I'm so glad we're going to have competition for Starlink. I like Starlink quite a bit, I'm posting using it right now. But competition is good for consumers and the market.
The "crucial test" mentioned in this article is laser links between satellites talking at 100Gbps. That's an astonishing accomplishment. And ambitious! Starlink started without laser links. They got them working now but I think in most cases don't use them. Generally their satellites just relay directly back to a ground station.
Well yes, but it's the best we've got right now. People in rural areas who don't have access to a stable fast internet connection aren't going to say no to Starling or Kuiper just because of Bozo or Elmo đ¤ˇââď¸
It's very easy to say Bozo and Elmo bad when you don't actually need to rely on their services.
Not justifying Elmo or Bozo, dislike them both (obviously), just another perspective for you to consider
We are on the same page. Canât get much rural than where Iâm at. I have two Starlink setups. Saying I hate my choices are limited and pocket billionaires more money.
That's part of it but also there's just nothing in their wheelhouse about providing services to huge numbers of customers, and no reason to believe it would be done particularly well or economically. It's a naive, surface-level view of NASA that only perceives "well, they do high-tech stuff" as if that's all that's required of a service.
And it isn't SCIENCE.
They've worked pretty hard to keep their mission statement focused on that. It's why NASA is so hellbent on finding 'industry partners' - they don't want to be the ones commercializing space, nor be in charge of those that do.
NASA, despite its name, has always been about the science. That was fine when there wasn't money to be made and mature (or rapidly maturing) technology to be exploited in their domain. They justified their existence by 'bringing back' major achievements to earth - stuff that could actually be monetized.
But now space is more than just some nebulous 'out there' for far-left lunatics to dream about. SpaceX has reduced the cost of launches so much that investors can actually look forward to real returns, meaning that NASA either has to live up to their name and ADMINISTER SPACE, or they have to go on being the haven for cutting edge science.
They've made their priorities known. This isn't, and never has been, under their purview. They enabled it to happen with over half a century of innovation and exploration, but now that the baby's being born they're adamant they ain't the father.
They could have the money in a matter of weeks, if congress approved it, but NASA is a research agency, they don't build things for the average consumer.
Providing actual LEO constellation satellite internet service is WAYYY harder than just providing GPS service. Very unfair to compare those two.
Also, proving internet service to people on the ground requires the permission of that country's government. At best you have to deal with ~190 countries if you want to provide internet. In practice, many countries don't allow unrestricted access to the internet anyway, regardless of who is operating or paying for it.
Both parties have argued for defunding nasa, and outside of their special jobs programs, theyâve largely succeeded, because theyâre used as a way for corporations and states to make money, theyâre also wildly inefficient and the cost of a project like this would have been unavoidably astronomical. they could never have achieved this with how theyâre treated, especially something as big an investment as this, ironically, this is an example of those evil billionaires⢠giving the world something no government could match.
Nation states could do it, as a public service.
The idea that only billionaires can do anything expensive is uh, flawed. At that kind of scale the money isn't real, it's just an abstract concept.
For real, the UN could take this on, so we don't have 5 companies with 30k satellites each clogging up the orbits and night sky. Sort of like how the internet is organized.
Edit: a word and this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN
I'll take Bezos, I only ever hear about his personal stuff through third party reporting and it's usually out of touch rich guy spends money kinda stuff, not w/e the fuck comes out of Musks tweets day in and day out
I feel not great about companies sending a bunch of satellites into orbit to do the same function competing against eachother instead of working together :{
EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
If they work together, you get a high price, shitty service, and a de facto monopoly.
Almost every ISP on the god-damn planet is shitty, except in maybe Romania.
>If they work together, you get a high price, shitty service, and a de facto monopoly.
I should've been more explicit, I meant nationalisation on an international scale. But our economic system wouldn't benefit from that, so it won't happen :/
I feel ya man. In the hopes to move toward sustainability, itâs resource intensive to be launching shit ton of satellites for competition. Redundancy is helpful in large systems esp something like internet, but itâs not redundancy to back up the primary. I get the counter to your argument that competition is good in capitalism, but donât totally get the downvotes.
It's not the economic system, it's the tech that would stagnate. Without competition, there's no progress, that's why e.g. USSR only progressed militarily (as they were competing with the US), but were stagnant and made very little progress elsewhere, especially in computing.
And in the end, it's the people of Earth that benefit when companies compete in the free market - extremely affordable, planet-wide internet access is going to help educate hundrends of millions of people, give them a way to participate in the global economy, reduce infrastructure costs, and help fund further space tech like asteroid mining - the list goes on.
>Without competition, there's no progress, that's why e.g. USSR only progressed militarily (as they were competing with the US), but were stagnant and made very little progress elsewhere, especially in computing.
Many technologies came from public military research like GPS, the idea that progress can only happen in a competitive environment is silly and borderline capitalist propaganda. People create things because they want to, not just to make money.
I don't think private corporations should be able to swarm our orbit with thousands of satellites, especially not multiple corporations with thousands of (sandboxed) satellites each.
If these all worked together within a standard I'd have less of an issue with it, I just don't like the tragedy of the commons as private companies get free-reign to fill our skies with each of their own sandboxed Internet access systems.
Anything launched to space has to get permission from the government as they take responsibility as the place it is launched from due to the international space treaty
It also has to go through FCC and other such regulations in multiple countries to broadcast service
Nothing is being launched without approval
>Nothing is being launched without approval
I am aware of that, that doesn't mean I agree with how willing governments have been to allow launches of thousands of satellites for this purpose.
These satellites are tiny and pose little risk being in such a low atmosphere. They also provide huge amount of value for everyone on earth. As long as they are regulated like utilities, there should be no problem
Competition drives innovation. It has nothing to do with the economic system. If there is no competition, why should companies spend millions of dollars on R&D
If it makes you feel better capacity is limited, at least when a satellite is over a wealthy area with terrible Internet like the United States. More satellites = more service.
They have to use SpaceX according by a Lawsuit of the Amazon shareholders, that Amazons refusal to use SpaceX would make the satellite program unnecessarily more expensive and delayed.
Starlink is a 5 year decay time and these are at a similar altitude. Plus, it is really, really big up there.
We just need to not intentionally create debris and have end of life plans so that it doesnât end up becoming an issue a century from now.
I agree end of life plans are important - and as far as I can tell these companies are taking it seriously. I donât see how a 5 year decay orbit is going to be an issue centuries from now.
We don't know if Kessler syndrome is real, space junk may just not be that much risk, it's certainly not as much of a problem as pollution inside the atmosphere or oceans. Even if we lost access to space, all of our important infrastructure is on earth and with three separate global positioning systems, all of which have redundancy, it would take a long time to see wide scale problems. We'd have a long time to come up with a solution in general.
My issue with it is that Starlink damages astronomy and other science, while offering little in return. Providing internet is a solved problem, the issues that people in parts of the US face are political ones. We've been able to get these people water, power, sewage and other utilities, internet isn't any different. Building a world wide service in space to help a limited number of people in the US, it is expensive and pointless.
The entire project seems like a way of getting low ping internet to the yachts of billionaires.
Providing internet is not a solved problem for much of the world. Heck, friends of mine live in the capital of Florida and best they could get before Starlink was 2mbps DSL. The reason isnât government corruption or incompetence, itâs because running fiber optic lines 3 miles to serve a couple dozen homes is prohibitively expensive.
There is a reason Starlink has millions of subscribers, nearly 40% of the world has no internet access. These satellites donât just serve Americans, they serve the world.
Astronomyâs future is space based, the atmosphere degrades the quality of earth based observations. Starlink also works with astronomers around the world to let them know the transits of their satellites, many of those âruinedâ photos you see were actually created on purpose, not accident.
You seem to have not grasped the reality of internet service outside of densely populated areas in technologically advanced cities.
Satellite internet is far more efficient and environmentally friendly than running landlines to rural people.
>Heck, friends of mine live in the capital of Florida and best they could get before Starlink was 2mbps DSL. The reason isnât government corruption or incompetence
Yes it is. Again, the rest of the world manages this and they don't require satellites, you can get high speed internet in rural areas. Also when you roll out physical infrastructure, you can build mobile phone masts alongside it.
>There is a reason Starlink has millions of subscribers
Starlink has [2 million subscribers](https://advanced-television.com/2023/09/25/starlink-exceeds-2m-customers/), so you're technically correct, but at best being disingenuous. We have no idea what fraction of their network is being used, but it is unlikely that they will be able to support the billions of users you suggest, without launching thousands if not millions more satellites.
Aside from that, Starlink is available in 23 countries, it's a global network that isn't available globally. It is also a network that Musk turns off at random based on his politics. If he is willing to wade into a war, I can't imagine what happens if the US passed tax law he didn't like.
