Test Results: Starlink on a Sailboat Underway

[SV Tom Crean]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

The Maritime version is only for big ships, certainly not for cruisers on 42' boats. I think it actually comprises 2 of the bigger (& much more expensive) Business Dishies.

Folks seem to be worried that prices will go up for mid-ocean service for us little guys, but I think that's pretty unwarranted. Musk is not known for price gouging. He could be getting MUCH more for servicing NASA jobs. His lunar lander bid was half the competition's.

It's not like it costs Starlink anything more to service the middle of the ocean. Those mid-ocean birds aren't doing anything else except possibly boosting to keep their orbits. Admittedly, they can't use their radios while they're boosting, but only a few will be doing that.

One of Starlink's publicly stated goals is to beat the latency of the normal internet between NY & London. To do this, they can't use the normal undersea transatlantic fiber - they HAVE to use their own lasers, keeping the data in space until it's close to its destination. Light in space is 30% faster than light in glass. And fiber has to go through amplifiers every few miles, which each add a tiny delay. Going from sat to sat introduces a tiny delay as well, but the hops are much longer.

I'm optimistic. The birds over parts of north America (& possibly Europe) are very busy, but the birds elsewhere are loafing, with most doing nothing at all.

I’m with you on that - a capped mobile RV/Nomad version, limited to maybe 30/40Mbs but works offshore and any continent, might be a good solution and for consumers only ( no commercial/for hire boats). It’s not like this is a new idea to SpaceX - there are cruisers working in SpaceX and are pushing for this.

This maritime sub is for commercial ships - your cruise liners, merchant ships and so on, businesses making money with their shipping.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by SV Tom Crean

I’m with you on that - a capped mobile RV/Nomad version, limited to maybe 30/40Mbs but works offshore and any continent, might be a good solution and for consumers only ( no commercial/for hire boats). It’s not like this is a new idea to SpaceX - there are cruisers working in SpaceX and are pushing for this.

This maritime sub is for commercial ships - your cruise liners, merchant ships and so on, businesses making money with their shipping.

But again this is a tiny niche market , the income from it would be tiny. Why bother ? And you need a suitable in-motion warranted hardware

( starlink within a territory can only operate within the license restrictions applicable to that territory , we don’t know the detail of these )

[Caz]

I just sailed from San Diego to San Francisco at times - up to 60 NM offshore. Starlink worked the entire time.

[Seafarer7]

Excellent news. It would appear the satellite laser interconnect links are up and running, paving the path for global connectivity. Makes sense given the 2 recent Starlink announcements of the Aviation and Maritime services

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Seafarer7

Excellent news. It would appear the satellite laser interconnect links are up and running, paving the path for global connectivity. Makes sense given the 2 recent Starlink announcements of the Aviation and Maritime services

If we could get offshore internet for $50 a month that would be a game changer

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

If we could get offshore internet for $50 a month that would be a game changer

Why $50
Why not $5?

Personally I'm good with the $170 odd charged for RV in Oz
And I'd be happy to give up big speed and data to have 100gb/MTH at 20mbps at 100nm out
Or for world cruising, the holes inbetween the 100 miles out slowed down to 2 Mbps.

2mbps is what I often got using 4g mobile data and still fast enough to do plenty.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

Why $50
Why not $5?

Personally I'm good with the $170 odd charged for RV in Oz
And I'd be happy to give up big speed and data to have 100gb/MTH at 20mbps at 100nm out
Or for world cruising, the holes inbetween the 100 miles out slowed down to 2 Mbps.

2mbps is what I often got using 4g mobile data and still fast enough to do plenty.

At 25 a month I have unlimited fast 4G to about 20 -30 nm offshore. So doubling that would go me be an acceptable cost to get coverage further out. My current LTE is delivering 12 mb/s up and 10mb/s down. As you say of I could get that deep offshore it would be great.

[Simi 60]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

At 25 a month I have unlimited fast 4G to about 20 -30 nm offshore. So doubling that would go me be an acceptable cost to get coverage further out. My current LTE is delivering 12 mb/s up and 10mb/s down. As you say of I could get that deep offshore it would be great.

6 years we have ran with 100gb of 4g for $30 and it's been fine as long as we stayed close to the mainland and civilisation.

Time to go back to our old haunts.
Islands and reef to ourselves for months on end and now, hopefully with weather reports which we had a tough time getting on radio before, no chance at all on mobile.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

6 years we have ran with 100gb of 4g for $30 and it's been fine as long as we stayed close to the mainland and civilisation.



Time to go back to our old haunts.

Islands and reef to ourselves for months on end and now, hopefully with weather reports which we had a tough time getting on radio before, no chance at all on mobile.

Agree I have unlimited 4G so once I’m Within range etc. last month my data usage was 420 Gbytes so unlimited off shore would be great

[shimari]

Originally Posted by Caz

I just sailed from San Diego to San Francisco at times - up to 60 NM offshore. Starlink worked the entire time.

Was this recent? Rumors are that SpaceX pushed a firmware upgrade within a month or two that limited use while in motion. From what I've read, the system locks (temporarily) with a message that you're not allowed to use the system while in motion. You're fine if you're moving under 6 MPH evidently.

We don't have our antenna mounted such that we can use starlink while in motion, otherwise I would have tested by now.

