Was there any hints at a potential merger between the Starlink side of spaceX and/or an established sat manufacturer (SSL ?) or more probably a sat operator with an experience in managing a large fleet (e.g Iridium or Telesat) ?
Quote from: Mike Jones on 06/10/2018 09:35 amWas there any hints at a potential merger between the Starlink side of spaceX and/or an established sat manufacturer (SSL ?) or more probably a sat operator with an experience in managing a large fleet (e.g Iridium or Telesat) ?Will they poach people from established companies? Obviously. But from their perspective, I doubt any company has meaningful expertise in either constellation management or satellite manufacturing. Iridium has the largest constellation ever launched and it is only 98 satellites. On the manufacturing side, I would imagine that they probably view the institutional knowledge and equipment of existing concerns as being tailored towards the production of massively expensive, bespoke satellites, which is anathema to them.
So what is the likely max amount of uplink/downlink capacity of any given gateway station on Earth surface?Each sat will be able to produce several frequency channels per spot: 8 to 16 channels X2 for left and right antenna circular polarization.Each sat will be able to produce several spots: ~16.Each channel is 1Gbps.Each sat has 5 laser links to its neighbors. Each of those should be equal in throughput to the U/D link.That puts the U/D throughput per sat at ~256Gbps to 512Gbps.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 06/10/2018 08:14 pmSo what is the likely max amount of uplink/downlink capacity of any given gateway station on Earth surface?Each sat will be able to produce several frequency channels per spot: 8 to 16 channels X2 for left and right antenna circular polarization.Each sat will be able to produce several spots: ~16.Each channel is 1Gbps.Each sat has 5 laser links to its neighbors. Each of those should be equal in throughput to the U/D link.That puts the U/D throughput per sat at ~256Gbps to 512Gbps.Even ignoring the backhaul capacity, that is a beastly number. (512 Gbps/satellite)*(4425 satellites)*(30 days) gives ~730 EB/month. Assuming that >90% of that capacity is wasted by time spent over the ocean, deserts, etc. it is still a large fraction of total global usage, which is estimated to be ~150 EB/month currently.
Are you proposing two kinds of Starlink satellites, one for optical and one for RF?What we "know" so far indicates that each satellite would have both RF to ground and optical for sat-to-sat, and there would be only "one" type (perhaps specialized for LEO vs VLEO and both surely evolved over time, but otherwise "the same")
Each sat has 5 laser links to its neighbors. Each of those should be equal in throughput to the U/D link.
Quote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 06/10/2018 08:14 pmEach sat has 5 laser links to its neighbors. Each of those should be equal in throughput to the U/D link.Of note, freespace optics lasercomm is not much higher than 2-3Gbps for near COTS stuff right now, so unless you are doing some impressive multiplexing you are not going to see 100Gbps+ unless somebody has been hiding some innovations...
The Starlink sats use Ku-band for user links and Ka-band for gateway links. The Ku beam communicates with multiple users but a Ka beam only communicates with a single gateway at a time (and up to four satellites can communicate with a gateway). For the Ku beams they use different polarities for uplink and downlink, for Ka downlink beams they can use both polarities at the same frequency. This is all in the documentation.
SpaceX’s ultimate ace in the hole is its Starlink satellite internet business
Just by sheer numbers alone, stepping from launch vehicle and spacecraft production and operations into the satellite manufacturing, services, and connectivity industries is a no-brainer. Bluntly speaking, the market for rocket launches makes up barely more than one-sixtieth – less than 2% – of the entire commercial satellite industry, while services (telecommunications, Earth observation, science, etc.) and equipment (user terminals, GPS receivers, antennae, etc) account for more than 93%. Even the satellite manufacturing industry taken on its own is more than three times as large as the launch industry – $15.5b versus $4.6b in 2017.
Excellent new article by vaporcobra:QuoteSpaceX’s ultimate ace in the hole is its Starlink satellite internet businessQuoteJust by sheer numbers alone, stepping from launch vehicle and spacecraft production and operations into the satellite manufacturing, services, and connectivity industries is a no-brainer. Bluntly speaking, the market for rocket launches makes up barely more than one-sixtieth – less than 2% – of the entire commercial satellite industry, while services (telecommunications, Earth observation, science, etc.) and equipment (user terminals, GPS receivers, antennae, etc) account for more than 93%. Even the satellite manufacturing industry taken on its own is more than three times as large as the launch industry – $15.5b versus $4.6b in 2017.https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-market-value-launch-business/
The satellite and launch business industries are tightly tied such that an increase of 20% in satellite industry would have a near equal 20% increase in the launch industry. The LEO comm constellations are set to create an 20%+ increase in the launch rates. So this should also increase the satellite industry side by the same expansion. But the these new sats are mostly not built by the same existing sat manufactures but new kids on the block. So the ratio of 3 to 1 sat to launch may not apply to this growth.
Quote from: Asteroza on 06/11/2018 07:24 amQuote from: oldAtlas_Eguy on 06/10/2018 08:14 pmEach sat has 5 laser links to its neighbors. Each of those should be equal in throughput to the U/D link.Of note, freespace optics lasercomm is not much higher than 2-3Gbps for near COTS stuff right now, so unless you are doing some impressive multiplexing you are not going to see 100Gbps+ unless somebody has been hiding some innovations...Those 2-3 Gbps are for a single wavelength, right? So you mean multiplexing by using lasers with different wavelengths for the same beam?
A large percentage of the population carry around $600 iPhones that have a service life of 2 years, (and a 3rd passed onto a poorer relative! d child.)Will the terminals all be individual, or will there be a tendency, or plan, to use them as "hot spots"?
Even though initially the higher bps rate ground terminals will be significantly more expensive. Very quickly the cost of the ground terminals for any bit rate will merge to a singularly low cost because of technology/manufacturing will advance on GT's faster than for the sats because of the quantities involved and the large number of competitive sources for hardware innovations.