I guess you mean things like internet on planes, shipping internet, off-shore rigs? But what things can't they do at the moment because of prohibitorily slow/costly satellite internet?
Shipping - Same as logistics, but across oceans.
Real-Time weather data, from solar powered sensors, spread across the world.
Real-Time video for tracking endangered wild-life.
I think different people can come up with more ideas.
The difference between satellite and cellular networks is coverage.
Imagine if a nature loving adventurer fell into a ravine and can just video call authorities about his location and condition.
https://www.findmespot.com/en-gb/
Edit: Starlink looks fantastic but maybe not for that particular scenario, at least not any time soon.
Shipping: already done via AIS
Real Time Weather: already done by satellites with the required features. SpaceX is not building this.
Real Time Video: again, there's no way you're getting animal scale images out of a starlink scale sat.
I swear people have taken the usual Elon hype with this and gone to absolutely absurd lengths. This is not your iphone suddenly works globally. This is not a star trek communicator. This is an alternative to sat internet like Dish network et all. Is your hiker really gonna be hauling around a giant freakin' dish?
It's going to be a premium priced broadband service for rural customers and institutions that can afford it. If you know anything about the market you know DoD is gonna be the customer they focus on.
Imagine being able to see live video, or AI enhanced video (movement detection, etc). A lot more bandwidth will open up many areas for innovation.
Imagine being able to get real-time data of patients being transported in planes or ground vehicles.
>Real Time Weather: already done by satellites with the required features.
But there is not much data about wind patterns, directions, barometric pressure, etc. Satellites can observe on a macro level. If you can combine that with micro level ground data, perhaps predictions for weather would be more accurate.
>Real Time Video: again, there's no way you're getting animal scale images out of a starlink scale sat.
Perhaps, but periodic photos, would be possible, and that would be enough for many innovations.
>I swear people have taken the usual Elon hype
Even I have the after taste of Hyperloop. However, this is different because there are billions being spent to send actual satellites to space. That is not hype. I would not cast aside Elon's vision so easily, especially if he has committed and spent so much on the idea and is actually building out the infrastructure.
>This is not a star trek communicator.
But Imagine if you could have one.
>Is your hiker really gonna be hauling around a giant freakin' dish?
Would it be too far fetched to think that those can be shrunk down, perhaps to the size of a suitcase or a backpack?
>It's going to be a premium priced broadband service for rural customers and institutions that can afford it. If you know anything about the market you know DoD is gonna be the customer they focus on.
Sure, that would be one revenue source. But many innovations in the world are made possible due to what is available. Would an app store be possible without the iPhone? But, when the iPhone was made, the app store, as a concept was at best, a theoretical idea in Jobs' mind.
For what benefit?
> Imagine being able to get real-time data of patients being transported in planes or ground vehicles.
This is a very niche use case.
> But there is not much data about wind patterns, directions, barometric pressure, etc. Satellites can observe on a macro level. If you can combine that with micro level ground data, perhaps predictions for weather would be more accurate.
I'm sorry but this is incredibly ignorant. There's a huge volume of data that's fed into several global weather modeling supercomputers continuously. That's literally where the weather forecasts on your tv come from.
> Perhaps, but periodic photos, would be possible, and that would be enough for many innovations.
You still aren't getting it. There are fundamental physical limits to image resolution based on the size of the optics. You'd have trouble resolving individual creatures even with a telescope the scale of Hubble/KeyHole. Starlink changes nothing about this.
> However, this is different because there are billions being spent to send actual satellites to space.
The hype is people speculating on applications like the above that are entirely implausible and unrealistic. It's on the same scale as thinking the next Tesla is going to be a flying delorian with fusion power.
> But Imagine if you could have one.
But you just aren't fantasizing, you're claiming these fantasies will become real in the short term without understanding the limitations that preclude them.
> Would it be too far fetched to think that those can be shrunk down, perhaps to the size of a suitcase or a backpack?
Yes, it is too far fetched. You cannot shrink a wavelength. In addition, starlink's design requires the transmission/received lobes have a certain maximum beam width. The global capacity of the system depends on this parameter. That means they need phased arrays of a certain minimum size in terms of array area and number of array elements to meet their specs.
> But, when the iPhone was made, the app store, as a concept was at best, a theoretical idea in Jobs' mind.
There were examples of app stores before iPhone. That wasn't a unique new concept.
Not sure how big this, objectively speaking money-wise, but for teleop/autonomy it sure does enable new things when there is true 100% coverage everywhere on earth.
But there won't be. Not with Starlink at least. Even at their envisioned full constellation size of 40000 satellites, coverage won't be 100%. The Arctic and Antarctic regions won't have any coverage at all, for example.
Starlink is cool and al, but satellite internet isn't new. Both forestry, mining and farming is utilising existing satellite services for monitoring and operations.
Starlink is better than all existing services, but with some drawbacks. Like it will be really expensive to provide service in really remote areas until sat to sat relay is possible as there must be a ground station within 500 km radius of the satellite. This means that to provide service in the Amazonas SpaceX will have to build ground stations in the Amazonas. To provide service in the Pacific and Atlantic SpaceX will have to deploy several floating ground stations in the middle of the oceans.
Again, not taking anything away from Space X. Starlink is really cool and will be a wake up call for the satcom industry, but satcom is not a new thing and Starlink have significant drawbacks for the time being.
Imagine being able to conduct a robot controller surgery in Africa, by a doctor in the US. Currently, not possible, but with high speed satellite based internet, it could be.
Imagine an electrical engineer being able to help his colleagues in Africa, with specific issue, over VR or Video calls, enabled by Satellite based internet.
I can see a number of possibilities and opportunities.
Highly unlikely for many reasons: latency too high, cost of equipment way too high, only very few hospitals are even equipped for remote surgery even in the West, let alone underdeveloped countries...
> Imagine an electrical engineer being able to help his colleagues in Africa
That's already possible even without satellite-based internet and doesn't require it at all.
The only point I agree with is the military - surveillance and remote controlled drones could benefit from greatly from low-latency high-bandwidth satellite internet.
You're talking about today, which is the lowest potential time scenario. How about the time frame of 15-20 years from now? It'll take years just to fully build out Starlink's constellation, then many more years to fully spread its use. Remote surgery will continue to expand, becoming increasingly common, and the prices will come down. As that process unfolds, you will increasingly see the major robotic-assisted surgery companies donate (or otherwise massively subsidize) equipment to poorer nations, exactly as is done with very expensive drugs now. Also, while today robotic-assisted surgery costs are very high (dominated by companies like Intuitive or Stryker), China and others will eventually fully knock down that door and flood the market with lower cost systems that are 85% good enough and will become very widely used.
It's also more likely that it'll be highly skilled doctors in one less developed nation doing work in another less developed nation. That will help keep the costs down more than the parent's example. US doctors will likely do most of their remote work within the US (other than charitable work), where they can command far higher fees.
Maybe in developed countries. In India, most Power Plant construction sites don't even have dial-up internet. There are a lot of projects going on in a lot of remote places, where there is simply no infrastructure available for internet. StarLink could be rented for a while and perhaps used after that.
There is tremendous potential for such a service.