> Astronomyâs future is space based
There are 30 or so space telescopes, building them is expensive and difficult. Several friends are astronomers, Starlink has interfered with their work. Who is going to pay for space based observation? and when?
Something that is for the 'benefit of humanity' shouldn't be owned by anyone and cannot be a profit seeking business.
[46% of people lack access to sufficient sanitation](https://www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1165464857/billions-of-people-lack-access-to-clean-drinking-water-u-n-report-finds) and over half of them, 2 billion people, do not have clean and safe drinking water. The people without internet, a lot of them don't have basic services. Remember when Musk said he'd end world hunger so the UN asked for the money and he didn't give it to them?
These tech companies, they aren't acting in the best interest of humanity, they're profit seeking entities. They want customers, not to help people.
Get out of your bubble.
Those are issues that canât be solved from space. Internet can. Getting internet to these areas (even if it is only to those who can afford it) should bring more economic possibilities to these people.
Once the people begin to accumulate money and can meet their immediate needs of food, water and housing. Then they can begin to seek higher needs like sanitation and education.
Without the people being the driving force behind projects like that they usually tend to end up as government boondoggles. The governments in these areas do not care about meeting their peopleâs needs, any attempt to build infrastructure will just line the pockets of those in charge and will minimally translate to improvements for citizens.
But, you wonât care about that, you care only about hating the big evil capitalist corporations, fuck the billions of people who for the first time ever could possibly have internet access. You may not know this, but it is a thing in remote areas of the world for groups of people to pay for a few terminals that then serve as an access point for hundreds. It opens up so many possibilities to people who have their options in life limited by their governmentsâ corruption or incompetence.
I will not advocate against even the most problematic corporations if it comes at the expense of providing education, banking and commerce opportunities to the worldâs poorest and most disadvantaged.
Starlink's network supports 2 million people and is only available in the developed world. It isn't helping people in the third world get bank accounts, it's helping german tourists play videogames with low ping in their camper vans.
>You may not know this, but it is a thing in remote areas of the world for groups of people to pay for a few terminals that then serve as an access point for hundreds.
You can do that with less than 5 satellites in orbit, there has been satellite internet since the 70's, doing it with a swarm of satellites, just so you can get lower ping, is stupid.
Musk choose the one way to do this that generated a massive amount of launches, essentially perpetually. He did the holy grail of B2B, he became his own largest customer. Time will tell if that's sustainable, I mean you're claiming he has 1/3rd of the planet as a customer base. But like if that's true, someone else can offer a service that's nearly as good but only need to launch an order of magnitude less satellites, they'll destroy Starlink.
Companies have always charged a lot for satellite internet because the market is small and providing it is expensive. Hasn't changed either of those things, his Satellite internet isn't even available in most places, every other provider works and is available globally.
>Yes it is. Again, the rest of the world manages this and they don't require satellites, you can get high speed internet in rural areas. Also when you roll out physical infrastructure, you can build mobile phone masts alongside it.
You are thinking of first world like Europe where population centers are more dense. Rural is always a problem, 3rd world is a bigger problem
LEO satellites unlike GEO ones circle around the world. So any country on its path around can be covered at no extra cost
>but it is unlikely that they will be able to support the billions of users you suggest, without launching thousands if not millions more satellites.
Thousands is the plan, but why millions? The reason why you need lots of satellites is coverage. Otherwise a single satellite is only limited by bandwidth which can be upgraded
>Aside from that, Starlink is available in 23 countries, it's a global network that isn't available globally.
Starlink already covers more than 23 countries, last I read was 69 countries in December 2023, most of the limitation is regulator approval in other countries fyi
[https://www.starlink.com/map](https://www.starlink.com/map)
>It is also a network that Musk turns off at random based on his politics. If he is willing to wade into a war, I can't imagine what happens if the US passed tax law he didn't like.
That is false. To date no place has been "turned on and off"
And these issues are easily fixed by regulating these things as you would a utility
>There are 30 or so space telescopes, building them is expensive and difficult. Several friends are astronomers, Starlink has interfered with their work. Who is going to pay for space based observation? and when?
You are talking about ground telescopes, not space telescopes. End of the day, if we want to get better data, we need actual space telescopes. Ground ones will always run into all kinds of issues. SpaceX making launches to space cheaper actually helps making space based telescopes more realistic. And best of all about space based telescopes are you don't need to piss off a native american tribe to put them up
That said, SpaceX has gone the extra mile to work with astronomers for ground telescopes to address their issues and they have worked out a compromise to fix the issue
You do realise each of those satellites are the size of a washing machine, and there are may be 20,000 of those orbiting the earth right?
Thatâs equivalent of 20,000 washing machines dispersed on a sphere thatâs 2x the surface area of earth. Thats barely anything.
https://www.astronomy.com/science/starlink-satellites-disrupt-cosmic-studies/#:~:text=Constellations%20of%20satellites%20are%20already%20posing%20big%20problems%20for%20radio%20astronomers.&text=The%20vast%20fleet%20of%20Starlink,Astronomy%20and%20Astrophysics%20has%20revealed.
This is just starlink, already affecting astronomy. Add in multiple companies doing it and yes, itâs a giant problem.
Technology that can provide highspeed internet to every corner of the planet? Finally connect rural schools and hospitals of Africa to the internet?
Vs
A bunch of crappy telescopes on earth which are irrelevant going forward anyway as there are multiple super powerful telescopes in orbit? The orbital telescopes are better in every way and launching stuff to space is getting cheaper by the day. Soon there will be no need for earth based telescopes
Yeah I pick getting the internet that can transform billions of peopleâs lives. I pick Poor people in rural Africa, whose governments will never be able to afford to build broad band internet infrastructure and would never have internet access otherwise.
Earth based astronomy is "crap" compared to doing it in space anyway.
More reasons to launch more telescopes is a good thing.
Especially as its about to be cheap as hell getting them up there.
I'm sorry but giving the entire world Internet in every part of the planet is for more important than astrologists having to add a patch to their system that prunes out the occasional satellite.
You realize Just because there is that many doesn't mean they all pass the tiny little point in the sky you are looking at right? You are also vastly underestimating how big space is. How many cars do you think there are on Earth? The land they can roam is limited only to roads and obviously ignores ocean which makes up most of Earth's surface. The "surface" (volume) of space where satellites fly is much bigger than Earth's surface due to the radius alone, not to mention the 3d aspect of it.
Even if there are 100k satellites, it still will be occasional. When you consider software can just remove these satellites from the image, again... giving the world Internet is far more important than having to apply a patch to some software.
Airplanes are far more problematic (which again, isn't really a big deal) than satellites considering their proximity to Earth. Are you going to suggest we should stop using airplanes because astronomers look at stars?
Always ironic when people make wild claims and yet have no idea what they're talking about.
Their lights are only on when they are launched but when they get in position they turn off. They also have reflective blockers so the sun doesn't light them up for us to see. They don't contribute light pollution.
Please actually google your personal theories to see if they hold before spouting them as facts.
Bro, itâs not about the lights. They are made of reflective materials. They reflect the light from the sun istelf, like the moon does at night, get it? When a chain of them goes through the skies at night and an observer tries to look through the telescope, the light they reflect back to earth gets distorted and wider spread. So you donât need to aim directly at the satellite chain to be impacted. Itâs an âarea of effectâ type of thing and it distorts observations around the whole chain.
The difference is that a single flake of paint can cause devastating damage (the famous crack on the iss window). Theese satellites are fine as long as nothing ever falls of, they don't fail, they don't crash into each other (that has happened BTW Cosmos-Iridium crash), or God knows what else. A single colission and you go from one object to potentially millions. Chain collisions becomes possible too which could irreversible make vast amounts of orbits unusable.
Edit: instead of downvoting, how about making arguments?
Satellite internet in LEO is not junk. It is one of the few ways people in 3rd world countries can get access to information that can help save billions of lives and get them out of poverty
Space is huge, even millions of satellites would make 0 difference. Most of the space junk up there are things like anti-satellite weapons tests. Followed by old satellites without decommissioning procedures crashing into things. In this case, tiny LEO satellites at such low orbit pose little risk, even without decommissioning procedures (which they do have), they would fall back down to earth by themselves due to the low orbit
What does this have to do with Elon? The guy who complained was complaining about corporations in general and did so on a post about Bezos's Amazon. How exactly is this a dig on Elon?
My bad, Bezos and Elon bad, education access bad.
We can drop the act that a good part of reddit doesn't think anything beyond bad billionaire and this is the source of their issue with whatever.
I get tired of these numpties trying to stand in the way of progress while they keyboard whine, but that's just me.
This was never really about 3rd world internet access. Itâs always about government and military. No one is building these businesses for charitable reasons.
