Yes, space looks crowded in these visualizations. But the size of the satellites is exaggerated here by thousands of times. Space is huge and the collision risk is extremely low. If displayed at their true size the satellites would not be visible, and indeed the vast majority are not visible in the real life night sky. The exception is recently launched satellites that are still in transit to their final orbits, but even those are only visible sometimes and generally only within an hour or two after sunset or before sunrise.
No, Kessler Syndrome is not a realistic concern for satellites in these orbits. Satellites here experience atmospheric drag and fall out of orbit in five years or so. Collision debris has a higher surface area to mass ratio due to the square-cube law and deorbits faster than that. And it takes a lot less than five years for debris to fall below the orbits of other satellites where it no longer poses any threat of a chain reaction. And no, a collision between two satellites in circular orbits cannot throw debris into much longer-lasting orbits, due to how orbital mechanics works. And even if Kessler Syndrome did somehow happen despite all that, it wouldn't trap us on Earth even for the five year period; a debris cloud would still be quite sparse and launching rockets through it would be no problem since the time spent in the cloud and thus probability of collision would be negligible.
I took a screenshot of the default view on my web browser. The satellites appear to be around 100km in diameter, but they are in reality 7m wide, so they are 14,000x larger on the map than in reality. The entire constellation would fit within 0.2% of one of the white dots as they appear in the map.
Then you need to remember that the space is 3D, unlike road surfaces (ignoring bridges etc.)
But the question is who gave this one guy right to surround our earth like this? As the power of individuals grow is there going to be any oversight to ensure a consensus is reached collectively before someone decide to do something like this? I agree that technically it may not be as bad as it looks but just in principle one cannot fathom the level of reach that modern civilization allows to just one person that this map demonstrates.
I see a lot of people getting riled up about "space junk" and how we have filled the space with tons of junk.
Humans are really bad at understanding things that are really big, and the amount of space is incredibly larger than they realize, to the scale where these satellites are literally like a gallon of water in the ocean.
Yes, space is huge, however offsetting that a bit is satellites in LEO orbit at something like 20,000 MPH, so reaction time for collision avoidance is lower than you might expect, and impact velocity will result in a very large debris field.
There's several more startups filing to launch their own 10,000+ satellites.
The sky is going to be trashed like the scooters littered across every major city's sidewalks, seemed like an acceptable idea on paper by the eager governments beforehand but in reality it just makes an absolute mess that no-one seems to take responsibility for or ever fixes.
It does seem like we need a term for a civilisation that decides that serving internet is more important than its ability to observe the universe.
Then, in that pursuit, they completely miss an otherwise easily detectable near earth object and become extinct, but the satellites will continue happily beaming internet to a user base that no longer exists.
Then again, it's probably a non-issue. Not because the satellites impede our ability to observe, but because we observe so little to begin with.
There's a bunch of Starlink coverage maps like this; the most useful one (IMHO) is Mike Puchol's at https://starlink.sx/
The nice thing about that Mike's is you can see exactly where you are in relation to nearby satellites and base stations. And get a pretty good guess as to where your packets are going to go. It is all guesswork - SpaceX only shares what they are required to by the FCC. But it's been pretty accurate in the way I can test it.
(Also try clicking the little ringed planet icon in upper right to get an orbital chart.)
In the early days there would only be 1 or 2 satellites in range of my house sometimes and I could feel the lag as the dish switched. Back then it only switched every 15 seconds whether a tree was about to block the view or not. Now there's regularly 10+ satellites to choose from and a smarter algorithm for switching to maintain signal. There's still significant problems compared to a wired connection or even fixed wireless but Starlink has definitely been a big improvement for my life.
I really like Mike's version. If anyone has perf tips, I'm happy to pass them on. It's a little out dated, we have a big update coming in the near future to add support for E-Band simulation, etc.
As impressive as the number of Starlink satellites is, the service has become unusable for me in Southern California, particularly for video calls. I’ve been told that the bottleneck is land stations, not satellites. Either way, I’ve had to cancel my Starlink service both at home and work.
idk any sources but i've always seen it as a weapon
enemies of the us will not be able to turn off the internet in their own countries if the us wants it, giving power to rebels to coordinate outside of government-controlled connections
I’m curious about how can they ensure connectivity for a particular area. Is it just that they place a bunch of satellites in orbits and hope that they have enough density? Or is there a method to the madness?
I am assuming a single satellite covers very small area, in this case a single hexagonal area
In central Louisiana, between 15 and 60 seconds. It might be slightly longer but I have a tree in the FOV to the east, so I get drops on that timescale.
The ones really close together are freshly launched and still being moved into their final position.
However, all satellites are by design placed into a small number of orbits, see [0]. For example, phase 1 consisted of 72 different orbits with 22 sats each, so each sat would be 1/22th of an orbit behind the previous one - and the orbits are shifted in a similar fashion around the earth. This ensures that there is a uniform global coverage, as a new sat will move over an area right when another one moves out.
That's a site I've made to track satellites. Yet another one! It's a 2D map, where you choose / fast-forward time, see the ground track prediction, and horizon radius.
the one thing i think I figure out, is that you right click and set a home, and that will give you real time triangulation as to how many satellites your signal is bouncing off as they move in orbit at any given time.
