It’s a lot, certainly, but it’s less than what they need to grow the network as they have been doing. They could stop today if they wanted, and just maintain the current fleet at a lower cost than growing it. They’d probably retain their current revenue, or even grow it somewhat into new areas that don’t require more bandwidth, and end up fairly profitable. But instead they’re continuing to grow.
Starship should change the economics as well, though even with Falcon 9 they’re doing ok. And Falcon 9 keeps getting cheaper as time goes on (the high cadence just naturally makes things cheaper, plus they have been incrementally increasing the reuse count for the boosters).
They have every model of airliner, both current production and out of production but still in use, on the list of airframes they’re trying to get aviation regulator approval for.
This will get its market foothold on fatcats and executives, but it’s aimed at the airline biz because that’s where the volume is. Thousands and thousands of airplanes.
At first glance it seems to be a lower profile antenna than the vast majority of current Ku band antennas. That means a lot less fuel burn; the antennas in use now add a surprising amount of drag.
I have no idea what airlines pay now for their inflight satellite connectivity. But Starlink’s prices don’t sound wacky to me.
To be clear, Starlink has several different product lines now. As Sam_Stone and LSLGuy noted, they have a specific aviation product for in-flight use. This won’t break any monopoly, but it will make in-flight WiFi much better. Current products are basically enough for web surfing; Starlink gives you a connection that supports streaming, gaming, etc. How this shows up in the end-user pricing remains to be seen, but if the prices go up it’ll be due to the airlines, not Starlink.
As for the new service–it’s not intended to replace a “normal” connection, whether WiFi, 5G, or otherwise. I’d almost say emergency use only, but it’s not quite that–but it is for situations where even a very limited connection is better than nothing. If you’re way in the backcountry, or on top of a mountain, or whatever, just having support for texting is a huge win. There are devices today that have similar capabilities (like Iridium), but they require custom hardware. This works with any LTE phone.
They plan on improving the bandwidth over time, and adding more services, but it’ll never be great. It’ll give something like a few megabits/second total per cell, which is a couple hundred square miles. For texting, that’s plenty. For phone calls, you might support a few hundred at a time–which is clearly useless in a dense area like a city, but might be ok in very rural areas. If you want a video call, you’d better be in Antactica or something and have a full cell all to yourself. Unfortunately, physics proves to be a limiter here (though one of their competitors, AST SpaceMobile, is tyring to overcome this with absolutely gigantic antennas in space).
As for your first question–if you press your phone against the window, you might just be able to send a text. It depends on if you can get line of sight to a satellite. Not impossible; I’ve seen my phone GPS work this way. But deeper in a plane, there’s not much chance.
Yeah, my understanding is that satellite internet on a plane requires the installation of a radome with a tracking antenna that can stay fixed on a satellite. Starlink uses a flat phased-array antenna, and should be almost flush to the skin of the aircraft.
Ther are now unique Starlink products for ships, aircraft, and land vehicles like RVs. Cruise wifi is a out to get a lot better, and cruise lines are signing up for Starlink rapidly. I saw a picture of a cruise liner with a line of Starlink antennas along the stern.
Most of the satellite antennas on current airliners are a very flat dish that is mechanically steered to point generally towards the target satellite. The whole housing with antenna inside is 6-8" tall, 4-5 feet long and 2-3 feet wide. It only looks kinda small because it’s bolted to something really big.
I have read adverts for phased array non-moving antennas for the same mission. Which are much lower profile, like 2" tall. At that time (a few months ago) the ads had that “coming soon” vibe. If they’re gonna succeed they better hurry.
It’s not that small, and in particular not all that flat. Starlink will be way flatter. And possibly even conformal (i.e., it can follow the curve of the fuselage).
By coincidence I saw an ad today for satellite broadband antennas for bizjets. This is intended to mount on top of a tailfin, where tall is OK, but narrow is required. unlike the fuselage-top antennas where tall is bad and broad is OK.
Amidst the body text they also talk about a flat panel phased array antenna in the works. For scale I think the antennas in the pic are about 8" in diameter.
I’m assuming their dedicated advertising isn’t paywalled. Let me know if it is.
Seems like a good start. Bob Smith undoubtedly filled the ranks with like-minded individuals (or oldspace cronies, depending on your viewpoint–this Mike Eilola spent 12 years at Honeywell, which is where Smith came from), and Limp will need to do some housecleaning.
Whether Limp can succeed remains to be seen, but he’ll definitely fail if he doesn’t replace a significant chunk of upper management.
As someone who worked in cellular communications for years, I am all too familiar with the redundancies high financial penalties can inspire. A wizard who can neutralize the phone system over a significant area would be scary.
On the other hand, a dense pine forest on a rainy day can do it easily.
Oof. The dust cloud is expected, and the result of some small solid rocket motors firing to cushion the landing. The capsule rolling away at fairly high speed is not nominal.
The main chute had a tear in it, possibly causing the lateral motion:
Don’t talk to me or my son ever again. (sorry, meme joke).
I’m really surprised that the “moon” hasn’t flown off into space or smashed into the main body from the irregular gravitational field. That has to be a fairly chaotic system.