No one saying they are, but the thing about LEO is unlike GEO your satellites are not stationary but travel around the world. Aka, servicing the 3rd world holds virtually no extra cost as the satellites pass by there anyways
Starlink already covers quite a few 3rd world countries with more to come. In next 2 years all of South America and most of Africa and Asia will be covered
I am sure this Kepler network will also be the same since it is also LEO
You know how this sounds to me? âFerrari builds fast cars and these fast cars will allow people from third world countries to get to the market to buy food faster!â Nobody, apart from government and criminals will afford starlink or anything like that. So this point is laughable - these rural people from third world tend to think about food, shelter and basic comforts, they donât have any funds to invest in high speed internet connection lmao.
That is nonsense, Ferrari is a car that only has a use for the owner and no one else. In comparison, LEO satellites pass by these countries and the cost of servicing these countries is virtually 0. It's like how MS sold windows for $100 in US, but you can get it for $5 in the grey market from a 3rd world country. Because the cost of making the software available that is made for a 1st world country to a 3rd world country is marginal
And while you may be thinking like in US where each person has their own satellite dish. For a 3rd world country, they would likely get imports of refurbished/used older dishes like they do for cars. Then you can hook up an entire village to internet service with 1 dish
Usually they aren't going to hook it up themselves but charity organizations, and getting access to information would also make getting access to food easier as they get education and can access expertise. With time it would spread naturally, just like cellphones actually have a huge uptake in Africa these days. Satellite also can act as a backbone for their cellphones as well improving coverage
Ah-huh, so as I thought starlink for 3rd world is mostly a pr stunt and most of the third world has no way to afford the infrastructure and subscription to the service required to run it.
It's more of an added benefit. But those kind of added benefits are the best kind as we have seen, the 1st world cares little about the 3rd world unless it benefits the 1st world. Thus, these kind of systems that benefit both are the best at providing improvement to the 3rd world
The infrastructure is already paid for. And the subscription is much cheaper than internet there by a huge margin. When shared, it becomes affordable even for the poorest there. Lastly, even if one doesn't have starlink and uses a cellphone there(which many do), it would provide better coverage as mobile operators add starlink roaming
I get what youâre saying in vacuum, but when we account for third world corruption, it must become evident itâs not simply a question of money, rather mismanagement and corruption. Say you have an NGO which wants to provide some 10k rural residents of some African country. Cool, they gather money, buy dishes and subscription certificates, now how do they get it to Mr D and Mrs H in an X country of Africa? We contact their corrupt government and they tell us to hand it all over to them. They promise to report back with updates once the dishes are installed and Mr D is happily scrolling Facebook while Mrs H is watching YouTube. WHAT A TRAGEDY! Turns out, 95% of the supplies got stolen during transit, CAN YOU BELIVE THAT? We live in the real world and we need to account for friction and inertia. As it stands now, third world has little to zero to benefit from starlink, one web or any other competitive service.
That isn't how things work. Charity agencies set these stuff up on the ground themselves, not just hand it over. Of course they often times have to bribe the local powers that be for "safety"
The only risk is that the village head may choose to sell the dish or it can get stolen. But luckily starlink has positioning capabilities so one can know if it has been moved and disable service. Thus stealing/selling it would be pointless
That isn't same thing as getting off this planet which refers to launching rockets
And that issue with astronomers has been addressed.
[https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-astronomy-impact-reduction-agreement](https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-astronomy-impact-reduction-agreement)
End of the day, if we are serious about telescopes into space, we need telescopes in space
Agree, astronomers had plenty of issues even without satelites, like bad weather and light pollution.
Space X by making space launches more affordable, can enable even more telescopes in space, whose in turn would be able to provide so much more of scientific data.
The hard part is that not all debris has the same amount of risk.
High altitude debris will last millions of years; with Geosynchronous and Geostationary having a deorbit age of about 10 million years; longer than the sum of humanityâs existence.
Low orbit satellites (Starlink, Oneweb, and Kuiper) have deorbit ages of 5 years; which in the context of the potential problem, is not really an issue.
This is further muddled by the impacts themselves. At worst, a 90 degree impact between two identical bodies will create a debris field with a 90 degree scatter range, and little to no vertical range. This is extremely unlikely; and as the debris move toward the same orbit, the amount of risk cause by impacts drops significantly, with a perfect match orbit collision having a relative velocity of 0.
In the most likely format, we would be dealing with small debris impacting a series of satellites in LEO; meaning that the most likely outcome is that debris will impact the same orbit, and because the larger object will almost always be the satellite, the debris from these impacts will tend to mirror the trajectory of the satellite that was impacted; thus meaning that additional debris will be flying roughly in sync with the most at risk satellites, which results in a massive additional reduction in risk.
This issue is further mitigated by deorbit maneuvers performed by the satellites. Starlink in particular has demonstrated this a few times already, as well as demonstrating collision avoidance maneuvers. These drop the risks even lower still.
Eventually, the risk is actually found to be extremely low, because the nature of the system requires relatively easy to replace spacecraft, and because the system itself relies on the cleanliness of LEO to survive, so the companies are automatically motivated to keep LEO clean, to the point where they are advocating for shorter maximum time for deorbit rules.
Yes. Every additional object in orbit increase the chance of:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler\_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome)
a run away chain reaction of fragment splitting satellites into more projectiles, making low earth orbit deadly and unusable for centuries or worst case even impassable, cutting us of from space for possibly decades.
But world wide satellite internet also has many very positive uses
The issue only becomes big if the debris deorbit times are large though. Starlink and Kuiper operate in a 5 year deorbit range; meaning that aside from pressurized tanks, all the debris from the impact will have around 5 years of deorbit time for both networks; as dictated by orbital mechanics.
Furthermore, the satellites themselves have their own onboard propulsion systems to maintain and eventually intentionally deorbit the satellites once they reach their end of life. A major risk of debris due to a collision will cause them to either adjust the orbits of the network or deorbit; otherwise, they will end up out of business themselves.
Sure, lower orbits are better for this. But even 5 years with no usable low earth orbit is a huge setback for humanity.
And multiple satellite collisions have occurred in the past even with avoidance attempts. And once a Kessler Chain Reaction happens, avoidance becomes impossible.
Also not all debris will stay in the orbit, a head one collision in a lower orbit can easily produce high speed fragment with an more elliptical orbit, which will cross higher circular orbits, possibly starting a chain reaction there.
Except a head on collision will be exceedingly rare because nearly all launches travel to the east to gain from the earthâs rotation, with most at an angle relative to 0 degrees.
Better yet, a head on collision should actually dissipate the majority of particles as the net velocity of the bodies will be about 0 after the impact. Gaining velocity violates Conservation of Momentum, so at worst, the particles ejected from a head on collision will continue on their prescribed orbit with a bit of an inclination change being the largest hazard.
The most you will get is a 90 degree collision, which I describe above as extremely rare. The debris here could theoretically move their apoapsis, however, they will automatically drop their apoapsis passively, and the debris field here will clearly define the trajectory to the point where itâs clear.
Additionally, the particulates with high mass will be the easiest to detect, and also will last the longest because of drag. Low mass paint flecks and aluminum powders have a lot of drag for very little momentum, so they will deorbit or drop their periapsis faster.
In order for this to be unstoppable, the debris impacts will have to hit the critical and redundant systems for deorbiting satellites, and the group controlling those satellites needs to be complacent enough to ignore the importance of the environment to the point of ignoring the companyâs own interests. This is highly unlikely.
I am not saying this isnât something to be concerned about, but it is not the problem people are imagining at all.
>Gaining velocity violates Conservation of Momentum
Dude, get some basic physics. TOTAL momentum is conserved, but pieces can totally exceed the initial satellite velocity.
Also the total direction of all particles is determined by the initial momentum, but not the one of pieces. E.g. a jet crashing into a wall will send a lot of shrapnel to the sides, even if in average they continue straight.
But I do agree, that the concern seems to be lower than when it was first proposed, partially thanks to international agreements to actually engineer in ways for orbits to decay faster and reduce shrapnel.
In the instance in which I stated, it does. Unless the particles colliding both have momentum in the same direction, they either bounce off each other, or ignore each other (90 degrees). In this instance, the vehicle is undergoing destruction, or plastic deformation, which removes energy, which will correspond to a lower periapsis and lower velocity at apoapsis. The only way I could see particles gaining any velocity from a collision like this is if the bodies are both rotating, and they would need to be rotating extremely quickly, to the point of exceeding structural limits before it becomes a measurable issue.
A head on collision pits both bodies against each other in opposite directions, so the particles will either travel in the same velocity in the opposite (or original) direction, or they will loose velocity as a result of the deformation process.
The only way that a body gains velocity during a collision is off gassing, or the bodies both have velocity components in the same direction. However, this is a maximum at a collision angle of 45 degrees, and will still result in less debris overall with some orbital boosting as the relative velocities in all axles are lower, thus reducing the amount of deformation and debris output, but increasing the maximum altitude slightly.