The more satellites linked to your home base, the better your latency and/or bandwidth. So with this you can see your location's service quality ahead of time.
No one in Asia or Africa or India seem to be using it. Are we just polluting LEO for the sake of a handful of Americans? I feel like in the US it's not even widely used...
> No one in Asia or Africa or India seem to be using it
from my understanding in order to provide internet services in any country you need to register with the authorities and get approval for providing those services.
their map shows where they got approval so far and where they're still in the process: https://www.starlink.com/map
In India satellite services are illegal except Inmarsat because they have a deal with them for surveillance. That's probably why. You can get in serious trouble there for carrying a satellite phone too.
In South Africa we have the Square Kilometre Array in the Meerkat National Park; I sincerely hope it doesn't come here. We don't need it polluting our skies. Fibre should be rolled out for internet access, not another unsensible Musk dream
That really isn't how orbits work... At any given time, there are as many starlink satellites overhead at Meerkat National Park as there are at any other point in the world around 30* north or south.
Yet starlink is available where broadband sometimes isn't, so the insensible dreams seem to be coming from those who expect broadband to be deployed even in the most remote parts of the world (not necessarily talking about the place you mentioned, but I certainly wouldn't expect broadband in places like a remote cabin in the woods here in Quebec, or in a lake hunting station).
Who cares if Elon is beyond this? I remember thinking how ridiculous it was that everything he did was overhyped and treated as the next revolution. But in a lot of ways discarding an amazing technology like starlink and being against it to own the musk is somehow even weirder to me. It's such a profoundly... online (terminally online perhaps?) outlook at things.
Like some people are unironically not buying Tesla's and openly saying that they went for a car they liked less just because the guy is a clown on twitter. Reminds me of conservatives who spite themselves just to own the libs in a weirdly self defeating way
Also here in Western Australia - as the SKA is a widely distributed radio array and sits here in the Murchison exclusion zone [1].
The hope is that all constellation satellite operators (not just Starlink) will adjust their reflective profile to reduce the visual spectrum noise pollution and honor an agreement to shut down all comms when passing over radio astronomy exclusion zones.
Starlink is already wreaking havoc on the night sky for every part of the planet inhabited by humans and it is only going to get worse. Unfortunately this is not getting much attention from anywhere besides the astronomy community and they are largely ignored because their funding is dwarfed by venture capital funds.
[+] [-] modeless|2 years ago|reply
Yes, space looks crowded in these visualizations. But the size of the satellites is exaggerated here by thousands of times. Space is huge and the collision risk is extremely low. If displayed at their true size the satellites would not be visible, and indeed the vast majority are not visible in the real life night sky. The exception is recently launched satellites that are still in transit to their final orbits, but even those are only visible sometimes and generally only within an hour or two after sunset or before sunrise.
No, Kessler Syndrome is not a realistic concern for satellites in these orbits. Satellites here experience atmospheric drag and fall out of orbit in five years or so. Collision debris has a higher surface area to mass ratio due to the square-cube law and deorbits faster than that. And it takes a lot less than five years for debris to fall below the orbits of other satellites where it no longer poses any threat of a chain reaction. And no, a collision between two satellites in circular orbits cannot throw debris into much longer-lasting orbits, due to how orbital mechanics works. And even if Kessler Syndrome did somehow happen despite all that, it wouldn't trap us on Earth even for the five year period; a debris cloud would still be quite sparse and launching rockets through it would be no problem since the time spent in the cloud and thus probability of collision would be negligible.
[+] [-] teruakohatu|2 years ago|reply
Then you need to remember that the space is 3D, unlike road surfaces (ignoring bridges etc.)
[+] [-] la64710|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chlorion|2 years ago|reply
I see a lot of people getting riled up about "space junk" and how we have filled the space with tons of junk.
Humans are really bad at understanding things that are really big, and the amount of space is incredibly larger than they realize, to the scale where these satellites are literally like a gallon of water in the ocean.
[+] [-] reaperducer|2 years ago|reply
See also: "We'll never run out of IPv4 addresses."
[+] [-] rlt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|2 years ago|reply
The sky is going to be trashed like the scooters littered across every major city's sidewalks, seemed like an acceptable idea on paper by the eager governments beforehand but in reality it just makes an absolute mess that no-one seems to take responsibility for or ever fixes.
[+] [-] mgoetzke|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tenpies|2 years ago|reply
Then, in that pursuit, they completely miss an otherwise easily detectable near earth object and become extinct, but the satellites will continue happily beaming internet to a user base that no longer exists.
Then again, it's probably a non-issue. Not because the satellites impede our ability to observe, but because we observe so little to begin with.
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|2 years ago|reply
The nice thing about that Mike's is you can see exactly where you are in relation to nearby satellites and base stations. And get a pretty good guess as to where your packets are going to go. It is all guesswork - SpaceX only shares what they are required to by the FCC. But it's been pretty accurate in the way I can test it.
(Also try clicking the little ringed planet icon in upper right to get an orbital chart.)
