I'd love to have a better idea as to how it works (how are they getting a much higher range than a conventional cell tower) but at a surface-level, this is pretty damn cool.
I'd love to have a better idea as to how it works (how are they getting a much higher range than a conventional cell tower) but at a surface-level, this is pretty damn cool.
This is a pretty exciting development for the promise of blanket coverage alone, but can anyone here comment on the speed vs cost of Starlink connections? I was researching this last year as I was...
This is a pretty exciting development for the promise of blanket coverage alone, but can anyone here comment on the speed vs cost of Starlink connections? I was researching this last year as I was considering more rural housing in CA, and ultimately came to the conclusion that I'd have to pay a lot more for the initial setup, and then the connection would be on par with very low end cable internet/DSL at best. So I ended up looking for housing exclusively in areas with cable internet instead. I saw lots of anecdotal evidence that people loved the service and were more than happy with what they were getting. How much of that is confirmation bias after a fairly large sunk cost vs genuine satisfaction?
My area only just got a 50 Mb/s option with a 500GB monthly limit last year which costs $85CAD a month. Before that the fastest you could get was astonishing speed of 6 Mb/s. Starlink costs...
My area only just got a 50 Mb/s option with a 500GB monthly limit last year which costs $85CAD a month. Before that the fastest you could get was astonishing speed of 6 Mb/s. Starlink costs $140CAD a month and will typically give at least 120 Mb/s with no monthly limit*, and even often sits closer to 200+ Mb/s. And it's been an option for a couple years now.
I don't like Musk, and have had some issues with Starlink, but if it gets you around a monopoly, then it's a lifesaver.
I would imagine that most people who are satisfied with it are like me and had their speed literally multiplied by over 20 and are willing to overlook the issues. Else I would imagine there are people whom their previous ISP had frequent outages, or their previous internet somehow cost more than Starlink.
But outside of those if you had options that offered even close to what Starlink offered before switching, they've probably got a bit of a confirmation bias. You won't really feel the issues that Starlink has is if all you use the internet for is some browsing and video streaming, and that tends to be a vast majority of people.
Honestly, if my last ISP actually gave us the 50 Mb/s option before we switched, we probably wouldn't have felt the need to switch and I would have been disappointed if we had. But as is, I know that it'll probably be another 10 years before that ISP offers anything faster, while Starlink on the other hand may see gradual improvements over time all without us needing to hound them to change our plan.
*We were told there was a monthly limit, but haven't received any additional bills for going over and I haven't noticed any throttling. Presumably because before we got Starlink they were trying to put forth a monthly limit, but then saw a bunch of blow back from customers and ditched it.
My brother had it but I haven't done a speed test there myself. He's in a spot out of town/on a lake and traditional internet wasn't fast enough to use Netflix. I believe he's getting around 100...
My brother had it but I haven't done a speed test there myself. He's in a spot out of town/on a lake and traditional internet wasn't fast enough to use Netflix. I believe he's getting around 100 megabits now with starlink.
Your speed is also going to suffer if you're in an area with a bunch of people using it.
How much of that is confirmation bias after a fairly large sunk cost vs genuine satisfaction?
For the rural people near me it's about going from terrible options to an okay option. The city almost all has access to fibre which is way better.
I think it's a terrible idea to give Elon Musk yet more unrestrained, unregulated power and control. His companies have already established choke points in U.S. space launch capability, short form...
I think it's a terrible idea to give Elon Musk yet more unrestrained, unregulated power and control. His companies have already established choke points in U.S. space launch capability, short form social network communications, electronic payments, electric vehicles, and solar installation.
His "land" grab in Low Earth Orbit is squeezing out safe satellite deployment for all other purposes. LEO is already cluttered with unregulated debris - even Starlink satellites have to perform evasive maneuvers which further diminish their expected lifecycle. When the satellites are launched or deorbit and burn up in the atmosphere, they generate metallic and organic vapors and particles in the stratosphere. This can impact the ozone layer and overall planetary albedo. We don't have good data on long term impacts, but modeling indicates real problems at current rates of deployment. Amazon is planning its own satellite Internet mega constellation, "Kuiper", which will worsen any issues even if it finally provides effective competition.
We already know that ISPs are vulnerable to surveillance and censorship [PDF warning]. We've seen what Musk has done with Twitter, including algorithmically deprioritizing material he disfavors. Musk's capricious actions with respect to Starlink use in the Ukraine-Russia War indicate that the earlier geofencing to prevent Russian use isn't being enforced. Intermittent Starlink blackouts in strategic areas of Ukraine have helped Russian advances.
I live in a semi-rural area with still-spotty broadband coverage. A number of friends and acquaintances have resorted to Starlink because they otherwise would only have a single provider's slow DSL service or 4G cellular available. They've reported Starlink's price increases for service, outages, defective equipment, difficulty maintaining signal in poor weather or snow, overheating in sunlight, and other issues, without the recompense legally mandated for landline providers' outages. The Starlink architecture is still dependent on ground stations connected to terrestrial backhaul data, and performance is limited by local availability.
The proposed cellular service will face limited data throughput unless Musk can apply regulatory leverage to the FCC (likely under the coming Trump administration) that will allow signal power output that can interfere with existing cellular broadcasts.
I don't want to be 100% negative here - it would be awesome if cellular data was available globally. But I don't want to see it subject to Elon Musk's (or Jeff Bezos') whims, or to see billionaires consolidating yet more unconstrained power at public expense.
It's almost as if a limited resource (stable LEO orbits) needs to be shared globally for critical infrastructure that would best be available globally, that kind of infrastructure should be owned...
It's almost as if a limited resource (stable LEO orbits) needs to be shared globally for critical infrastructure that would best be available globally, that kind of infrastructure should be owned and shared by some sort of international NGO.
Announced cell network providers so far. The prospect of my cell phone now also being a satellite phone is an exciting one. If I understand this right, I could be anywhere on the North American...
GLOBAL PARTNERS
Cellular providers using Direct to Cell have access to reciprocal global access in all partner nations.
T-MOBILE (USA)
OPTUS (AUSTRALIA)
ROGERS (CANADA)
ONE NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
KDDI (JAPAN)
SALT (SWITZERLAND)
ENTEL (CHILE)
ENTEL (PERU)
Announced cell network providers so far.
The prospect of my cell phone now also being a satellite phone is an exciting one. If I understand this right, I could be anywhere on the North American continent north of Mexico and still have coverage through the T-Mobile plan I'm on.
It says on the site they plan to have the texting service available in 2024. Has this rolled out to anyone public yet? It's getting pretty late in the game for a 2024 launch if not. I hope this...
It says on the site they plan to have the texting service available in 2024. Has this rolled out to anyone public yet? It's getting pretty late in the game for a 2024 launch if not. I hope this isn't getting too far delayed, but I can't imagine we'll be seeing a data/RCS launch in 2025.
I mean, I know you had a discussion about the "shitting on Elon Musk" trend above, but with his companies' past track records of delivery.... I'd expect texting service to be available sometime...
I mean, I know you had a discussion about the "shitting on Elon Musk" trend above, but with his companies' past track records of delivery.... I'd expect texting service to be available sometime around 2031. Less jokingly, I do hope there is something tangible in the next year on this but I'm not holding my breath too much.
Yeah I'm under no delusions about his "over promise, under deliver" bullshit, don't worry. Though from starlink's history they do seem to be one of the faster moving companies. If you told me 6...
Yeah I'm under no delusions about his "over promise, under deliver" bullshit, don't worry. Though from starlink's history they do seem to be one of the faster moving companies. If you told me 6 years ago that there was going to be thousands of tiny satellites in low-earth orbit beaming lightning fast Internet down for a big part of the globe in 6 years, I would have laughed you out of the room. They really have accomplished a ton in a very short time.
Why does it matter that much? Pretty much every single large company that is changing the world (for better or worse) is run by a egotistical psychopathic billionaire. Elon just happens to be more...
