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SpaceX COO says Starlink is just five launches away from "full global connectivity":
The day before SpaceX aced its eighth Starlink launch in three months, President and COO Gwynne Shotwell implied that the company’s constellation of satellites could achieve “full [global] connectivity” just a handful of months from now.
Speaking at Satellite 2021’s “LEO Digital Forum” on April 6th, Shotwell revealed that SpaceX hopes to cross that milestone a few months after a total of 28 operational Starlink launches have been completed. Around 25 hours after her panel appearance, SpaceX launched its 490th Starlink satellite of the year, more or less wrapping up the first quarter of 2021.
[...] SpaceX’s April 7th Starlink launch and booster landing was the 23rd successful launch of operational ‘v1.0’ satellites since they began flying in November 2019. All told, of the 1383 operational satellites launched by SpaceX in those 17 months, some 1369 are still in orbit, at least 1356 are functioning as expected, and more than 900 have reached their final orbits and are operational. Another 400 appear to be in long-term parking orbits dozens to hundreds of kilometers below their operational 550 km (~340 mi) ceiling, the purpose of which is unclear.
Once the 400-500 satellites now in low parking orbits reach whatever orbital parameters they’re waiting on, it’s unlikely to take more than two or three months for them to boost up to an operational altitude. Starlink-23 added another 60 around 250 km (155 mi).
[...] Given Shotwell’s 28-launch comment and a general idea of SpaceX’s 2021 launch cadence targets, it’s possible to extrapolate to a reasonably accurate timeline for the constellation to reach a point of “full connectivity globally” – albeit with a few caveats.
[...] In other words, barring unprecedented numbers of early satellite failures or unusually long orbit-raising periods, it’s likely that SpaceX will have enough operational satellites – around 1700 – for near-total, uninterrupted Starlink coverage of the inhabited world by the end of Q3 (September) 2021.
That works out to just less than two years from Starlink's very first launch to total world coverage. Granted, this would be the minimum coverage required. Each satellite can only support so many users at one time, so SpaceX will continue launching Starlinks for quite some time to come.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jasassin on Sunday April 11 2021, @03:41PM (9 children)
$99/month. $499 starter kit.
Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.
I guess if you're really hard up it might be worth it. That's the deal. It would be cool to have broadband on a boat in the middle of an ocean. Streaming Netflix while the Titanic sinks... oh yeah!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 5, Informative) by ilPapa on Sunday April 11 2021, @03:47PM
Here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, only 20 miles from a major research university, my only option for home internet is US Cellular, which costs me $300/month and has a hard data cap of 225GB. On the best day, I can almost hit 10mbps.
Yes, I'm really hard up when it comes to broadband here in rural America.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by Zinnia Zirconium on Sunday April 11 2021, @08:07PM
Yeah maybe I'll try Starlink later this decade. As long as it costs ten times as much as LTE and it's not portable like LTE then I'm going to continue using LTE for a while longer.
I wonder if any Captain Midnight person or maybe Captain Midnight himself has gotten free internet using Starlink equipment yet. I know I haven't because buying the equipment isn't worth doing when I can't fit it in my handbag.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Sunday April 11 2021, @09:59PM (4 children)
I'm in a major metro suburb, just outside the ring road. My only options are comcast and Hughesnet. Comcast lied and stole from us repeatedly, so we refuse to give them another penny, so we're on Hughesnet at little better than dial-up speeds. I've been on the Starlink waiting list since the day it opened.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Zinnia Zirconium on Sunday April 11 2021, @10:09PM
You're lucky since your bad experience with Comcast motivated you to build your own home router using a WireGuard VPN to punch a hole in the Comcast firewall and then you shared your VPN connection with the whole house so you could continue to use Comcast without giving Comcast another penny.
What? You didn't do this??
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Monday April 12 2021, @03:41PM (2 children)
Have you looked into Point-to-Point Wireless? It's the best internet I've been able to get. I'm not about to hop onto any traditional Satellite internet provider. I grew up with dial-up, dial-up sucks, while satellite is likely somewhat better, the latency sure isn't. In fact, dial-up had much better latency than Satellite had, until Starlink.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Monday April 12 2021, @05:57PM
I'll look into that, thanks.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @06:02PM
Not legal where I live due to the contract the phone company and the cable company have with the city. Only unincorporated County people can get wireless.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 12 2021, @03:37PM
That is literally better than what I can get and I'm 50 miles or so from downtown Fort Worth, Texas. While the $499 starter kit is a little expensive, it's not out of the ballpark when considering point-to-point wireless setup. The $99 per month is slightly more expensive, but the throughput is higher and the latency is similar, if not better.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @06:05PM
"Better Than Nothing Beta" pretty much sums it up. The sad part is that even in this incomplete state it is still an upgrade for a great many people.