Washington Emergency Responders First To Use SpaceX's Starlink Internet In the Field: 'It's Amazing' (cnbc.com) 85
The Starlink satellite internet network that SpaceX is developing has been used in the field by Washington state emergency responders in recent weeks, the first early application of the company's service to be disclosed. CNBC reports: Washington's state military, which includes its emergency response division, began employing Starlink user terminals in early August to bring internet service to areas devastated by wildfires. User terminals are the small devices on the ground that connect to the satellites. The emergency division has seven Starlink user terminals, which it is deploying with early success. "I have never set up any tactical satellite equipment that has been as quick to set up, and anywhere near as reliable" as Starlink, Richard Hall, the emergency telecommunications leader of the Washington State Military Department's IT division, told CNBC in an interview Monday.
Hall, whose division has used other satellite broadband services, said "there's really no comparison" between Starlink and traditional networks, where the satellites are farther away from the Earth in Geosynchronous or medium earth orbits. "Starlink easily doubles the bandwidth" in comparison, Hall said, noting that he's seen more than 150% decreases in latency. "I've seen lower than 30 millisecond latency consistently," he said. Hall said that, with other traditional services, it typically takes between 30 minutes to an hour to set up a satellite connection, "with a lot less speed and bandwidth and a lot higher latency in a much larger package."
By comparison, Hall emphasized that it took him between five and 10 minutes to set up and connect a Starlink terminal. And a single person can set up one of the devices: "It doesn't require a truck and a trailer and a whole lot of other additional equipment," Hall said. "I have spent the better part of four or five hours with some satellite equipment trying to get a good [connection]. So, to me, it's amazing," Hall added.
Hall, whose division has used other satellite broadband services, said "there's really no comparison" between Starlink and traditional networks, where the satellites are farther away from the Earth in Geosynchronous or medium earth orbits. "Starlink easily doubles the bandwidth" in comparison, Hall said, noting that he's seen more than 150% decreases in latency. "I've seen lower than 30 millisecond latency consistently," he said. Hall said that, with other traditional services, it typically takes between 30 minutes to an hour to set up a satellite connection, "with a lot less speed and bandwidth and a lot higher latency in a much larger package."
By comparison, Hall emphasized that it took him between five and 10 minutes to set up and connect a Starlink terminal. And a single person can set up one of the devices: "It doesn't require a truck and a trailer and a whole lot of other additional equipment," Hall said. "I have spent the better part of four or five hours with some satellite equipment trying to get a good [connection]. So, to me, it's amazing," Hall added.
Space-Jesus will save us all (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen.
Re:Space-Jesus will save us all (Score:5, Insightful)
But more seriously, they launch almost every week a rocket with 60 of them and then lands on the 'Of course I still love you'.
If memory serves, there are around 800 of them up now and it already works pretty decently.
With 12-15000 planned, the competition had better to hurry up.
Re: Space-Jesus will save us all (Score:1)
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It's going to get very crowded up there. The UK plans a constellation, China is talking about it, Russian wants one, there will doubtless be other commercial ventures.
It will be interesting to see what places like China do to enforce their Great Firewall as well. Could try to ban receivers or they could try jamming.
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The constellation probably doesn't broadcast over geographical areas where it doesn't have permission to do so. Starlink would need to obtain licenses to use RF spectrum in China. I'm sure China will oblige but insist that all packets traverse their firewall first.
Re:Space-Jesus will save us all (Score:5, Funny)
Our Function() which art in Memory, RNGesus be Thy Name.
Thy Pixelations come, Thy RND(seed) be done,
on the Client as it is on the Server;
Let us bow our heads in payment...
Ramen
Re:paint em black (Score:5, Insightful)
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How they hell is it going to be busted? Can't be any worse than clouds or airplanes.
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How they hell is it going to be busted?
Because it conflicts with Stone Age religions. But in space, no one can hear you protest.
Re: paint em black (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: paint em black (Score:3)
I don't stargaze personally, but I can definately see the appeal to the experience surrounding it.
Much the same way, if less extreme, to comparing snappong shots of sharks in a dive cage as opposed to looking at galleries on national geographics website.
Re: paint em black (Score:2)
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January 25, 2005.
That September ended over a decade and a half ago.
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Not sure what that date represents. I get...
"
Friday February 25, 2005
US date format: 2/25/2005, UK date format: 25/2/2005
It was Friday, under the sign of Pisces (see birth chart on February 25, 2005). The US president was George W. Bush (Republican), the UK Prime Minister was Tony Blair (Labour), Pope St John Paul II was leading the Catholic Church. In that special week of February people in US were listening to Let Me Love You by Mario. In UK Like Toy Soldiers by Eminem was in the top 5 hits. My Big Fat In
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> Half the fun is being cold and outside in the middle of the night.
The same can be said for sex, before you can afford your own place.
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Have an orgy then. You think watching stars is fun...
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So space observations only make sense for wavelengths that are strongly absorbed by the atmosphere, like the deep IR.
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"Orbital astronomy is nice, but it can't compare with ground-based observations. Modern adaptive optics produces pictures that are as clear as Hubble's images, while allowing for much larger mirrors."
Space has no weight constraints, and we're able to spin mercury mirrors in space far larger than anything we could manufacture on earth.
You also forget that the atmosphere absorbs some of all wavelengths and blocks others. It actually attenuates lots of the visible range. Ground-based astronomy is GARBAGE with
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Atmosphere does pose a problem, but not in many interesting wavelengths.
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See my comment [slashdot.org] about this last month.
In a nutshell ...
Yes, satellite constellations are a big problem. See what organizations such as the International Astronomical Union [iau.org], Scientific American [scientificamerican.com] say about it.
No, not all astro
Re:paint em black (Score:5, Informative)
You should not be spouting uninformed quips like that on a topic that you obviously don't know anything about. It shows ...
Light pollution is real. Even a brief read on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] will reveal its extent. Or this short video [youtube.com] from a science channel.
That is why professional observatories are being built in places like the Canary Islands, the Atacama desert, Namibia, or Hawaii. That is why new discoveries are no longer made at Palomar or Mount Wilson observatories. They were state of the art some 70 years ago or so, but are no longer as useful as they were.
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Yes. The famous Wilson Observatory in LA has been relevated to 2nd or 3rd rank observations due to light pollution.
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There's this place.
https://astronomerswithoutbord... [astronomer...orders.org]
Sa’adat Shahr is the capital of Pasargad County, located close to Pasargad World Heritage, Fars Province, Iran. Many wedding ceremonies end with star party and telescopic observation in Sa’adat Shahr. Some taxis, doctors, and bakeries are free during the astronomy week [the final week of each Global Astronomy Month]; we have weekly sky report after the Friday's prayers in the main mosque. . .
It's very usual to turn off the lights of cit
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Re:paint em black (Score:4, Informative)
Can't use your telescope anymore? That's nonsensical, there aren't nearly enough of them up in the sky for that. Also, they are only visible around sunset and sunrise .. late night they are in the Earth's shadow.
Re: paint em black (Score:2)
Re: paint em black (Score:5, Informative)
Let's see how it goes when there's 15,000 of the bastards in geosynchronous orbit.
There won't be any Starlink satelites in GSO. They are made for LEO. That's why internet connections through them can be low latency and high bandwidth... and you need a boatload of them to cover the entire earth.
Ow, Slashdot filters think my response is ASCII-art if I add an extra dot... How cute :P
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"Ow, Slashdot filters think my response is ASCII-art if I add an extra dot... How cute :P"
The filters are exactly like DRM. You can't post code here any more (on a site supposedly for nerds) but they do nothing to filter out the swastika spam. The filters only hurt the legitimate users.
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Do you realize how big the Earth is?
Re:paint em black (Score:5, Funny)
I can see a satellite and I want to paint it black / Can't use my telescope no more, why don't they paint them black?
Henry Ford, automobile pioneer: "You can have your car in any color you like, as long as it is black."
Elon Musk, space pioneer: "You can have your satellite in any color you like, as long as it looks like it is out of "Diamonds are Forever".
The fluffy white pussy cat on Musk's lap offered no further comment.
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Eh, you can't see the stars through the layers of thick haze anyway. Time to launch your 100 meter telescopes into deep space.
I wonder if they'll have a hiking emergency unit (Score:3)
The portable unit they were using sounds nice, but it seems like the units you used to connect from a home were larger (I seem to remember pizza box size)...
