Starlink satellite-train visible with the naked eye

[thanatos_dem]

Looks a lot like the cloud ark from Neil Stevenson’s hard science fiction book ”Seveneves”.

The long of the short of it is that moon goes boom, kills life on earth, humanity survives onboard the ISS and a flurry of small habitation pods which are splayed out into a string so they share an orbit, but isolated in case they get hit by space debris.

The book came out in 2015, and despite having a fictional plot, nearly all of the science checks out.

[sharcerer]

that novel was amazing. I loved the 5000 year jump too. Although I found it difficult to visualize some of the futuristic parts. I think a movie is being made based on the novel.

[aristophenes]

Imagine all the people who have never heard about SpaceX that see these. They will think the aliens have arrived :)

[agildehaus]

https://twitter.com/hashtag/ufo

Already happening.

[childintime]

Counted 52 spots, plus an additional 2 which only appeared briefly and dimly, a little off the track of the others. 4 or 5 dots seem to be pairs. So that acounts for pretty much all satellites. I'd like to experience this for myself. With 12000 of them the sky will be quite littered with them though. Astronomy will never be the same again.

[Kutta]

You can only see LEO satellites near dawn and dusk. They are in shadow most of the time at night.

[chomp]

>I’d like to experience this for myself.

Find out when the satellites pass over you!

Here's the TLE data that someone estimated: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/May-2019/0207.html

Here's an online calculator: https://www.satellite-calculations.com/TLETracker/SatTracker...

Plug in the TLE data, select your town or enter your coordinates, and generate a 24 hour projection! Find a time where the elevation is higher than 10 or 20 degrees so that you can actually see it.

[mrep]

Here is another video: https://vimeo.com/338361997

[clashmoore]

Like morse code trying to tell us something.

[childintime]

Good info on starlink: https://wyliodrin.com/post/starlink-the-internet-of-space

6 months ago, so not accurate about the height.

[anthuman]

I respect and admire the risks Musk is willing to take and am amazed that he is able to find financial backers for his projects.

But I have to wonder whether the internet connection can be maintained during cloudy days and what the expected upload/download speeds will be and finally what the expected costs will be.

Affordable and globally available internet could be a game-changer. If viable, couldn't it challenge wireless carriers and ISPs?

Also, aren't there geopolitical ramifications. Would China, Russia, EU, etc allow their citizens to access the starlink system? Or will starlink have to be censored, filtered and monitored in these regions?

[HeadsUpHigh]

>But I have to wonder whether the internet connection can be maintained during cloudy days and what the expected upload/download speeds will be and finally what the expected costs will be.

Depends on the size of the constellation. Ultimately I think they want to have 3 sats visible at any given time which should be enough. The bands used can penetrate though anyway. I've seen numbers quoted of speeds up to 1gbps, so basically "good enough". I'm currently using a 4 mbps connection just fine and the fastest I have access to is 8 mbps down 0.5mbps up. And I'm getting my browsing done just fine. Costs are up to discussion, the main selling point of Starlink is backbone and the receiver was according to Shotwell one of the main research points to drive the cost down( 1k$ at the time but an obscure tech, they want it down to 300$).

>Affordable and globally available internet could be a game-changer. If viable, couldn't it challenge wireless carriers and ISPs?

No because of density limitations. They can't support enough bandwidth for an entire city. Also direct LoS is required so big buildings will limit you.

>Also, aren't there geopolitical ramifications. Would China, Russia, EU, etc allow their citizens to access the starlink system? Or will starlink have to be censored, filtered and monitored in these regions?

Current sat internet providers just don't sell their receivers in China or any country that doesn't allow them.

[brad0]

I’m not an expert but I don’t think clouds will affect it.

Do clouds prevent you from getting a GPS signal? (I know these satellites are LEO but I don’t think that should matter)

[sschueller]

Is this only until they are in position or are going to see this everytime they fly over?

[mikeash]

You’ll be able to see them as individual dots any time they’re illuminated by the sun when they fly over at night (like any other satellite), but they won’t be bunched together like this.

[senectus1]

is this what its always going to look like when we have 12000 of the things in the sky?

Astronomers are going to be going spare

[colek42]

Sending telescopes to space will be cheaper as the volume of launches increase

[NikkiA]

Money > Science, I'm afraid.

[CorvusCrypto]

Okay that's interesting but I have to say it's also quite ugly. Is this a new trend to cluster satellites like this? If so what advantage does it bring and is it worth that ugly streak appearing in the night?

I get this comment is very subjective but surely I'm not the only one thinking it's a bit of an eyesore

[dahfizz]

Is it uglier than telephone poles and huge cell towers everywhere? Of all the infrastructure humans build out, this is probably going to be one of the least eyesore.

[19870213]

They are currently spreading out and once they have spread out enough they will move on their own power to their final orbits.