Meta-comment: I haven't seen this noted elsewhere, but there's been a very sudden and significant acceleration in the pace of space launch. So far there have been 22 launches this year, which is about double the pace of last year. And there are more than 180 launches planned -- again, double the pace of last year. The most launches ever to occur in a single year was 139 -- during the height of the space race in 1967. Although many of this year's planned launches will undoubtedly slip into next year, we're quite likely to set an all-time record:
Also notable is the fact that of the 22 launches this year, three have been the debuts of entirely new vehicles, two of which were entirely privately funded. There are likely to be several more private launch vehicle debuts this year.
This is a really significant shift for what had long been a moribund industry, and a lot of complementary innovations will be able to piggyback onto this momentum.
I'm interested in what the total system gain, EIRP and power looks like in an Astranis spot beam from geostationary, as compared to a current-generation 4000 to 6500 kilogram geostationary satellite with Ku and Ka band spot beams.
I am optimistic but also skeptical. The size and power of the satellite will influence what the size of VSAT terminals needs to be, and also the earth stations/major teleports. The example size of the satellite shown in the URL is so much smaller than current geostationary satellites that I don't see how the Tx power from each transponder will be anywhere near the power on a much bigger, costlier satellite.
Let's say for example I have put together from industry standard components, a 3.0 meter compact cassegrain Ku-band antenna in a remote part of Nepal, with a 40W BUC and a relatively recent Comtech EF Data modem. Are you planning on selling 1:1 dedicated capacity SCPC (and MCPC) type transponder kHz on a monthly basis? Or are you planning on standardizing on your own type of VSAT hardware terminal in bulk and selling contended access only?
Where do you see your value proposition for high capacity IP trunk links as compared to an ISP buying a 2 x 1.8m dish o3b terminal, and dedicated capacity through o3b? What will your $/Mbps rate look like compared to o3b with a monthly spend of 2500 or 3500 dollars?
What effect does the small size of the satellite have on the cost and complexity of the terminal?
The small-aperture terminal market has been driven by GEO satellites getting bigger, a lot bigger. Yes, we can fit more satellite in a small package, and solar cells have gotten more efficient, but there are laws-of-physics issues involving the size of the antenna, power requirements, etc. that aren't going to go away.
Geosynchronous satellite spacing is determined by the ability of ground stations to resolve satellites so there is a certain number of satellites that can fly, so there is a pressure towards large high-performance satellites that can deliver the maximum capacity as opposed to launching fewer low-performance satellites. Already the high-capacity satellites have insufficient bandwidth to serve demand (otherwise people would just be getting satellite instead of asking for terrestrial internet) and I don't see how low-capacity satellites will actually help.
I see similar problem with the terminals for systems like the SpaceX constellation. To get "wireless equivalent" performance I see the ground terminal requiring some kind of electronically scanned array which would put the cost upwards of $6000.
There is a precedent for satellite services with a high-cost terminal, as back in the 1980s many people would spend about that much for an unlicensed satellite terminal to receive TV, but since that was pirate there was no subscription fee. Compare that to $100 a month for cable and that pays for itself in 5 years.
I have this funny feeling that next-gen satellite providers want to have the expensive terminal AND the expensive service -- possibly because of the "Juicero" issue that the people bankrolling them don't know what prices look like to the average customer.
Why do you think this pin-point for-hire internet sat service is better than a constellation? Is it because you can profit right away without an initial setup cost of the constellation? But in the long run the constellation pays off and might drive you out of business, right?
In a world where OneWeb and/or Starlink exist, how would a service with 10x worse latency compete? Are you betting that both will fail? Otherwise you'll only have a couple of years to recoup the entire cost of your system before it becomes obsolete.
Where does the "industry’s targeted $75 per megabit per second per month for dedicated bandwidth" figure come from? Is it a satellite industry figure, or submarine cable cost, or normal terrestial fiber haul cost, or...?
I don't see the novelty on this at all. Geostationary satellites are pretty much the standard for satellite internet for years. I had a broadband connection like that on my first job, 15 years ago.
It's off course very welcome if they can get higher transfer speeds, cleaner and lighter satellites and newer technologies to the mix, but that's it. The biggest problem with satellite internet: the latency, is not going to be solved.
Which is fine, I must say, since they are in the business of bringing Internet to where there's none. But these new Internet users will arrive without access to the Internet's most incredible features, such as real time voice and video communication, interactive website experiences and online gamming.
