I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands
Compared to leveraging the existing cellular networks and using satellites for rare edge cases. ~8$/minute or say 1$/minute averages out to a more reasonable number when less than 5% of calls use it.
Sailors can make calls using the ships Wi-Fi via full sized Starlink dishes, they need coverage on land.
But even ignoring that the contention is low in the middle of the ocean and satellites have hardware either way, driving down the market rate for calls at sea.
Yes, but compared to the setup for equivalent satellite services it is very cheap. The Inmarsat antennas need active compensation and they sit inside big radomes, while the Starlink antennas are smaller and do not need to move thanks to being phased arrays.
The bandwidth, latency and stability that Starlink has is also leagues better than geosynch based solutions, for a much lower monthly price.
Even without considering the better performance, the price makes it viable now to have a internet connections in places it did not make financial sense before.
250$/month gets you 50GB/month on the open ocean, 1TB for 1,000$/month is lower ost per GB. https://www.starlink.com/boats
Calls are ~0.75 MB/minute which works out calling 24/7 for a full month for 250$, or more realistically it would almost entirely be used up sending other kinds of data and a sub cent per minute opportunity cost for using that data on calls.
Starlink is used in low density areas. You could setup LTE towers at a remote mine and use Starlink for the back haul, but for their customers using WiFi calling gives the same benefit without extra hardware.
Starlink would need to license LTE spectrum in every country it operated. Much easier to work with local carriers and piggyback on their existing bandwidth.
I suspect the primary reason they took this approach is that licensing for these frequencies is astronomical if you want to cover the entire US. That would bleed them dry as they build out the constellation and try to ramp up user count.
Partnering with a national carrier handles the licensing aspect and if the tech pans out the economics could shift to allow them to buy national spectrum and offer direct service.
I see where you're coming from, but I prefer to have the relationship with a single entity (my cellular carrier) and get access to both. Simpler to deal with.
Agreed on the potential complication if/when I'm in another country, but, well, everything can't be simple...
Kinda not. Generally if you got road you got reception. Only wilderness areas don’t. For few people who go camping, etc the standalone miniterminal makes most sense.
The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly; and hence the partnership with MNOs. With 5G (after Google & Meta got involved, the designs took on a Cloud/Internet-heavy focus), Starlink very well might have "slices" carved out exclusive for its own use world over.
I think that, once SpaceX starts launch Starlink satellites with Starship, they'll be able to increase their globally available bandwidth by a factor of 5-10x (although it might take 5 years to roll out). A lot of that bandwidth will be eaten up by existing demand. But hopefully some of it will enable novel services like global cell service through a single provider (even if it's limited to low bandwidth applications like text and voice).
It would be very interesting to see some kind of diagram depicting all of the corporate entities Musk is involved in and how each entity does business with one another.
xAI just raised billions to help Tesla build out FSD (or at least that was part of the pitch).
His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
The closest comparison I can think of is Berkshire Hathaway (one person/group controlling multiple wide ranging private and public companies).
> His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
My understanding is that, given Tesla is a public company, any collaboration between Tesla and other Musk companies needs to be approved by the board (or maybe by other C-suite executives) without Musk in the room. Musk can come up with the idea for a collaboration, but then the decision that it is in the best interests of Tesla and all its shareholders to proceed with the collaboration needs to be made independently of him.
By contrast, I don't think the rules apply as strictly to his other companies since they are privately held. The law cares a lot more about protecting shareholder rights in public companies than in private ones.
> The board at Tesla is basically Elon’s buddies. There is no oversight or independence there, they do what he wants.
This is true at most companies with a competent CEO.
My uncle had an inimical board that tried to remove him, but he somehow replaced them all one by one before they could. Needless to say he replaced them with people who didn't want to remove him ("buddies"; but what kind of a leader surrounds himself with people that want him to fail?). He's never told me how he did that despite my asking several times.
Following the law should be above the shareholder gain. Mentality like yours is what got us in this situation where people are blatantly abusing the government for personal gain.
It's similar (ish), but I think unfortunately the comparison distracts from your core point and observation.
Musk Inc. is, in essence, a privet equity company. He raises a fund, and invests it along with his own cash into a business he knows well, and with which he believes he can disrupt the status quo.
He's very hands on, understanding all the important core details, setting culture, and pushing hard. But he also delegates to experts he brings in to run his businesses.
It's obviously not the same as PE, but there are distinct similarities. With each of his companies he clearly can't take an active role all the time, but what his team are experts at is identifying the areas he needs to be on top of, and they will quite literally fly him in for it. It seems to me it's always the start of something, be it a new company or project. He will be there 24/7 getting it off the ground, but then hand over to lieutenants to run.
It's a formula that seems to work again and again. We're (well those of you in the US) are in for an interesting time over the coming year as he has a new project to kick start.
> Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
Starlink is not a separate entity — it's a division of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
From Terms of Service[1]:
> Your order for two-way satellite-based internet service (“Services”) and a Starlink antenna, Wi-Fi router and mount (“Starlink Kit” or “Kit”) is subject to the terms (“Terms”) of this Starlink agreement for the United States and its territories. These Terms, those terms incorporated by reference, and the details you agree to in your online order (“Order”) form the entire agreement (“Agreement”) between you (“customer” or “user”) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (known as “Starlink” in these Terms).
This is supposed to launch in New Zealand during 2024, in partnership with a local carrier. Was being heavily hyped a year or so back, but I haven’t heard much recently?
