Apparently they realise where people have few other options…. The price will come down, but for now it’s a bit too painful in the wallet to seriously consider it for a boat or plane – for me, at least. Unless I’d live on a boat, then I’d do it in an instant.
This page contains an image of the antenna:
https://www.starlink.com/aviation
I fear this answers all questions for anything below maybe 10t MTOW.
That is a huge antenna
But there are bigger issues, for some.
He is a weird bloke. Would you do business with such a weirdo?
He is controlling what Ukraine can use it for… like happens with all satellite phones (Iridium, Thuraya, etc) he gets the GPS coordinates of each user in real time and he is blocking the data in places of his determination, and his “determination” changes each time he changes his underpants.
I think in life one should do only stuff which one believes is right, and I would not support a business run by such a dickhead with no moral principles.
Peter wrote:
I think in life one should do only stuff which one believes is right, and I would not support a business run by such a dickhead with no moral principles.
I agree 100%.
Peter wrote:
He is a weird bloke. Would you do business with such a weirdo?
Being a bit weird myself, I have no problems doing business with someone a bit weird.
My problem with Musk is that he’s a sociopath, not that he’s weird.
alioth wrote:
My problem with Musk is that he’s a sociopath, not that he’s weird.
How many top managers aren’t?!
I would argue that anybody who is really good at something will be some way on the autistic spectrum, because you will achieve nothing in life unless you can focus properly. So you won’t be the life and soul of a party 
People who are are airheads and those with a few braincells tend to work in Marketing. This is standard personality model stuff…
But Musk is not in the above. He has good IQ but with the mental age of an attention seeking 10 year old spoilt brat. He is way out “on the spectrum”… yeah, the sophomoric spectrum.
Given his brainless position on Ukraine, I would not touch him with a bargepole. There has hardly been a more black and white issue in the 20th and 21st centuries, and still he doesn’t “get it”. And it isn’t because he is financed from Russia. Then look at the way he buggered up Twatter; whatever you think of social media, he is utterly incompetent in business. He got as far as he has because he has loads of money. But, for all we know, one day he might wake up and shut down Business X because he is bored with it. You have spent a load of money on installing X on your plane and suddenly it is useless.
Also why would one need such bandwidth in a GA plane. The only thing I can think of is stopping your kids getting bored and demanding to watch movies on their Ipads.
Talking about Musk and Starlink, today, the New York Times released a podcast episode sharing the results of some research they did – The man owns 50% of all satellites in the atmosphere. That’s over 4,500 satellites.
Apparently, Amazon and the EU are launching similar services.
Somebody did actually manage to use Starlink in flight:
But overall it kind of underlines the issues, so this will not be an option for most of GA.
Thanks for the video, that was highly interesting. To be honest, it looks way more promising than I thought before – it’s just a tiny step (and an affordable plan) away from distribution throughout aviation. The antenna weighs about 3kg, the main issue in existing planes is finding unblocked access to the sky, especially in the spam cans. But external mounts, with all the issues, seem possible, too.
