[Starlink] Bad news from Tonga

[Ulrich Speidel]

We've just learned that the Reliance cable ship was unable to recover 
any more of the domestic cable and has departed to Papua New Guinea. 
They're looking at a 6-9 months downtime until new cable can be procured.

Most of the domestic cable route is at the bottom of a valley between 
Hunga and various seamounts and small islands on one side, and the 
subduction uplift ridge west of the Tonga trench on which the Ha'apai 
group sits. I'm not surprised - that valley would have copped a lot of 
turbidites from potentially all sides.

One interesting tidbit now is that they are talking about 85 km of cable 
missing. The previous number was 77 km.

Bummer.

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Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel at auckland.ac.nz
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
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