluit. Currently data goes to geo satellite then back down
to Toronto ground station (Xplornet) then back up to same satellite and
back down to Iqaluit's dish.

With the new model, it become theoretically possible for the packet to
go up to one satellite, transit to whateere satellite is over ioqaluit
and back down, eliminating the big long hops or the use of a ground station.


No, because individual users won't have the capability to receive and
transmit on Starlink ground frequencies.


But when you look at the structure of the Internet, most of the traffic
goes to very centralised places (an city that has Netflix, Google,
Amazon, Level3, Akamai etc servers). Home to home traffic is light and
couwl dconsist of gaming and Skype stuff.


You seem very confused about both the architecture of the internet and
the intended architecture of Starlink.



Early Starlink satellites will have a 3 year lifetime, so they can
easily be replaced with upgraded satellites every 3 years.


Satellites aren't the problem. Ground stations are.


Why do you think that? Ground stations are just ordinary ISP server
farms with some antennae.


This
dovetails nicely with BFR. Essentially SpaceX will be launching
satellites every single year to keep the Starlink constellation up to
date.


Yet, people believe the claims that such services will be far more
affordable than current services.


Because BFR/BFS will be a fully reusable system it will be
preposterously cheap compared to any system (including Falcon 9) in
use today.




Have fund with your 1gbps speed on satellite when you monthly usage is
limited to 5 GB.


I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you just pulled that
"information" out of your ass.


https://www.xplornet.com/shop/our-internet-packages/ Postal ode X0A0R0
(Pangnirtung) (the "0" are all zeros in postal code)

The satellite services in the USA are not as bad. But Xplornet has been
promising amazing thinsg with its "4G" satellites when they launched and
nothing much changed with their rates and monthly limits when the new
satellites were put int production.

So sorry to rain on your parade, but don't expect Starlink to be that
different. Someone has to pay for lanching these thousands of satellites.


Thank you for demonstrating that you did indeed pull that number out
of your ass. Comparing Starlink to an existing service is rather like
claiming that mere hours in transport between cities at prices much
cheaper than buying a Conestoga wagon is impossible.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn