Watch SpaceX launch a Falcon 9 rocket packed with Starlink satellites this Star Wars Day - Today 3pm Eastern

Space.com ^ | 05/04/21 | Space Today

[srmanuel]

This never gets old to me, especially the landings, but today at 3:01pm Eastern the next batch of SpaceX/Starlink satellites are scheduled to be launched.

Anything can happen but the weather looks good for a launch today...

This will be the 26th launch of 60 satellites, which means about 1550 Starlink satellites are up there in LEO offering internet service to a rapidly growing beta test base...including users in the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.....

[fireman15]

This low earth orbit shrapnel traveling at 17,500 mph or 9 times faster than a 50 caliber bullet is only expected to stay in orbit about 3 years before it drops back to the ground. Each one weighs approximately 600 pounds. There are currently 1,300 circling the earth but the plan is for around 7,500. Does anyone have any idea how much destructive force a 600 pound object traveling 9 times the speed of a 50 caliber bullet has. If something goes haywire on the reentry routine there could be some pretty big problems. And no they are not going to burn up in the atmosphere like most meteors.

[SunkenCiv]

Starlink IPO Confirmed by Musk: When Can You Expect Stock?
By Amber Deter
Originally posted February 11, 2021
Updated on March 8 at 12:37 pm
https://investmentu.com/starlink-ipo/

[SunkenCiv]

Starlink Internet service could be “fully mobile” by the end of the year
Shane McGlaun - Apr 18, 2021, 9:09am CDT
https://www.slashgear.com/starlink-internet-service-could-be-fully-mobile-by-the-end-of-the-year-18669257/

FCC approves SpaceX change to its Starlink network, a win despite objections from Amazon and others
PUBLISHED TUE, APR 27 2021 11:12 AM EDT
UPDATED TUE, APR 27 20217:08 PM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/27/fcc-approves-spacex-starlink-modification-despite-objections.html

[pnz1]

Thanks for the heads-up.. will have to go outside and watch for it 😊

[Jane Long]

Bfl.

[srmanuel]

I think the stock is a long term big time winner...

I don’t think a competitor exists right now that has worldwide reach in terms of internet service...meaning Starlink already has customers all over the world and it’s still in beta test......

As a network engineer I worked with a couple of customers that had worldwide networks, my last job had me supporting sites in Australia, New Zealand, Papua Papua New Guinea, China, and pretty every other major city in Asia, they all had different telco providers, it was a pain to learn all the country specific telco standards that were used...

Starlink can go beyond all that and offer internet service from one company worldwide....one might exist but I don’t know of any other company that can do that...putting their potential customer base in the 10s of millions if not more....

I could easily see countries all over Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific working with Starlink but subsidizing their service to expand internet access to really remote areas....

[AFreeBird]

These sats are not bullet shaped and at 600lbs is gonna burn up. Now if we were talking 600 tons; that would be different.

[SunkenCiv]

I wholeheartedly agree. The postwar archipelogo nations off SE Asia immediately saw the advantage of using satellite downlinks to build out their local comm systems, due to, well, a lot of islands, lower overall cost, and rapidity of the buildout.

I got fiber here not long ago, and it's been great (the download speeds are, uh, remarkable), but had it not been available, I'd have considered Starlink, no question about it. There are plenty of Starlink customer vids out there now, a bunch from people in remote and sparsely populated areas with no other options, and they've got a lot of good info about their experience.

[ready2brd]

Nothing. They are designed to completely burn up upon re-entry in the atmosphere.

[srmanuel]

I routinely check YouTube for new Starlink Videos, specifically looking for new places where it’s being beta tested and any new speed increases...

Beta Test users are springing up in Australia and New Zealand a lot recently....
I’ve also seen a few users reporting 300mb plus download speeds, which is a game changer for remote areas....

Australia evidently has been trying to implement a National Broadband Network (NBN) to really remote areas and Starlink is likely to make that network a waste of time and money unless by competition they rapidly pickup the pace and compete, which is going to be very, very difficult....

Getting a Starlink terminal sent to you and setting it up in less than 1 hour and pulling in 300mb downloads in really remote areas versus fiber being run everywhere is a no brainer on who will win that customer....

