SpaceX Internet Satellite Network: Starlink

[f205v]

Will future Tesla cars be equipped with those "pizza satellite dish" (maybe hidden in the hood) to be used for internet connection instead of the SIM cards they are using now? And in case: what about connection in tunnels? (here in Switzerland the country is full of long tunnels all along the highway system, many of them longer than 10 Km)

 

[Beeroclock]

Will future Tesla cars be equipped with those "pizza satellite dish" (maybe hidden in the hood) to be used for internet connection instead of the SIM cards they are using now? And in case: what about connection in tunnels? (here in Switzerland the country is full of long tunnels all along the highway system, many of them longer than 10 Km)

Boring.

 

[ICUDoc]

Boring.

Nice.

 

[GolanB]

Boring.

Tunnels can easily be configured with cellular radios. They do this here in NYC in both subways and tunnels. This assures existing communication devices continue to work.

I didn’t get the sense that Starlink was targeting densely populated areas that already has connectivity, but rather for rural areas where connectivity may be hard to establish.

Right now it doesn’t sound like it’s suited for mobile connectivity given the receiver size.

 

[Beeroclock]

Why not?
Just order a Pizza and save the dish.

 

[billh13850]

When can I sign up??!!??

SpaceX wants to offer Starlink internet to consumers after just six launches

 

[dhanson865]

Will future Tesla cars be equipped with those "pizza satellite dish" (maybe hidden in the hood) to be used for internet connection instead of the SIM cards they are using now? And in case: what about connection in tunnels? (here in Switzerland the country is full of long tunnels all along the highway system, many of them longer than 10 Km)

no, first off the metal of the hood blocks the signal too much.

Second the sat tracking is tough enough if you are stationary. Move the car and the sats at the same time and tracking gets harder, now add bumps, curves, buildings, trees, etc and you can't make it happen on anything close to a reliable basis.

So sure you could park it at cars and coffee in a parking lot and open the frunk and give it access to the sky while parked. But you wouldn't be able to use it on the road at speed.

And when it's sitting in your garage it won't be able to get signal because the garage itself blocks the signal. You need the antenna on top of the house or on top of the garage (if it's got a roof) to have any view of the sky and get signal.

 

[billh13850]

If the Starlink service is as capable and cheap as promised, I wouldn't be too surprised to eventually see Starlink dishes popping up on the cell towers... (It could well be a faster cheaper "backbone" service.)

 

[BioSehnsucht]

We've covered this before. The relative motion of a moving user terminal on a ground vehicle should be a non issue, especially since they intend to offer it for use on boats and airplanes. The real issue is that there's nowhere nice to put it since it's big and metal would interfere, you'd have to either come up with a way to transparently integrate it into a sunroof or to integrate it into a non-metal body panel (i.e., a plastic/carbon fiber/fiberglass hood or trunk lid), which is doable but not cheap.

We'll probably not see starlink terminals on regular cars (busses, RVs and Semis could be reasonable) for the foreseeable future both due to complexity of integration and if nothing else, the utility in dense cities is limited due to line of sight required to operate - it's utility would be mostly in rural applications, where cell coverage may not be so great. And it's probably easier and cheaper in the long run to just dot the countryside with solar powered, Starlink backhauled cell towers than to equip all vehicles with starlink.

 

[Beeroclock]

" And it's probably easier and cheaper in the long run to just dot the countryside with solar powered, Starlink backhauled cell towers than to equip all vehicles with starlink"

How is that cheaper than simply having conventional 4G or 5G cell towers?

 

[mongo]

" And it's probably easier and cheaper in the long run to just dot the countryside with solar powered, Starlink backhauled cell towers than to equip all vehicles with starlink"

How is that cheaper than simply having conventional 4G or 5G cell towers?

The comparison was Starlink cell towers and conventional cell modems in cars versus Starlink terminals in every car along with the cell modem to handle cities, tunnels, high lattitudes. With the goal to provide closer to 100% coverage.

The Starlink towers would still provide 4G or 5G cell service. The difference is that they would not need fiber connections to the internet backbone or multiple RF repeaters (through other towers) to the backhaul. Instead, the tower would only need the 5G equipment, a Starlink terminal, and a power source. Solar + Powerwall/Powerpack would let you place a tower anywhere with sunlight regardless of existing infrastructure.

 

[billh13850]

The comparison was Starlink cell towers and conventional cell modems in cars versus Starlink terminals in every car along with the cell modem to handle cities, tunnels, high lattitudes. With the goal to provide closer to 100% coverage.

The Starlink towers would still provide 4G or 5G cell service. The difference is that they would not need fiber connections to the internet backbone or multiple RF repeaters (through other towers) to the backhaul. Instead, the tower would only need the 5G equipment, a Starlink terminal, and a power source. Solar + Powerwall/Powerpack would let you place a tower anywhere with sunlight regardless of existing infrastructure.

Next, World Domination! BwuhahahahaHAAAA!

 

[mongo]

Next, World Domination! BwuhahahahaHAAAA!

One beeeelllion subscribers!

 

[billh13850]

Seriously, if the networking execs aren't scared out of their wits, they're not paying attention. If this is anywhere near spec, it pulls the rug out from under their pricing structures and even their backbone technologies. I'm signing up as soon as it's available here.

