[sneak]

There is no direct connectivity between the satellites at this point, so starlink can't be expected to have global reach yet - you go up, and you come down within a certain distance of where you are.

They will need ground stations all over the earth soon.

[ackbar03]

So currently all the internet for Starlink customers are from bouncing off Starlinks low-orbit satellites to these ground stations where they are connected via cable connected (normal internet) and served up, am I interpreting that correctly?

[sneak]

That's how I understand it, yes.

If double latency is okay, it may be possible to do M-shaped ones where an isolated ground station (with only power) relays solely between two different satellites to reach further, for example in the middle of oceans (with a ground station on an island or ship). I am not sure if they plan to implement this interim step or not, but it is technically possible.

Their eventual goal is to allow communication directly between the satellites (via laser is the plan, but who knows if that will reach production). It's in testing/R&D and is quite a difficult challenge.

[KiwiJohnno]

The satellites in polar orbits (so far only 10, but they are planning to launch several hundred more this year) do have laser crosslinks. They said all satellites launched next year will have laser crosslinks Source: https://spacenews.com/spacex-adds-laser-crosslinks-to-polar-...

[sneak]

> The satellites in polar orbits (so far only 10, but they are planning to launch several hundred more this year) do have laser crosslinks.

Yeah they've launched, but do they work? Teslas can be ordered with "autopilot" or "full self driving", too.

Nobody's ever done it before, and they've never said if it's working or not. I know they intend to do this, but it's important to draw a big fat line between what is planned to be accomplished and what is actually possible today. (To be clear, I am not casting doubt on their ability to accomplish it - the smartest people on Earth work for SpaceX. It's just not known publicly today if/when they will.)

Perhaps EM's best and most important skill is blurring the lines between today, tomorrow, next quarter, and next year as much as possible. Has someone named his Reality Distortion Field yet?

[martyvis]

Us "Texas Tank Watchers" just refer to Elon Time. A lot of what Elon talks about comes to fruition, but you can might need quadruple the time he predicts.

[ackbar03]

> Their eventual goal is to allow communication directly between the satellites

I guess they'll have to though if they want to make it more scale-able? They satellites will always have to be up in space, but with communication between them they won't have to build ground stations everywhere. Plus ground stations themselves have to have good internet connectivity

[KiwiJohnno]

Another huge potential market for Starlink will be internet links to ships at sea, or aircraft. When far from land there would be no ground station in range of the satellites overhead, and laser crosslink is the only way to make this work.

[sliken]

Or skip real time, and allow a store and forward setup for, imagine if you could send/receive a few MB of a few times an hour.

[ec109685]

They are working on satellite to satellite links: https://spacenews.com/spacex-adds-laser-crosslinks-to-polar-...

[GekkePrutser]

True but for best latency and speeds a direct link back to ground would be best. I think the laser links would be more for remote areas and oceans where downlinks are impossible.

[lmm]

> True but for best latency and speeds a direct link back to ground would be best.

Speed maybe, latency no. Light is faster in a vacuum than through a fiber optic cable, so a satellite-to-satellite path would generally be faster even though it has to go a few hundred km further.

[GekkePrutser]

True but in each satellite it has to be processed, integrity checked routed and queued to the next hop. That kind of stuff takes much longer than any differences in light speeds.

[lmm]

No it doesn't, and it's not like you don't need to route messages travelling terrestrially. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the technology knows that what you're saying is straight-up false.