[Caz]

Originally Posted by shimari

Was this recent? Rumors are that SpaceX pushed a firmware upgrade within a month or two that limited use while in motion. From what I've read, the system locks (temporarily) with a message that you're not allowed to use the system while in motion. You're fine if you're moving under 6 MPH evidently.

We don't have our antenna mounted such that we can use starlink while in motion, otherwise I would have tested by now.

We sailed Sept 23-26, 2022 San Diego to San Francisco. I don't have pictures of Starlink working 60NM offshore, as I was not monitoring the service the entire way, but our crew was able to make phone calls, and surf the internet without issue. Here are some pictures taken along the way. Our speed hit a maximum of 8.59 kts. The position of the Starlink antenna did not change unless I power-cycled it. However, it appeared to work regardless of position. Hope this helps.

[goboatingnow]

I wish we had a proper definitive statement from starlink as to what the position on moving systems really is. It’s abject nonsense the users have to test it.

The other risk is as it’s geofenced is they could arbitrarily tighten the system offshore at any time

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by Seafarer7

Excellent news. It would appear the satellite laser interconnect links are up and running, paving the path for global connectivity. Makes sense given the 2 recent Starlink announcements of the Aviation and Maritime services

Not necessarily, Seafarer. The birds have similar antennae to Dishy, flat phased arrays that can direct their beams out about 45º from the direction they're pointing, which is straight down, of course. Given that they're ~300nm up, simple geometry says that a max single-bird hop would be ~600nm, but that depends on the bird being exactly between you & a ground station, a situation that won't last for long. In practice, you have to be within about ~450nm of a ground station for Starlink to work reliably.

So 60nm offshore should still be able to talk to any ground stations that are near the coast, or even in Nevada. It doesn't require the sat/sat laser mesh at all. And while Starlink is selling their Maritime Dishy, there are no reports yet of it working mid-ocean.

What it did require was that Starlink DEFINE cells offshore, & for the birds to ping those cells to see if any station there requires service. This is the ability that Starlink recently introduced. (Strangely, there's no back-channel for Dishy to call out to the birds "I'm here, put a beam on me", & this alternative is very unreliable, IMO, but it is what it is.)

But you're partially correct. Starlink *IS* starting to test their sat/sat laser-mesh, but only in specific places, like bits of Antarctica, bits of Alaska, & (somewhat surprisingly) some of the Australian outback. Maybe eastern Ukraine, as all of Ukraine's traffic is having to go through a single ground station in Poland, & that station is ~760nm from the eastern end of Ukraine.

There are currently ~3,000 active birds in the constellation, & ~2,000 of those are the v1.5 birds that have the lasers necessary for sat-to-sat communications. I'm a bit concerned that Starlink hasn't started more active testing of their worldwide laser-mesh yet. After all, Iridium achieves a full worldwide (low-bandwidth) microwave mesh with only 66 birds. I would have expected more testing by now.

I hope that Starlink did their homework correctly. The v1.5 birds apparently have 4 lasers, front, back, & on each side. The front & back lasers talk to the birds ahead & behind them in their own orbit. Those birds shouldn't move relative to each other significantly, so the lasers shouldn't have to adjust their aim (much) but given that there are only 22-24 birds in each orbit, they're ~1,000 miles apart, which is a fairly long laser-hop, & it's not something that can be easily tested on the ground.

The side lasers talk to birds in neighboring or even crossing orbits, & they're significantly closer, as the orbits are only ~300nm apart. But those birds will be moving relative to each other, so the lasers will have to be constantly adjusting their aim.

The upshot from all this is that I'd have expected Starlink to have started testing some time ago, & for that testing to be more widespread. The polar testing is all being done with polar birds. Those birds all have lasers, but there aren't many of them up there.

I hope that their design is good, & that we don't have to wait for the v2 birds to get that sat/sat laser-mesh functionality that we've all been waiting so long for.

For those talking about using the system while underway, yes, Starlink did introduce code to shut Dishy down if it found it was moving at more than ~10kts. However, they've now removed that restriction, & several folks have reported that their systems are working just fine at 20kts, & there are implications that RVers are being able to again use their systems at highway speeds.

[CaptainRivet]

Originally Posted by Pole

Iridium and Inmarsat should be getting nervous. Either of those products will be like being a Video Store owner when streaming arrived. Or more accurately owning a taxi company when Uber arrived. Surely they will become obsolete almost immediately. Unless protective rules are applied who is going to buy a dedicated expensive service that basically allows only small messages, when the opposition lets you surf the net in the middle of a crossing?

Thanks to the OP. I for one have been wondering if Starlink will work on a sailing yacht. Now we can see every ship, even trains, airliners and cars will be connected.

Welcome to the 21st century.

That can end very quickly if iridium or and immersat fight through a court that spaceX has to control and check where you use the RV account. SpaceX simply doesn’t control because it’s not in their interest to do so but some laws requiring an extra license for different usages.
Starlink works with a ground station, that’s why it’s restricted to around 10nm out in most cases. To have it out on the ocean you need interconnected satellites which are much more expensive to make and operate plus starlink has only a few of those in the orbit. That’s why the marine version costs 10k + 5k month…plus it’s targeted at commercial like eg cruise ships.

[Seafarer7]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

Not necessarily, Seafarer. . .

Excellent analysis- thank you Jon. New coastal cells up to 60nm offshore should cover most coastal hops at the least. Glad to hear the speed restriction has been removed.