zlacker

>>alden5+(OP)
So that is "432 Mbit/s per laser, and 9000 lasers total". I don't know you guys but I find that statement much more relatable than "42 PB/day". Interestingly, they also say each laser "can sustain a 100Gbps connection per link" (although another part of the article even claims 200 Gbit/s). That means each laser is grossly underused on average, at 0.432% of its maximum capacity. Which makes sense since 100 Gbit/s is probably achievable in ideal situations (eg. 2 satellites very close to each other), so these laser links are used in bursts and the link stays established only for a few tens of seconds or minutes, until the satellites move away and no longer are within line of sight of each other.

And with 2.3M customers, that's an average 1.7 Mbit/s per customer, or 550 GB per customer per month, which is kinda high. The average American internet user probably consumes less than 100 GB/month. (HN readers are probably outliers; I consume about 1 TB/month).

>>mrb+b46
Starlink's big investor and launch customer was US Air Force.DoD had long complained about lack of fast sat comms, it's also why they effectively own Iridium.

So in addition to households add foreign bases and possibly drone command networks to possible sources of traffic going fast enough to warrant sat-to-sat connection.

>>p_l+bmb
Launch customer yes. Investor no. That's Google and Fidelity Paying above the regular rate. Definitely

>>inemes+9rb
USAF fronted significant (40%? Those kinds of numbers were floating around) of initial operational capability costs.

>>p_l+Lxb
I'd like to see an article or even an estimate. SpaceX spent 2.4 billion upfront on the dishes alone to ST Micro.

I don't believe the AF spent anything more than 100m for whatever R&D program. And the money was post development.

Was it a black budget thing?