I really wonder if anyone is going to be able to catch up to SpaceX anytime soon. Kuiper seems dead in the water, the legacy operators seem unwilling to expand into LEO constellations.
Does this allow the ability to circumvent LTE networks in countries like China? Do we have the capability to send messages to any/all phones in China if we (USA) wanted to?
For that, Starlink would have to use the frequency band that the phone (and, therefore, the relevant operator) is using. Such frequencies are assigned by states to operators, and using them from space would be extremely easy to detect. That is why Starlink either has to make a deal with in operators, or acquire a licence to use a frequency band in every country it wants to operate.
I assume that if Starlink was trying to do this without agreement, in violation of the interational treaty on radio regulations, the USA would have to prevent them from doing so. If the USA did not, I don't see what would prevent China from shooting down Starlink's constellation.
As a side note on the technology, since Starlink satellites orbit 340km from earth, I wonder if they emit a directed signal. If they don't, I don't see how they intend to respect borders when sending messages down.
I switched to T-Mobile at the last upgrade interval because of this. My family looks forward to no longer relying on Garmin InReach devices when out hiking.
Initially I thought the same re: hiking, skiing etc. The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
Same. Done a few trips to alaska and had to coordinate pickups and food drops via garmin inreach. Battery life on those is way better and more durable.
> The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
I think it depends on the application you're using it for.
If you're constantly using the gps - yeah, I'd definitely agree with you.
But if you're using it purely for emergency communication, you can just turn off the cell phone, and it should be fine.
It's also possible to pursue a hybrid approach by bringing a battery to change the phone.
With an inReach I have the option of periodically tracking my position and uploading that to a site my loved ones can check. Even whilst doing this I can leave the device on for a multi-day trip without worrying about battery drain. I'm not saying you couldn't do this with a cell phone, but the inReach is just a more robust solution for a safety critical application.
If you have zero signal, modern iPhone allows you to connect to satellite and text using iMessage. I just used it this week multiple times during massive Pacific Northwest blackout.
Works surprisingly well. You have to be outside and hold iPhone in the specifics position pointed at satellite, it tells you where to turn iPhone to to get signal.
I'd still carry an old-school PLB (not a satellite messenger subscription service) for the enduring battery-life, ruggedness, and reliability when it matters. And use LTE-Starlink for the basic non-urgent but super convenient communication needs.
This is really interesting. Based on their wikipedia I can see they collect a lot of RF traffic - are IMEIs identifiable with the raw data captured that way? I'm surprised they are not encrypted. I say this as someone who knows nothing about the space.
In 2G/3G networks, IMSI is unencrypted in the initial handshake process while the handset gets a TMSI, so it can very trivially be passively observed, but only at specific points in time.
In 5G this is somewhat fixed - the handset uses its Home Network Public Key to encrypt the device-specific IMSI (producing a SUCI) which only the Home Network can decrypt. The MCC and MNC (carrier information) are still sent in the clear to allow the encrypted SUCI to route to the correct Home Network for decryption.
My thinking is that you can think of Starlink satellites as LTE towers that just happen to be ~350 miles away from your phone. It happens to work because while they are far away, the satellites have a very clear line of sight (directly down) with few (no) obstacles.
The complication is that the base stations will be moving much more rapidly than traditional terrestrial towers.
No, that’s just satellite backhaul for a cell tower. That’s not hard, but also typically if you can get power to a base station you can run fiber along the same poles the power runs on.
This is direct from handset to satellite, it’s clearly explained in the link.
It’s going to be unambiguously good for wilderness rescue and disaster response.
But I like camping and hiking in remote areas in order to remove myself from the world. And I think the lack of connectivity discourages unprepared people from taking on more than they can handle in the wilderness. If the wilderness becomes fully connected, will it spoil that feeling? Will it lead to the last few truly remote places in the US suddenly being overrun with TikTok crowds? I honestly have no idea, and it’s a little scary.
But it feels like an anachronism that we don’t already have worldwide connectivity, and I guess this was just bound to happen.
There are virtually no unconnected places in most of Europe yet wilderness is still dangerous. It is good that rescue services can help you if accident happens (and it can happen even to the adequatly prepared).
Definitely. But when Apple released their Satellite SOS feature, I expected that to remain the cutting edge for a while, and for all devices to eventually gain very limited satellite emergency call capabilities. Instead, it seems like we’re going straight from most devices having zero connectivity in the (US) wilderness to all devices having connectivity everywhere in the world, as soon as next year. That’s a lot of change to come all at once.
Sure, and people were making YouTube videos in the wilderness before that, but the accessibility that came with TikTok and Instagram created a phenomenon increased demand tenfold at many parks. That’s why you have to win a lottery to hike Angels Landing in Zion now.
Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
> Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
My guess is there will be some more wilderness livestreams streams, largely made by the people that are already going out to these places to produce content.
Are you particularly worried about a group of people that so far had no interest at all in taking pictures or videos in the wilderness but will now show up in droves to make competing bits of strictly-live content? Who are these users??
Which bandwidth can a phone reasonably expect given nobody around for kilometers? Are we talking kbits or mbits? Is there some kind of theoretical maximum?
How can it be that a LTE smartphone, costing ~$100 and doing all the things a smart phone can do, and being designed to connect to a cell network via a tower a few miles away, can somehow also function as the pizza sized $500 Starlink dish?
Doesn’t Globestar still have more satellites in orbit? With Apple supporting them, hoping there will be some consumer choice. This looking like regular cellular will become the new landline company.
