Starlink Better Than Nothing Beta program

Yep, that’s what I figured. No way we can see something in a LEO from up here. Maybe could do something with a Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) but that requires so many more satellites to get the full cover you need for TV or internet. And it still would’t cover the high latitudes completely.

Think @Troll and I should start a protest movement…the “High Latitude Residents for High-speed Satellite-Based Internet Access and Amazon Prime Next Day Delivery Service…Liberation Front!”…needs some editing.

Polar orbits are very problematic for anything like this.

Speaking of polar orbits, Andøya is home to Norway’s rocket launching center. I think they are planning on putting something into a polar orbit in a year or so.

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Put it on the agenda for the next Mudspike Arctic Conferense.

Let’s hope they won’t start WW3 in the process… :wink:

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Yes, the folks around here seem to have a thinly-disguised pride in that incident. “Did you know we almost started WW III over at the Space Center?”, they say with a solemn expression that breaks into a wry smile.

Re the agenda: We can add it in right after the discussion on whether to serve Lapskaus or Bacalao at the annual dinner dance…there might be a call for Lutefisk but I don’t think it will get too much traction.

And back - sort of - to the subject: So this only covers +/- 50º latitude. Wow. That cuts off a large portion of Europe including big cities like London (EDIT - Evidently just barely covered)(@Victork2) and Berlin (@Aginor ?), not to mention all of the Netherlands (@schurem), Denmark, Sweden, Norway (me and @Troll). But that’s orbital mechanics for you. If I blame anyone, I blame Sir Isaac Newton!

EDIT:

Shotwell says that once they have 1,200 satellites in orbit, they will have global coverage (with the exception of the polar regions)

I wonder how they define “polar regions”. The Arcttic/Antiarctic circles? (63º33’33" N and S) I’m at 69° 8’29.60"N so I’d be out of luck. @Troll too, Bummer.

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Yep, Europe is pretty far north. Berlin is above 52°N
As you said they are planning to provide more inclined orbits at a later point.

As a cartographer I am inclined (LOL, see what I did there?) to say that there is only one correct definition of polar regions, and that’s 66.6° and above.
But I admit that I am a bit conservative in that regard.

IMHO, this scheme/program/project/enterprise is extremely well timed. In the Amazon antenna article, I noted with interest this quote:

“If you want to make a difference for unserved and underserved communities, you need to deliver service at a price that makes sense for customers,” said Rajeev Badyal, VP of Technology for Project Kuiper at Amazon.

That statement may bring to mind isolated villages in rural parts of undeveloped nations. It did for me.

Then I got to thinking, given COVID and the social unrest in the U.S., many who can are “heading for the hills”…or at least heading for unserved and underserved areas. A number of my friends and former colleagues still in the US are looking to move to the mountains of Tennessee or the plans of Texas; essentially anywhere far from a US city. (Technically I headed for the fjords but the “underserved” caveat applies. I took a factor of ten decrease in my internet speed. It was worth it. And my online Norwegian course works great so even if it takes a while to upload the latest DCS OB, I’m “bare bra”.)

And when they get there, what will they need/want to do? Telecommute, attend meetings on Zoom, collaborate with OneNote, stream Netflix.

SpaceX and Amazon certainly did not create the pandemic nor promote the social unrest in the US, however, they are in an excellent position to take advantage of its 2nd and 3rd order effects.

(Note to self: Call stockbroker when it is 9AM EST)

Always fun to scare the crap out of the eastern neighbors… :wink:

I propose Finnebiff!

I guess their reasoning is that there’s basically nothing south of 50°S and the inhabited parts north of 50°N already has access to pretty decent internet feeds.
But it looks like they will have polar orbits too, which will increase coverage.

We had similar issues with the EGNOS Satellite Based Augmentation System. It’s basically a satellite broadcasted correction signal to improve the accuracy of GPS signals. We are using a similar but ground based system since about a decade. When EGNOS became available for aviation, everybody wanted to replace old navigation systems like VOR, ILS, NDB, and replace them with GPS based precision approaches with vertical guidance, that was purely satellite based.
The only problem was that the correction signal satellites were in equatorial orbit and the signal up here was too weak and unreliable. That has improved by using higher orbits and more RIMS (Ranging and Integrity Monitoring Stations).

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Actually I cannot complain. If we lived in Andenes we would have fiber-based internet service. Out here in the wilds of Dverberg, we have a microwave connection (as near as I can guess by looking at the antenna on the roof) to a sub station a few km away. OK for downloading; acceptable for uploading. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Looks like polar orbits are coming up soon:

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I’ve seen a few reviews now, and it seems the system is working decently so far. Of course with very little load and hyped people.
Still better than I expected if you consider that it is far from being finished. Interesting stuff.

If they really are going to achieve full polar coverage, I know 5 guys at BGNO who will be absolutely thrilled!
They are stationed up there for two years at a time, with no TV or internet, only HF radio and a Iridium phone. The last couple of years, I think they were able to piggyback on a science project internet line, running on the Iridium network, but it’s pretty low bandwidth and expensive, so limited to email.
All other satelites are below the horizon, but I guess Starlink should be visible?

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In an order published Jan. 8, the FCC granted SpaceX permission to launch 10 Starlink satellites into a 560-kilometer orbit with an inclination of 97.6 degrees. Those satellites will launch on a Falcon 9 no earlier than Jan. 14 as part of Transporter-1, a dedicated smallsat rideshare mission.

These 10 will go up to 97.6 (so 7.6 retrograde from the pole I guess, help?) inclination according to the article, with about 500 more planned. Not a lot up there, so I wonder why - perhaps a civil/military sponsored aspect, dunno.

A fun map of the current live coverage (wait a sec for it to load).

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That’s pretty neat. I’m hoping it won’t take too long before it becomes available down here in Texas.

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I love how you can see the newly launched ones still in their ‘released from launcher’ mode (bottom left of this image in a line), and will spread out to fill the gaps. I think the red lines up by the US/Canada border are the ‘beta’ area that’s active, so that gives a good idea of the density expected.

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I like that they use ion engines to adjust their orbits themselves, and now they also turn their solar panels in a way that they don’t reflect sunlight toward Earth, thus making them less visible.
I also like that their low orbits make them automatically deorbit should they fail or run out of fuel.

Billionaires arguing about orbits, dystopian future ftw:

On another subject of the recent polar orbit launch that @JediMaster heard, I had a look on https://satellitemap.space/ (I wanted to see if they’d go over Norway properly) and couldn’t see the new polar orbit ones - but maybe I looked at a bad time or they aren’t tracked? Not sure how to filter them to recent launches… (ascending maybe)

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Only one way to settle this of course…

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In one single day in July 2020, Jeff Bezos made $13,000,000,000, due to Amazon’s stock price increasing and bringing his total wealth to about $189bn. For a while Elon was richer than him. GDP-wise, they are worth more than, say, Greece. They’ll need their own national flags soon, so perhaps they can go on their robots. :greece: :robot:

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Well, Elon wants to go to Mars so he can claim it.

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Yeah it is absurd that the amount of wealth they gain per second is comparable to what most people in their countries make per month.

I would venture that it is closer to what the average person world wide makes per year.

Wheels