Why does it matter that much? Pretty much every single large company that is changing the world (for better or worse) is run by a egotistical psychopathic billionaire. Elon just happens to be more outspoken than the rest of them, but Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc think that we're all bugs that are annoying them while they try to achieve their legacies. Musk is just a part of the crowd. Don't let him single-handedly ruin the extraordinary achievements of the SpaceX, Tesla, etc engineers and scientists.
Because, unlike the others, Musk actively and successfully cultivates followers who agree with his awful beliefs? It matters to me because Musk is a transphobic piece of garbage. Similarly, if the...
Because, unlike the others, Musk actively and successfully cultivates followers who agree with his awful beliefs?
It matters to me because Musk is a transphobic piece of garbage. Similarly, if the literal nazi party were still around and learned cool new biology stuff by vivisecting humans, I would allow my distaste for nazis to overwhelm my enthusiasm for science.
I assume that you’re trying to be comforting with your comment, overall …? But — not speaking for OP, and more on a personal note — some people prefer observing, feeling, and maybe acting, when a perceived injustice occurs. Don’t let their expressed morals dissuade you from your own feelings, but note that it’s very important to them even if it isn’t equivalently so for you.
I understand having extreme distaste for Elon himself, but you also have to understand that all of the billionaire class are fascist corrupt murdering monsters right? Companies like Coca Cola...
Exemplary
I understand having extreme distaste for Elon himself, but you also have to understand that all of the billionaire class are fascist corrupt murdering monsters right? Companies like Coca Cola literally murdered hundreds to thousands of people for daring to stand up to them in South America. Amazon has singlehandedly destroyed the lives of millions of people and forced them to work menial jobs and piss in bottles or die (many people chose death, one of my friends included)
I really don't understand why people are perfectly fine ignoring those things but draw the line at the Twitter lunatic who clowns around with donald trump. Jeff Bezos and pals may not have a cult of personality like musk does (or at least not as widespread of one) but I don't believe for a moment that they've done any less harm to the world, and honestly for most of them I believe they've done MUCH MORE harm than musk.
Every single thread where Space X/Tesla/Starlink announces an incredible achievement born off the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of hard working people; the most anyone ever wants to say is "ugh I hate Elon Musk" and it's downright exhausting. It's not productive or relevant to the discussion and all it does is minimize and dismiss the magic that these people are working so hard to achieve.
We're talking about cell-phone coverage for the entire earth, no fancy phone required. This is life changing technology for some people, assuming they can pull it off and it won't be extortionately expensive. To brush aside this kind of leap forward with a throwaway lazy comment about the owner of the company is infuriating.
I’m sorry about your friend. And agreed that this will keep happening as long as billionaires and corporations continue existing; all of them are complicit. I disagree that people are consciously...
I’m sorry about your friend. And agreed that this will keep happening as long as billionaires and corporations continue existing; all of them are complicit.
I disagree that people are consciously drawing that line. Most aren’t aware, and those that are might have too much on their mental plate to be able to focus on the problem given that it’s ever present. If the only thing someone can accomplish is pointing out that a problem exists, that still seems worthwhile to me, even if it doesn’t for you.
And for what it’s worth, when threads like these come up for other massive companies, people do point out how atrocious they are. It’s just that Chiquita isn’t expanding the frontiers of scientific knowledge, they’re organizing coups across dozens of countries for cheap bananas. So there’s no reason for positivity in the slightest.
No one is trying to minimize these accomplishments, they’re telling other people how they make them feel (or at least, that’s what I would be doing). Agreed that it could be worded more productively for a discussion, but pointing out the source of a work is useful for people who don’t have context. And honestly, people should be free to say how they feel.
I’m also sorry that it feels like people are attacking the genuinely skilled, passionate people who are working on these projects; I assume they are just attacking Musk (which I presume we can all get behind), and relating their personal experiences.
Apologies; I don’t this digression has been productive. I’d imagine that you want to continue discussing there actual technical accomplishment at hand, so I’ll stop with this thread.
You’ve used the phrase “I don’t understand” and asked “why does it matter so much”; so in sum, it matters to me because I point this out everywhere anyways, and I understand perfectly well that our entire economic system is designed to either turn us against each other or kill us all. Hopefully those are straightforward enough answers.
I apologize for getting testy there, it's not the first time the only comment chain in a thread like this has just been a discussion about what new evil thing elon has done recently. I respect...
I apologize for getting testy there, it's not the first time the only comment chain in a thread like this has just been a discussion about what new evil thing elon has done recently. I respect people having those opinions, or even those discussions; it's just frustrating when they always seem to happen solely in unrelated threads.
I also respect the user base of tildes too much to believe that we have to preface every single discussion about a spaceX topic with the fact that we hate elon musk just in case everyone wasn't on the same page. As if we haven't focused enough on the atrocities going on in the world right now. There's power in infamy, and I prefer to not contribute to it when I don't have to.
It's still a warning to stay away even if you minimize it by saying "other people do it, too." Yes, other billionaires are also corrupt. Why continue to tolerate Musk if it's bad enough to call it...
It's still a warning to stay away even if you minimize it by saying "other people do it, too." Yes, other billionaires are also corrupt. Why continue to tolerate Musk if it's bad enough to call it out?
It's pretty difficult to become a billionaire without completely losing your humanity. I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but the vast majority of them are monsters. Even the "respected"...
It's pretty difficult to become a billionaire without completely losing your humanity. I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but the vast majority of them are monsters. Even the "respected" ones just have better PR firms.
I don’t know any billionaires and neither do you, presumably. Seems like that’s more an ideological article of faith than a fact. What does “completely losing your humanity” even mean?
I don’t know any billionaires and neither do you, presumably. Seems like that’s more an ideological article of faith than a fact. What does “completely losing your humanity” even mean?
I don't know them personally, but I know their deeds and I know it's basically impossible to accumulate that level of wealth without abusing thousands of people? It's not just elon or bezos, the...
I don't know them personally, but I know their deeds and I know it's basically impossible to accumulate that level of wealth without abusing thousands of people? It's not just elon or bezos, the investment banker billionaires have destroyed this country's working class. The oil industry billionaires have destroyed the environment. The military industrial complex billionaires have orchestrated the death of millions of people by starting wars to enrich themselves. The pharma billionaires started the opioid crisis by bribing doctors to over-prescribe life-destroying drugs. The insurance billionaires have denied and overcharged for life-saving procedures and medicines to save them a buck. The telecommunications billionaires destroyed our privacy and sold us out to the NSA and FBI.
I'm confused, is this a controversial take or something? Do you think these kinds of things just happens on their own?
It’s a very common take but it’s just generic anti-capitalist ideology. Do you think the reason Beyoncé got to $760 million (estimated) is because she abuses people? Will she need to abuse people...
It’s a very common take but it’s just generic anti-capitalist ideology.
Do you think the reason Beyoncé got to $760 million (estimated) is because she abuses people? Will she need to abuse people to get to a billion, or just keep being a popular singer? When she gets to a billion, are you then going to look for reasons why actually, she has “lost her humanity” and is evil now?
It does require extreme popularity to get to that kind of money, but some products are very popular and wealth snowballs. It’s not fair but that’s just kind of how it works. There are billions of people willing to spend money on something they like, and sometimes they all decide to buy the same things, or buy them the same way, so that’s where the money flows.
So yes, in a sense, I do think extreme wealth can just kind of happen, because sometimes there are no brakes. It’s a similar mechanism as posts going viral, and it happens more easily for virtual goods.
It’s also true that businesses in many industries have made a lot of money by doing all sorts of terrible things, but the idea that it’s not possible for extreme wealth to happen any other way is a sort of wishful thinking by people who want simple rules to decide who to hate.
I mean... yes? And this was just the first thing that came to my head, I'm sure there's much more than just the abusing of sweatshop labor in Sir Lanka. I get the argument, but celebrities are...
