Starlink's first constellation of direct-to-phone satellites is now in orbit
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Things like this are paraded around as helpful for people in oppressive regimes when in reality they're more useful for building a bigger surveillance state in the West.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-is-bui...
Cellular protocols have a very bad security track record, and this is built on the exact same standards.
Even if Musk only does it when it suits him it's still an overall improvement.
There are only three known entities to have bested the US government in many decades - Vietnam, Scientology and the Taliban. Musk is better advised that it's a foolish attempt to become the fourth one.
So legally it isn’t in government yet, however as it is officially part of the elected governments plans, you can make a sensible argument that it is part of the incoming transitional government that has been elected and while having now power due to not being sworn in yet, is indeed part of government by nature transition teams and the president elect having status in government by way of things like security briefings and other rights and privileges normally only held by the incumbent government like increased security protection…
It would be like saying a government in exile (a well established precedent of history) isn’t a government and none of the people in it are in government…
His position as co-head of the nominal “department of government efficiency” only exists due to the legitimacy it has been granted by the recognition granted to it by the incoming administration… otherwise we would all be calling it some variety of the first buddy’s pet think tank and arguing over if the incoming administration would even pay attention to it or not… that is a government granted position of power, a position that it is pretty hard to argue is not part of the government that grants it legitimacy… therefore making it a position in government… even if it’s unpaid and advisory… it’s still practically in the government if not legally (for all the conflict of interest reasons you highlight)…
I’m not trying to make a civics or political science case here… I’m talking politics as the exercise of power by government upon the governed… he is currently having breakfast lunch and dinner with the incoming president, making arguments and shaping the cabinet, and contributing to the transition team… he’s involved with government… he’s “in” it.
The scenarios you put forth here are effectively not happening. This is not a communist+dictator state (where this is much easier) nor does one branch have the power to unilaterally decide this.
The only time nationalization of a private service should happen in our country is wartime, specifically WWIII has to happen and on US soil. WW2 never saw this, nor did it need to.
The Supreme Court practically gave the President full immunity as long as they are in office, Congress is gridlocked and governing has happened mostly through executive orders for decades now.
Assuming a President (and no matter who it is) gives the orders, they will get executed as given - and any kind of protest will be dealt with in the courts, in a process that will likely take years.
> The only time nationalization of a private service should happen in our country is wartime
The US has been at war for the utter majority of the last decades. Vietnam, Libya 1, Iraq 1, Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq 2, Libya 2, Yemen, and that's just the major ones where the US were an active combattant.
Instead he managed to pull off a trick that not even Capone and Scientology were bold enough to try.
He became the government.
boldness or foolishness to become government we shall see…
Unless you just mean we could do exactly the same things, but more efficiently. But that is not what is meant; it means stopping doing a lot of things.
Very efficient
The real story is that he's anti-anti-competition. His competitors in particular already have deep ties with the government and its various departments. Companies like Boeing, Lockheed, etc. have engaged in deep regulatory capture to prevent competition from emerging.
These already established corporations have a revolving door with the government and that's the real impediment. That's what he's against.
So while you're right about his self interests, I think it's important to clarify that the decades long entrenchment of these various incumbent corporations is why this is all happening in the first place.
That's the real reason.
which <could> influence
That's a silly way to weigh your decisions and valuations. "There are more than four hundred federal employees, that's more than the number of states."
The number of agencies is itself mostly irrelevant, it's their individual size, effectiveness, and appropriateness that matters. Do all of them need to exist? Almost certainly not. But do we need to cut it down to one per US state? That's an arbitrary and useless target.
I'm sure they could be reduced down to similar areas of operation. One of the first to be cut being The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA). Who has so-far spent 16 years building 119 miles of track at a cost of $14 billion. That's roughly $66,845 per yard.
Using the number of states as some yardstick makes zero sense: merging multiple current states into one wouldn’t make our society less complex.
How can you POSSIBLY state he is "strongly antigovernment"
uh, what do you base this on? it sort of seems like made up bullshit, especially because it's easily disproven by tracking his jet and seeing that it's visiting the locations of his offices in both california and austin frequently. there's even a video of him in one of his offices literally yesterday as he did a zoom meeting for WSJ.
i don't understand why people just blatantly lie like this
So a government could easily block this.
Also the bandwidth is too limited to allow every cell phone in a country to have access.
I guess GP is alluding to the fact that they might choose to just ignore these facts in some cases.
Would you enjoy waking up to propaganda blasted to your phone as a non-silence-able "Presidential Alert" in retaliation?
I suppose they could make the case that it’s technically infeasible to limit their satellite beam footprints that granularly (like it used to be the case for non-spotbeam services), and that their service limitation works on the basis of billing addresses, not physical cells – except that they seem to be very capable of enforcing that to distinguish mobile from stationary plans, and ocean from land areas.
The US has granted SpaceX a sanctions waiver.
People spew this international law nonsense too much. If there is convention that has been signed and ratified by member states there is no law….
Lets say he flipped that switch, anywhere else but the US. They would: Ban Starlink devices for the sake of it. Block / Filter Starlink IP Addresses. Shut down Starlink ground stations, and tear up telco licenses of anyone who does business with them. Reallocate the frequencies Starlink pays to broadcast on, likely heavily deteriorating the service. Arrest anyone affiliated with Starlink in country.
If they did it in seppoland they could go one better and just prevent new satellite launches.
Heck, he shut down starlink in Ukraine because he is on board with Putin.
