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Elon Musk says SpaceX Starlink satellite broadband beta testing starts in a few months:
This week [SpaceX] launched another batch of 60 satellites to bring the total size of its growing Starlink broadband constellation to more than 400. While it has the go-ahead to launch more than 12,000 satellites in the coming years, Musk said Wednesday that a "private beta" test of the service will begin in about three months, followed by a public beta about three months later for testers at northern latitudes.
In response to a Twitter user, Musk said Germany qualifies as far enough north, which could mean that much of northern Europe, Canada and the northernmost parts of the US may be eligible to try the service.
There is only so much bandwidth per satellite, so your pizza-box-sized transceiver would experience more congestion and lower throughput in an urban area than it would in a rural setting.
How many Soylentils are interested in signing up?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Friday April 24 2020, @11:42PM
I'd say it specifically hurts astrophotographers more than amateur astronomers. The sats may not be visible to the naked eye after mitigations and final orbits, and you can still point binoculars or a telescope at a target and not notice anything.
Starlink looks like it will cause trouble for specific telescopes, with wide-field surveys like LSST being affected the most. Pro astronomers will ultimately be helped by Starlink/SpaceX, since SpaceX will use Starship to send up big, cheap space telescopes. I could even see SpaceX setting up a fund to provide free launches to universities for space telescopes. If not voluntarily, then to settle a lawsuit filed by representatives of the astronomy community!
This problem was going to happen sooner or later as access to space gets cheaper and we talk about millions of people living and working in space [blueorigin.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]