Quote from: ThomasGadd on 06/30/2019 07:11 pmQuote from: speedevil on 06/30/2019 04:12 pmQuote from: Keldor on 06/29/2019 11:22 pmInitially, they're not going to have a lot of collective bandwidth with their satellites since they just won't have most of them up. During this time, using satellites as relays between two ground stations puts less stress on the constellation's resources.Caching may also help a lot, on several levels.A whole netflix library these days is several kilograms of flash. This could plausibly sit on each sat.Several tens of gigabytes of storage in the end-user device along with multicast would enable a severalfold reduction of traffic for denser regions. (your neighbour starts watching the latest episode of whatever when it's released, and it's downloaded en-block to everyone in that cell).Multicast for live events, similarly.Look at how content serving is done now, on large specialized server farms. Adding that level of complexity to all the satellites would be a lot of overhead. Adding some limited capability to the satellite may significantly increase its effective capacity without interlinks.
Quote from: speedevil on 06/30/2019 04:12 pmQuote from: Keldor on 06/29/2019 11:22 pmInitially, they're not going to have a lot of collective bandwidth with their satellites since they just won't have most of them up. During this time, using satellites as relays between two ground stations puts less stress on the constellation's resources.Caching may also help a lot, on several levels.A whole netflix library these days is several kilograms of flash. This could plausibly sit on each sat.Several tens of gigabytes of storage in the end-user device along with multicast would enable a severalfold reduction of traffic for denser regions. (your neighbour starts watching the latest episode of whatever when it's released, and it's downloaded en-block to everyone in that cell).Multicast for live events, similarly.Look at how content serving is done now, on large specialized server farms. Adding that level of complexity to all the satellites would be a lot of overhead.
Quote from: Keldor on 06/29/2019 11:22 pmInitially, they're not going to have a lot of collective bandwidth with their satellites since they just won't have most of them up. During this time, using satellites as relays between two ground stations puts less stress on the constellation's resources.Caching may also help a lot, on several levels.A whole netflix library these days is several kilograms of flash. This could plausibly sit on each sat.Several tens of gigabytes of storage in the end-user device along with multicast would enable a severalfold reduction of traffic for denser regions. (your neighbour starts watching the latest episode of whatever when it's released, and it's downloaded en-block to everyone in that cell).Multicast for live events, similarly.
Initially, they're not going to have a lot of collective bandwidth with their satellites since they just won't have most of them up. During this time, using satellites as relays between two ground stations puts less stress on the constellation's resources.
You can find initial filing for first 6 gateway stations here, I believe they later updated the # of antennas to 4 per station.The antenna they're using seems to be this one (or something similar), its price is about $40K.You can see an actual station here, it's just a trailer with 4 antenna domes on it.I believe the long term plan is to use their own phase array antenna at gateway stations, which presumably would be a lot cheaper.
ground segment will be an important investment to operate at full capacity (and might constitute the weakness of the project), at least until the new generation of sats using intercommunication technology are deployed, but it's not supposed to be in the first 4400 sats.
Quote from: kartofell on 07/01/2019 01:50 pmground segment will be an important investment to operate at full capacity (and might constitute the weakness of the project), at least until the new generation of sats using intercommunication technology are deployed, but it's not supposed to be in the first 4400 sats.I hadn't heard that such a huge block wouldn't have intersat lasers -- is there a source for this?
Quote from: Tulse on 07/02/2019 05:20 pmQuote from: kartofell on 07/01/2019 01:50 pmground segment will be an important investment to operate at full capacity (and might constitute the weakness of the project), at least until the new generation of sats using intercommunication technology are deployed, but it's not supposed to be in the first 4400 sats.I hadn't heard that such a huge block wouldn't have intersat lasers -- is there a source for this?They haven't said exactly how many won't have interconnects. It could be a lot less than 4400. I'd guess it will be at least 800-1600. Their initial focus is getting the first 550km shell up as soon as possible, which is about 1600 satellites.
Story about Starlink contracted a UK company AQL to build a gateway station at an abandoned school yard in a Norwegian village, but it's facing local opposition: https://www.nrk.no/nordland/pa-en-nedlagt-skole-i-oksnes-skal-det-settes-opp-antenner-til-elon-musk-sitt-internettprosjekt-1.16055175
Story about Starlink contracted a UK company AQL to build a gateway station at an abandoned school yard in a Norwegian village, but it's facing local opposition
Starlink Gen2 Gateway "Megasites"! (h/t @kierank_). This is from a UK filing about a new site in Wherstead, UK being built by @HiberniaNetwork. The first of these sites appears to be in Prosser, WA, which was constructed in June 2022. @mikepuchol @Megaconstellati @RealTeslaNorth"SpaceX explains that two Ka-band gateway beams are transmitted at the same frequency, right hand circular polarization and left hand circular polarization, and 32 satellites may communicate with the same gateway at the same time, for a maximum of 64 co-frequency beams"Connecting back to the PoP, using Dark Fiber. Early reports on Reddit suggested they were buying 100G waves (https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/jybmgn/we_are_the_starlink_team_ask_us_anything/gd2tcq2/).
SpaceX’s Bellingham, WA Starlink Gateway site has been built! (sat imagery from Dec 16th)
Starlink Gateways under construciton / newly built:Angola, IN (construction, Oct 29th)Benkelman, NE (early construction, Nov 4th)Brunkswick, ME (complete, Nov 7th)Sat images of 19 of 32 proposed Gateway sites: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16249DVWjRVnEYoJQFvjBgsEOfiCLJgcN (some were not availalbe)
It appears the Brunswick site is built to accomodate 32 antennas, squinting at it, the other likely are as well.
Now it's 20 out of 35... few more to check.
On 12/27, SpaceX filed to build 5 US Gateway Megasites with E-Band (81-86Ghz TX, 71-76Ghz RX)! Anderson, SC (existing)Benkelman, NE (new)Blountsvilole, AL (new)Savannah, TN (existing)Surrency, GA (new)(h/t to u/feral_engineer on Reddit)
Update: SpaceX has applied for more! (18)Anderson, SCBenkelman, NEBlountsvilole, ALSavannah, TNSurrency, GAAdelanto, CAArlington, ORMarshall, TXProsser, WARomulus, NYSheffield, ILBrunswick, MEClinton, ILSavanna, ILElkton, MDRoberts, WIYork, PAPort Matilda, PA
With these new locations, SpaceX has applied for 99 unique gatway sites across 40 states/territories (GU, PR, and 38 states)
Hello guys, I'm new on the forum and just wanted to share some ideas...Considering the last 1B$ development fund Musk managed to obtain, it seems very likely that it would be enough to finance manufacturing sats + launch for about 15-20 launches, that should covers the US easily as he said and starts to show revenues rapidly. However nothing is said about gateways and ground control facilities he would need to operate his constellation. I believe it is rather expensive to operate a constellation. I've read from Globalsat that "managing high fixed-cost infrastructures is an important challenge" for them and they spend around $200 million each year in their ground facilities. Does it apply to SpaceX ? Maybe they have so many sats that the cost of building ground facilities will be easily absorbed...I am curious to know how it works, how many ground stations and gateway do you need to operate such a constellation ? If you want to cover the whole world, you'll probably need to build facilities at every corner of the planet... political issues may arise if we consider the potential military use of Starlink.Anyway, Musk talked a lot about manufacturing its satellites and deploy them but stayed rather quiet about the ground facilities it would requiere.