Funny how you say those are the most incredible features.
For me (and obviously this is personal preference, so please don't take offence) these are "nice to have" features.
What I'm really after are (and have been, since I kinda grew out of FPS games)
* google/$INFORMATION
* Wikipedia
* podcasts
* spotify/torrent/$MUSIC
* blogs/twitter
* youtube/netflix/torrent/$VIDEO
pretty much in that order. None of which would be a problem on satellite (albeit less convenient) but would make a day/night difference for me.
As for the "interactive website experiences", that's usually the part I like the least about a website, which is why I use uMatrix most of the time, making pages more readable (or, depending on the JS affinity of the people making them, completely unreadable)
Most large GEO's today still use purely analog repeaters. Having a true digital payload where we're doing digital signal processing on board the satellite is a significant step forward.
To get to the lower costs that we're aiming for, going to software defined radios was a necessary step. That's because it gives us the ability to build many satellites that are as identical as possible without hardwiring in the specific frequencies like they do with analog satellites today. It's hard to overstate the importance of that technology for what we're doing and the low cost targets we need to hit to get unconnected people online.
Isn't latency a major issue for connectivity with satellites in geosynchronous orbit? I'm curious what their approach is here, either technically or what customer use cases they are targeting.
The distance to GEO does add some latency due to the distance, that’s the main trade off. What we found in studying this problem for a long time was that 95% of internet traffic isn’t latency sensitive— CDN traffic, video streaming, audio streaming, file downloads, social media posts, etc. The bandwidth crunch is a huge problem to solve but we realized there is low hanging fruit here that we can go after by putting satellites one at a time in GEO and putting a dent in it immediately. vs LEO constellations where you have to put up hundred of satellites (at a cost of billions of dollars) just to get started.
How is 10Gb/s achieved and how reliable is that BW in the presence weather? What is the practical coverage area of the satellite and what would the typical user BW be on a clear day? How would the BW change on a rainy day?
There's a reason that no other company tries to use geosynchronous orbit.
Stationary orbit is at a distance of 35800 km above sea level, which implies a one way latency of 110 ms based off the speed of light. Since any request from a user requires a total of 2 round way trips (one for request, one for response), the minimum latency for a request is 440 ms.
Avg latency with fiber is something like 30-60 ms, so we can assume an average request with Astranis will have ~500 latency.
Most modern webpages will not be able to support such latency. Astranis will need to essentially cache webpages on demand and deliver them to the end user as a fully rendered page, which will introduce security headaches.
I don't see why Astranis chose this vs a lower orbit.
"no other company tries to use geostationary" - uhm, probably 85% of the satellite industry by gross revenue is based on geostationary platforms. Look at Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat, Asiasat, the various north american Ku, BSS and Ka band TV satellites, etc.
> any request from a user requires a total of 2 [sequential] round way trips (one for request, one for response)
Please elaborate? This makes no sense to me. Certainly, this is not the case for terrestrial communication (request/response latency is only 2× the one-way latency).
[+] [-] nkoren|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_spaceflight
Also notable is the fact that of the 22 launches this year, three have been the debuts of entirely new vehicles, two of which were entirely privately funded. There are likely to be several more private launch vehicle debuts this year.
This is a really significant shift for what had long been a moribund industry, and a lot of complementary innovations will be able to piggyback onto this momentum.
[+] [-] wastedhours|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gedmark|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|8 years ago|reply
I'm interested in what the total system gain, EIRP and power looks like in an Astranis spot beam from geostationary, as compared to a current-generation 4000 to 6500 kilogram geostationary satellite with Ku and Ka band spot beams.
I am optimistic but also skeptical. The size and power of the satellite will influence what the size of VSAT terminals needs to be, and also the earth stations/major teleports. The example size of the satellite shown in the URL is so much smaller than current geostationary satellites that I don't see how the Tx power from each transponder will be anywhere near the power on a much bigger, costlier satellite.
Let's say for example I have put together from industry standard components, a 3.0 meter compact cassegrain Ku-band antenna in a remote part of Nepal, with a 40W BUC and a relatively recent Comtech EF Data modem. Are you planning on selling 1:1 dedicated capacity SCPC (and MCPC) type transponder kHz on a monthly basis? Or are you planning on standardizing on your own type of VSAT hardware terminal in bulk and selling contended access only?