Do you think the reason Beyoncé got to $760 million (estimated) is because she abuses people?
I mean... yes? And this was just the first thing that came to my head, I'm sure there's much more than just the abusing of sweatshop labor in Sir Lanka.
I get the argument, but celebrities are rarely billionaires, and they don't make even make up a tiny minority of the people I was calling out in my comment. Highlighting the very rare exception and not even providing an actual billionaire like Taylor Swift is just odd.
See, this is the sort of thing that happens to celebrities. Linking their name to anything, good or bad, sells newspapers. If a singer didn’t do anything wrong themselves, they can dig for abuse...
See, this is the sort of thing that happens to celebrities. Linking their name to anything, good or bad, sells newspapers. If a singer didn’t do anything wrong themselves, they can dig for abuse happening somewhere in the supply chain for their merchandise. It’s not all bad, since it’s a news hook for an article about sweatshops, but Beyoncé is not the reason why there are sweatshops in Sri Lanka.
How much do you police your supply chain? If you don’t do that, have you lost your humanity?
(To be clear, I think it’s good for people to be aware of where the stuff they buy comes from and to try to use more ethical sourcing, but not doing that doesn’t make you evil, it just means you’re not being as careful as you could be.)
I don't have to police my supply chain because I'm not selling $5,000 handbags that cost $4.50 to make. And funnily enough neither are any of the people I know and respect. But you're right I...
I don't have to police my supply chain because I'm not selling $5,000 handbags that cost $4.50 to make. And funnily enough neither are any of the people I know and respect. But you're right I should empathize with the soon-to-be billionaire because she totally didn't know that her company employed modern day slaves. It may have been reported to sell clicks, but it still happened.
And even then, you continue to focus on the tiny fraction of a percent of (not even) billionaires who just so happened to be lucky enough (or more likely nepotismed into) fame and fortune. What about all of the real billionaires I mentioned in my original comments? Maybe they also just got smeared as a hook in the newspaper for hiring death squads in Columbia to assassinate union leaders.
It seems like you're the one making claims about billionaires as a class, not me? My argument is that we don't actually know much about most rich businesspeople (Beyonce included), and you keep...
It seems like you're the one making claims about billionaires as a class, not me? My argument is that we don't actually know much about most rich businesspeople (Beyonce included), and you keep saying that, actually, you do know all about them. But based on what?
tiny fraction of a percent
I don't think you made a spreadsheet and calculated this. You're not citing a study. Such a study couldn't be done by reading the news because most people don't appear in the news. Finding more news stories about good or bad billionaires wouldn't tell us about the denominator in a percentage calculation.
Where does your confidence come from? Why do you find skepticism about your anti-capitalist beliefs so threatening that you're hurling more overheated rhetoric at me for raising doubts?
I raise doubts about these things because I'm against dehumanizing people based on which class they're in. There are a lot of things going on in the world that I don't like, but I think that's going too far.
I was talking about celebrities being a tiny fraction of billionaires, which is objectively true. There are only a few dozen "celebrity billionaires" and even a portion of those are businessmen...
I don't think you made a spreadsheet and calculated this. You're not citing a study. Such a study couldn't be done by reading the news because most people don't appear in the news.
I was talking about celebrities being a tiny fraction of billionaires, which is objectively true. There are only a few dozen "celebrity billionaires" and even a portion of those are businessmen who got famous because they were rich. (People like Mark Cuban or everyone's favorite Muskrat.) On top of that, a large majority of those celebrity billionaires just so happened to make it rich shilling products like designer clothes, makeup products, or pseudoscience snakeoil. It's not really worth going further into the absolute ethical nightmare that each of these product lines involves so I'll leave it with a fairly irrefutable conclusion that out of the 3,000 known billionaires in the world, only a few dozen of them are celebrities who made their money at least somewhat "ethically".
Where does your confidence come from? Why do you find skepticism about your anti-capitalist beliefs so threatening that you're hurling more overheated rhetoric at me for raising doubts?
Is it anti-capitalist to believe that most billionaires are monsters? Why does the system of capitalism have to result in 0.0000375% of the people in the world having more wealth than many monarchs throughout history? I've provided many examples of billionaires literally killing people, destroying the environment, and causing international incidents to enrich themselves, and your argument against that is just "well we don't know that they're all bad." There really aren't that many of them out there, it isn't much of a logical leap. Look at the top of any industry that historically or even currently is known to be doing comically evil things and find those people who make the decisions. Those are the billionaires I'm talking about.
I'm sure Beyonce is a perfectly lovely person to have lunch with, but by my standards at least, someone who directly enriches themselves to a ridiculous level off of slave labor is not a good person.
Billionaires are indeed monsters, regardless of their personality or how kind they seem. Hell, if they still own or are worth billions, they're monsters even regardless of whether they're...
Billionaires are indeed monsters, regardless of their personality or how kind they seem. Hell, if they still own or are worth billions, they're monsters even regardless of whether they're philanthropic, IMO. TBH, I could not care less about whether or not I know billionaires or other similarly extremely rich people personally. I also could not care less if they seem "like a good person"
Simply owning or being worth that much money, in my eyes, is inherently immoral. No one deserves that much wealth. No one should be allowed to keep that much wealth. This even includes the ones some people think are the "good ones" or the "exceptions". Even some of them that have "foundations" that may or may not do good work. There may indeed be one or two exceptions out there, but I remain even skeptical of those. There is no kindness large enough to hide the monstrosity of their wealth unless they give 95+% of it away. Yes, this may include your favorite musician.
Do I really need to explain why I think Elon is worse than other billionaires? Yes, they are all bad but I would hope it would be clear that the richest man in the world also being red pilled and...
Do I really need to explain why I think Elon is worse than other billionaires? Yes, they are all bad but I would hope it would be clear that the richest man in the world also being red pilled and working as a stooge for Trump is worse than most billionaires.
I can't believe the "it's just a drop in a bucket" fallacy is so alive and well as we sit and soak in the over flowing bucket that is modern society. Why can't we have rationalizations about doing...
I can't believe the "it's just a drop in a bucket" fallacy is so alive and well as we sit and soak in the over flowing bucket that is modern society.
Why can't we have rationalizations about doing things that improve society just a tiny bit instead of having armies of people justifying being not too evil?
If this can reach any place on earth with good speed it makes me wonder if it's worth wiring up the world (though we've gotten pretty far so far.) This got me pretty hyped for the future of...
If this can reach any place on earth with good speed it makes me wonder if it's worth wiring up the world (though we've gotten pretty far so far.) This got me pretty hyped for the future of satcom, but eh, I hope we don't forget about Kessler
p.s. I'll be noise, but can we keep the misery to ~society? Y'all bringing reddit to my tildes :P
I'd imagine we're still going to have fibre optics/wires running everywhere. Starlink has limits on the number of subscribers per km^2 due to physics reasons (bandwidth + beam forming...
If this can reach any place on earth with good speed it makes me wonder if it's worth wiring up the world (though we've gotten pretty far so far.) This got me pretty hyped for the future of satcom, but eh, I hope we don't forget about Kessler
I'd imagine we're still going to have fibre optics/wires running everywhere. Starlink has limits on the number of subscribers per km^2 due to physics reasons (bandwidth + beam forming limitations), so if you want a quick and reliable internet connection especially in an urban area, you'll want to connect via hard line.
That said, as long as some competitors can spring up, this could make a decent argument against building out rural ISPs in some situations.
p.s. I'll be noise, but can we keep the misery to ~society? Y'all bringing reddit to my tildes :P
People have cracked reddit-esque jokes in some more serious threads I've written in; ignoring them and not upvoting is all I've been doing. Feel free to label the comment as "Offtopic" or "Noise" if you don't feel it's useful to the conversation at hand.
This is exactly the problem though. You can't have multiple competitors blanketing the earth in these satellites, the aforementioned Kessler Syndrome. This isn't even exactly unique to...
