Why SpaceX is Making Starlink
Why Hacker News recommends it
Recommended as a clear explanation of Starlink's purpose and the case that it can beat fiber on latency for long routes.
What it is
Real Engineering explains why SpaceX is building Starlink, including the economics of satellite internet. It covers the latency advantage of light in vacuum over fiber for long-distance links.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2019 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Nican · 2019-07 · on “Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites”
Real engineering made a video on it: [this video] I recommend watching. The channel does really good explanations.
Recommends bearcobra · 2019-10 · on “Elon Musk tweets using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet”
Real Engineering has an interesting video on why it would be useful for firms trading internationally [this video]
Recommends PopeDotNinja · 2020-08 · on “SpaceX Starlink average speedtest is 42.3Mbps down / 9.7 Mbps up”
Light travels 47% slower in a fiber optic cable than it does in the vacuum of space. [1] [1] [this video] (the whole video is worth watching, but that timestamp answers your specific question.
Recommends hangonhn · 2020-09 · on “Amazon drivers are hanging smartphones in trees to get more work”
Right, so if you can't go through the crust then going up would be another option. Over long enough of a distance, say NYC to London (or even farther), the overhead of going up first and then a "straight" line horizontally (it's not completely straight because it has relay between the satellites via LOS laser but each arc would be fairly long) and back down would be shorter than a line following the curvature. (Edited: This is wrong. I had conflated the lower latency with shorter distance as others have pointed out.) BTW, I want to give full credit to my source: [this video] It also does a much better job of explaining it than I have but it is a convincing argument for how Starlink can be useful
Cites PopeDotNinja · 2019-07 · on “Google’s Equiano Cable Will Extend to the Remote Island of Saint Helena”
Someone smarter than I made this, which you may or may not agree with... "Why SpaceX is Making Starlink" [this video] TL;DR -- satellites can be faster than cables in certain cases
Cites hangonhn · 2020-08 · on “Beta users of Starlink get downloads of 11 to 60 Mbps”
[this video] According to this Engineering Explained video, it may be possible to achieve a lower latency using Star Link than over fiber if the points are far enough. People like high frequency traders might be willing to pay a ton for such a thing.
Cites coolandsmartrr · 2020-10 · on “Invites sent for Starlink beta”
This video[1] speculates that Starlink will achieve lower latency than fibre Internet. Latency-sensitive industries like finance are very willing to pay a lot for improved latency. [1] [this video]