If they get the initial network up in two more years, I wonder if they'd early retire the first shell next to get rid of the non ISL sats. Have they abandoned the 7,000 sat V-Band idea?
Quote from: Nomadd on 03/23/2022 08:29 pm If they get the initial network up in two more years, I wonder if they'd early retire the first shell next to get rid of the non ISL sats. Have they abandoned the 7,000 sat V-Band idea?Yeah, I would guess they would replace the non-ISL sats at first opportunity. It would reduce the need to keep creating more local ground stations, which are also quite expensive. It would also allow for more pricing competition on ground station access, as they can use more remote stations. I think the newer generation satellites have higher bandwidth capability as well.
Quote from: capoman on 03/24/2022 04:25 pmQuote from: Nomadd on 03/23/2022 08:29 pm If they get the initial network up in two more years, I wonder if they'd early retire the first shell next to get rid of the non ISL sats. Have they abandoned the 7,000 sat V-Band idea?Yeah, I would guess they would replace the non-ISL sats at first opportunity. It would reduce the need to keep creating more local ground stations, which are also quite expensive. It would also allow for more pricing competition on ground station access, as they can use more remote stations. I think the newer generation satellites have higher bandwidth capability as well.Will Starlink have cross-plane ISL, or just in-plane ISL? Cross-plane is harder but has some dramatic advantages: a true mesh forwarding network in the sky. Speed-of-light in vacuum is 300,000 Km/sec versus speed in fiber of 200,000 Km/sec, and ISL is straight line, not follow-the-fiber-path. This means the Starlink latency will be smaller than fiber latency in almost all cases if cross-plane ISL is implemented. For applications that are extremely sensitive to latency, it may make sense to use Starlink even when the endpoints have very good land-line connections.In-plane ISL is a lot simpler because the satellites don't move much with respect to each other and repointing to another satellite is very rare. Cross-plane ISL will generally require more frequent repointing and more sophisticated forwarding table updates. Also, for in-plane you only need a total of two links. (All of this is for lasers or point-to-point RF).
Also, regardless of what frequency they’d use, are SpaceX still planning much lower altitudes, ie VLEO at 340km?
How much is “50%”? 7500?Also, regardless of what frequency they’d use, are SpaceX still planning much lower altitudes, ie VLEO at 340km?
On March 1, 2017, SpaceX filed an application for a proposed NGSO fixed satellite service (FSS) satellite system in the V-band. The proposed SpaceX system consists of the addition of V-band frequencies to the 4,425 NGSO satellites previously authorized to allow the use of both Ku- and V-band spectrum for user links, and both Ka- and V-band spectrum for gateway links and tracking, telemetry, and command functions. SpaceX also proposes to add a very-low-Earth orbit(VLEO) NGSO constellation, consisting of 7,518 satellites operating at altitudes from 335 km to 346 km, using V-band spectrum for all links to and from associated earth stations. The V-band frequencies proposed are: 37.5-42.0 GHz (space-to-Earth), and 47.2-50.2 GHz, and 50.4-51.4 GHz (Earth-to-space).
Those are separate questions.
Starlink, at least so far, has resisted all hacking & jamming attempts
Döpfner: What happens if the Russians and Chinese are targeting satellites? Is that also a threat for Starlink?Musk: It was interesting to view the Russian anti-satellite demonstration a few months ago in the context of this conflict. Because that caused a lot of strife for satellite operators. It even had some danger for the space station, where there are Russian cosmonauts. So why did they do that? It was a message in advance of the Ukraine invasion. If you attempt to take out Starlink, this is not easy because there are 2000 satellites. That means a lot of anti-satellite missiles. I hope we do not have to put this to a test, but I think we can launch satellites faster than they can launch anti-satellites missiles.
Starlink 🛰 team too! Expecting over 4200 Starlink satellites in operation within 18 months, which is ~2/3 of all active satellites of Earth.
SpaceX's Gen2 amended application does have VLEO slots, but don't know if it can overlap successfully with approved V-band system (if I am understanding your implication correctly).Gen2 in VLEO5,280 @ 340km5,280 @ 345km5,280 @ 350km3,600 @ 360kmV-Band in VLEO2,493 @ 335.9km2,478 @ 340.8km 2,547 @ 345.6km
The Starlink system provided speeds up to 30 times faster during the week long test.
U.S. Air Force testing SpaceX Starlink as a communications option for supporting F-35A fighter jetQuoteThe Starlink system provided speeds up to 30 times faster during the week long test.https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/u-s-air-force-testing-spacex-starlink-as-a-communications-option-for-supporting-f-35a-fighter-jet/
I suggest (based on past constellations and some quick back of the envelope cost estimates for replenishment) about 1 million users is the approximate crossover point to being profitable, or at least self-sustaining. Of course, contracts with the military help profitability tremendously as they tend to be higher margin, so they might already be close to profitable if they stopped investing a massive amount to grow the capability.They’re at, what, a quarter million right now?
Quote from: Robotbeat on 04/06/2022 03:25 pmI suggest (based on past constellations and some quick back of the envelope cost estimates for replenishment) about 1 million users is the approximate crossover point to being profitable, or at least self-sustaining. Of course, contracts with the military help profitability tremendously as they tend to be higher margin, so they might already be close to profitable if they stopped investing a massive amount to grow the capability.They’re at, what, a quarter million right now?https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1493358044989767683That's 250k * $110 * 12 = $330M/year
I think the rate of adding weekly subscriber's is the important metric until the customer base is larger or stable-ish. IIRC the latest production number was 5000 terminals per week. That's far to slow and we know that Starlink wants to get to much higher numbers but they want to get the price down too. ... snip ...