I wonder if they'll have even more compact forms of StarLink connection, would be nice to have one of those emergency transponders you can get a message out to people from anywhere, using StarLink it might be more reliable...
I have one for hiking in very remote places, that is around the size of a large phone charging battery. It can only send location and text messages and issue an emergency message that you are in trouble, even if that's all the StarLink model did if it were faster and more reliable it would be really useful.
A Starlink model would also probably be less expensive as the one I had, I think was around $50/month to activate and make limited use of...
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At the frequency's starliink is using your not going to make it through any foliage (10.7 ghz is the lowest). An EPIRB is 406 mhz to give it reasonable propagation, the 121.5 was better but the gear had false positive issues.
If you want reasonable distress beacons, positions, and txt/email messaging study up and get a ham license (~15 bucks for 10 years). A lot of hiking areas have very good terrestrial APRS coverage and there is reasonable sat coverage. If your realy going off the beaten path a HF rig i
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At the frequency's starliink is using your not going to make it through any foliage
Great point, had not thought about the specific frequency they were using.
If your realy going off the beaten path a HF rig is not much bigger and can reach the other side of the planet.
An interesting alternative idea, probably a bit more effort than I want to go through for that purpose. Seems like it could be really nice though.
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The only problem with HAM licences is that the registration data is public. I know a few people who would like to get one but don't want their information in a public database for safety reasons.
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PO boxes, work address, local Ham club, etc it just needs to be a valid mailing address.
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Looking at the photo in TFA it seems that the claim the receiver would be pizza box size was BS. Maybe this isn't the final unit but it's got the footprint of a very large pizza box and then a pole going up and an equally large dish on top.
"150% decreases in latency" (Score:3)
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Cool, so with previous satellite links, he had 100ms latency, and now the packets arrive 50ms before they have been sent! I knew that everything Elon touches does no longer have to obey pesky limits like the speed of light!
Can't speak to the exact maths, but, as noted in TFS, the traditional satellites are in much higher orbits than the Starlink units, some in geosync (22,236 miles above the equator), so round-trip communication *should* be faster w/Starlink.
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Sure, it should work faster. But it shouldn't cause us to question the relationship between cause and effect.
Re: "150% decreases in latency" (Score:3)
Listen youngster... some of us walked up hill both ways between home and school in our younger years :)
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Yes, noticed that as well. I suspect a measurement error or fraud (or plain old stupidity).
66% in actual decreases iso 150% (Score:1)
And just think... (Score:1)
... all we had to pay for it was a bunch more space junk in orbit to dodge that also fucks up astronomy.
Re: And just think... (Score:2)
Either the laws of physics are fundamentally wrong, or Slashdot 'Editors' are incompetent.
Hmm.
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
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You do realize that they need marketing research first, right? It's just common sense. You need focus groups to see what is likely to go down well.
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In other news, Washington has a military (Score:4, Funny)
In other news, Washington State has its own military units. Who knew?
Re:In other news, Washington has a military (Score:4, Informative)
Who knew?
Guess most people don't, but many states have a state guard or state defense forces (in addition to things like the national guard). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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I live in Washington state, and that was quite surprising to me. But in any case now I'm really disappointed we don't have our own Space Force.
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If Seattle would finally elect 'Good Space Guy' we might (he's been running with that name since the turn of the century), although he's a Libertardian so all the benefits would go to the top 0.01% anyway.
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Who knew? What other US States have their own military, they also should not need Federal Military or National Guard.
If Washington State has their own military, then there should be no need for the Federal Government to use the Federal Military inside Washington State. Where were they in Seattle riots?
Why is there so much duplication of effort and responsibility?
Wow, even California has a military. Why are disasters/emergency the domain of a State Military? Wouldn't it be better, safer, cheaper, more po
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Lots of people actually. Vermont has mountain troops (makes sense). Massachusetts has an artillery brigade. Texas even has their own armor division!
Whaaa? (Score:2)
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Dammit Jim ! I'm a soldier, not a mathematician !
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I agree 110% percent!
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I feel like some knob said "Hey, 30ms! That's great! We were getting 75 ms before... 150% more latency. This new system has cut our latency by 150%" and totally failed to understand math.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Agreed. It's 2020, and very little good is coming out of it, but, yay! to the little (billion $) successes.