Oh, no. Apple owns them at this point. 20% ownership, and they have 85% of Globalstar's current satellite capacity for themselves. GSAT isn't really putting new customers on the constellations and Apple is funding all the replacement hardware.
To put some numbers to it, it looks like SpaceX started launching direct to cell satellites at the beginning of the year[1], and by July they had over 100 in orbit. Not sure how many are in orbit right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were close to 200.
So they now offer direct cellular coverage whereas before only offered internet?
This is great for regions that need to be connected and the power elites, but for the rest of us it wouldn't change much.
I disagree with almost all of Elon's "politics" but Starlink still has huge potential. Hopefully, he doesn’t abuse the power too much and focuses on making the world more connected, in the hands of the us government and given away like GPS it could be the way to go to get the whole world connected.
> This is great for regions that need to be connected
That's at least a billion people. I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though.
I'm writing this from an Ayahuasca center in rural Peru connected with Starlink. Before, internet was a ten minute drive into town away. We're now connected when at one side of the center. It would be nice to have it all the way into the jungle. And when you want to be disconnected, just turn your phone off or leave it behind.
> I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though.
My understanding is that the monthly cost for Starlink varies pretty wildly across the world. Presumably the same would be true for this cell service - idle satellites have the same huge fixed cost and don't generate any revenue.
The constellation is subdivided into orbital planes, with ~20 to ~60 satellites in each plane chasing each other around the planet.
The following is somewhat speculative:
The bearing to the next satellite ahead or behind you in the same plane should be roughly constant; likewise, the bearing to satellites in adjacent planes orbiting in the same direction will change slowly during most of the orbit.
Near the poles the required slew rate will likely be too high to keep the side-to-side links working but that's also a part of the planet where subscriber density will be low so losing that capacity for periods of a few minutes when near the poles likely won't matter.
What I wonder about the Starlink constellation is, how secure it is physically? There are people burning down 5G towers. How plausible would be for a conspiracy nut to create a rocket to take out the satellites? Maybe starting a cascading effect?
USC students just broke the non-government, non-corporate rocket launch altitude record, reaching 143.25km[1]. But that is still a long way from the ~500km that Starlink operates at.
On top of that the person would have to develop a guidance system and payload capable of targeting and sufficiently damaging one of these satellites - not an easy feat.
Finally, it seems unlikely that a single hit would cause a chain reaction. There aren't that many satellites that are part of Starlink. Imagine 6000 cars spread over the surface of the Earth. Except that they're even more sparse than that because many of them are at different altitudes.
Additionally, SpaceX has already had to deal with the result of the debris field from the Russian Cosmos satellite that was destroyed by a Russian anti-satellite missile.[2]
Starlink has a lot of protection compared to other constellations since the satellites occupy such low orbits that most debris spontaneously deorbits in 5-10 years.
They don't fly sun synchronous orbits, so a giant vertical laser cannon near equator running 24/7 can kill them all in matters of days. I think. Carrying this out likely also constitute a de facto declaration of war against the US.
Lot's of conspiracy theorists have become quite wealthy with the raise of Bitcoin, as it was very popular among them early on.
Military tech or not, its just atoms. Very interesting people are quite rich now, they will have access to precision machining advanced materials and chemicals if they have the motivation.
This is such an unhinged take, what if a super villain decided to build missiles to attack satellites? You understand that’s something nation states struggle with, that billionaire status doesn’t even guarantee success on.
Some bitcoin bro with a net worth in the millions is not building orbit reaching guided missiles in their garage. And if they were the satellites would be the least of our concerns.
There are about 6 thousand Starlink satellites out there and their total count may grow to some 40 thousand in the future.
But even if we abstracted the LEO to just one sphere, it would be quite a bit BIGGER than the Earth alone.
If 40 thousand, say, small cars were distributed across the entire globe including oceans, would you call the result "unsustainable pollution"? In fact, compared to what we live in today, such a world would be positively pristine. We are used to having 40 thousand cars in every city of 80 thousand people, which is usually just a small dot on the map.
Space is big. Even near-Earth orbits are mindbogglingly huge. Even if there were millions of satellites on low Earth orbits, that space would still be several nines of vacuum.
Some people aren't smart enough to appreciate theory. These people don't even learn the hard way either. They take their disbelief and excuses to their grave. For the rest of us, good theories aren't just admired from afar, they're acted upon before they materialize.
Misanthropes [1] look at human civilization as a disease.
Look instead at what we've accomplished.
Think about the hard steps to life and intelligent life. About how silent the universe appears. Consider then how we're taking leaps towards making the cold and bleak universe self-aware. We are a part of evolution.
What would be tragic would be for this earth to simply boil away. Its life giving gasses and materials to vanish, unused, and life to be forgotten. Return to an unthinking rock.
[1] Maybe it's uncharitable to label you as a misanthrope, but looking broadly at this behavior in general.
I think it's fair to be concerned about what we're losing without being labeled as a Misanthrope. I think the progress, in its entirety, is worth it, but I'm still a little sad at the night sky having even more artificial things that take attention away from the stars. Looking at the night sky as a child seemed timeless to me, and that's no longer the case.
You can’t see Starlink satellites in the night sky except shortly after sunset or before sunrise when they are still in daylight and you aren’t. They don’t produce visible light on their own.
The night sky will be exactly the same otherwise so you’re doing a lot of handwringing over nothing.
Real astronomers are complaining about many other things. Streaking in long exposures and noise in other spectrums. But that’s not relevant to anyone looking at the sky with the naked eye or an amateur telescope.