That said, as long as some competitors can spring up
This is exactly the problem though. You can't have multiple competitors blanketing the earth in these satellites, the aforementioned Kessler Syndrome. This isn't even exactly unique to space....there's a reason we don't have dozens of power companies running dozens of electrical cables running proprietary and different competing standards.
If this gets traction, Starlink becomes a monopoly in rural areas. If not for the above reason....good luck convincing SpaceX to give you an affordable contract to launch your competing network.
Isn't low earth orbit basically the least dangerous place for Kessler Syndrome? All of these satellites have natural life spans of only a few years before they fall into the gravity well and burn...
Isn't low earth orbit basically the least dangerous place for Kessler Syndrome? All of these satellites have natural life spans of only a few years before they fall into the gravity well and burn up in atmo. They need to be regularly boosted to maintain orbit. I understand being wary of filling up the sky with junk, but LEO is probably the "best" place to do this kind of thing in regards to Kessler Syndrome
Yes, but this interview sums it up nicely, and far more eloquently than I could. Basically, LEO means a success rate of 5-15% for satellites, 40-70% with rocket phases. Which is better, but...
Yes, but this interview sums it up nicely, and far more eloquently than I could.
Basically, LEO means a success rate of 5-15% for satellites, 40-70% with rocket phases. Which is better, but doesn't bode well when talking about deploying more satellites in LEO in less than 20 years than have been deployed in the prior 60.
Interviewee goes into much more detail, notably about current standards likely not being sufficient for that kind of load. Based on what I read there, I think Starlink probably shouldn't have been given the OK to begin with.
If we're now thinking about putting another couple of thousands of satellites up there, with levels of compliance similar to what we've been doing so far, then we're talking about a possible catastrophe.
Operators of any type of large satellite constellation would have to behave far better than most current actors in spaceflight have been doing. And this is the concern: Before you launch, operators can of course say and demonstrate that they are going to comply with all international norms and guidelines. But it's only after launch that we know how responsible their behavior actually was.
And since this company is headed up by a guy seeking to dismantle as much regulation as possible, this does not give me the warm fuzzies.
Just want to point out that the 5-15% success rate only applies to payloads with orbit lifetimes >25 years. Starlink satellites are naturally compliant with the "space debris mitigation measures"....
Just want to point out that the 5-15% success rate only applies to payloads with orbit lifetimes >25 years. Starlink satellites are naturally compliant with the "space debris mitigation measures". Technically, they wouldn't even need to perform their deorbit burns. However, the report also points out that the current limits are likely not strict enough.
Thanks! I'll read this and educate myself, I don't know much about orbital mechanics so I feel awkward even trying to make educated guesses about this kinda thing. But I am very interested in it...
Thanks! I'll read this and educate myself, I don't know much about orbital mechanics so I feel awkward even trying to make educated guesses about this kinda thing. But I am very interested in it and do my best to read and watch content about them whenever I can. I wonder if there are good ways to identify and neutralize "threats" like this with automated systems like lasers to either vaporize or de-orbit space debris from a distance. Could be a good way to clean up orbit if we do end up causing problems with too much junk.
Edit: This article says we only have a 5-15% success rate for satellites to de-orbit after 25 years, but are they talking specifically about starlink sats with that figure? I was under the impression that they basically had to de-orbit after only 5~ years if they weren't boosted back up.This would make it basically impossible for them to become a long term threat if they were to collide with other objects. Is this just inaccurate or is the person in the article somehow not aware of that? I believe they are talking about more traditional satellites like telecom relays which are way further out in orbit and don't generally naturally decay without outside forces.
Edit 2: Oh, this article is from 2019, are we sure it contains up to date information? This is back when the system was pretty much brand new and there might have not been as much info out there about it yet. A lot of what I'm reading isn't consistent with all the other information I've read on the subject. The more I read from this article the more I think that the expert they brought in isn't even talking specifically about Starlink satellites, they seem to focus more on traditional satellites which orbit at a much higher altitude and are more likely to cause issues in the future if they aren't manually deorbited after their working lifespan is over. This is not an issue with Starlink sats (as I understand it) so I don't think Kessler's syndrome applies to this situation, unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding something. It feels really weird questioning someone who's title is literally "Space Debris Analyst" at the European Space Agency as I'm sure they're far more educated on the subject than I am; but I have to believe this is outdated information or the questions weren't given to them correctly.
I'm going to apply Occam's razor: Specialist in 2019 says it would have taken a revolutionary leap over current state-of-the-art to accomplish what Starlink was claiming. Elon claimed Teslas would...
I'm going to apply Occam's razor:
Specialist in 2019 says it would have taken a revolutionary leap over current state-of-the-art to accomplish what Starlink was claiming.
Elon claimed Teslas would be fully autonomous since 2016.
I have no doubts that Starlink does meet current requirements, and I'm sure they're better than a lot of them. But the sheer numbers involved means even if they're 3x more effective they'll be contributing exponentially more. We'll find out for real in about 15 years.
Wait no please, I'm really confused. I'm not talking about Starlink meeting regulatory requirements, I'm talking about the fundamental nature of orbits! This isn't something where they have to go...
Wait no please, I'm really confused. I'm not talking about Starlink meeting regulatory requirements, I'm talking about the fundamental nature of orbits! This isn't something where they have to go out there with a trash bag and a grabber and go pick them up after 15 years, these satellites literally are going to burn up in the atmosphere in less than 5 years
This isn't some take on if I believe elon musk is going to keep his word or anything, I'm legitimately talking about how (I believe based on what I've read) it's physically impossible for this to become a long term issue with the current nature of how the starlink network functions. I believe we diverged somewhere on the intent of this discussion, and I'm not sure where, but I think you're trying to make a entirely different point to what the original topic was.
The problem is those burns need to be 100% or any tiny fragments become part of the problem. That's what that 5-15% success rate is talking about....satellites being decommissioned from LEO by...
The problem is those burns need to be 100% or any tiny fragments become part of the problem. That's what that 5-15% success rate is talking about....satellites being decommissioned from LEO by burning through the atmosphere at 100%. Kessler is explicitly about LEO, not higher orbits.
And while the lower orbits do increase odds of things burning up, it's not a given, especially if there is a collision. And we're talking about speeds where orbiting paint flecks can destroy equipment.
The introduction of Musk is really about his unwillingness to be regulated, and is putting his money where his mouth is in a very publicly visible way. Regulation is pretty much the only way these things don't become an unmitigated disaster.
I feel like I'm missing something pretty important. That 5-15% number was specifically not talking about Starlink satellites. I mean how could it, they had barely even been in the sky when this...
I feel like I'm missing something pretty important. That 5-15% number was specifically not talking about Starlink satellites. I mean how could it, they had barely even been in the sky when this article was written. At these altitudes even paint flecks are going to lose orbital velocity relatively quickly and fall into the planet. LEO, though relatively small, is still a huge place and the period of time it takes for something to naturally deorbit ranges has an incredibly high range with even a difference of just a few hundred KM. These satellites are lower than most other things in LEO (except the ISS interestingly enough, which is around the same altitude and needs to be consistently boosted back up to maintain orbit.) Funnily enough musk actually wants to fly his satellites even lower which would improve the speed and latency of the network, and also further decrease the risk of long-term space debris... though it would be a huge waste of resources due to how often they'd need to replace them. The network is already pretty wasteful so that isn't really a good thing.
I haven't read anything that implies that starlink satellites pose any real risk of causing Kessler's syndrome for any significant period of time.
And the ISS has had to make 3 debris-avoiding maneuvers in 2020 alone. Starlink has collectively needed to make over 25,000 from December 2022 to May 2023. I think the important bit you're missing...
I think the important bit you're missing is that all of these problems are happening in spite of all these advantages to LEO in this vein. In that same link , NASA estimates 85% of space debris exists in LEO. Partly because satellites in higher orbits have much higher rates of successful termination.
