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Comment by mrauha | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the (slow) process of acquiring and fitting a sailboat for living at remote places. While I acknowledge that the cheapening of satellite internet will be nice, practical, and make my plans more realizable money-wise, I'm also a bit sad on what this implies to the taking a real distance to the information overloaded society.

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I'm not sure this is for you, if you plan to move your boat:

https://www.starlink.com/faq

> Can I travel with Starlink, or move it to a different address?

> Starlink satellites are scheduled to send internet down to all users within a designated area on the ground. This designated area is referred to as a cell.

> Your Starlink is assigned to a single cell. If you move your Starlink outside of its assigned cell, a satellite will not be scheduled to serve your Starlink and you will not receive internet. This is constrained by geometry and is not arbitrary geofencing

Musk mentioned on Twitter that it should be doable.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1323691195239960579

I reckon the current restrictions will ease up when more sats are deployed, especially with more laser interconnects.

When this was announced I actually assumed this was a ploy to get fast Internet into Teslas.

It is for the US Army. They are the initial customer anyway. Civilians are the best beta testers. The internet was originally created to have a network in place for the military and I see this as the natural evolution beyond hard wired systems or intermittent wireless towers.

I think it was dreamed up as a way to monetise the increasing capacity of SapceX launches. They might run out of customers and so they need ways to make money out of launching. A constellation of 10k+ satellites is a good way to need lots of launches!

It's a way to for Musk to benefit from government subsidies (as described in the article), like all Musk ventures.

I can imagine this is only in the beginning. As more sats go up ships can easily be a lot of customers.

Would you like to upgrade to the roaming plan for $99.99?

Shut up and take my money!

Seriously I have sites running 5 figure data bills every week.

Any sort of commercial fishing or shipping vessel would pay for that without hesitation.

It's pretty cheap for the speed if they (starlink) cover a vast space of oceans.

i'd pay for that if i really needed it.

It has to change or it cannot be used by airplanes, which surely is a prime target for Starlink.

Users have already shown that you can move the dish and Starlink doesn't block it. However they might in the future.

They are already testing Starlink on planes and those are clearly moving.

A dedicated product for boats and planes is certainty on its way. Understandably to do capacity planning, they are focusing on stationary at first.

Beta users on Reddit indicate the service shuts off 90 miles from the home location

Well, that sucks but good to know, so no RV traveling yet?

Also a sailboat (even a big one) is not stable and from experience satellite receivers can lose connection on slightly strong winds. So I guess this wouldn't work even if Starlink allowed it.

The starlink antenna may look like an ordinarry satelite dish -- but it is a super-advanced phased array antenna which uses a lot of signal processing to electronically steer the beam. This electronic beam steering should have no problems keeping up with boat motion.

From what I gather beamforming operates only in limited range, i.e. tracking satellites as they move small fraction of a degree per second. For bigger adjustments the dishes turn mechanically. It's not clear if beamforming could handle relatively small waves, but for big ones mechanical adjustment would be needed. I'm speaking out of my ass, but if I had to guess moving the antenna mechanically would not keep the link up in wavy waters.

The beamforming is fast enough. It can probably steer at a few kHz of steering-bandwidth, if not more.

Yes, mechanical adjustment for big waves, but that's a simple passive 2-axis gimbal and having the center of mass slightly below the gimbal axis crossing.

I have one, the dish doesn’t move after it initially sets up.

They've demonstrated 650Mbps connections between Starlink and a jet plane. Sailboat & wave motion will be trivial in comparison.

Where did they demonstrate it? Latest news was that they filed for a license [0] to install 5 user terminals on up to 5 Gulfstream planes - application that is still pending.

[0] https://fcc.report/ELS/Space-Exploration-Holdings-LLC/0955-E...

Speed of beamforming tracking is not the problem - what is a problem is the lack of compensation for movement of the base station (and necessary hardware for it) which is quite evident when people test it in motion [0] - which is quite understandable, SpaceX had to think about the features it actually needs to support to get current price point and use in motion is not the intended target for the current rollout. Tracking is much easier if you can assume that the ground station is immobile.

And no, putting it in a passive gimbal as some of the other commenters are suggesting is not enough to fix this as the direction of the antenna beam is not even close to being parallel to ground (like it is when a gimbal is used with a marine radar).

Plus there is the fact that it does not appear to be sufficiently waterproofed to begin with and the motor mount is rather flimsy (both a problem if you want to use it at sea instead of lakes...).

Marine antennas for Starlink will come, no doubt - but the current home user terminal one is not it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU2y-QmQfXY

This is absolutely true as long as they built the IMUs and control loops into the software to do that. My guess is by the time the service is available for moving users that will be the case.

i'm pretty sure boats (especially big ones) are one of the potential markets for starlink, so even if current receiver will lose a connection, there will be special receiver for boats eventually. Stabilizing phased array shouldn't be that hard, even without adjusting motors constantly.

Just place the current one in a gimbal. Problem solved.

I wonder if they'll reserve a segment for global use, probably at higher expense. I could see a lower tier strata that requires planning but allows for relocation on a planned schedule.

It’s because most of the satellites do not have laser links yet, so the satellite you use must be able to see a downlink station in order to provide internet.

When they have laser links widely deployed, you will be able to move about.

Supposedly it’s meant I work in airplanes and trains, so sailboats I’d imagine too. +/- constant swaying etc.

With a simple passive gimbal they should be able to use the electronic steering to correct for the remaining swaying on planes and boats.

Trains might have more issues with vegetation and geography obstructing clear view of the satellites.

Why not just omit the internet fittings? Surely you can control the access that you have.

> I'm also a bit sad on what this implies to the taking a real distance to the information overloaded society.

You could just turn it off.

A practical concern with Starlink in this scenario is that the dish consumes ~100 watts.

Bring 2 square meters of solar panel, an inverter and some batteries and hope for sun.

You can turn it off when not in use.

Whatever, your present PC, Monitor, printer, Router, and Internet wireless will already be using more than 100W.

Printer, monitor, ... ?

A ~15 watt Macbook Air M1 seems suitable when living on a boat.

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