Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

This is a nitpick, but the color tones chosen in the map can be very difficult to differentiate. (recall the visual puzzles when two tones separated by a 3rd tone are shown to be actually identical)

I read the map as:

-- There is full coverage around the coasts of N. America, Europe, Australia/NZ, Southern Brazil, Chile right now

-- Q4 2022 will see the whole band of 20 to 60 deg North covered, as well as 33 deg South and below

-- Q1 2023 will see the rest of the entire Earth covered

Do I have that right?

I'm also curious what physical or ground station-related developments happen to enable this? Is it related to enough satellite density to allow transmission satellite-to-satellite to land anywhere, without needing a nearby ground station any more?

> I'm also curious what physical or ground station-related developments happen to enable this?

The v1.0 satellites have no intersat links, so the only way to get coverage with them is to connect to a satellite that is close enough to a functioning ground station. This is the coastal coverage shown.

The v1.5 satellites they are launching right now contain laser links that let them forward incoming packets to other satellites until they reach one that can contact a ground station, but there are not enough of them up there to provide constant coverage anywhere yet. According to this map, by some time in Q4 there will be enough v1.5 sats up to cover the entire mid-latitudes. They get coverage first because the orbits SpaceX are using cause satellites to spend most of their time near these areas. Eventually SpaceX will launch polar sats and just have enough sats up total that they can cover both the poles and the equator.

(The bands of coverage should be symmetric around the equator, so either the map is drawn imprecisely or you got your latitudes wrong.)

Thanks!

I changed the colors, hope this helps: https://imgur.com/a/VvvCx9H

Red/green colorblind people will have trouble reading this version

In that case: https://imgur.com/a/pTUmU11

(according to this palette https://imgur.com/a/lrNT5yZ)

Actually the map stops at about 60 deg S; it's not clear why it's truncated there; it certainly extends much further north of the equator.

Yes, you have it right.

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