If Starlink can deliver on equipment and service, they going to very big and VERY profitable IMO..

[fireman15]

These sats are not bullet shaped and at 600lbs is gonna burn up. Now if we were talking 600 tons; that would be different.

Better sharpen your pencils Poindexters! With the increasing amount of objects being launched into space... debris from normal space junk weighing a heck of a lot less than 600 tons is making it to earth every day now. The International Space Station weighs 450 tons. And it took more than 30 missions to get all of the pieces into space.

Space debris is starting to become a real problem. "SpaceX has the Federal Communications Commission’s permission to launch 12,000 Starlink satellites. And to enhance internet service, the company plans to launch 30,000 more and has applied for priority spectrum rights to these additional satellites with the FCC." That is 42,000 satellites altogether which is an unprecidented amount of space junk. So far 3% of the launches have resulted in failures. 3% have resulted in space debris orbiting the earth in completely out of control and in unpredictable paths and that doesn't include 47 more that were succesfully "deorbited" after being found to be defective. The actual rate of defective Starlink satellites is closer to 10%.

These satellites are being operated at a much lower altitude than most, 340 miles. They are actually called "very low earth orbit sattelites". At low very orbit the satellites will not be hitting the atmosphere at high enough velocities for most to completely burn up.

I am not a genius like the two of you; I had to read about this to find out that there were potential problems developing.

"Space debris created by past rocket launches, dead satellites and other space missions is a burning concern for scientists and aerospace companies globally. Just this week, a defunct Soviet satellite almost smashed into a Chinese rocket body in space."

https://observer.com/2020/10/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-risk-space-debris/

Just one of dozens if not hundreds of articles about the issues developing which have been known about for many years now. But I am glad that you two are not losing any sleep over it.

[SunkenCiv]

The fiber buildout is (or is going to become) financed by cell companies, because without a faster ground network, they're not going to get 5G, 6G, etc. My view is, with the rising price of copper, the traditional landline companies should be building that and selling capacity to the mobile vendors, and finance part of that by a one-size-fits-all home service (web, landline at a single price, and optional cable -- but who cares about that?) by recovery of the old buried copper lines, since copper prices are up and are likely to continue to rise.

I took SpaceX's Starlink 'Dishy' to my cousin's farm! | Jeff Geerling | April 9, 2021

This is the first of a series of videos where I'll be exploring Starlink, SpaceX's new satellite-based Internet service.

[SunkenCiv]

Caveat: this guy’s a dipstick. His country cousin is the funny one, which means, it’s worse than you even think.

[SunkenCiv]

You may not want to finish this video. I couldn't. And I set the URL to skip his first ad.

Gaming on STARLINK!! | Linus Tech Tips | February 9, 2021

[srmanuel]

The problem with 5G or 6G or whatever follows is it will require as you said infrastructure to be built....

By the end of 2021 at it’s current pace Starlink will be out of beta test in a lot of areas....their biggest 3 factors are getting dishes out, launching new satellites and corresponding ground stations to handle the expanding coverage.....

The problem with traditional telecom providers is in most of the world they are state owned or heavily subsidized companies who don’t have to really compete for business and competition to them is a unknown concept....

[Vaduz]

Australian guy grabs shot gun for another Mir photo shoot.

[SunkenCiv]

It's a problem in much of the world, but here in the rust belt (and in legacy urban areas in US, Europe, Asia) it makes tons of sense. OTOH, I wholeheartedly agree -- Musk is going to offer direct satellite phone service, and probably within five years. Hard to believe something as new as mobile telephony can meet a disruptive force, but his photo should be in the dictionary at the "disruptive force" definition.

[SunkenCiv]

Bunch of these:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+does+spacex+build+so+fast

[srmanuel]

This doesn’t get mentioned very often but the military is testing Starlink and investing money in it for potential future use....

Think about our adversaries, Russia, China, North Korea, etc....Starlink will have dozens of LEO satellites over their countries at all times...I don’t think it would be a stretch to add spying capabilities in the satellites that would drive our enemies insane knowing the US Military has that many satellites overhead in LEO at all times...