I'm sort of undecided here. Yeah it's great for some use cases & many people, we should probably do it, seems worth it.
But also, before having 40k thingies on the orbit that will decay/break within years, why not think of a better strategy or the implications of this? We shouldn't repeat all the mistakes we have made in the past.
A lot of smart people have been trying to think of a better strategy for decades. This appears to be the best we can do within our current understanding of physics. A better strategy would require antigravity technology or faster than light communications or something similarly unlikely.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about, so from what did you derive these harsh feelings? Starlink satellites are in LEO, without active boosting they decay in mere years.
A decayed satellite doesn't just disappear though. There's particulate pollution from it burning up, not to mention the pollution from rocket launches.
There's also the light pollution that the astronomy community has been complaining about for years.
For astronomy, sinking costs of space launches present an opportunity to move the actual telescopes into space, where the atmosphere doesn't stand in the way at all.
I read a long description of an astronomer's journey to a prestigious Chilean observatory deep in the desert. He wasn't particularly happy about either the isolation or the bloodsucking bugs that could not be entirely exterminated and carried diseases.
Compared to that, remote work on a space-based telescope might be preferable from the human perspective, too.
I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands
One space based cell plan for the whole world
It’s not going to work inside buildings, and they would need to charge you a fairly astronomical fee per minute.
However, a Starlink mini dish can let you cheaply make calls from basically anywhere with some minor setup.
> astronomical fee
Well it's n̵o̵t̵ rocket science.
Compared to what?
Traditional satellite phone corporations used to charge something like 8 USD/min.
Compared to leveraging the existing cellular networks and using satellites for rare edge cases. ~8$/minute or say 1$/minute averages out to a more reasonable number when less than 5% of calls use it.
Not for somebody whose job is outside the existing networks, such as sailors.
Sailors can make calls using the ships Wi-Fi via full sized Starlink dishes, they need coverage on land.
But even ignoring that the contention is low in the middle of the ocean and satellites have hardware either way, driving down the market rate for calls at sea.
The setup cost for Starlink on a boat is still massively higher than on land.
Yes, but compared to the setup for equivalent satellite services it is very cheap. The Inmarsat antennas need active compensation and they sit inside big radomes, while the Starlink antennas are smaller and do not need to move thanks to being phased arrays.
The bandwidth, latency and stability that Starlink has is also leagues better than geosynch based solutions, for a much lower monthly price.
Even without considering the better performance, the price makes it viable now to have a internet connections in places it did not make financial sense before.
250$/month gets you 50GB/month on the open ocean, 1TB for 1,000$/month is lower ost per GB. https://www.starlink.com/boats
Calls are ~0.75 MB/minute which works out calling 24/7 for a full month for 250$, or more realistically it would almost entirely be used up sending other kinds of data and a sub cent per minute opportunity cost for using that data on calls.
I think OP is pointing out the pun in this case.
I concur, and I appreciate the pun :)
Terrestrial fees
LEO fees?
Yep, definitely beyond sky-high prices :)
My 5g doesn't work inside of many buildings.
Could Starlink receivers not act as a mesh like network and broadcast LTE themselves, gaining inside coverage.
Starlink is used in low density areas. You could setup LTE towers at a remote mine and use Starlink for the back haul, but for their customers using WiFi calling gives the same benefit without extra hardware.
Starlink would need to license LTE spectrum in every country it operated. Much easier to work with local carriers and piggyback on their existing bandwidth.
I suspect the primary reason they took this approach is that licensing for these frequencies is astronomical if you want to cover the entire US. That would bleed them dry as they build out the constellation and try to ramp up user count.
Partnering with a national carrier handles the licensing aspect and if the tech pans out the economics could shift to allow them to buy national spectrum and offer direct service.
I see where you're coming from, but I prefer to have the relationship with a single entity (my cellular carrier) and get access to both. Simpler to deal with.
Agreed on the potential complication if/when I'm in another country, but, well, everything can't be simple...
I was curious about this! I wish this was a perk of owning / purchasing a Tesla or a more expensive option of Starlink terminal.
It’s kind of crazy Tesla hasn’t partnered with SpaceX to provide Starlink as an option.
I think the fact that they haven't may be kind of indicative. Last I searched it had supported maximum local device density of just handful in miles.
Kinda not. Generally if you got road you got reception. Only wilderness areas don’t. For few people who go camping, etc the standalone miniterminal makes most sense.
> Generally if you got road you got reception.
Er, if you got highway, maybe? I assure you there are plenty of roads that have poor cell reception.
100% speak to A German high speed rail traveller and she will tell you all about the white spots
Any idea of the etymology for calling it a "white spot"? Assuming this is a German thing
> One space based cell plan for the whole world
The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly; and hence the partnership with MNOs. With 5G (after Google & Meta got involved, the designs took on a Cloud/Internet-heavy focus), Starlink very well might have "slices" carved out exclusive for its own use world over.
See also: Cloudflare's Zero-Trust SIM (2022), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32982697
> The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly
It turns out they do.
> The baseband on handheld devices do not have that much power to transmit and receive from Starlink directly;
That is exactly what this is about, direct from standard handsets to starlink satellites.
Not really feasible. The only reason Starlink DTC works is because it's not trying to supply coverage inside dense cities.
Musk mentions this in the very first announcement of Starlink. https://youtu.be/AHeZHyOnsm4?t=191
It will happen over time
> It will happen over time
I'm optimistic.