The problem isn't that these collisions won't eventually burn up. It's that each individual collision causes exponentially more space debris, which will not burn up instantaneously as these are highly erratic orbits which will cross all sorts of altitude boundries between 300km and 2000km for years.
Sure, if Starlink performs perfectly 100% of the time for the entirety of the program, it won't contribute to any debris. A single failure from a single satellite will make the problem worse. And a single solar flare will cause failures.
I don't know enough about orbital mechanics to say this with any confidence, but AFAIK it'd be pretty difficult for anything to "break" out of LEO without additional energy being pumped into the...
I don't know enough about orbital mechanics to say this with any confidence, but AFAIK it'd be pretty difficult for anything to "break" out of LEO without additional energy being pumped into the system. Orbit is a BIG place, and LEO is very low down compared to where things like geostationary satellites are. Starlink sats are "only" 250-350~ miles up and traditional telecom satellites are at 22 THOUSAND miles up. That's wider than the earth 3 times over!
I agree that a chunk breaking out of LEO wouldn't be possible/likely. My understanding is that a chunk that gets shot upward in a collision would be put into a bit of a an elliptical orbit and so...
I agree that a chunk breaking out of LEO wouldn't be possible/likely. My understanding is that a chunk that gets shot upward in a collision would be put into a bit of a an elliptical orbit and so would be way more likely to be hitting the atmosphere or just re-entering.
What I kind of pictured was one orbital layer affecting the next layer and so on. I can't see that affecting geostationary satellites, but I'd imagine it could easily end up affecting all of LEO.
Yeah maybe, I really don't have enough knowledge to say anything more than that haha. I try my best not to talk out of my ass too much on Tildes, but from everything I've read and watched, the...
Yeah maybe, I really don't have enough knowledge to say anything more than that haha. I try my best not to talk out of my ass too much on Tildes, but from everything I've read and watched, the Starlink sats are simply far too low in the range of LEO to have any sort of long term effect that comes anywhere close to Kessler syndrome. That's just an uneducated layperson's perspective who just happens to be interested in learning about this kind of thing, but its a scary problem for sure.
Yeah, I doubt this will ever replace hardwired internet for most homes in America that have cheap access to it; but this will revolutionize (kill) the satellite phone market, and drastically...
Yeah, I doubt this will ever replace hardwired internet for most homes in America that have cheap access to it; but this will revolutionize (kill) the satellite phone market, and drastically reduce the need for cellphone towers in less populated areas. It'll still mean a big reduction in physical infrastructure throughout the world; especially for countries who haven't already invested trillions of dollars in telecom infrastructure. Lots of people in Asian countries have a cellphone as their only computer, it's pretty reasonable to think that is the model of other developing cultures as well.
I really like the idea that this essentially kills roaming. But it seems from the details, also because Starlink isn't a mobile network provider, they do communicate with local providers.
I really like the idea that this essentially kills roaming. But it seems from the details, also because Starlink isn't a mobile network provider, they do communicate with local providers.
This all still heavily relies on ground equipment to work, kessler is still a major concern, and ground based systems like cell towers and physical wired connections will always be faster and...
This all still heavily relies on ground equipment to work, kessler is still a major concern, and ground based systems like cell towers and physical wired connections will always be faster and cheaper.
Pretty much every improvement to satellite equipment will also apply to ground based radio communications and it will work better because it's 100km closer than a satellite.
Most definitely way worse, it's currently only good enough for messaging and they want to roll out voice calls next year. I think we're still quite a ways off, but just having reception literally...
Most definitely way worse, it's currently only good enough for messaging and they want to roll out voice calls next year.
I think we're still quite a ways off, but just having reception literally anywhere would be a big deal
Yeah, just being able to text anywhere is a big deal, there are special devices that people usually have to buy like Garmin InReach, and they're basically just expensive panic buttons, not really...
Yeah, just being able to text anywhere is a big deal, there are special devices that people usually have to buy like Garmin InReach, and they're basically just expensive panic buttons, not really ideal for letting your family know you're going to be delayed coming home from hiking/camping or that you're stuck on the road in Utah for another day.
I'd love to have a better idea as to how it works (how are they getting a much higher range than a conventional cell tower) but at a surface-level, this is pretty damn cool.
This PDF has some more info, but its still not super specific.
This is a pretty exciting development for the promise of blanket coverage alone, but can anyone here comment on the speed vs cost of Starlink connections? I was researching this last year as I was considering more rural housing in CA, and ultimately came to the conclusion that I'd have to pay a lot more for the initial setup, and then the connection would be on par with very low end cable internet/DSL at best. So I ended up looking for housing exclusively in areas with cable internet instead. I saw lots of anecdotal evidence that people loved the service and were more than happy with what they were getting. How much of that is confirmation bias after a fairly large sunk cost vs genuine satisfaction?
My area only just got a 50 Mb/s option with a 500GB monthly limit last year which costs $85CAD a month. Before that the fastest you could get was astonishing speed of 6 Mb/s. Starlink costs $140CAD a month and will typically give at least 120 Mb/s with no monthly limit*, and even often sits closer to 200+ Mb/s. And it's been an option for a couple years now.
I don't like Musk, and have had some issues with Starlink, but if it gets you around a monopoly, then it's a lifesaver.
I would imagine that most people who are satisfied with it are like me and had their speed literally multiplied by over 20 and are willing to overlook the issues. Else I would imagine there are people whom their previous ISP had frequent outages, or their previous internet somehow cost more than Starlink.
But outside of those if you had options that offered even close to what Starlink offered before switching, they've probably got a bit of a confirmation bias. You won't really feel the issues that Starlink has is if all you use the internet for is some browsing and video streaming, and that tends to be a vast majority of people.
Honestly, if my last ISP actually gave us the 50 Mb/s option before we switched, we probably wouldn't have felt the need to switch and I would have been disappointed if we had. But as is, I know that it'll probably be another 10 years before that ISP offers anything faster, while Starlink on the other hand may see gradual improvements over time all without us needing to hound them to change our plan.
*We were told there was a monthly limit, but haven't received any additional bills for going over and I haven't noticed any throttling. Presumably because before we got Starlink they were trying to put forth a monthly limit, but then saw a bunch of blow back from customers and ditched it.
My brother had it but I haven't done a speed test there myself. He's in a spot out of town/on a lake and traditional internet wasn't fast enough to use Netflix. I believe he's getting around 100 megabits now with starlink.
Your speed is also going to suffer if you're in an area with a bunch of people using it.
For the rural people near me it's about going from terrible options to an okay option. The city almost all has access to fibre which is way better.
I think it's a terrible idea to give Elon Musk yet more unrestrained, unregulated power and control. His companies have already established choke points in U.S. space launch capability, short form social network communications, electronic payments, electric vehicles, and solar installation.
His "land" grab in Low Earth Orbit is squeezing out safe satellite deployment for all other purposes. LEO is already cluttered with unregulated debris - even Starlink satellites have to perform evasive maneuvers which further diminish their expected lifecycle. When the satellites are launched or deorbit and burn up in the atmosphere, they generate metallic and organic vapors and particles in the stratosphere. This can impact the ozone layer and overall planetary albedo. We don't have good data on long term impacts, but modeling indicates real problems at current rates of deployment. Amazon is planning its own satellite Internet mega constellation, "Kuiper", which will worsen any issues even if it finally provides effective competition.
We already know that ISPs are vulnerable to surveillance and censorship [PDF warning]. We've seen what Musk has done with Twitter, including algorithmically deprioritizing material he disfavors. Musk's capricious actions with respect to Starlink use in the Ukraine-Russia War indicate that the earlier geofencing to prevent Russian use isn't being enforced. Intermittent Starlink blackouts in strategic areas of Ukraine have helped Russian advances.
