SpaceX delivers 3rd batch of Starlink satellites in two weeks

My mother was raving about the service the other day.<p>Speeds are 10-15x faster, she’s having an easier time with her online community college course and her job KPI is up by double digit percents [1]. She was worried that IT wouldn’t be OK with it when I said it was satellite (They’d been burned too many times), but the IT guy was incredibly excited because he’s also waiting to get Starlink.<p>Looking forward to the service only getting better, really incredible execution.<p>[0] My dad went on the roof in the cold Wisconsin winter to put it up.<p>[1] Lines transcribed per hour, as a medical transcriptionist working from home.

Starlink is SpaceX&#x27;s way of guaranteeing SpaceX has a launch client. It increases the number of launches they make, and drives down the cost per launch, both for themselves and for their other customers. They are creating a business model which is both profitable and drives profits to their launch business. This is similar to the synergy Amazon&#x27;s online store and AWS have with each other.<p>If SpaceX has room on a launch vehicle or an empty launch vehicle, they stuff it with Starlink satellites. Since Starlink will require constant refreshes, SpaceX has a constant client, it becomes far easier for them to offer smaller payloads at good rates. This is SpaceX&#x27;s way of commoditizing launches and keeping their launch service running regularly.<p>It&#x27;s extremely clever use of complimentary resources.

Amazing times, when a private company can launch 3 flights in two weeks, not even counting the Starship tests :). It is faszinating to see, how quickly Starlink is progressing, we are on the brink of global satellite broadband internet. This could be a substantial change especially in all the countries without a wide broadband availability. It will be interesting to see whether SpaceX can generate enough revenue to be able to finance large space projects on their own. Of course there is Mars, but also the Moon, perhaps a space station or asteroid mining.

Worth also pointing out: That&#x27;s the 9th flight of Booster 1051. And it had a perfect landing.<p>The goal of this design of Falcon 9 is to handle 10 flights with minimum refurbishment. Right now, it looks like they&#x27;re within a couple months of achieving that goal for the first time, with booster 1049 close as well, at 8 flights.<p>SpaceX is soon going to reach a point that they don&#x27;t need to build more Falcon 9 boosters.

The service is awesome.<p>In Placerville California our service went from Calnet 10mbps down at 28ms latency to Starlink 160mbps down at 24ms latency.<p>This is a really big deal and will disrupt a lot of these shitty ISPs that have done nothing for years.<p>Also, still tracking for my 2021 predictions: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25601473" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25601473</a><p>Edit: Price is only $99&#x2F;month with one up front cost for the hardware ($500).<p>Upload is currently only 15mbps, but should improve.<p>Elon says we should see 300mbps soon and less than 20ms ping (iirc).

For the people talking about space pollution and problems for astronomers. Yes, it is definitely an issue, but this constellation is also a way for many people to have access to education and information that will help them and their community.<p>If you&#x27;re curious about both the positives and negatives of Starlink I highly recommend the mini documentary &quot;Is this the END of Astronomy?&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TifUa8ENQes" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=TifUa8ENQes</a><p>Most things in life are like this. Wind turbines are a great way to supply green energy, but building them takes a lot of energy. So it is important to also think about things like using low co2 concrete, and making them more efficient. They also kill many birds, but this is nothing compared to the amount of birds that cats kill. And engineers are working on ways to get fewer birds killed.

As someone stuck on old (HughesNet) satellite internet and waiting on my Starlink pre-order, this is great news. I didn’t get into the beta sadly, though I was signed up and in the eligibility area since day 1.

I&#x27;d like to point out that I&#x27;m a big astrophotography nerd. And these satellites are regularly showing up in my long exposure images. It&#x27;s really quite a nuisance, and I don&#x27;t look forward to it getting worse.

I&#x27;m keen to see Starlink deals with government censorship requests. Can a country even effectively enforce their requests? How will China enforce the Great Firewall for instance?

So where is Amazon in relation to all of this?<p>I got pinged by a recruiter from Kuiper the other week and all I can see is that there&#x27;s no way they&#x27;re on track to be working in 5 years. They don&#x27;t even have a stable launch platform. Would Musk sell Bezos the ride?

That’s really cool - essentially mission accomplished for reusability. Clearly they’re not degrading fast so with optimisation more will be possible

I set up on my Starlink near Sacramento last week and it is fantastic. So much better than other rural Internet options. The one drawback to it now is it&#x27;s a little unreliable, largely because there aren&#x27;t enough satellites up in orbit yet. I&#x27;m papering over it with the Speedify VPN for now (using a second slower link). Every launch brings Starlink closer to 100% uptime.

While watching today’s launch, occurred to me the ratio of paying-client launches to Starlink launches is [whatever it is]. Profit margins on paid launches must be high, maybe amazing, to support so many Starlink launches.

Could someone explain to me how&#x2F;if this resolves the speed issues that all satellite internet has had since its inception.

Can you travel around the world with your satellite dish? Sounds like a boon for digital nomads.

I&#x27;m ready for the high speed it provides

How much is starlink? Hope its cheap, so i can move on from mobile data

More junk, and no responsibilities of the companies whatsoever. The cleanup (or kessler syndrome-related catastrophe) will be payed with taxpayer money: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;platform.leolabs.space&#x2F;visualizations&#x2F;leo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;platform.leolabs.space&#x2F;visualizations&#x2F;leo</a>

My high school daughter has really gotten into astronomy and space in the last few years, and is torn between celebrating the 9th use of the same first-stage rocket and hating the pieces of space junk it’s delivering to low earth orbit.

These satellites have marred the night sky. There is more to life than broadband availability.

am i the only person thinking that there should be laws to prevent rich individuals to increase the mass in LEO by a factor 10 in less than 10 years? i understand the enthusiasm but shouldn&#x27;t these decisions let to the people, countries, for instance an intergouvernemental agency.<p>also: is the dark coating working? without it those are quite visible, and make radio and optical astronomy much harder (especially large sky surveys).

I&#x27;m really concerned about the alarms raised by Scientific in regards to &quot;Space Pollution&quot;.[0]<p>Elon Musk has been dodging the question for the past years and never gave a clear answer about it aside of &quot;Umbrella&quot; joke...<p>Some astronomers are suggesting that with multiple space telecom companies ( US + EU + China ) it would potentially mean we would never be able to see space in plain sight ever. At least not without visual pollution.<p>[0]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;1971751&#x2F;a-flood-of-spacex-satellites-started-a-fight-over-space-pollution&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;qz.com&#x2F;1971751&#x2F;a-flood-of-spacex-satellites-started-...</a>

On my early morning walk I can see the satellites as very bright (much brighter than the stars) line across the sky. It&#x27;s clear they didn&#x27;t do enough about the reflectivity issue.<p>Edit: Already downvoted for stating a fact. Amazing.<p>Edit: Changed &#x27;did nothing&#x27; to &#x27;didn&#x27;t do enough&#x27;<p>Edit: Looks like experts still believe reflectivity is still a problem: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;physicsworld.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;dark-coated-starlink-satellites-are-better-but-not-perfect-say-astronomers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;physicsworld.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;dark-coated-starlink-satellites-a...</a>