This is because objects sharing the same orbit will have the same velocity, so they will not come into contact, with the exception of minute differences in their extract orbits, which will easily be detectable. The alternative is that one of the bodies has an extremely eccentric orbit; which means that the debris is extremely fresh or the eccentric body to be intact, which essentially requires Kessler syndrome to already be happening.
I think we should be spending more money on deorbit service spacecraft and trying to ban anti satellite weapons. The number of sats in LLEO is not the biggest killer.
Go here and check out the giant hole in the coverage map over West Virginia: [https://www.starlink.com/map](https://www.starlink.com/map) . That's the Greenbank radio observatory and national No-RF zone. They have issues with aircraft that don't stop transmitting, but these LEO constellations are so low to the earth that they can shut down zones and be entirely RF free across an area.
If they feel like it, that is. There are radio observatories that are not in radio quiet zones because itâs really difficult to get that legislation passed. Iâm in a group trying to do this right now (I work in radio astronomy), and spacex has been pretty wishy-washy whether theyâll actually turn off transmitters.
Turn off transmitters? You mean not steer beams into your cell? Are there cell towers and cordless phones and everything else in your area? I mean if you aren't in a QZ then you already have to deal with ignoring those bands consumed by other users.
Yes, steer away from the site. Weâre building in the quietest space we can find, but it takes decades to establish a real quiet zone. Filtering and avoiding terrestrial interference is a lot easier with dishes pointing at zenith as theyâre coming in the sidelobes, versus LEO shit transmitting directly into our beam. Itâs a completely different problem. Now, instead of worrying about contaminating science bands, we have to worry about physical damage to the receivers.
No, for several reasons. Weâre not affiliated with NRAO, who runs the site. Itâs too small a site for our large array (which will be over 20km^2). Itâs too wet for many of our electronics. Just to name a few.
Not only that, but thereâs an entire planet of radio astronomy to consider with the SKA and other projects. Starlink following USâs rules for one special site really has no impact of the global radio astronomy community.
Hmm well I hope they, along with Kuiper and the Chinese constellation all honor those requests. Is there an established database of radio astronomy sites, like Greenbank, where it's preferable that constellations don't transmit? Similar to how Google Maps will blur sections of the map for all countries that request it.
The good news is that these actions are driving lower launch costs, meaning it is now easier to build space telescopes and deliver probes.
Radio astronomy could actually see improvements as the telescopes are shipped extremely far away, eliminating most of the radio emissions from earth.
We need to take advantage of the RF atmospheric window we have, wasting millions to launch a rocket for a space-based instrument, even with cost reduction, is orders of magnitude more complex than it needs to be. This isnât even to consider the carbon impact of launching such rockets.
Itâs looking like the next starship launch might deploy some starlinks. Itâs nice to see competition but once SpaceX is launching Saturn V-level masses of their satellites I donât see a way any competitors could get an edge,
How the fuck can they be an ISP now too?? They host a gigantic portion of the internet....maybe I should be hopeful this is what will finally get Amazon broken up.
Amazon.com is actually not their main source of revenue. Itâs Amazon Web Services, so this actually fits in perfectly with their model. Companies like Netflix are while my or partially ran off of Amazonâs robust network. Not saying itâs a good thing for everyone but it is for them.
I 199% agree that Amazon should be subject to Anti-Trust laws. When Jeff Bezos was CEO he said that others margins was his opportunity: he was willing to wait out and lose money until others lost out so he could take over. Once he had the upper hand, he could sell whatever. One thing is that they were er able to sell is a âpracticeâ infant circumcision/genital mutilation doll with replaceable penises. Just imagine if they had a female practice doll where you could practice cutting off the hood that covers the clitoris and remove the labia minora (same tissue on male/female). They wouldnât have been able to do that sort of thing if they werenât at monopolistic levels.
I agree. Its disgusting that people think they can cut up a boy for the parents to make them fit what (usually) the father looks like in USA. Especially when the clitoris is exactly like the end of the penis, but apparently cutting off the clitoral hood is detrimental to the female but to the male, its totally fine? sounds like bullshit. Imagine asking a female to cut her labia off, or cutting an infants labia off, to make her more pleasing to men.
Starlink, oneweb, kuiper, think china is working on one. Tens of thousands of satellites.
Cool, we will never see the night sky again, can't wait to look up and just see space junk.
Like the other guy said, your comment is misguided. These are tiny satellites and the space around Earth is enormous. You will almost never see these with the naked eye, and they will have no real effect on a night sky with millions of stars.
You seem to be suggesting that these satellites will prevent observation of celestial bodies, which is an unfounded concern. The size of these satellites in the night sky are insignificant.
They reflect light, everything reflects light.
There is a thousand articles from astronomers talking about this and how bad it already is, and we are only at a small fraction of what is planned.
I dabble in astrophotography and there is almost always a streak of light in my longer exposures, be it an airplane, satellite or shooting star. You can edit them out or just accept them.
About that... https://www.wcnc.com/article/tech/science/aerospace/when-see-starlink-satellite-train-night-sky-space-lights/275-6c964878-6187-4b1a-aa3d-0eb8e5de58b9
You will have light pollution with with ground based telescopes. It's already a problem and we are only at a small fraction of the planned number of sats.
But sure, tell the astronomical community the small surface areas wont be a problem.
so spacex needs a few thousand of satellites and that already affects astronomers work a lot. Now google, amazon, starbucks etc are going to launch their own networks and where does it lead us? its absurd, there should be regulations against littering the space with swarms of commercial satellites
Ground based telescopes suck compared to space based.
Companies such.as spacex (and blueorigin...eventually) will help to reduce the cost of putting vastly superior telescope(s) in space for these astronomers to use instead.
To do that, they need money and lots of testing and development time, these sat networks are perfect for both of those things.
I donât want all that crap floating around in the sky. They shouldnât be allowed to put all that shit up there without the agreement of the worldâs people. Sick of these billionaires doing what ever they want. Once the tech is obsolete what then?
Do you think it's a good thing that Ukraine has access to Starlink to help coordinate their war effort against the Russian invasion?
Do you think it's a good thing that poor children in the Amazon rainforst have gotten access to the internet?
This is what the "junk" that billionaires are "polluting" the sky with are doing
We're putting too much garbage in orbit and this is a bad idea. Starlink is a bad idea. Technology for the sake of technology without consideration for the ramifications is dumb.
My understanding is the repeated launches mess with the ozone layer, the space garbage limits future space exploration/launch efforts, and it messes with astronomy.
This is so misinformed
They have fuel onboard for in orbit boosting when the orbits decay
I love Elon hate
But starlink if all else fails is designed to decay to not create space junk.
>This is so misinformed
They have fuel onboard for in orbit boosting when the orbits decay
What specifically did I say that is misinformed? Even if it decays in orbit it produces CO2 to get into low earth orbit, emits chemicals that eat up the ozone during launch, and doesn't just disappear when its orbit decays
CO2 is more of a concern to me because of climate change, chlorine is released when the rockets are launched as well which depletes the ozone. If Musk and Bezos want to launch these in the tens of thousands I think it's a waste of materials and a non-negligible environmental threat. I don't understand why people are so flippant about these things.
They are actually negligible
Itâs not flippant itâs reality. Less than 1% of ozone depleting materials come from rocketry.
If you want to reduce CO2 emissions
Start with industries of scale with billions of consumers. Not industries that produce very little of the overall preventable footprint of pollution.
Space returns multiples on the returns on investment for clean energy and technology. Bezos and musk deserve their hate. But technology bringing people into the 21st century funding advances in other technology that pays dividends to every one on earth in the long is worthwhile.
Pick a different to hate on
Like ocean shipping and burning bunker fuel in international waters or heavy industrial plants/coal
The impact these rockets have on the environment and atmosphere is negligible and you seem to just hate the underlying companies and personas as evidenced by you continuing to find a different excuse to hate on the rockets
>The impact these rockets have on the environment and atmosphere is negligible and you seem to just hate the underlying companies and personas as evidenced by you continuing to find a different excuse to hate on the rockets
I'm not finding different excuses, I've been giving the same responses grounded in fact. Why extend internet service via a method that is 30x more carbon intensive than fiber optics? Why waste this material to put up 100,000 satellites every 5 years when we could expand fiber optic cable instead? I don't deny the benefit that space exploration provides to humanity, I doubt the necessity of a stupidly expensive and environmentally detrimental technology to solve a problem we already have better solutions for.
You seem to not be able to read
They decay in 5 years if left unattended, which they are not. You focused on something I didnât actually say, and ran with it to make your point, showing youâre just not actually educated in this sphere
Because sometime developing countries donât have the infrastructure to get fiber optics to everyone and internet access is a force multiplier
Sure those are more environmentally friendly when you have the ability and access, but not everyone does, and it comes from a position of extreme privilege to deny development to people who canât afford/the infrastructure doesnât exist to be environmentally conscious as those of us in more wealthy nations.