I live in a semi-rural area with still-spotty broadband coverage. A number of friends and acquaintances have resorted to Starlink because they otherwise would only have a single provider's slow DSL service or 4G cellular available. They've reported Starlink's price increases for service, outages, defective equipment, difficulty maintaining signal in poor weather or snow, overheating in sunlight, and other issues, without the recompense legally mandated for landline providers' outages. The Starlink architecture is still dependent on ground stations connected to terrestrial backhaul data, and performance is limited by local availability.
The proposed cellular service will face limited data throughput unless Musk can apply regulatory leverage to the FCC (likely under the coming Trump administration) that will allow signal power output that can interfere with existing cellular broadcasts.
I don't want to be 100% negative here - it would be awesome if cellular data was available globally. But I don't want to see it subject to Elon Musk's (or Jeff Bezos') whims, or to see billionaires consolidating yet more unconstrained power at public expense.
It's almost as if a limited resource (stable LEO orbits) needs to be shared globally for critical infrastructure that would best be available globally, that kind of infrastructure should be owned and shared by some sort of international NGO.
Announced cell network providers so far.
The prospect of my cell phone now also being a satellite phone is an exciting one. If I understand this right, I could be anywhere on the North American continent north of Mexico and still have coverage through the T-Mobile plan I'm on.
It says on the site they plan to have the texting service available in 2024. Has this rolled out to anyone public yet? It's getting pretty late in the game for a 2024 launch if not. I hope this isn't getting too far delayed, but I can't imagine we'll be seeing a data/RCS launch in 2025.
I mean, I know you had a discussion about the "shitting on Elon Musk" trend above, but with his companies' past track records of delivery.... I'd expect texting service to be available sometime around 2031. Less jokingly, I do hope there is something tangible in the next year on this but I'm not holding my breath too much.
Yeah I'm under no delusions about his "over promise, under deliver" bullshit, don't worry. Though from starlink's history they do seem to be one of the faster moving companies. If you told me 6 years ago that there was going to be thousands of tiny satellites in low-earth orbit beaming lightning fast Internet down for a big part of the globe in 6 years, I would have laughed you out of the room. They really have accomplished a ton in a very short time.
This is closer to the initial promise of Starlink. I just wish my excitement for it wasn't completely ruined by the human dumpster fire Elon.
Why does it matter that much? Pretty much every single large company that is changing the world (for better or worse) is run by a egotistical psychopathic billionaire. Elon just happens to be more outspoken than the rest of them, but Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc think that we're all bugs that are annoying them while they try to achieve their legacies. Musk is just a part of the crowd. Don't let him single-handedly ruin the extraordinary achievements of the SpaceX, Tesla, etc engineers and scientists.
Because, unlike the others, Musk actively and successfully cultivates followers who agree with his awful beliefs?
It matters to me because Musk is a transphobic piece of garbage. Similarly, if the literal nazi party were still around and learned cool new biology stuff by vivisecting humans, I would allow my distaste for nazis to overwhelm my enthusiasm for science.
I assume that you’re trying to be comforting with your comment, overall …? But — not speaking for OP, and more on a personal note — some people prefer observing, feeling, and maybe acting, when a perceived injustice occurs. Don’t let their expressed morals dissuade you from your own feelings, but note that it’s very important to them even if it isn’t equivalently so for you.
I understand having extreme distaste for Elon himself, but you also have to understand that all of the billionaire class are fascist corrupt murdering monsters right? Companies like Coca Cola literally murdered hundreds to thousands of people for daring to stand up to them in South America. Amazon has singlehandedly destroyed the lives of millions of people and forced them to work menial jobs and piss in bottles or die (many people chose death, one of my friends included)
I really don't understand why people are perfectly fine ignoring those things but draw the line at the Twitter lunatic who clowns around with donald trump. Jeff Bezos and pals may not have a cult of personality like musk does (or at least not as widespread of one) but I don't believe for a moment that they've done any less harm to the world, and honestly for most of them I believe they've done MUCH MORE harm than musk.
Every single thread where Space X/Tesla/Starlink announces an incredible achievement born off the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of hard working people; the most anyone ever wants to say is "ugh I hate Elon Musk" and it's downright exhausting. It's not productive or relevant to the discussion and all it does is minimize and dismiss the magic that these people are working so hard to achieve.
We're talking about cell-phone coverage for the entire earth, no fancy phone required. This is life changing technology for some people, assuming they can pull it off and it won't be extortionately expensive. To brush aside this kind of leap forward with a throwaway lazy comment about the owner of the company is infuriating.
I’m sorry about your friend. And agreed that this will keep happening as long as billionaires and corporations continue existing; all of them are complicit.
I disagree that people are consciously drawing that line. Most aren’t aware, and those that are might have too much on their mental plate to be able to focus on the problem given that it’s ever present. If the only thing someone can accomplish is pointing out that a problem exists, that still seems worthwhile to me, even if it doesn’t for you.
And for what it’s worth, when threads like these come up for other massive companies, people do point out how atrocious they are. It’s just that Chiquita isn’t expanding the frontiers of scientific knowledge, they’re organizing coups across dozens of countries for cheap bananas. So there’s no reason for positivity in the slightest.
No one is trying to minimize these accomplishments, they’re telling other people how they make them feel (or at least, that’s what I would be doing). Agreed that it could be worded more productively for a discussion, but pointing out the source of a work is useful for people who don’t have context. And honestly, people should be free to say how they feel.
I’m also sorry that it feels like people are attacking the genuinely skilled, passionate people who are working on these projects; I assume they are just attacking Musk (which I presume we can all get behind), and relating their personal experiences.
Apologies; I don’t this digression has been productive. I’d imagine that you want to continue discussing there actual technical accomplishment at hand, so I’ll stop with this thread.
You’ve used the phrase “I don’t understand” and asked “why does it matter so much”; so in sum, it matters to me because I point this out everywhere anyways, and I understand perfectly well that our entire economic system is designed to either turn us against each other or kill us all. Hopefully those are straightforward enough answers.
I apologize for getting testy there, it's not the first time the only comment chain in a thread like this has just been a discussion about what new evil thing elon has done recently. I respect people having those opinions, or even those discussions; it's just frustrating when they always seem to happen solely in unrelated threads.
I also respect the user base of tildes too much to believe that we have to preface every single discussion about a spaceX topic with the fact that we hate elon musk just in case everyone wasn't on the same page. As if we haven't focused enough on the atrocities going on in the world right now. There's power in infamy, and I prefer to not contribute to it when I don't have to.
Correct. The only difference between Musk and other billionaires is that Musk is enough of an attention-seeking child to publicly be corrupt.
It's still a warning to stay away even if you minimize it by saying "other people do it, too." Yes, other billionaires are also corrupt. Why continue to tolerate Musk if it's bad enough to call it out?
This isn’t true, you’re just thinking about the CEO’s that get in the news and get talked about.
It's pretty difficult to become a billionaire without completely losing your humanity. I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but the vast majority of them are monsters. Even the "respected" ones just have better PR firms.
I don’t know any billionaires and neither do you, presumably. Seems like that’s more an ideological article of faith than a fact. What does “completely losing your humanity” even mean?
I don't know them personally, but I know their deeds and I know it's basically impossible to accumulate that level of wealth without abusing thousands of people? It's not just elon or bezos, the investment banker billionaires have destroyed this country's working class. The oil industry billionaires have destroyed the environment. The military industrial complex billionaires have orchestrated the death of millions of people by starting wars to enrich themselves. The pharma billionaires started the opioid crisis by bribing doctors to over-prescribe life-destroying drugs. The insurance billionaires have denied and overcharged for life-saving procedures and medicines to save them a buck. The telecommunications billionaires destroyed our privacy and sold us out to the NSA and FBI.
I'm confused, is this a controversial take or something? Do you think these kinds of things just happens on their own?
It’s a very common take but it’s just generic anti-capitalist ideology.