In the early days there would only be 1 or 2 satellites in range of my house sometimes and I could feel the lag as the dish switched. Back then it only switched every 15 seconds whether a tree was about to block the view or not. Now there's regularly 10+ satellites to choose from and a smarter algorithm for switching to maintain signal. There's still significant problems compared to a wired connection or even fixed wireless but Starlink has definitely been a big improvement for my life.
[+] [-] Aeolun|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] virtuallynathan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lm28469|2 years ago|reply
With an 8 core cpu, 2060rtx graphic card, 32gb of ram, this thing runs at like 2.5 fps (if even) on chrome and firefox
What we did with web tech is truly amazing
[+] [-] mikekij|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charles_f|2 years ago|reply
What is the data source?
[+] [-] walrus01|2 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/search?q=norad%20tle&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-...
[+] [-] stainablesteel|2 years ago|reply
enemies of the us will not be able to turn off the internet in their own countries if the us wants it, giving power to rebels to coordinate outside of government-controlled connections
[+] [-] praveen9920|2 years ago|reply
I am assuming a single satellite covers very small area, in this case a single hexagonal area
[+] [-] bhaney|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] herpderperator|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] genewitch|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flangola7|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gondaloof|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crote|2 years ago|reply
However, all satellites are by design placed into a small number of orbits, see [0]. For example, phase 1 consisted of 72 different orbits with 22 sats each, so each sat would be 1/22th of an orbit behind the previous one - and the orbits are shifted in a similar fashion around the earth. This ensures that there is a uniform global coverage, as a new sat will move over an area right when another one moves out.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#/media/File:Starlink_...
[+] [-] diimdeep|2 years ago|reply
New York City - New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ Stock Market
Tokyo - Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE)
Shanghai - Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE)
Hong Kong - Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX)
London - London Stock Exchange (LSE)
Toronto - Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX)
Mumbai - Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange of India (NSE)
Frankfurt - Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FWB)
Paris - Euronext Paris
Sydney - Australian Securities Exchange (ASX)
[+] [-] kylecazar|2 years ago|reply
I'm not a user though, so I can't testify to the problems people have been having.
[+] [-] autorun|2 years ago|reply
That's a site I've made to track satellites. Yet another one! It's a 2D map, where you choose / fast-forward time, see the ground track prediction, and horizon radius.
[+] [-] hypertexthero|2 years ago|reply
I have a WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) that works fairly well with occasional issues.
I’m consisdering Starlink but heard there may be issues with latency and dropped frames, and it is around 60% more expensive.
[+] [-] teleforce|2 years ago|reply
The legend and the help sections are not very helpful.
[+] [-] IG_Semmelweiss|2 years ago|reply
The more satellites linked to your home base, the better your latency and/or bandwidth. So with this you can see your location's service quality ahead of time.
[+] [-] amir734jj|2 years ago|reply
Website: https://threejs-earth-satellites.vercel.app/05_equatorial_pl...
Github: https://github.com/amir734jj/threejs-earth-satellites
Beam Planner: https://github.com/amir734jj/beam-planner
[+] [-] tornato7|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hungryforcodes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmlx|2 years ago|reply
from my understanding in order to provide internet services in any country you need to register with the authorities and get approval for providing those services.
their map shows where they got approval so far and where they're still in the process: https://www.starlink.com/map
[+] [-] wkat4242|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lionkor|2 years ago|reply
- remote places, with
- people who need internet but dont have a wire or fiber running to them, and
- who can afford a super expensive starlink (have disposable income), and
- for who 3G/4G isnt good enough
Thats not a lot of people outside the US
[+] [-] mlindner|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enslavedrobot|2 years ago|reply
It's pretty cool to think about the impact of all the kids who will go from no access to having the world at their fingertips.
[+] [-] caskstrength|2 years ago|reply
It is quite popular in Ukraine. Granted, Ukraine is neither in Asia nor in Africa.
[+] [-] daneel_w|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 101008|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] botanical|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SECProto|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kortilla|2 years ago|reply
> Fibre should be rolled out for internet access, not another unsensible Musk dream
You want to roll fiber through national forests and parks to serve a few rural people? How do you prefer the ocean faring population to get access?
[+] [-] mardifoufs|2 years ago|reply
Who cares if Elon is beyond this? I remember thinking how ridiculous it was that everything he did was overhyped and treated as the next revolution. But in a lot of ways discarding an amazing technology like starlink and being against it to own the musk is somehow even weirder to me. It's such a profoundly... online (terminally online perhaps?) outlook at things.
Like some people are unironically not buying Tesla's and openly saying that they went for a car they liked less just because the guy is a clown on twitter. Reminds me of conservatives who spite themselves just to own the libs in a weirdly self defeating way
[+] [-] defrost|2 years ago|reply
The hope is that all constellation satellite operators (not just Starlink) will adjust their reflective profile to reduce the visual spectrum noise pollution and honor an agreement to shut down all comms when passing over radio astronomy exclusion zones.
[1] https://www.industry.gov.au/science-technology-and-innovatio...
[+] [-] hnau|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsthecourier|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reustle|2 years ago|reply