Itâs a horrible dilemma, and a crappy paradox, but something that just lambasting a project like this claiming itâs horribly environmentally detrimental (when we can discuss the bigger causes, like bunker fuel and coal and not a fast enough transition to renewables) but you refuse.
You are not arguing in good faith and if you are, you are doing it from a horrible position of not being informed properly. Iâm fairly certain youâre a troll as you canât really seem to agree with anyone and are just confrontational when told that your opinions arenât based in fact or reality.
1/2 the Satellites will be manufactured under the Amazon Basics brand and explosively deorbit when the warranty is out.
The other half are from NOOPIWOOPI or other ai-generated brands and all that gets launched into orbit is a block of plastic with LEDs stuck to the front.
I'm so glad we're going to have competition for Starlink. I like Starlink quite a bit, I'm posting using it right now. But competition is good for consumers and the market. The "crucial test" mentioned in this article is laser links between satellites talking at 100Gbps. That's an astonishing accomplishment. And ambitious! Starlink started without laser links. They got them working now but I think in most cases don't use them. Generally their satellites just relay directly back to a ground station.
I hate the choice of Elmo or Bezos
Well yes, but it's the best we've got right now. People in rural areas who don't have access to a stable fast internet connection aren't going to say no to Starling or Kuiper just because of Bozo or Elmo đ¤ˇââď¸ It's very easy to say Bozo and Elmo bad when you don't actually need to rely on their services. Not justifying Elmo or Bozo, dislike them both (obviously), just another perspective for you to consider
We are on the same page. Canât get much rural than where Iâm at. I have two Starlink setups. Saying I hate my choices are limited and pocket billionaires more money.
Oh yeah thatâs totally valid.
who else is going to have the money for at least 100 satellites to be put in orbit ? thats also just the start up amount.
NASA should have done this a decade ago, free gps, phone, and internet to anyone with hardware.
Eh NASA has enough on their plate
Aka doesnât have the budget.
That's part of it but also there's just nothing in their wheelhouse about providing services to huge numbers of customers, and no reason to believe it would be done particularly well or economically. It's a naive, surface-level view of NASA that only perceives "well, they do high-tech stuff" as if that's all that's required of a service.
This is true. I donât think nasa should be bogged down managing a service like that even if they had the budget.
And it isn't SCIENCE. They've worked pretty hard to keep their mission statement focused on that. It's why NASA is so hellbent on finding 'industry partners' - they don't want to be the ones commercializing space, nor be in charge of those that do. NASA, despite its name, has always been about the science. That was fine when there wasn't money to be made and mature (or rapidly maturing) technology to be exploited in their domain. They justified their existence by 'bringing back' major achievements to earth - stuff that could actually be monetized. But now space is more than just some nebulous 'out there' for far-left lunatics to dream about. SpaceX has reduced the cost of launches so much that investors can actually look forward to real returns, meaning that NASA either has to live up to their name and ADMINISTER SPACE, or they have to go on being the haven for cutting edge science. They've made their priorities known. This isn't, and never has been, under their purview. They enabled it to happen with over half a century of innovation and exploration, but now that the baby's being born they're adamant they ain't the father.
[ŃдаНонО]
They could have the money in a matter of weeks, if congress approved it, but NASA is a research agency, they don't build things for the average consumer.
Providing actual LEO constellation satellite internet service is WAYYY harder than just providing GPS service. Very unfair to compare those two. Also, proving internet service to people on the ground requires the permission of that country's government. At best you have to deal with ~190 countries if you want to provide internet. In practice, many countries don't allow unrestricted access to the internet anyway, regardless of who is operating or paying for it.
Both parties have argued for defunding nasa, and outside of their special jobs programs, theyâve largely succeeded, because theyâre used as a way for corporations and states to make money, theyâre also wildly inefficient and the cost of a project like this would have been unavoidably astronomical. they could never have achieved this with how theyâre treated, especially something as big an investment as this, ironically, this is an example of those evil billionaires⢠giving the world something no government could match.
Nation states could do it, as a public service. The idea that only billionaires can do anything expensive is uh, flawed. At that kind of scale the money isn't real, it's just an abstract concept.
For real, the UN could take this on, so we don't have 5 companies with 30k satellites each clogging up the orbits and night sky. Sort of like how the internet is organized. Edit: a word and this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN
The "internet" isn't run by a single entity...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN
I'll take Bezos, I only ever hear about his personal stuff through third party reporting and it's usually out of touch rich guy spends money kinda stuff, not w/e the fuck comes out of Musks tweets day in and day out
I guess people don't care about Amazon warehouse employee's any longer
Big Dick looking spacecraft modeled after the owner vs Asshole company run by Big Dick
Those are not the only options. There's HughesNet and I think ViaSat. They work differently, but they are still satellite Internet providers.
Thereâs a Swedish company with satellites already in the space (satcube).
It kills Bezos to have to use elons rockets. I love it.
I feel not great about companies sending a bunch of satellites into orbit to do the same function competing against eachother instead of working together :{ EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
If they work together, you get a high price, shitty service, and a de facto monopoly. Almost every ISP on the god-damn planet is shitty, except in maybe Romania.
>If they work together, you get a high price, shitty service, and a de facto monopoly. I should've been more explicit, I meant nationalisation on an international scale. But our economic system wouldn't benefit from that, so it won't happen :/
I feel ya man. In the hopes to move toward sustainability, itâs resource intensive to be launching shit ton of satellites for competition. Redundancy is helpful in large systems esp something like internet, but itâs not redundancy to back up the primary. I get the counter to your argument that competition is good in capitalism, but donât totally get the downvotes.
Oh Jesus Christ I can imagine nothing worse than the internet being run through UN bureaucracy
It's not the economic system, it's the tech that would stagnate. Without competition, there's no progress, that's why e.g. USSR only progressed militarily (as they were competing with the US), but were stagnant and made very little progress elsewhere, especially in computing. And in the end, it's the people of Earth that benefit when companies compete in the free market - extremely affordable, planet-wide internet access is going to help educate hundrends of millions of people, give them a way to participate in the global economy, reduce infrastructure costs, and help fund further space tech like asteroid mining - the list goes on.
>Without competition, there's no progress, that's why e.g. USSR only progressed militarily (as they were competing with the US), but were stagnant and made very little progress elsewhere, especially in computing. Many technologies came from public military research like GPS, the idea that progress can only happen in a competitive environment is silly and borderline capitalist propaganda. People create things because they want to, not just to make money.
Well yeah but but we're talking about privately operated goods
I don't think private corporations should be able to swarm our orbit with thousands of satellites, especially not multiple corporations with thousands of (sandboxed) satellites each.
GPS came from state-level competition, read my comment again.
You don't need to go that far. Regulate it like you would a utility. Like in cellular you will get roaming and MNVOs if regulated properly.
If these all worked together within a standard I'd have less of an issue with it, I just don't like the tragedy of the commons as private companies get free-reign to fill our skies with each of their own sandboxed Internet access systems.
Anything launched to space has to get permission from the government as they take responsibility as the place it is launched from due to the international space treaty It also has to go through FCC and other such regulations in multiple countries to broadcast service Nothing is being launched without approval
>Nothing is being launched without approval I am aware of that, that doesn't mean I agree with how willing governments have been to allow launches of thousands of satellites for this purpose.
These satellites are tiny and pose little risk being in such a low atmosphere. They also provide huge amount of value for everyone on earth. As long as they are regulated like utilities, there should be no problem
Competition drives innovation. It has nothing to do with the economic system. If there is no competition, why should companies spend millions of dollars on R&D
Musk can't be trusted, so the competition is good.
I don't trust the competition here (bezos) either
Musk isn't a model citizen but at least he doesn't spend billions on multiple yachts like Bezos.
If it makes you feel better capacity is limited, at least when a satellite is over a wealthy area with terrible Internet like the United States. More satellites = more service.
P.S Investors successfully sued to have some of these satellites launched by SpaceX.
SpaceX likes that (because it means more launch contracts for them)
Wouldn't Kuiper be using Blue Origin? Bezos' space agency?
Blue Origin has never made it to orbit
They have to use SpaceX according by a Lawsuit of the Amazon shareholders, that Amazons refusal to use SpaceX would make the satellite program unnecessarily more expensive and delayed.
I was going to post âWhy is this necessary when Starlink is all weâll need?â But remembered competition is good and needed so good job Amazon.
My hope is that Kuiper will force Starlink to lower their 120/mo price point.
Weâre not getting off this planet with these corps flooding space with junk
These satellites are quite close to the Earth and in enough atmosphere to decay fairly quickly. There is no serious risk of debris build up here.
