SpaceX’s Starlink internet shows fast speeds during early tests, capable of gaming and str

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Fishy that they say super low latency but don't state the latency numbers.

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Yep.

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Latency is at least 500 ms if they are going to space.

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They aren’t going to GSO these satellites are in LEO so they have been claiming lower numbers than that. But I agree it’s fishy they don’t state a real number.

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Latency is at least 500 ms if they are going to space.

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As another poster mentioned, this would be true if they were using sats in geostationary orbit, but theirs are in low earth orbit. The difference in altitude is 22,000 miles vs. ~350 miles for SpaceX Starlink satellites. So while the absolute minimum ping for a geostationary satellite is (22k * 4) / 186k = ~475ms, SpaceX could approach something like (350 * 4) / 186k = ~7.5ms (excluding additional ground distance).

So while it is impossible to achieve exactly that low latency, the altitude of the satellites is not adding much over typical ground based internet. And actually, once they get more sats up there, in certain situations Starlink can actually beat ground-based service once they get the sat-to-sat laser network operating. A packet that never leaves the ground often has to take an indirect route to its destination along the backbones, and in some cases sat-to-stat can be a more direct (shorter) route.

That’s better internet than I had in Papua New Guinea. Good for streaming basic videos but no go on playing shooter games

Starlink AKA Skynet

Thanks for pic, I remember seeing claims for<50ms which is great.

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I thought the purpose was more to connect 3rd world countries, NK, China, to unfiltered internet than to try and replace existing US infrastructure.

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Plenty of homes in Rural America are missing high speed also. It isn't designed to replace it in locations with high speed already in place but to add it to rural areas in all parts of the world, including at sea.

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Interesting take having them in LEO, will require a much broader array of satellites, more antennas that are constantly moving

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Yep, they plan on putting anywhere from 12k to 40k+ satellites up there! As you mentioned, LEO means they will move quickly across the sky, so tons of them are required so that at least one is always "visible" to a stationary antenna on the ground.

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but the bigger issue is that these satellites have to essentially be disposable, as LEO has a shorter orbit life than GSO.

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Yeah the orbits will decompose since there is still some atmosphere at that altitude, and they can't maintain orbit forever with boosters, so they will have to be constantly replenished.

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This has never been possible given the price to send them to space, but if SpaceX can lower the price to getting something to space

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I think SpaceX has already lowered the cost/pound to orbit by about 10X, and they believe they can lower it another 10X.

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if they can piggy back on larger satellite/crewed launches

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I don't think there are any plans to piggyback because that introduces lots of new problems, but as it stands they already have over 700 of them up there and they continue to launch 60 at a time a couple times per month. They are iterating very quickly, making it routine and lowering costs.

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then maybe this truly can be disruptive not just connecting the third world, but also adding competition to ISPs.

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I hope so! The ISP market is in dire need of competition in many areas of the US. Even if they are not able to provide gigabit speeds per customer, as long as it is in the 50mbps range that would be adequate. The crucial bit for me is hoping they don't put in data caps.

I wonder if it will slow down like "Excede" did when they fill up their bandwidth with subscribers?