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Almost none. There are already algorithms to remove meteors, space junk, functioning satellites, and asteroids from the captured images automatically. The initial complaints were about the occasional bright flash (similar to but less intense than the 'Iridium flash') which would overwhelm the filters, but that was dealt with by making them almost non-reflective. Even then it would have only happened very close to the terminator, where the satellite was still illuminated by the sun, a region which for var
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Buried cable should be faster and cheaper (Score:2)
Buried cable — fiber or even copper — should still be faster and (much) cheaper. But is not. Because government [wired.com] — even the mighty Google all but gave up [mercurynews.com].
Can't wait for the same benevolent and omniscient folks to run our healthcare...
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Re:Buried cable should be faster and cheaper (Score:5, Interesting)
The city I live in is adopting the Ammon, Idaho model: the local utility is running fiber throughout the city, thereby owning and servicing the infrastructure. Then ISP's sign up to provide service, all running over the same infrastructure and competing on quality of service. That eliminates the local duopoly, but also sidesteps the whole objection of private companies having to compete with the Government.
Once it's done rolling out in a couple years, it will be a thing of beauty.
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20 years ago, DSL was done this way some times — Verizon was responsible for copper, ISPs (like SpeakEasy) providing service.
It was not pleasant... Point is, actually laying down — and owning — the cable is not as big a deal as the adherents of the "natural monopoly" theory [mises.org] like to pretend... If it weren't for the bureaucrats, seeking rent that's quite literally exorbi
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Musk's boring company could have a niche here - drill underground for optical fibres (and all other type of installations). Digging a huge trench with an excavator is inefficent, intrusive and expensive.
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So you don't know anything about laying outdoor cable, I take it. Burying conduit is expensive, slow, and requires extensive survey work to ensure you don't hit other utilities, and isn't even viable in many areas. It took them almost two years to do it just in my suburban Seattle neighborhood built in the early '60s, anywhere older or with sidewalks would be far worse. In rural areas a full team in soft dry dirt with no buried obstacles is doing really well to run half a kilometer per day.
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I don't, but people at Google Fiber do — which is why the set out to do it in the first place. And they did know — the theory.
The other article I linked to explains in detail, how local governments slow that process in practice.
Found the "natural monopoly" adherent :)
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Buried cable â" fiber or even copper â" should still be faster
Depends what you mean by "faster".
Later versions of Starlink will use sat to sat laser to route traffic over long distances.
The speed of light in a vacuum is faster than the speed of light through fiber, and a cable on the ground doesn't go in a very straight line.
Over a long distance, it is expected that Starlink will have lower latency than fiber.
That said, if you're moving data, nothing beats a Antonov An-225 filled with 18TB hard drives.
That's around 5.2 Exabytes per shipment.
150% decrease in latency? (Score:2)
What is this, "science for morons"? Decrease latency by more than 100% and you have your message arrive before it was sent. Does nobody understand the basics anymore?
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Sadly, they don't [segmeowtationfault.com].
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Re:Yeah, right (Score:4, Funny)
They seem to be here [wa.gov]. It appears they nefariously popped up around 1855.
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They seem to be here [wa.gov]. It appears they nefariously popped up around 1855.
Decades before Washington had even become a state. Those nefarious fiends!
23 of 50 States have their own military. Who knew? (Score:1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
7 with their own Navy.
Where is the cry for Defund State Military!
Sure, US Army is their main target customer... (Score:2)
https://www.reddit.com/r/consp... [reddit.com]
Next up: (Score:2)
Fat landwhales expecting 24/7 rescue service from their desert hike in gobi., ready to sue any S&R who doesn't deliver.
Space shield (Score:1)
What if these are disabled? (Score:2)
Military and first responder use, eh? What if Russia or some other state (mainly Russia) decides to target and disable these satellites? What recourse is there, given that they are commercial property?
I'm just wondering about possible worst-case scenarios.
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Military and first responder use, eh? What if Russia or some other state (mainly Russia) decides to target and disable these satellites? What recourse is there, given that they are commercial property?
There will be upwards of 15,000 satellites. Russia or any other probable aggressor state (and Russia and China are the only two on the planet with the demonstrated physical capability) would bankrupt themselves before they could shoot them all down. This will be the most robust satellite communications system ever built by humans, simply because of its massively distributed nature. Traditional satellite data systems have consisted of one geosynchronous satellite for the entire hemisphere, or in the case