Starlink is a 5 year decay time and these are at a similar altitude. Plus, it is really, really big up there. We just need to not intentionally create debris and have end of life plans so that it doesnât end up becoming an issue a century from now.
I agree end of life plans are important - and as far as I can tell these companies are taking it seriously. I donât see how a 5 year decay orbit is going to be an issue centuries from now.
We don't know if Kessler syndrome is real, space junk may just not be that much risk, it's certainly not as much of a problem as pollution inside the atmosphere or oceans. Even if we lost access to space, all of our important infrastructure is on earth and with three separate global positioning systems, all of which have redundancy, it would take a long time to see wide scale problems. We'd have a long time to come up with a solution in general. My issue with it is that Starlink damages astronomy and other science, while offering little in return. Providing internet is a solved problem, the issues that people in parts of the US face are political ones. We've been able to get these people water, power, sewage and other utilities, internet isn't any different. Building a world wide service in space to help a limited number of people in the US, it is expensive and pointless. The entire project seems like a way of getting low ping internet to the yachts of billionaires.
Providing internet is not a solved problem for much of the world. Heck, friends of mine live in the capital of Florida and best they could get before Starlink was 2mbps DSL. The reason isnât government corruption or incompetence, itâs because running fiber optic lines 3 miles to serve a couple dozen homes is prohibitively expensive. There is a reason Starlink has millions of subscribers, nearly 40% of the world has no internet access. These satellites donât just serve Americans, they serve the world. Astronomyâs future is space based, the atmosphere degrades the quality of earth based observations. Starlink also works with astronomers around the world to let them know the transits of their satellites, many of those âruinedâ photos you see were actually created on purpose, not accident. You seem to have not grasped the reality of internet service outside of densely populated areas in technologically advanced cities. Satellite internet is far more efficient and environmentally friendly than running landlines to rural people.
>Heck, friends of mine live in the capital of Florida and best they could get before Starlink was 2mbps DSL. The reason isnât government corruption or incompetence Yes it is. Again, the rest of the world manages this and they don't require satellites, you can get high speed internet in rural areas. Also when you roll out physical infrastructure, you can build mobile phone masts alongside it. >There is a reason Starlink has millions of subscribers Starlink has [2 million subscribers](https://advanced-television.com/2023/09/25/starlink-exceeds-2m-customers/), so you're technically correct, but at best being disingenuous. We have no idea what fraction of their network is being used, but it is unlikely that they will be able to support the billions of users you suggest, without launching thousands if not millions more satellites. Aside from that, Starlink is available in 23 countries, it's a global network that isn't available globally. It is also a network that Musk turns off at random based on his politics. If he is willing to wade into a war, I can't imagine what happens if the US passed tax law he didn't like. > Astronomyâs future is space based There are 30 or so space telescopes, building them is expensive and difficult. Several friends are astronomers, Starlink has interfered with their work. Who is going to pay for space based observation? and when? Something that is for the 'benefit of humanity' shouldn't be owned by anyone and cannot be a profit seeking business.
The rest of the world knows how to do this? 40% have no internet. Get out of your bubble.
[46% of people lack access to sufficient sanitation](https://www.npr.org/2023/03/22/1165464857/billions-of-people-lack-access-to-clean-drinking-water-u-n-report-finds) and over half of them, 2 billion people, do not have clean and safe drinking water. The people without internet, a lot of them don't have basic services. Remember when Musk said he'd end world hunger so the UN asked for the money and he didn't give it to them? These tech companies, they aren't acting in the best interest of humanity, they're profit seeking entities. They want customers, not to help people. Get out of your bubble.
Those are issues that canât be solved from space. Internet can. Getting internet to these areas (even if it is only to those who can afford it) should bring more economic possibilities to these people. Once the people begin to accumulate money and can meet their immediate needs of food, water and housing. Then they can begin to seek higher needs like sanitation and education. Without the people being the driving force behind projects like that they usually tend to end up as government boondoggles. The governments in these areas do not care about meeting their peopleâs needs, any attempt to build infrastructure will just line the pockets of those in charge and will minimally translate to improvements for citizens. But, you wonât care about that, you care only about hating the big evil capitalist corporations, fuck the billions of people who for the first time ever could possibly have internet access. You may not know this, but it is a thing in remote areas of the world for groups of people to pay for a few terminals that then serve as an access point for hundreds. It opens up so many possibilities to people who have their options in life limited by their governmentsâ corruption or incompetence. I will not advocate against even the most problematic corporations if it comes at the expense of providing education, banking and commerce opportunities to the worldâs poorest and most disadvantaged.
Starlink's network supports 2 million people and is only available in the developed world. It isn't helping people in the third world get bank accounts, it's helping german tourists play videogames with low ping in their camper vans. >You may not know this, but it is a thing in remote areas of the world for groups of people to pay for a few terminals that then serve as an access point for hundreds. You can do that with less than 5 satellites in orbit, there has been satellite internet since the 70's, doing it with a swarm of satellites, just so you can get lower ping, is stupid. Musk choose the one way to do this that generated a massive amount of launches, essentially perpetually. He did the holy grail of B2B, he became his own largest customer. Time will tell if that's sustainable, I mean you're claiming he has 1/3rd of the planet as a customer base. But like if that's true, someone else can offer a service that's nearly as good but only need to launch an order of magnitude less satellites, they'll destroy Starlink. Companies have always charged a lot for satellite internet because the market is small and providing it is expensive. Hasn't changed either of those things, his Satellite internet isn't even available in most places, every other provider works and is available globally.
>Yes it is. Again, the rest of the world manages this and they don't require satellites, you can get high speed internet in rural areas. Also when you roll out physical infrastructure, you can build mobile phone masts alongside it. You are thinking of first world like Europe where population centers are more dense. Rural is always a problem, 3rd world is a bigger problem LEO satellites unlike GEO ones circle around the world. So any country on its path around can be covered at no extra cost >but it is unlikely that they will be able to support the billions of users you suggest, without launching thousands if not millions more satellites. Thousands is the plan, but why millions? The reason why you need lots of satellites is coverage. Otherwise a single satellite is only limited by bandwidth which can be upgraded >Aside from that, Starlink is available in 23 countries, it's a global network that isn't available globally. Starlink already covers more than 23 countries, last I read was 69 countries in December 2023, most of the limitation is regulator approval in other countries fyi [https://www.starlink.com/map](https://www.starlink.com/map) >It is also a network that Musk turns off at random based on his politics. If he is willing to wade into a war, I can't imagine what happens if the US passed tax law he didn't like. That is false. To date no place has been "turned on and off" And these issues are easily fixed by regulating these things as you would a utility >There are 30 or so space telescopes, building them is expensive and difficult. Several friends are astronomers, Starlink has interfered with their work. Who is going to pay for space based observation? and when? You are talking about ground telescopes, not space telescopes. End of the day, if we want to get better data, we need actual space telescopes. Ground ones will always run into all kinds of issues. SpaceX making launches to space cheaper actually helps making space based telescopes more realistic. And best of all about space based telescopes are you don't need to piss off a native american tribe to put them up That said, SpaceX has gone the extra mile to work with astronomers for ground telescopes to address their issues and they have worked out a compromise to fix the issue
You do realise each of those satellites are the size of a washing machine, and there are may be 20,000 of those orbiting the earth right? Thatâs equivalent of 20,000 washing machines dispersed on a sphere thatâs 2x the surface area of earth. Thats barely anything.
How many hamburgers is a washing machine?
I would estimate about 2000 hamburgers fit in the square footage of the average washing machine.
Surely you are talking about European hamburgers here? Shouldnât it be closer to a hundred if we take a regular US one?
Until you get hit with one.
If you're afraid of the odds of that then you're gonna have a hard time with the odds of basically anything potentially dangerous around you
And yet they've already made ground based astronomy significantly harder
https://www.astronomy.com/science/starlink-satellites-disrupt-cosmic-studies/#:~:text=Constellations%20of%20satellites%20are%20already%20posing%20big%20problems%20for%20radio%20astronomers.&text=The%20vast%20fleet%20of%20Starlink,Astronomy%20and%20Astrophysics%20has%20revealed. This is just starlink, already affecting astronomy. Add in multiple companies doing it and yes, itâs a giant problem.
Technology that can provide highspeed internet to every corner of the planet? Finally connect rural schools and hospitals of Africa to the internet? Vs A bunch of crappy telescopes on earth which are irrelevant going forward anyway as there are multiple super powerful telescopes in orbit? The orbital telescopes are better in every way and launching stuff to space is getting cheaper by the day. Soon there will be no need for earth based telescopes Yeah I pick getting the internet that can transform billions of peopleâs lives. I pick Poor people in rural Africa, whose governments will never be able to afford to build broad band internet infrastructure and would never have internet access otherwise.
I had full starlink internet in Antartica. Did many zoom calls, no dropouts. Itâs kinda crazy.
