On Wed, 31 Aug 2022, David P. Reed wrote:
I'm not going to reason from "intersatellite" routing being operational until they offer it in operation. It's feasible, sort of. Laser beam aiming is quite different from phased array beam steering, and though they may have tested it between two satellites, that makes it a "link technology" not a network. (you can steer a laser beam by moving lightweight mirrors, I know. But tracking isn't so easy when both satellites are moving relative to each other - it seems like way beyond the technology base that Starlink has put in its satellites so far. But who knows.
They have been launching laser enabled satellites for a while now. I suspect that the only way we will really know when they are enabled is when we see coverage expand to the poles and mid-ocean (unless they make announcements about it) I doubt that they would be launching laser enabled satellites that could not track each other. David Lang _______________________________________________ Starlink mailing list [email protected] https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