Do you think the reason Beyoncé got to $760 million (estimated) is because she abuses people? Will she need to abuse people to get to a billion, or just keep being a popular singer? When she gets to a billion, are you then going to look for reasons why actually, she has “lost her humanity” and is evil now?
It does require extreme popularity to get to that kind of money, but some products are very popular and wealth snowballs. It’s not fair but that’s just kind of how it works. There are billions of people willing to spend money on something they like, and sometimes they all decide to buy the same things, or buy them the same way, so that’s where the money flows.
So yes, in a sense, I do think extreme wealth can just kind of happen, because sometimes there are no brakes. It’s a similar mechanism as posts going viral, and it happens more easily for virtual goods.
It’s also true that businesses in many industries have made a lot of money by doing all sorts of terrible things, but the idea that it’s not possible for extreme wealth to happen any other way is a sort of wishful thinking by people who want simple rules to decide who to hate.
I mean... yes? And this was just the first thing that came to my head, I'm sure there's much more than just the abusing of sweatshop labor in Sir Lanka.
I get the argument, but celebrities are rarely billionaires, and they don't make even make up a tiny minority of the people I was calling out in my comment. Highlighting the very rare exception and not even providing an actual billionaire like Taylor Swift is just odd.
See, this is the sort of thing that happens to celebrities. Linking their name to anything, good or bad, sells newspapers. If a singer didn’t do anything wrong themselves, they can dig for abuse happening somewhere in the supply chain for their merchandise. It’s not all bad, since it’s a news hook for an article about sweatshops, but Beyoncé is not the reason why there are sweatshops in Sri Lanka.
How much do you police your supply chain? If you don’t do that, have you lost your humanity?
(To be clear, I think it’s good for people to be aware of where the stuff they buy comes from and to try to use more ethical sourcing, but not doing that doesn’t make you evil, it just means you’re not being as careful as you could be.)
I don't have to police my supply chain because I'm not selling $5,000 handbags that cost $4.50 to make. And funnily enough neither are any of the people I know and respect. But you're right I should empathize with the soon-to-be billionaire because she totally didn't know that her company employed modern day slaves. It may have been reported to sell clicks, but it still happened.
And even then, you continue to focus on the tiny fraction of a percent of (not even) billionaires who just so happened to be lucky enough (or more likely nepotismed into) fame and fortune. What about all of the real billionaires I mentioned in my original comments? Maybe they also just got smeared as a hook in the newspaper for hiring death squads in Columbia to assassinate union leaders.
It seems like you're the one making claims about billionaires as a class, not me? My argument is that we don't actually know much about most rich businesspeople (Beyonce included), and you keep saying that, actually, you do know all about them. But based on what?
I don't think you made a spreadsheet and calculated this. You're not citing a study. Such a study couldn't be done by reading the news because most people don't appear in the news. Finding more news stories about good or bad billionaires wouldn't tell us about the denominator in a percentage calculation.
Where does your confidence come from? Why do you find skepticism about your anti-capitalist beliefs so threatening that you're hurling more overheated rhetoric at me for raising doubts?
I raise doubts about these things because I'm against dehumanizing people based on which class they're in. There are a lot of things going on in the world that I don't like, but I think that's going too far.
I was talking about celebrities being a tiny fraction of billionaires, which is objectively true. There are only a few dozen "celebrity billionaires" and even a portion of those are businessmen who got famous because they were rich. (People like Mark Cuban or everyone's favorite Muskrat.) On top of that, a large majority of those celebrity billionaires just so happened to make it rich shilling products like designer clothes, makeup products, or pseudoscience snakeoil. It's not really worth going further into the absolute ethical nightmare that each of these product lines involves so I'll leave it with a fairly irrefutable conclusion that out of the 3,000 known billionaires in the world, only a few dozen of them are celebrities who made their money at least somewhat "ethically".
Is it anti-capitalist to believe that most billionaires are monsters? Why does the system of capitalism have to result in 0.0000375% of the people in the world having more wealth than many monarchs throughout history? I've provided many examples of billionaires literally killing people, destroying the environment, and causing international incidents to enrich themselves, and your argument against that is just "well we don't know that they're all bad." There really aren't that many of them out there, it isn't much of a logical leap. Look at the top of any industry that historically or even currently is known to be doing comically evil things and find those people who make the decisions. Those are the billionaires I'm talking about.
I'm sure Beyonce is a perfectly lovely person to have lunch with, but by my standards at least, someone who directly enriches themselves to a ridiculous level off of slave labor is not a good person.
Billionaires are indeed monsters, regardless of their personality or how kind they seem. Hell, if they still own or are worth billions, they're monsters even regardless of whether they're philanthropic, IMO. TBH, I could not care less about whether or not I know billionaires or other similarly extremely rich people personally. I also could not care less if they seem "like a good person"
Simply owning or being worth that much money, in my eyes, is inherently immoral. No one deserves that much wealth. No one should be allowed to keep that much wealth. This even includes the ones some people think are the "good ones" or the "exceptions". Even some of them that have "foundations" that may or may not do good work. There may indeed be one or two exceptions out there, but I remain even skeptical of those. There is no kindness large enough to hide the monstrosity of their wealth unless they give 95+% of it away. Yes, this may include your favorite musician.
No war but class war.
Do I really need to explain why I think Elon is worse than other billionaires? Yes, they are all bad but I would hope it would be clear that the richest man in the world also being red pilled and working as a stooge for Trump is worse than most billionaires.
I can't believe the "it's just a drop in a bucket" fallacy is so alive and well as we sit and soak in the over flowing bucket that is modern society.
Why can't we have rationalizations about doing things that improve society just a tiny bit instead of having armies of people justifying being not too evil?
If this can reach any place on earth with good speed it makes me wonder if it's worth wiring up the world (though we've gotten pretty far so far.) This got me pretty hyped for the future of satcom, but eh, I hope we don't forget about Kessler
p.s. I'll be noise, but can we keep the misery to ~society? Y'all bringing reddit to my tildes :P
I'd imagine we're still going to have fibre optics/wires running everywhere. Starlink has limits on the number of subscribers per km^2 due to physics reasons (bandwidth + beam forming limitations), so if you want a quick and reliable internet connection especially in an urban area, you'll want to connect via hard line.
That said, as long as some competitors can spring up, this could make a decent argument against building out rural ISPs in some situations.
People have cracked reddit-esque jokes in some more serious threads I've written in; ignoring them and not upvoting is all I've been doing. Feel free to label the comment as "Offtopic" or "Noise" if you don't feel it's useful to the conversation at hand.
This is exactly the problem though. You can't have multiple competitors blanketing the earth in these satellites, the aforementioned Kessler Syndrome. This isn't even exactly unique to space....there's a reason we don't have dozens of power companies running dozens of electrical cables running proprietary and different competing standards.
If this gets traction, Starlink becomes a monopoly in rural areas. If not for the above reason....good luck convincing SpaceX to give you an affordable contract to launch your competing network.
Isn't low earth orbit basically the least dangerous place for Kessler Syndrome? All of these satellites have natural life spans of only a few years before they fall into the gravity well and burn up in atmo. They need to be regularly boosted to maintain orbit. I understand being wary of filling up the sky with junk, but LEO is probably the "best" place to do this kind of thing in regards to Kessler Syndrome
Yes, but this interview sums it up nicely, and far more eloquently than I could.
Basically, LEO means a success rate of 5-15% for satellites, 40-70% with rocket phases. Which is better, but doesn't bode well when talking about deploying more satellites in LEO in less than 20 years than have been deployed in the prior 60.
Interviewee goes into much more detail, notably about current standards likely not being sufficient for that kind of load. Based on what I read there, I think Starlink probably shouldn't have been given the OK to begin with.
And since this company is headed up by a guy seeking to dismantle as much regulation as possible, this does not give me the warm fuzzies.
