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Comment by eqvinox | Hacker News Reader

This sure sounds useful, but "might remove need for deep-sea cables" is quite silly.

Anything they do to cram bandwidth into their laser link can reasonably also be applied to fiber optical cables. Except the fiber optical cables come in bundles of 12 to 144 with absolutely no separation issues. Replicating that over open space (air or vacuum), if reasonably possible at all, will chug significant amounts of power in signal processing at the receive end.

There are major benefits to free-space optics -

- quicker to build

- lower latency

- in some cases, large coverage

But deep-sea cables compete on bandwidth, and that's not something free-space optics can beat them on. Why diminish this research achievement by conflating it with that? :(

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On top of this I really doubt the claim about working in bad weather. Some weather will work, sure, maybe at reduced speeds. But if there is a proper cloud in the way, the near-visible 1550 nm light will be scattered completely.

I believe the idea is that the ground link is still radio but the interconnect between the satellites is a laser. While radio can be affected by weather, the "works in bad weather" is a long solved issue.

That could work, but unless you can somehow deliver similar speeds with radio the network would bottleneck on the ground to satellite links.

Not to mention stuff like Solar flares.

what is a proper cloud? it does not seem to be a term frequently used when discussing clouds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud

Is this parody?

Not any more than saying a "proper cloud" will disrupt satellite transmissions is meant to be serious. Is it a cirrus cloud? Is it a cumulus? A cumulonimbus? Which cloud is going to do this blocking?

This really isn't that complicated. You can't do a link through pretty much any cloud where you would say "it's cloudy". If you're not sure, the link still works but a lot worse...

A proper cloud. Everybody understood what he meant, including you. Why the need for such extreme pedantry? Oh right. It's HN, home of uber-pedants.

No. I still don’t know what is meant by a proper cloud. I don’t have a starlink, but I’ve had plenty of other satellite systems in the past. None of these have had issues with clouds. Severe storms with heavy rain and lightning would affect it at times. With the older large dishes, heavy winds could cause it to move enough to degrade image. Clouds by themselves? No, not an issue.

So, yet again I have to ask because all of the useless answers received to this point have not been an actual answer to what a proper cloud is that could interfere with a signal

Not sure if you're being deliberately dense but he means a thick cloud. A very cloudy day where the clouds are very dense and voluminous.

If sounds like you don't agree with him, but don't pretend you don't understand him. Please.

You're going to need to show me charts with strength of signal being diminished by "proper" clouds before I'll even remotely come to thinking this isn't just FUD. So, no, I don't understand him, and yes, if this is the premise I do not agree with it.

It is pretty simple, you can't see through a cloud because the visible light gets scattered. This system works with 1550 nm light, which behaves pretty much the same in the context.

Normal ground to satellite communication use wavelengths of 7 mm and up, as those have reasonable cloud penetration.

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