You arent magically free of earthbound constraints, you just have a new one, Musk.
What this tool allows US state is to circumvent foreigns government sovereignty and ultimately, directly guide people through communication channels via psychological operations.
By inverse(contradiction), observe what happens with TikTok, Huawei or "Chinese ballons" within US borders.
Starlink Direct to Cell (799 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42230103
Starlink Successfully Tests Space Direct to Cell Mobile Service (204 comments):
For example, the Pixel 9 has a Exynos 5400 modem, which advertises satellite connectivity as one of its features. The upcoming Pixel 9a will use the older Exynos 5300, which does not have that same satellite feature.
It's not clear (to me) whether the newer modem's satellite feature refers to this or something else. Will the Pixel 9a be able to use this Starlink service once both are available to the general public?
This is not that, this is seemingly LTE via satellite. I assume via some beamforming higher power signals, but I could be very wrong.
Edit: From SpaceX [1]
In addition to expanding mobile coverage, Direct to Cell will enable ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity outside of terrestrial coverage, connecting millions of devices across critical global industries.
• No specialized or additional hardware required • Compatible with off-the-shelf CAT-1, CAT-1 Bis, and CAT-4 modems* • Plans available via our global partners in approved countries starting in 2025
A 100m/300ft radio tower can see about 40km, just one order of magnitude less than the distance to a Starlink satellite. We know phones can reach base stations at least twice as far away as our theoretical 100m tower because of quotes about the ranges of base stations on mountains. The rest they likely make up with better beam forming and relative lack of reflections when communicating with a satellite overhead
What the Pixel uses is 5G NTN, powered by Skylo, I believe – that's a satellite-specific stack, but if you were to use a Pixel on T-Mobile via Starlink, that would be the regular LTE stack it also contains.
I frequently get out into the backcountry here in Colorado, and would love to have an affordable sat phone.
I was considering getting an inreach before trying the service.
I wonder how Apple thinks about services like this? Do you know if this is using "iMessage for business" or is otherwise blessed by Apple?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NROL_39_vector_logo....
Could facilitate other forms of passive monitoring though. eg I recall hearing whispers around attempts to track stealth planes via space based emissions. (Noting that even if that works it would not be accurate enough to shoot it down)
The Orion-class Signals Intelligence satellites are claimed to be the largest in space, with a primary dish diameter of about 100 meters.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite)
The Green Bank radio telescope is a dish on that scale, and it looks just wrong, too large to be real. The usual portrait shot doesn't do it justice, but try to put a mental image together from the photos up on the Commons:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Green_Bank_Tel...
I spent a week out there during its construction. There were contractor shacks - cargo container size - up there on the platform at the base of the elevation gear (photo labeled "Altitude" on the page linked above).
So right now, in space, you have soccer-stadium-sized satellites. They are far less massive than the GBT, not solid surface. But very large.
They’re covering the planet for cell coverage with 20 satellites? Why are they launching 1000s? Why do we have so many cell towers?
“Bandwidth per beam is only ~10 Mb, but future constellations will be much more capable.”
They are not. Of these 20, 13 were the last to launch of the first shell of the direct-to-cell constellation, which contains 285 satellites. Once they reach destination orbit (which will still take weeks), Starlink DtC will be able to provide continuous low-throughput comms.
> Why do we have so many cell towers?
There is a superlinear relationship between total system capacity and the amount of cell towers. The total amount of capacity that Starlink DtC has will be, frankly, pathetic. 10Mb/s sounds good until you realize that that's all the capacity of the beam, that's spread out over a huge geographical area.
It will not be replacing cell towers. Instead, it will just end coverage gaps for low-throughput workloads, like sending emergency messages.
Line-of-sight is a key reason. Satellites have fewer obstructions compared to terrestrial towers.
But also: Capacity. The more satellites you have, the smaller you can make the cells they're projecting to earth, and the higher transmit power levels can be (assuming that the satellites are largely power limited), as well as the better the SNR is going to be as you can focus the same antenna payloads on a smaller area.
A beefier satellite with larger solar panels, more antennas, and bigger and reflectors could achieve the same with fewer satellite vehicles, which seems to be the approach ASTS is taking.
But Starlink, as far as I understand, is also providing their "regular" beamformed service using the same satellites, and there you can actually increase capacity greatly with more satellites than strictly required for global coverage (since the terminals can also "point", i.e. you and your neighbor can use the same frequency at the same time, but pointed at another satellite, increasing total data rate per Hz).
Whatever local provider my Tesla connects to doesn't have great reception. The onboard streaming music often cuts in and out.
I could see in-car based Starlink usage in the Ka band, though – the Starlink Mini terminal definitely fits the form factor and power envelope.
EDIT: Oh, I see. EIRP already accounts for directionality and is measured where the antenna gain is highest. Never mind then!
Starlink is only allowing text messaging for now. They are going to offer data but haven't announced how much.
this is also a noteworthy nuance because you can video call with emergency services using this satellite connection. that's a pretty rare and exceptional circumstance so they clearly allow you to saturate a lot of the bandwidth for that purpose
still super cool technology. 10mbit is like 9000 texts per second, so even in the most dense areas like Manhattan with 1.3 million people in 50 square km, if everyone texts 40 times a day, starlink still has 10x more bandwidth than that. granted people text more during the day, but it'd still be fine for text-only without media.
Ref:
The Kessler Effect: A self-perpetuating cascade of collisions between satellites and debris.