Ask HN: How did the Starlink POC work?
Lately I've heard that the network latency in Starlink has reduced to indistinguishable level. Curious how SpaceX ran the POC for a planetary scale project.
Starlink is not the first system for data via low-earth-orbit satellites.
There is Orbcomm that carries short data messages. Orbcomm is used for things like getting a few bytes of sensor information from a pumping station in Siberia or tracking devices far away from cellphone network coverage. If a device is down in a valley it may have to wait for a satellite to be directly overhead to exchange messages.
There is the Iridium satellite phone network.
AIUI, Starlink became practical a) because Musk can hurl lots of satellites into a pretty low orbit relatively cheaply, partially due to reusing booster rockets instead of letting them drop into the Ocean and building more.
and b) because you can have ten billion transistors in a silicon chip so the satellites can do high speed data stuff with the miserable amount of power available from solar panels.
The design of the satellites and user terminals can all be done and tested without hurling anything into orbit.