Just want to point out that the 5-15% success rate only applies to payloads with orbit lifetimes >25 years. Starlink satellites are naturally compliant with the "space debris mitigation measures". Technically, they wouldn't even need to perform their deorbit burns. However, the report also points out that the current limits are likely not strict enough.
Thanks! I'll read this and educate myself, I don't know much about orbital mechanics so I feel awkward even trying to make educated guesses about this kinda thing. But I am very interested in it and do my best to read and watch content about them whenever I can. I wonder if there are good ways to identify and neutralize "threats" like this with automated systems like lasers to either vaporize or de-orbit space debris from a distance. Could be a good way to clean up orbit if we do end up causing problems with too much junk.
Edit: This article says we only have a 5-15% success rate for satellites to de-orbit after 25 years, but are they talking specifically about starlink sats with that figure? I was under the impression that they basically had to de-orbit after only 5~ years if they weren't boosted back up.This would make it basically impossible for them to become a long term threat if they were to collide with other objects. Is this just inaccurate or is the person in the article somehow not aware of that? I believe they are talking about more traditional satellites like telecom relays which are way further out in orbit and don't generally naturally decay without outside forces.
Edit 2: Oh, this article is from 2019, are we sure it contains up to date information? This is back when the system was pretty much brand new and there might have not been as much info out there about it yet. A lot of what I'm reading isn't consistent with all the other information I've read on the subject. The more I read from this article the more I think that the expert they brought in isn't even talking specifically about Starlink satellites, they seem to focus more on traditional satellites which orbit at a much higher altitude and are more likely to cause issues in the future if they aren't manually deorbited after their working lifespan is over. This is not an issue with Starlink sats (as I understand it) so I don't think Kessler's syndrome applies to this situation, unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding something. It feels really weird questioning someone who's title is literally "Space Debris Analyst" at the European Space Agency as I'm sure they're far more educated on the subject than I am; but I have to believe this is outdated information or the questions weren't given to them correctly.
I'm going to apply Occam's razor:
Specialist in 2019 says it would have taken a revolutionary leap over current state-of-the-art to accomplish what Starlink was claiming.
Elon claimed Teslas would be fully autonomous since 2016.
I have no doubts that Starlink does meet current requirements, and I'm sure they're better than a lot of them. But the sheer numbers involved means even if they're 3x more effective they'll be contributing exponentially more. We'll find out for real in about 15 years.
Wait no please, I'm really confused. I'm not talking about Starlink meeting regulatory requirements, I'm talking about the fundamental nature of orbits! This isn't something where they have to go out there with a trash bag and a grabber and go pick them up after 15 years, these satellites literally are going to burn up in the atmosphere in less than 5 years
This isn't some take on if I believe elon musk is going to keep his word or anything, I'm legitimately talking about how (I believe based on what I've read) it's physically impossible for this to become a long term issue with the current nature of how the starlink network functions. I believe we diverged somewhere on the intent of this discussion, and I'm not sure where, but I think you're trying to make a entirely different point to what the original topic was.
The problem is those burns need to be 100% or any tiny fragments become part of the problem. That's what that 5-15% success rate is talking about....satellites being decommissioned from LEO by burning through the atmosphere at 100%. Kessler is explicitly about LEO, not higher orbits.
And while the lower orbits do increase odds of things burning up, it's not a given, especially if there is a collision. And we're talking about speeds where orbiting paint flecks can destroy equipment.
The introduction of Musk is really about his unwillingness to be regulated, and is putting his money where his mouth is in a very publicly visible way. Regulation is pretty much the only way these things don't become an unmitigated disaster.
I feel like I'm missing something pretty important. That 5-15% number was specifically not talking about Starlink satellites. I mean how could it, they had barely even been in the sky when this article was written. At these altitudes even paint flecks are going to lose orbital velocity relatively quickly and fall into the planet. LEO, though relatively small, is still a huge place and the period of time it takes for something to naturally deorbit ranges has an incredibly high range with even a difference of just a few hundred KM. These satellites are lower than most other things in LEO (except the ISS interestingly enough, which is around the same altitude and needs to be consistently boosted back up to maintain orbit.) Funnily enough musk actually wants to fly his satellites even lower which would improve the speed and latency of the network, and also further decrease the risk of long-term space debris... though it would be a huge waste of resources due to how often they'd need to replace them. The network is already pretty wasteful so that isn't really a good thing.
I haven't read anything that implies that starlink satellites pose any real risk of causing Kessler's syndrome for any significant period of time.
And the ISS has had to make 3 debris-avoiding maneuvers in 2020 alone. Starlink has collectively needed to make over 25,000 from December 2022 to May 2023.
I think the important bit you're missing is that all of these problems are happening in spite of all these advantages to LEO in this vein. In that same link , NASA estimates 85% of space debris exists in LEO. Partly because satellites in higher orbits have much higher rates of successful termination.
Here is an example from one singular collision event.
The problem isn't that these collisions won't eventually burn up. It's that each individual collision causes exponentially more space debris, which will not burn up instantaneously as these are highly erratic orbits which will cross all sorts of altitude boundries between 300km and 2000km for years.
Sure, if Starlink performs perfectly 100% of the time for the entirety of the program, it won't contribute to any debris. A single failure from a single satellite will make the problem worse. And a single solar flare will cause failures.
My question as a counter point to you is; how likely is it that a cascade event would stay limited to only LEO if it starts there.
I don't know enough about orbital mechanics to say this with any confidence, but AFAIK it'd be pretty difficult for anything to "break" out of LEO without additional energy being pumped into the system. Orbit is a BIG place, and LEO is very low down compared to where things like geostationary satellites are. Starlink sats are "only" 250-350~ miles up and traditional telecom satellites are at 22 THOUSAND miles up. That's wider than the earth 3 times over!
Yes, it would be essentially impossible.
I agree that a chunk breaking out of LEO wouldn't be possible/likely. My understanding is that a chunk that gets shot upward in a collision would be put into a bit of a an elliptical orbit and so would be way more likely to be hitting the atmosphere or just re-entering.
What I kind of pictured was one orbital layer affecting the next layer and so on. I can't see that affecting geostationary satellites, but I'd imagine it could easily end up affecting all of LEO.
Yeah maybe, I really don't have enough knowledge to say anything more than that haha. I try my best not to talk out of my ass too much on Tildes, but from everything I've read and watched, the Starlink sats are simply far too low in the range of LEO to have any sort of long term effect that comes anywhere close to Kessler syndrome. That's just an uneducated layperson's perspective who just happens to be interested in learning about this kind of thing, but its a scary problem for sure.
Yeah, I doubt this will ever replace hardwired internet for most homes in America that have cheap access to it; but this will revolutionize (kill) the satellite phone market, and drastically reduce the need for cellphone towers in less populated areas. It'll still mean a big reduction in physical infrastructure throughout the world; especially for countries who haven't already invested trillions of dollars in telecom infrastructure. Lots of people in Asian countries have a cellphone as their only computer, it's pretty reasonable to think that is the model of other developing cultures as well.
I really like the idea that this essentially kills roaming. But it seems from the details, also because Starlink isn't a mobile network provider, they do communicate with local providers.
This all still heavily relies on ground equipment to work, kessler is still a major concern, and ground based systems like cell towers and physical wired connections will always be faster and cheaper.
Pretty much every improvement to satellite equipment will also apply to ground based radio communications and it will work better because it's 100km closer than a satellite.
I have my doubts about how well it will do indoors or in comparison to much faster fiber optics.
Most definitely way worse, it's currently only good enough for messaging and they want to roll out voice calls next year.
I think we're still quite a ways off, but just having reception literally anywhere would be a big deal
Yeah, just being able to text anywhere is a big deal, there are special devices that people usually have to buy like Garmin InReach, and they're basically just expensive panic buttons, not really ideal for letting your family know you're going to be delayed coming home from hiking/camping or that you're stuck on the road in Utah for another day.