Where do you see your value proposition for high capacity IP trunk links as compared to an ISP buying a 2 x 1.8m dish o3b terminal, and dedicated capacity through o3b? What will your $/Mbps rate look like compared to o3b with a monthly spend of 2500 or 3500 dollars?
[+] [-] PaulHoule|8 years ago|reply
The small-aperture terminal market has been driven by GEO satellites getting bigger, a lot bigger. Yes, we can fit more satellite in a small package, and solar cells have gotten more efficient, but there are laws-of-physics issues involving the size of the antenna, power requirements, etc. that aren't going to go away.
Geosynchronous satellite spacing is determined by the ability of ground stations to resolve satellites so there is a certain number of satellites that can fly, so there is a pressure towards large high-performance satellites that can deliver the maximum capacity as opposed to launching fewer low-performance satellites. Already the high-capacity satellites have insufficient bandwidth to serve demand (otherwise people would just be getting satellite instead of asking for terrestrial internet) and I don't see how low-capacity satellites will actually help.
I see similar problem with the terminals for systems like the SpaceX constellation. To get "wireless equivalent" performance I see the ground terminal requiring some kind of electronically scanned array which would put the cost upwards of $6000.
There is a precedent for satellite services with a high-cost terminal, as back in the 1980s many people would spend about that much for an unlicensed satellite terminal to receive TV, but since that was pirate there was no subscription fee. Compare that to $100 a month for cable and that pays for itself in 5 years.
I have this funny feeling that next-gen satellite providers want to have the expensive terminal AND the expensive service -- possibly because of the "Juicero" issue that the people bankrolling them don't know what prices look like to the average customer.
I would love it if you could prove me wrong.
[+] [-] planteen|8 years ago|reply
1. What bandwidth capacity are you aiming for per spacecraft?
2. Are you using commercial or rad hard parts?
3. Is there a deployable antenna that makes the spacecraft larger than 3'x3'x3'?
[+] [-] caio1982|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modeless|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caio1982|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fulafel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RobLach|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryananderson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caio1982|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephpmay|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guhcampos|8 years ago|reply
It's off course very welcome if they can get higher transfer speeds, cleaner and lighter satellites and newer technologies to the mix, but that's it. The biggest problem with satellite internet: the latency, is not going to be solved.
Which is fine, I must say, since they are in the business of bringing Internet to where there's none. But these new Internet users will arrive without access to the Internet's most incredible features, such as real time voice and video communication, interactive website experiences and online gamming.
[+] [-] black_puppydog|8 years ago|reply
* google/$INFORMATION
* Wikipedia
* podcasts
* spotify/torrent/$MUSIC
* blogs/twitter
* youtube/netflix/torrent/$VIDEO
pretty much in that order. None of which would be a problem on satellite (albeit less convenient) but would make a day/night difference for me.
As for the "interactive website experiences", that's usually the part I like the least about a website, which is why I use uMatrix most of the time, making pages more readable (or, depending on the JS affinity of the people making them, completely unreadable)
[+] [-] gedmark|8 years ago|reply
To get to the lower costs that we're aiming for, going to software defined radios was a necessary step. That's because it gives us the ability to build many satellites that are as identical as possible without hardwiring in the specific frequencies like they do with analog satellites today. It's hard to overstate the importance of that technology for what we're doing and the low cost targets we need to hit to get unconnected people online.
[+] [-] nappy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gedmark|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmmBacon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] consciouskernel|8 years ago|reply
Stationary orbit is at a distance of 35800 km above sea level, which implies a one way latency of 110 ms based off the speed of light. Since any request from a user requires a total of 2 round way trips (one for request, one for response), the minimum latency for a request is 440 ms.
Avg latency with fiber is something like 30-60 ms, so we can assume an average request with Astranis will have ~500 latency.
Most modern webpages will not be able to support such latency. Astranis will need to essentially cache webpages on demand and deliver them to the end user as a fully rendered page, which will introduce security headaches.
I don't see why Astranis chose this vs a lower orbit.
[+] [-] wmf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colanderman|8 years ago|reply
Please elaborate? This makes no sense to me. Certainly, this is not the case for terrestrial communication (request/response latency is only 2× the one-way latency).
[+] [-] tomrod|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CamperBob2|8 years ago|reply