Space and Science BS Thread

Depends who you get it from. In comparison it's a fraction of the cost of up there. I used to work for a company based in Toronto-- my coworkers were all jealous of my 70 dollar GIG fiber.

 

Yeah my farm in Oklahoma we pay like 90 bucks for 4mb down and 1-2 upload... line of sight radio connection. It's decent enough to game on but it's not great

 

I have $70 USD gig fiber in a small town of 9,000 in Alberta. Again, it all depends on the provider. Bell is doing some things in Ontario that have actually turned into a court case. Something along the lines of throttling optical lines artificially and refusing to sell access on them to third parties based on that which is against the law.

 

Yeah---- I sell fiber services in and out of China for a living. We have it easy over here compared to the prices they pay for access outside of China --- and restrictions due to the firewall etc.

Even though all the big tech giants scrape our data--I'll gladly take that over having the same restrictions as back East.

 

There are more people capable and willing to pay for the service and equipment in the northern hemisphere of earth than the southern so they are starting there and working their way down.

 

Supposedly they figured out, somehow, the beta equipment is locked to a much smaller grid area. Like 100 x 100 miles. Not sure beyond that though. Again, simply communicating what they said. It actually might of been a TechLinked video.

I get what you're saying about focusing on specific areas of the constellation first to provide service to the continental US first since that's what they signed up for. That's not what I meant.

 

Cant wait for the starlink IPO

 

If I could like this a hundred times I would.

 

I see you're in Washington, but you have a Montana dish, sorry gonna have to buy another! Probably just a beta thing in reality. Stress testing what satellites they have, while eliminating possible bad reviews of " my internet drops every 5 minutes" when they moved to Florida and can only contact 1 satellite.

 

Honestly I think it is a terrible idea. Caused as many problems for Tesla as it created. There is an interview somewhere where elon talked a little about it. He didn't really seem to like it. It's gonna suck when some billionaire buys in and starts demanding things like data caps and speed limits if you use too much, etc.

What I'll be curious about is the link between starlink and SpaceX. They had said they plan to use the profits of it to colonize mars. But I've heard no talks of going public is SpaceX. Are they going to keep it separate, and if so how will that work?

 

satellite internet tech is horrible. Interested to see what they can do but it won't ever replace fiber

 

Traditional satellite internet sucks, mainly because of the high orbit. Starlink is in low earth orbit bringing the ping down to low to mid double digits. And from what I understand they haven't started using the laser interlinks yet, which will beat fiber in speed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh1a2K9ZgNA

 

When I was a kid, dial up internet was just a gleam in Al’s eyes...

As for not having a library, that’s not a laughing matter. Another symptom of a small amount of individuals gathering and retaining vast amounts of wealth. And it’s worse than it was a decade ago:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/05/18/country-without-libraries/

 

I imagine starlink being the motor behind spacex's ambitious plans. Sort of like Amazon to blue origin

 

Sure but a laser interlink is literally just data being transmitted on an optical signal, using a laser beam. On paper it pretty much works the same way that a fiber-optic link does. I guess the advantage comes from the ability of satellites to talk directly to each other, instead of going to the ground and back repeatedly. Saving on speeds and increasing bandwidth....more paths available and the distance is shorter.

We'll see what the FCC will attempt with regulation as visible light is a whole different ballgame compared to RF

 

I said most CEO's, not all. A lot of them put in many 16-20 hour days 7 days a week to get where they are. Others were spoon-fed their whole life. The few bad apples give the rest a bad name.

Jeff Bezos sells 1 billion in Amazon stock every year to fund blue origin. Seems like a pet project to me, but it works for him. I don't know if that model would work for a Martian colony.

 

Faster. No optical resistance of the fiber. And lasers are only visible with the eye because we make them that way. We can make them invisible.

 

Sure--- lol I signed up for it just now. My farm has shitty internet-- fiber goes right by and they wont terminate. We work out of there often too so it would be nice to have a solid connection for less

 

The big problem Starlink has, and it's in the video, is that latency tends to stack on some uses. So even if Starlink is sub-100 ms in most cases, it can't keep up with fiber because of the latency stacking from communication back and forth before anything happens on your screen. I mean, Starlink is still great, but let's not pretend it completely replaces fiber on the ground. A great fiber network and Starlink operating as best it can is the best solution all around since it'll minimize the time loss on both ends.

 

Also just going to throw in that laser stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. When you talk about laser like devices that operate outside of the visible light spectrum, technically they're Masers if they're in the microwave band or X-ray/Infrared Lasers if in those bands. I know, technical, but it's important to note that using the word laser alone implies a visible light laser.