Thread by @ErrataRob

This is what my Starlink map looks like. The "dish" (not a dish but a phased-array) points north. At this precise moment, there's 3 satellites theoretically in view. In practice, because a hill north of me, only the one to the left may actually be usuable.

Each satellite is only visible for a few minutes before they disappear over the horizon. They are traveling at 550km above the earthy at 27,000 kmph. Here's an update picture between these two tweets.

I've been doing Facetime calls over the service. The handoff between satellites is pretty seamless. I see the occasional fraction-section hiccup -- but that's normal for wired connections due to brief congestion.

Again, a couple minutes later, and the map has completely changed again. I need to dig into the internals to see the average number of handoffs.

FYI: By next year, more than half of all active satellites in orbit will be Musk's Starlink satellites.

Satellites provide world-wide coverage, but they only bounce signals to nearby ground stations. These are only in US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand right now for beta.

They are shown on the map with those little brown icons.

Note these dots overrepresent the size of the satellites. They are 250kg, roughly the size of a table top. They are launched as groups of 60 at a time on reused SpaceX rockets.

The innovation isn't the satellites (though launching them on re-used boosters is a big deal), but the ground terminal. It's called a "dish" (Dishy McFlatface), but it's really a phased-array of 1000 radios.

Phased-arrays can change the direction they "point" by changing the phase of all the radio elements, without having to physically point in that direction. That's why it can track a satellite as it moves overhead, and switch instantly to a different one.

My tree farm in Oregon is within easy commute distance to Intel's campus, but outside good Internet range. I suspect property prices are going to radically change now that it's within good Internet range. There goes the neighborhood!!

BTW, it's real hard to find useful information about Starlink. It's overwhelmed by Musk's celebrity status, either fanatics or haters. Fanatics think Starlink will compete with wired Internet (it won't), haters avoid the fact it services those without Internet access.

For those living near towns, wired is better. But for those living further out, we'll never get adequate wired infrastructure to all potential customers. With Starlink, we can get much closer.

Thus, for 95% of you reading this tweet thread, you don't care.

But for those with poor Internet in rural areas, you should be jumping up and down with excitement. It'll change people's lives.

BTW, the tree farm is powered by solar and has a 4G "microcell" connected to Starlink for cell phone service. The microcell's range extends quite a bit across the property, hundreds of meters from the house.

It's a good model for where we'll be in 5 years with Starlink, being able to drop a 4G/internet station in a village anywhere in the world, no matter how far from civilization.

...now only if we could block Facebook, we'll avoid destroy countries with such access...