I think that, once SpaceX starts launch Starlink satellites with Starship, they'll be able to increase their globally available bandwidth by a factor of 5-10x (although it might take 5 years to roll out). A lot of that bandwidth will be eaten up by existing demand. But hopefully some of it will enable novel services like global cell service through a single provider (even if it's limited to low bandwidth applications like text and voice).
Are you planning to be in direct line of sight to a Starlink satellite 24x7?
Starlink's certainly planning on that, more or less.
Unless they can remove buildings from this world, that isn't going to be a reality.
>"One space based cell plan for the whole world"
And a single entity to decide who gets disconnected if they do not behave
> ENGINEERED BY SPACEX
It would be very interesting to see some kind of diagram depicting all of the corporate entities Musk is involved in and how each entity does business with one another.
xAI just raised billions to help Tesla build out FSD (or at least that was part of the pitch).
His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
The closest comparison I can think of is Berkshire Hathaway (one person/group controlling multiple wide ranging private and public companies).
While your overall question is valid, Starlink is simply a division of SpaceX. There's no "relationship" to consider. They are one and the same.
> His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part.
My understanding is that, given Tesla is a public company, any collaboration between Tesla and other Musk companies needs to be approved by the board (or maybe by other C-suite executives) without Musk in the room. Musk can come up with the idea for a collaboration, but then the decision that it is in the best interests of Tesla and all its shareholders to proceed with the collaboration needs to be made independently of him.
By contrast, I don't think the rules apply as strictly to his other companies since they are privately held. The law cares a lot more about protecting shareholder rights in public companies than in private ones.
The board at Tesla is basically Elon’s buddies. There is no oversight or independence there, they do what he wants.
If law was applied equality to billionaires as it does to regular people, he would be in jail for fraud.
> The board at Tesla is basically Elon’s buddies. There is no oversight or independence there, they do what he wants.
This is true at most companies with a competent CEO.
My uncle had an inimical board that tried to remove him, but he somehow replaced them all one by one before they could. Needless to say he replaced them with people who didn't want to remove him ("buddies"; but what kind of a leader surrounds himself with people that want him to fail?). He's never told me how he did that despite my asking several times.
If shareholders are happy, what business is it of yours? If they aren’t happy, they can sell the shares.
SEC destroyed
Following the law should be above the shareholder gain. Mentality like yours is what got us in this situation where people are blatantly abusing the government for personal gain.
Wasn't Musk pulling Tesla engineers to go work on Twitter?
It's similar (ish), but I think unfortunately the comparison distracts from your core point and observation.
Musk Inc. is, in essence, a privet equity company. He raises a fund, and invests it along with his own cash into a business he knows well, and with which he believes he can disrupt the status quo.
He's very hands on, understanding all the important core details, setting culture, and pushing hard. But he also delegates to experts he brings in to run his businesses.
It's obviously not the same as PE, but there are distinct similarities. With each of his companies he clearly can't take an active role all the time, but what his team are experts at is identifying the areas he needs to be on top of, and they will quite literally fly him in for it. It seems to me it's always the start of something, be it a new company or project. He will be there 24/7 getting it off the ground, but then hand over to lieutenants to run.
It's a formula that seems to work again and again. We're (well those of you in the US) are in for an interesting time over the coming year as he has a new project to kick start.
I’m curious why this is being downvoted (seems to hit the nail on the head)
You're describing a corporate conglomerate, in style of pre-modern to early industrialization era.
Berkshire is very different, they are a hedge fund/holding company and their main business is trading companies.
Starlink and SpaceX have an even closer relationship than most other Musk companies; Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
> Starlink is a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX.
Starlink is not a separate entity — it's a division of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
From Terms of Service[1]:
> Your order for two-way satellite-based internet service (“Services”) and a Starlink antenna, Wi-Fi router and mount (“Starlink Kit” or “Kit”) is subject to the terms (“Terms”) of this Starlink agreement for the United States and its territories. These Terms, those terms incorporated by reference, and the details you agree to in your online order (“Order”) form the entire agreement (“Agreement”) between you (“customer” or “user”) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (known as “Starlink” in these Terms).
[1]: https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1020-91087-64?r...
Starlink isn’t a company. It’s a product offered by spacex. Just like Falcon, Starship, and Dragon.
This is supposed to launch in New Zealand during 2024, in partnership with a local carrier. Was being heavily hyped a year or so back, but I haven’t heard much recently?
I really wonder if anyone is going to be able to catch up to SpaceX anytime soon. Kuiper seems dead in the water, the legacy operators seem unwilling to expand into LEO constellations.
Rocket Lab and Peter Beck are your best hope!
Does this allow the ability to circumvent LTE networks in countries like China? Do we have the capability to send messages to any/all phones in China if we (USA) wanted to?
For that, Starlink would have to use the frequency band that the phone (and, therefore, the relevant operator) is using. Such frequencies are assigned by states to operators, and using them from space would be extremely easy to detect. That is why Starlink either has to make a deal with in operators, or acquire a licence to use a frequency band in every country it wants to operate.
I assume that if Starlink was trying to do this without agreement, in violation of the interational treaty on radio regulations, the USA would have to prevent them from doing so. If the USA did not, I don't see what would prevent China from shooting down Starlink's constellation.
As a side note on the technology, since Starlink satellites orbit 340km from earth, I wonder if they emit a directed signal. If they don't, I don't see how they intend to respect borders when sending messages down.
Yes, the beams are highly directional.
Technically yes.