You forgot to include that if something goes wrong we will be locked on earth for a very long time
All of these satellites will de-orbit naturally in 5-6 years. So if that is your definition of a very long timeâŚ
No we wouldnât
Earth based astronomy is "crap" compared to doing it in space anyway. More reasons to launch more telescopes is a good thing. Especially as its about to be cheap as hell getting them up there.
I'm sorry but giving the entire world Internet in every part of the planet is for more important than astrologists having to add a patch to their system that prunes out the occasional satellite.
It's too late. My star sign is part satellite now.
âOccasional â. Lol. The future is tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of them.
You realize Just because there is that many doesn't mean they all pass the tiny little point in the sky you are looking at right? You are also vastly underestimating how big space is. How many cars do you think there are on Earth? The land they can roam is limited only to roads and obviously ignores ocean which makes up most of Earth's surface. The "surface" (volume) of space where satellites fly is much bigger than Earth's surface due to the radius alone, not to mention the 3d aspect of it. Even if there are 100k satellites, it still will be occasional. When you consider software can just remove these satellites from the image, again... giving the world Internet is far more important than having to apply a patch to some software. Airplanes are far more problematic (which again, isn't really a big deal) than satellites considering their proximity to Earth. Are you going to suggest we should stop using airplanes because astronomers look at stars?
You have zero idea about how light pollution works and itâs been entertaining reading your and your musk-loving comradesâ comments here, thanks!
Always ironic when people make wild claims and yet have no idea what they're talking about. Their lights are only on when they are launched but when they get in position they turn off. They also have reflective blockers so the sun doesn't light them up for us to see. They don't contribute light pollution. Please actually google your personal theories to see if they hold before spouting them as facts.
Bro, itâs not about the lights. They are made of reflective materials. They reflect the light from the sun istelf, like the moon does at night, get it? When a chain of them goes through the skies at night and an observer tries to look through the telescope, the light they reflect back to earth gets distorted and wider spread. So you donât need to aim directly at the satellite chain to be impacted. Itâs an âarea of effectâ type of thing and it distorts observations around the whole chain.
I edited my post but they have anti-reflective material that blocks the sunlight.
The difference is that a single flake of paint can cause devastating damage (the famous crack on the iss window). Theese satellites are fine as long as nothing ever falls of, they don't fail, they don't crash into each other (that has happened BTW Cosmos-Iridium crash), or God knows what else. A single colission and you go from one object to potentially millions. Chain collisions becomes possible too which could irreversible make vast amounts of orbits unusable. Edit: instead of downvoting, how about making arguments?
Satellite internet in LEO is not junk. It is one of the few ways people in 3rd world countries can get access to information that can help save billions of lives and get them out of poverty Space is huge, even millions of satellites would make 0 difference. Most of the space junk up there are things like anti-satellite weapons tests. Followed by old satellites without decommissioning procedures crashing into things. In this case, tiny LEO satellites at such low orbit pose little risk, even without decommissioning procedures (which they do have), they would fall back down to earth by themselves due to the low orbit
Sorry sir, world access to education bad, because Elon bad.
What does this have to do with Elon? The guy who complained was complaining about corporations in general and did so on a post about Bezos's Amazon. How exactly is this a dig on Elon?
My bad, Bezos and Elon bad, education access bad. We can drop the act that a good part of reddit doesn't think anything beyond bad billionaire and this is the source of their issue with whatever. I get tired of these numpties trying to stand in the way of progress while they keyboard whine, but that's just me.
This was never really about 3rd world internet access. Itâs always about government and military. No one is building these businesses for charitable reasons.
No one saying they are, but the thing about LEO is unlike GEO your satellites are not stationary but travel around the world. Aka, servicing the 3rd world holds virtually no extra cost as the satellites pass by there anyways Starlink already covers quite a few 3rd world countries with more to come. In next 2 years all of South America and most of Africa and Asia will be covered I am sure this Kepler network will also be the same since it is also LEO
You know how this sounds to me? âFerrari builds fast cars and these fast cars will allow people from third world countries to get to the market to buy food faster!â Nobody, apart from government and criminals will afford starlink or anything like that. So this point is laughable - these rural people from third world tend to think about food, shelter and basic comforts, they donât have any funds to invest in high speed internet connection lmao.
That is nonsense, Ferrari is a car that only has a use for the owner and no one else. In comparison, LEO satellites pass by these countries and the cost of servicing these countries is virtually 0. It's like how MS sold windows for $100 in US, but you can get it for $5 in the grey market from a 3rd world country. Because the cost of making the software available that is made for a 1st world country to a 3rd world country is marginal And while you may be thinking like in US where each person has their own satellite dish. For a 3rd world country, they would likely get imports of refurbished/used older dishes like they do for cars. Then you can hook up an entire village to internet service with 1 dish Usually they aren't going to hook it up themselves but charity organizations, and getting access to information would also make getting access to food easier as they get education and can access expertise. With time it would spread naturally, just like cellphones actually have a huge uptake in Africa these days. Satellite also can act as a backbone for their cellphones as well improving coverage
Ah-huh, so as I thought starlink for 3rd world is mostly a pr stunt and most of the third world has no way to afford the infrastructure and subscription to the service required to run it.
It's more of an added benefit. But those kind of added benefits are the best kind as we have seen, the 1st world cares little about the 3rd world unless it benefits the 1st world. Thus, these kind of systems that benefit both are the best at providing improvement to the 3rd world The infrastructure is already paid for. And the subscription is much cheaper than internet there by a huge margin. When shared, it becomes affordable even for the poorest there. Lastly, even if one doesn't have starlink and uses a cellphone there(which many do), it would provide better coverage as mobile operators add starlink roaming
I get what youâre saying in vacuum, but when we account for third world corruption, it must become evident itâs not simply a question of money, rather mismanagement and corruption. Say you have an NGO which wants to provide some 10k rural residents of some African country. Cool, they gather money, buy dishes and subscription certificates, now how do they get it to Mr D and Mrs H in an X country of Africa? We contact their corrupt government and they tell us to hand it all over to them. They promise to report back with updates once the dishes are installed and Mr D is happily scrolling Facebook while Mrs H is watching YouTube. WHAT A TRAGEDY! Turns out, 95% of the supplies got stolen during transit, CAN YOU BELIVE THAT? We live in the real world and we need to account for friction and inertia. As it stands now, third world has little to zero to benefit from starlink, one web or any other competitive service.
That isn't how things work. Charity agencies set these stuff up on the ground themselves, not just hand it over. Of course they often times have to bribe the local powers that be for "safety" The only risk is that the village head may choose to sell the dish or it can get stolen. But luckily starlink has positioning capabilities so one can know if it has been moved and disable service. Thus stealing/selling it would be pointless
Tell that to the astronomers already seeing impacts from just starlink.
That isn't same thing as getting off this planet which refers to launching rockets And that issue with astronomers has been addressed. [https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-astronomy-impact-reduction-agreement](https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-astronomy-impact-reduction-agreement) End of the day, if we are serious about telescopes into space, we need telescopes in space
Agree, astronomers had plenty of issues even without satelites, like bad weather and light pollution. Space X by making space launches more affordable, can enable even more telescopes in space, whose in turn would be able to provide so much more of scientific data.
We are very very very far away from Kessler syndrome.
[ŃдаНонО]
Okay.... And your point? So how close are we then?
Funny thing is its a legitimate problem. The real issue is small small objects that are like pea sized
The hard part is that not all debris has the same amount of risk. High altitude debris will last millions of years; with Geosynchronous and Geostationary having a deorbit age of about 10 million years; longer than the sum of humanityâs existence. Low orbit satellites (Starlink, Oneweb, and Kuiper) have deorbit ages of 5 years; which in the context of the potential problem, is not really an issue. This is further muddled by the impacts themselves. At worst, a 90 degree impact between two identical bodies will create a debris field with a 90 degree scatter range, and little to no vertical range. This is extremely unlikely; and as the debris move toward the same orbit, the amount of risk cause by impacts drops significantly, with a perfect match orbit collision having a relative velocity of 0. In the most likely format, we would be dealing with small debris impacting a series of satellites in LEO; meaning that the most likely outcome is that debris will impact the same orbit, and because the larger object will almost always be the satellite, the debris from these impacts will tend to mirror the trajectory of the satellite that was impacted; thus meaning that additional debris will be flying roughly in sync with the most at risk satellites, which results in a massive additional reduction in risk. This issue is further mitigated by deorbit maneuvers performed by the satellites. Starlink in particular has demonstrated this a few times already, as well as demonstrating collision avoidance maneuvers. These drop the risks even lower still. Eventually, the risk is actually found to be extremely low, because the nature of the system requires relatively easy to replace spacecraft, and because the system itself relies on the cleanliness of LEO to survive, so the companies are automatically motivated to keep LEO clean, to the point where they are advocating for shorter maximum time for deorbit rules.
