996Outpost.com

After many months of hearing nothing, I got a ping back from SpaceX..."Starlink is now available for order to a limited number of users in your coverage area. Placing your order now will hold your place in line for future service. Orders will be fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis."

Service address will be Big Bear City, CA.

Co-worker in Portland got his a month or so ago. It kept him connected to the Internet (with the help of his generator) during his 4-5 days without power. His review is that it works, but it is exactly what you should expect from a Satellite system. It's slow. Better than the Sat links of the 90s, but painful by today's ISP standards.

It's another Elon special though, so you KNOW something is going to go wrong...

I expect that I'll have better coverage further south. We'll see.

The cable coverage up here in Big Bear is REALLY affected by wind/weather. Starlink (allegedly) is going to be largely unaffected by weather since the dish only has to get signal to/from low-earth orbit (300 miles for Starlink instead of 22,000 miles for DirectPC in geostationary orbit).

But then again, the glass was supposed to be shatterproof...

Because I'm a Millennial with a soul from the Lost Generation I didn't really know about this. Just looked it up and holy hell... for $99/month I'd be happy to tell my cable company to shove their hidden fees up my Starlink.

Even if it's kind of crappy - what I've already got is ALSO already crappy, and it costs more. Plus...space porn!

I keep forgetting that you are a Millennial especially when you type things like "new fangled hippity-hop music interface"...

Dr_Strangelove (whew!) wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:08 pm Because I'm a Millennial with a soul from the Lost Generation I didn't really know about this. Just looked it up and holy hell... for $99/month I'd be happy to tell my cable company to shove their hidden fees up my Starlink.

What could possibly go wrong with this plan...

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation being constructed by SpaceX providing satellite Internet access. The constellation will consist of thousands of mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit, working in combination with ground transceivers.

Just hope the thousands of "mass-produced satellites" do not have hardened shells so they DO burn up when they start falling from the sky like iguanas out of trees in the cold!

5chn3ll wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:52 pm Even if it's kind of crappy - what I've already got is ALSO already crappy, and it costs more. Plus...space porn!

The good thing about LEO: those satellites need to stationkeep. If they stop working, they burn up. They're also TINY - SpaceX is planning for about 12,000 of them instead of the dozen or so they'd need for geostationary North American coverage. Surviving reentry is beyond unlikely.

32wildbilly wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:27 pm I keep forgetting that you are a Millennial especially when you type things like "new fangled hippity-hop music interface"...

Dr_Strangelove (whew!) wrote: ↑Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:08 pm Because I'm a Millennial with a soul from the Lost Generation I didn't really know about this. Just looked it up and holy hell... for $99/month I'd be happy to tell my cable company to shove their hidden fees up my Starlink.

For some reason, those graphics remind me of "Stargate".