Technically, yes. But there's no way they would actually do that. Good question about the emergency message feature...
I switched to T-Mobile at the last upgrade interval because of this. My family looks forward to no longer relying on Garmin InReach devices when out hiking.
Initially I thought the same re: hiking, skiing etc. The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
Same. Done a few trips to alaska and had to coordinate pickups and food drops via garmin inreach. Battery life on those is way better and more durable.
Yea. My inReach device stays charged for months when it is off.
> The only issue I see is that cellphone battery life is terrible compared to inReach like devices. Not sure I'd want to depend on it for longer than a few hours.
I think it depends on the application you're using it for.
If you're constantly using the gps - yeah, I'd definitely agree with you.
But if you're using it purely for emergency communication, you can just turn off the cell phone, and it should be fine.
It's also possible to pursue a hybrid approach by bringing a battery to change the phone.
> It's also possible to pursue a hybrid approach by bringing a battery to change the phone.
Or, as I have done on multi-day trips, a solar panel and a battery.
Turn off your phone?
With an inReach I have the option of periodically tracking my position and uploading that to a site my loved ones can check. Even whilst doing this I can leave the device on for a multi-day trip without worrying about battery drain. I'm not saying you couldn't do this with a cell phone, but the inReach is just a more robust solution for a safety critical application.
Why switch carriers for that, you can get the same functionality built-in to iPhones and it's not dependent on carrier.
If you aren't on an iPhone already, switching carriers might be easier.
That's a fair point. I did make some assumptions.
iPhone sos does not allow you to just text random stuff to arbitrary people. It’s emergency only and a preselected “family group”
If you have zero signal, modern iPhone allows you to connect to satellite and text using iMessage. I just used it this week multiple times during massive Pacific Northwest blackout.
Works surprisingly well. You have to be outside and hold iPhone in the specifics position pointed at satellite, it tells you where to turn iPhone to to get signal.
Did they get rid of the limitation of having to setup a special family group in advance?
That is not true. If you don't know, don't guess.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/120930
I'd still carry an old-school PLB (not a satellite messenger subscription service) for the enduring battery-life, ruggedness, and reliability when it matters. And use LTE-Starlink for the basic non-urgent but super convenient communication needs.
The inReach is basically indestructible. A cell phone, not so much.
Does this mean they can track the location of specific IMEIs from orbit?
HawkEye 360 has been doing this for a few years.
This is really interesting. Based on their wikipedia I can see they collect a lot of RF traffic - are IMEIs identifiable with the raw data captured that way? I'm surprised they are not encrypted. I say this as someone who knows nothing about the space.
In 2G/3G networks, IMSI is unencrypted in the initial handshake process while the handset gets a TMSI, so it can very trivially be passively observed, but only at specific points in time.
In 5G this is somewhat fixed - the handset uses its Home Network Public Key to encrypt the device-specific IMSI (producing a SUCI) which only the Home Network can decrypt. The MCC and MNC (carrier information) are still sent in the clear to allow the encrypted SUCI to route to the correct Home Network for decryption.
Which means military has been doing this for decades
They always have been...
spacex? No, the direct to cell sats require much larger antenna to pick up cell signals. The regular Starlink sats aren’t capable of that.
Can anyone explain how upload would work? How can an unmodified cellphone upload data to a satellite?
My thinking is that you can think of Starlink satellites as LTE towers that just happen to be ~350 miles away from your phone. It happens to work because while they are far away, the satellites have a very clear line of sight (directly down) with few (no) obstacles.
The complication is that the base stations will be moving much more rapidly than traditional terrestrial towers.
very slowly, with the radio at maximum power, and no obstructions
Your cell phone uses the nearest base station, the base station will handover to the satellite infra.
Why do you need satellite if you can connect to a base station? This makes no sense.
No, they claim direct phone to satellite link.
No, that’s just satellite backhaul for a cell tower. That’s not hard, but also typically if you can get power to a base station you can run fiber along the same poles the power runs on.
This is direct from handset to satellite, it’s clearly explained in the link.
> That’s not hard, but also typically if you can get power to a base station you can run fiber along the same poles the power runs on.
Or a directional microwave link to the next station in sight.
Aren't those satellites going to generate simulated cell tower signals so you won't require any modification whatsoever?
I feel so, so mixed about this.
It’s going to be unambiguously good for wilderness rescue and disaster response.
But I like camping and hiking in remote areas in order to remove myself from the world. And I think the lack of connectivity discourages unprepared people from taking on more than they can handle in the wilderness. If the wilderness becomes fully connected, will it spoil that feeling? Will it lead to the last few truly remote places in the US suddenly being overrun with TikTok crowds? I honestly have no idea, and it’s a little scary.
But it feels like an anachronism that we don’t already have worldwide connectivity, and I guess this was just bound to happen.
There are virtually no unconnected places in most of Europe yet wilderness is still dangerous. It is good that rescue services can help you if accident happens (and it can happen even to the adequatly prepared).
„There are no unconnected places in most of Europe“ Then you haven’t traveled with the German railway yet!
Definitely. But when Apple released their Satellite SOS feature, I expected that to remain the cutting edge for a while, and for all devices to eventually gain very limited satellite emergency call capabilities. Instead, it seems like we’re going straight from most devices having zero connectivity in the (US) wilderness to all devices having connectivity everywhere in the world, as soon as next year. That’s a lot of change to come all at once.
People have been making TikTok videos in the wilderness this entire time, they just wait until they get service to upload them.
