Starlink however forgets that Russia does have anti satellite weapons and they probably will not hesitate to use them which will make low earth orbit a very dangerous place when Russia starts blowing up the Starlink birds.    I applaud the humanitarian aspect of providing Starlink service, unfortunately there are geopolitical realities like access to space which is likely to be negatively impacted if and when Russia starts shooting down these birds.    Fortunately if they start shooting down the birds the debris will burn up in a year or so unlike geosync orbit where it would stay forever.

On Tue, Mar 1, 2022 at 1:44 PM Phineas Walton <phin@phineas.io> wrote:

This is more of a brand image / marketing stunt for Starlink. A pretty ingenious way to market which will heavily pay off long term. To them, this is cheap for how much attention it’s getting them.

Phin

On Tue, Mar 1, 2022 at 6:36 PM Crist Clark <cjc+nanog@pumpky.net> wrote:

So they’re going to offer the service to anyone in a denied area for free somehow? How do you send someone a bill or how do they pay it if you can’t do business in the country?

On Mon, Feb 28, 2022 at 4:39 PM Jay Hennigan <jay@west.net> wrote:

On 2/28/22 16:17, Michael Thomas wrote:

> As a practical matter how does this help? You need to have base
> stations/dishes, right? Can they be beefy ones that can pump out
> gigabytes that would be capable of backfilling the load? Or would it
> need to be multiple in parallel? Wouldn't that bandwidth be constrained
> by the number of visible satellites in the constellation? I wonder if
> they've ever even tested it with feeding into an internet facing router.
> Could tables on the satellites explode?

If there aren't fixed Internet-connected earth stations line-of-sight to
the satellite that's serving the remote terminal, Starlink will relay
satellite-to-satellite until a path to an Internet-connected earth
station is in reach.

 From the linked article:

"Musk has previously stressed Starlink’s flexibility of Starlink in
providing internet service. In September, Musk talked about how the
company would use links between the satellites to create a network that
could provide service even in countries that prohibit SpaceX from
installing ground infrastructure for distribution.

As for government regulators who want to block Starlink from using that
capability, Musk had a simple answer.

“They can shake their fist at the sky,” Musk said."

--
Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net
Network Engineering - CCIE #7880
503 897-8550 - WB6RDV