 

[ecarfan]

The relative motion of a moving user terminal on a ground vehicle should be a non issue, especially since they intend to offer it for use on boats and airplanes. The real issue is that there's nowhere nice to put it since it's big and metal would interfere, you'd have to either come up with a way to transparently integrate it into a sunroof or to integrate it into a non-metal body panel (i.e., a plastic/carbon fiber/fiberglass hood or trunk lid), which is doable but not cheap.

I could make space on the roof of my 17 ft travel trailer. Why would metal — in my case, aluminum — directly below the receiver be a problem?

 

[mongo]

I could make space on the roof of my 17 ft travel trailer. Why would metal — in my case, aluminum — directly below the receiver be a problem?

View attachment 413238

I think they were talking about a hidden mounting (inside the panel), as opposed to placed on the exterior surface.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

I could make space on the roof of my 17 ft travel trailer. Why would metal — in my case, aluminum — directly below the receiver be a problem?

I think they were talking about a hidden mounting (inside the panel), as opposed to placed on the exterior surface.

Yes, I could have been more clear. I was speaking in terms of built-in on regular cars and even most trucks, there isn't a lot of good places to integrate it under / into the bodywork in an unobtrusive way (stylistically and aerodynamically) without additional expense and engineering that are unlikely to happen due to the general case of most cars/trucks not being outside of cellular coverage for any real amount of time.

I briefly mentioned RVs / Busses (for entertainment / etc) and Semis (for always connected logistics and monitoring) further down in my previous comment as likely to get it either as a factory option or as an easily installed aftermarket accessory (though I didn't clearly state this, just that except for these other vehicle times, cars are unlikely to have starlink terminals). Travel trailers would fall into the same category as RVs and such.

 

[dhanson865]

We've covered this before. The relative motion of a moving user terminal on a ground vehicle should be a non issue, especially since they intend to offer it for use on boats and airplanes. The real issue is that there's nowhere nice to put it since it's big and metal would interfere, you'd have to either come up with a way to transparently integrate it into a sunroof or to integrate it into a non-metal body panel (i.e., a plastic/carbon fiber/fiberglass hood or trunk lid), which is doable but not cheap.

We'll probably not see starlink terminals on regular cars (busses, RVs and Semis could be reasonable) for the foreseeable future both due to complexity of integration and if nothing else, the utility in dense cities is limited due to line of sight required to operate - it's utility would be mostly in rural applications, where cell coverage may not be so great. And it's probably easier and cheaper in the long run to just dot the countryside with solar powered, Starlink backhauled cell towers than to equip all vehicles with starlink.

I don't think they intend to offer it on boats, I think ships yes. Big difference between a ship that crests a medium wave once a minute vs a small boat that bounces on small waves non stop.

Imagine a tiny bass boat, perfectly fine to fire it up when stopped to fish, but may not be able to track reliably will being bounced all over the place during a trip from one fishing spot to the next.

and as to planes they did the test on a very large military plane, not a tiny personal aircraft.

will perform a series of tests with the integrated airborne prototype terminal … varying motion for representative roll and pitch rates of a high-performance aircraft

note they didn't say anything about turbulence or vibration testing.

I say scale matters, even if the craft is big enough to easily hold the antenna that doesn't mean it's stable enough to keep uninterrupted tracking while it's moving.

If you think there is no condition that would cause loss of signal due to craft movement, I disagree. I say a car/truck/RV on a bumpy road is worse than a ship or plane.

I agree that some moving objects move smoothly enough to be a non issue.

 

[mongo]

Scale matters, even if the craft is big enough to easily hold the antenna that doesn't mean it's stable enough to keep uninteruppted tracking while it's moving.

If you think there is no condition that would cause loss of signal due to craft movement, I disagree. I say a car/truck/RV on a bumpy road is worse than a ship or plane.

I agree that some moving objects move smoothly enough to be a non issue.

Something to keep in mind when talking about the physical dynamics of the system is that the antenna steering and accelerometer/ gyro data operate at the speed of electronics (potentially tens of kHz). So, while a car bump may be faster that a ship on a swell, it is still insignificant compared to the reaction time of the system.

 

[BioSehnsucht]

I'd expect the steering to operate well beyond tens of kHz. It should be able to update aiming at least within a few transmission time slices, ideally after every time it receives (and that can include anyone else near enough for the satellite's steered beam to cover it) it can fine tune the aiming. Keep in mind it will be keeping in touch with two or more satellites most of the time to perform seamless handoff as the satellites fly by, so it already must be able to quickly steer between satellites which might not even be on the same orbital plane but completely perpendicular. All this steering is digital and not mechanical, so the only limitation is how fast they want the steering algorithm to update, and thus how much CPU power they're willing to give it. It's not a super demanding task, relative to the amount of data that can flow through the link.

And even if you have trouble with a dinghy on the open ocean, there's no need to nit pick between "boat" and "ship". Any floating vessel big enough to have a use for starlink (versus just having a Iridium sat phone for emergency rescue situations) should be fine. These are not your grandfather's satellite dishes, so to speak. There is nothing to move, nothing to aim, just simply digitally controlled beam steering. You don't even have to be particularly careful about what angle you attach the terminal at, it doesn't need to be on a flat surface, just have a reasonable view of the sky, and it will handle the rest.