Sure, and people were making YouTube videos in the wilderness before that, but the accessibility that came with TikTok and Instagram created a phenomenon increased demand tenfold at many parks. That’s why you have to win a lottery to hike Angels Landing in Zion now.
Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
surely there are other wildernesses? is demand so high that there aren’t any left?
> Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
My guess is there will be some more wilderness livestreams streams, largely made by the people that are already going out to these places to produce content.
Are you particularly worried about a group of people that so far had no interest at all in taking pictures or videos in the wilderness but will now show up in droves to make competing bits of strictly-live content? Who are these users??
> Now we get wilderness livestreams! What will that do?
Encourage others to explore the wilderness?
or like most other tech - do the opposite “why would I explore in person when I can watch it from my couch”
Honestly, lack of connectivity completely makes these places you speak of inaccessible for a lot of people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENodeB
Which bandwidth can a phone reasonably expect given nobody around for kilometers? Are we talking kbits or mbits? Is there some kind of theoretical maximum?
How can it be that a LTE smartphone, costing ~$100 and doing all the things a smart phone can do, and being designed to connect to a cell network via a tower a few miles away, can somehow also function as the pizza sized $500 Starlink dish?
It doesn’t. The throughput here is multiple orders of magnitude lower than what you get from Starlink
It uses a different transceiver on the satellite which is broadcasting a ~standard LTE signal, at a miniscule data rate
Doesn’t Globestar still have more satellites in orbit? With Apple supporting them, hoping there will be some consumer choice. This looking like regular cellular will become the new landline company.
> With Apple supporting them
Oh, no. Apple owns them at this point. 20% ownership, and they have 85% of Globalstar's current satellite capacity for themselves. GSAT isn't really putting new customers on the constellations and Apple is funding all the replacement hardware.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285347/apple-globalstar...
Globestar have 48 Satellites in orbit [1]
Starlink has 6,426 [2] (Though that number is likely out of date by the time you read this)
[1] https://www.groundcontrol.com/knowledge/calculators-and-maps...
[2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html
I think his point is that most Starlink satellites do not have this technology, but he's probably still wrong quantitatively.
To put some numbers to it, it looks like SpaceX started launching direct to cell satellites at the beginning of the year[1], and by July they had over 100 in orbit. Not sure how many are in orbit right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were close to 200.
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1. https://spacenews.com/spacex-deploys-direct-to-smartphone-sa...
2. https://www.satellitetoday.com/connectivity/2024/07/03/space...
> I think his point is that most Starlink satellites do not have this technology
Ah, thanks, I missed that.
Wait another month, there will be at least another ~500 in orbit.
So they now offer direct cellular coverage whereas before only offered internet?
This is great for regions that need to be connected and the power elites, but for the rest of us it wouldn't change much.
I disagree with almost all of Elon's "politics" but Starlink still has huge potential. Hopefully, he doesn’t abuse the power too much and focuses on making the world more connected, in the hands of the us government and given away like GPS it could be the way to go to get the whole world connected.
> Hopefully, he doesn’t abuse the power too much
The best possible outcome for Starlink is that he gets distracted with something else and doesn't meddle in it whatsoever.
> This is great for regions that need to be connected
That's at least a billion people. I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though.
I'm writing this from an Ayahuasca center in rural Peru connected with Starlink. Before, internet was a ten minute drive into town away. We're now connected when at one side of the center. It would be nice to have it all the way into the jungle. And when you want to be disconnected, just turn your phone off or leave it behind.
> I don't know what the intersection of that with the affordability is, though.
My understanding is that the monthly cost for Starlink varies pretty wildly across the world. Presumably the same would be true for this cell service - idle satellites have the same huge fixed cost and don't generate any revenue.
> Hopefully, he doesn’t abuse the power too much
Haha, good one.
Starlink: Direct to Target
My question is how the laser backhaul works. If the satellites are constantly moving how do they adjust since lasers require line of sight?
The constellation is subdivided into orbital planes, with ~20 to ~60 satellites in each plane chasing each other around the planet.
The following is somewhat speculative:
The bearing to the next satellite ahead or behind you in the same plane should be roughly constant; likewise, the bearing to satellites in adjacent planes orbiting in the same direction will change slowly during most of the orbit.
Near the poles the required slew rate will likely be too high to keep the side-to-side links working but that's also a part of the planet where subscriber density will be low so losing that capacity for periods of a few minutes when near the poles likely won't matter.
What I wonder about the Starlink constellation is, how secure it is physically? There are people burning down 5G towers. How plausible would be for a conspiracy nut to create a rocket to take out the satellites? Maybe starting a cascading effect?
It's not very likely.
USC students just broke the non-government, non-corporate rocket launch altitude record, reaching 143.25km[1]. But that is still a long way from the ~500km that Starlink operates at.
On top of that the person would have to develop a guidance system and payload capable of targeting and sufficiently damaging one of these satellites - not an easy feat.
Finally, it seems unlikely that a single hit would cause a chain reaction. There aren't that many satellites that are part of Starlink. Imagine 6000 cars spread over the surface of the Earth. Except that they're even more sparse than that because many of them are at different altitudes.
Additionally, SpaceX has already had to deal with the result of the debris field from the Russian Cosmos satellite that was destroyed by a Russian anti-satellite missile.[2]
Starlink has a lot of protection compared to other constellations since the satellites occupy such low orbits that most debris spontaneously deorbits in 5-10 years.
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1. https://viterbischool.usc.edu/news/2024/11/usc-student-rocke...
2. https://spacenews.com/starlink-satellites-encounter-russian-...
They don't fly sun synchronous orbits, so a giant vertical laser cannon near equator running 24/7 can kill them all in matters of days. I think. Carrying this out likely also constitute a de facto declaration of war against the US.
At the level of nation-state funding, sure thing that's possible.
If you can make a rocket that reaches a Starlink Satellite then there are many other targets the same rocket can hit that would be more damaging.
Rockets are a military technology, and are treated as such.
Lot's of conspiracy theorists have become quite wealthy with the raise of Bitcoin, as it was very popular among them early on.
Military tech or not, its just atoms. Very interesting people are quite rich now, they will have access to precision machining advanced materials and chemicals if they have the motivation.
This is such an unhinged take, what if a super villain decided to build missiles to attack satellites? You understand that’s something nation states struggle with, that billionaire status doesn’t even guarantee success on.
Some bitcoin bro with a net worth in the millions is not building orbit reaching guided missiles in their garage. And if they were the satellites would be the least of our concerns.
I doubt there is enough overlap between people able to build a rocket capable of taking out satellites and people who are afraid of 5G.
Could perhaps melt them with a powerful laser?
> how plausible would it be for a conspiracy nit to create a rocket to take out the satellites?
not plausible at all. Most /countries/ aren't able to launch a rocket to orbit.
Those countries just don't have the motivation to do such a thing. Those who have the motivation had done it despite embargoes.
More unsustainable satellite pollution
There are about 6 thousand Starlink satellites out there and their total count may grow to some 40 thousand in the future.
But even if we abstracted the LEO to just one sphere, it would be quite a bit BIGGER than the Earth alone.
If 40 thousand, say, small cars were distributed across the entire globe including oceans, would you call the result "unsustainable pollution"? In fact, compared to what we live in today, such a world would be positively pristine. We are used to having 40 thousand cars in every city of 80 thousand people, which is usually just a small dot on the map.
Space is big. Even near-Earth orbits are mindbogglingly huge. Even if there were millions of satellites on low Earth orbits, that space would still be several nines of vacuum.
Just wait until they initiate Kessler syndrome, sending junk upward, polluting the entire orbit, up and down. It's just a matter of time.
They’re in low earth orbit they eventually deorbit they have a lifecycle
Kessler syndrome is a theoretical construction, yet too many people speak of it as a certainty-beyond-any-doubt, like you do.
Some people aren't smart enough to appreciate theory. These people don't even learn the hard way either. They take their disbelief and excuses to their grave. For the rest of us, good theories aren't just admired from afar, they're acted upon before they materialize.
> If 40 thousand, say, small cars were distributed across the entire globe including oceans, would you call the result "unsustainable pollution"?
Cars don’t produce light pollution, which I believe is what’s being mentioned here.
Misanthropes [1] look at human civilization as a disease.
Look instead at what we've accomplished.
Think about the hard steps to life and intelligent life. About how silent the universe appears. Consider then how we're taking leaps towards making the cold and bleak universe self-aware. We are a part of evolution.
What would be tragic would be for this earth to simply boil away. Its life giving gasses and materials to vanish, unused, and life to be forgotten. Return to an unthinking rock.
[1] Maybe it's uncharitable to label you as a misanthrope, but looking broadly at this behavior in general.
I think it's fair to be concerned about what we're losing without being labeled as a Misanthrope. I think the progress, in its entirety, is worth it, but I'm still a little sad at the night sky having even more artificial things that take attention away from the stars. Looking at the night sky as a child seemed timeless to me, and that's no longer the case.
You can’t see Starlink satellites in the night sky except shortly after sunset or before sunrise when they are still in daylight and you aren’t. They don’t produce visible light on their own.
The night sky will be exactly the same otherwise so you’re doing a lot of handwringing over nothing.
Real astronomers are complaining about many other things. Streaking in long exposures and noise in other spectrums. But that’s not relevant to anyone looking at the sky with the naked eye or an amateur telescope.
I'm sort of undecided here. Yeah it's great for some use cases & many people, we should probably do it, seems worth it.
But also, before having 40k thingies on the orbit that will decay/break within years, why not think of a better strategy or the implications of this? We shouldn't repeat all the mistakes we have made in the past.
A lot of smart people have been trying to think of a better strategy for decades. This appears to be the best we can do within our current understanding of physics. A better strategy would require antigravity technology or faster than light communications or something similarly unlikely.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about, so from what did you derive these harsh feelings? Starlink satellites are in LEO, without active boosting they decay in mere years.
A decayed satellite doesn't just disappear though. There's particulate pollution from it burning up, not to mention the pollution from rocket launches.
There's also the light pollution that the astronomy community has been complaining about for years.
When you exhale carbon dioxide comes out, maybe consider stopping
For astronomy, sinking costs of space launches present an opportunity to move the actual telescopes into space, where the atmosphere doesn't stand in the way at all.
I read a long description of an astronomer's journey to a prestigious Chilean observatory deep in the desert. He wasn't particularly happy about either the isolation or the bloodsucking bugs that could not be entirely exterminated and carried diseases.
Compared to that, remote work on a space-based telescope might be preferable from the human perspective, too.
Ah, "unsustainable" meaning it annoys earth-bound astronomers. Cell phones in general must be unsustainable then, since they annoy radio astronomers.
Actually, we can sustain this just fine. The public derives virtually zero measurable benifit from astronomy, particularly the sort done from Earth.