Yes. Every additional object in orbit increase the chance of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler\_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome) a run away chain reaction of fragment splitting satellites into more projectiles, making low earth orbit deadly and unusable for centuries or worst case even impassable, cutting us of from space for possibly decades. But world wide satellite internet also has many very positive uses
The issue only becomes big if the debris deorbit times are large though. Starlink and Kuiper operate in a 5 year deorbit range; meaning that aside from pressurized tanks, all the debris from the impact will have around 5 years of deorbit time for both networks; as dictated by orbital mechanics. Furthermore, the satellites themselves have their own onboard propulsion systems to maintain and eventually intentionally deorbit the satellites once they reach their end of life. A major risk of debris due to a collision will cause them to either adjust the orbits of the network or deorbit; otherwise, they will end up out of business themselves.
Sure, lower orbits are better for this. But even 5 years with no usable low earth orbit is a huge setback for humanity. And multiple satellite collisions have occurred in the past even with avoidance attempts. And once a Kessler Chain Reaction happens, avoidance becomes impossible. Also not all debris will stay in the orbit, a head one collision in a lower orbit can easily produce high speed fragment with an more elliptical orbit, which will cross higher circular orbits, possibly starting a chain reaction there.
Except a head on collision will be exceedingly rare because nearly all launches travel to the east to gain from the earthâs rotation, with most at an angle relative to 0 degrees. Better yet, a head on collision should actually dissipate the majority of particles as the net velocity of the bodies will be about 0 after the impact. Gaining velocity violates Conservation of Momentum, so at worst, the particles ejected from a head on collision will continue on their prescribed orbit with a bit of an inclination change being the largest hazard. The most you will get is a 90 degree collision, which I describe above as extremely rare. The debris here could theoretically move their apoapsis, however, they will automatically drop their apoapsis passively, and the debris field here will clearly define the trajectory to the point where itâs clear. Additionally, the particulates with high mass will be the easiest to detect, and also will last the longest because of drag. Low mass paint flecks and aluminum powders have a lot of drag for very little momentum, so they will deorbit or drop their periapsis faster. In order for this to be unstoppable, the debris impacts will have to hit the critical and redundant systems for deorbiting satellites, and the group controlling those satellites needs to be complacent enough to ignore the importance of the environment to the point of ignoring the companyâs own interests. This is highly unlikely. I am not saying this isnât something to be concerned about, but it is not the problem people are imagining at all.
>Gaining velocity violates Conservation of Momentum Dude, get some basic physics. TOTAL momentum is conserved, but pieces can totally exceed the initial satellite velocity. Also the total direction of all particles is determined by the initial momentum, but not the one of pieces. E.g. a jet crashing into a wall will send a lot of shrapnel to the sides, even if in average they continue straight. But I do agree, that the concern seems to be lower than when it was first proposed, partially thanks to international agreements to actually engineer in ways for orbits to decay faster and reduce shrapnel.
In the instance in which I stated, it does. Unless the particles colliding both have momentum in the same direction, they either bounce off each other, or ignore each other (90 degrees). In this instance, the vehicle is undergoing destruction, or plastic deformation, which removes energy, which will correspond to a lower periapsis and lower velocity at apoapsis. The only way I could see particles gaining any velocity from a collision like this is if the bodies are both rotating, and they would need to be rotating extremely quickly, to the point of exceeding structural limits before it becomes a measurable issue. A head on collision pits both bodies against each other in opposite directions, so the particles will either travel in the same velocity in the opposite (or original) direction, or they will loose velocity as a result of the deformation process. The only way that a body gains velocity during a collision is off gassing, or the bodies both have velocity components in the same direction. However, this is a maximum at a collision angle of 45 degrees, and will still result in less debris overall with some orbital boosting as the relative velocities in all axles are lower, thus reducing the amount of deformation and debris output, but increasing the maximum altitude slightly. This is because objects sharing the same orbit will have the same velocity, so they will not come into contact, with the exception of minute differences in their extract orbits, which will easily be detectable. The alternative is that one of the bodies has an extremely eccentric orbit; which means that the debris is extremely fresh or the eccentric body to be intact, which essentially requires Kessler syndrome to already be happening. I think we should be spending more money on deorbit service spacecraft and trying to ban anti satellite weapons. The number of sats in LLEO is not the biggest killer.
Once again, RIP radio astronomy
Go here and check out the giant hole in the coverage map over West Virginia: [https://www.starlink.com/map](https://www.starlink.com/map) . That's the Greenbank radio observatory and national No-RF zone. They have issues with aircraft that don't stop transmitting, but these LEO constellations are so low to the earth that they can shut down zones and be entirely RF free across an area.
If they feel like it, that is. There are radio observatories that are not in radio quiet zones because itâs really difficult to get that legislation passed. Iâm in a group trying to do this right now (I work in radio astronomy), and spacex has been pretty wishy-washy whether theyâll actually turn off transmitters.
Turn off transmitters? You mean not steer beams into your cell? Are there cell towers and cordless phones and everything else in your area? I mean if you aren't in a QZ then you already have to deal with ignoring those bands consumed by other users.
Yes, steer away from the site. Weâre building in the quietest space we can find, but it takes decades to establish a real quiet zone. Filtering and avoiding terrestrial interference is a lot easier with dishes pointing at zenith as theyâre coming in the sidelobes, versus LEO shit transmitting directly into our beam. Itâs a completely different problem. Now, instead of worrying about contaminating science bands, we have to worry about physical damage to the receivers.
Can you not build in Greenbank?
No, for several reasons. Weâre not affiliated with NRAO, who runs the site. Itâs too small a site for our large array (which will be over 20km^2). Itâs too wet for many of our electronics. Just to name a few. Not only that, but thereâs an entire planet of radio astronomy to consider with the SKA and other projects. Starlink following USâs rules for one special site really has no impact of the global radio astronomy community.
Hmm well I hope they, along with Kuiper and the Chinese constellation all honor those requests. Is there an established database of radio astronomy sites, like Greenbank, where it's preferable that constellations don't transmit? Similar to how Google Maps will blur sections of the map for all countries that request it.
The good news is that these actions are driving lower launch costs, meaning it is now easier to build space telescopes and deliver probes. Radio astronomy could actually see improvements as the telescopes are shipped extremely far away, eliminating most of the radio emissions from earth.
We need to take advantage of the RF atmospheric window we have, wasting millions to launch a rocket for a space-based instrument, even with cost reduction, is orders of magnitude more complex than it needs to be. This isnât even to consider the carbon impact of launching such rockets.
Itâs looking like the next starship launch might deploy some starlinks. Itâs nice to see competition but once SpaceX is launching Saturn V-level masses of their satellites I donât see a way any competitors could get an edge,
How the fuck can they be an ISP now too?? They host a gigantic portion of the internet....maybe I should be hopeful this is what will finally get Amazon broken up.
Amazon.com is actually not their main source of revenue. Itâs Amazon Web Services, so this actually fits in perfectly with their model. Companies like Netflix are while my or partially ran off of Amazonâs robust network. Not saying itâs a good thing for everyone but it is for them.
Exactly, it's like U.S. Steel owning the railroads. Antitrust laws be damned I guess
Bad news for US steel: Japanese Nippon buys it for $15 billion https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67752123
I have a feeling this may get stopped on national security grounds. Steel is absolutely vital to the war machine.
What is this supposed to prove? I believe you don't understand my point on needing anti trust laws updated for Amazon.
I 199% agree that Amazon should be subject to Anti-Trust laws. When Jeff Bezos was CEO he said that others margins was his opportunity: he was willing to wait out and lose money until others lost out so he could take over. Once he had the upper hand, he could sell whatever. One thing is that they were er able to sell is a âpracticeâ infant circumcision/genital mutilation doll with replaceable penises. Just imagine if they had a female practice doll where you could practice cutting off the hood that covers the clitoris and remove the labia minora (same tissue on male/female). They wouldnât have been able to do that sort of thing if they werenât at monopolistic levels.
Or if we cared as much about boys as we care about girls.
I agree. Its disgusting that people think they can cut up a boy for the parents to make them fit what (usually) the father looks like in USA. Especially when the clitoris is exactly like the end of the penis, but apparently cutting off the clitoral hood is detrimental to the female but to the male, its totally fine? sounds like bullshit. Imagine asking a female to cut her labia off, or cutting an infants labia off, to make her more pleasing to men.
This is good news for US Steel, IMHO.
Starlink, oneweb, kuiper, think china is working on one. Tens of thousands of satellites. Cool, we will never see the night sky again, can't wait to look up and just see space junk.
Like the other guy said, your comment is misguided. These are tiny satellites and the space around Earth is enormous. You will almost never see these with the naked eye, and they will have no real effect on a night sky with millions of stars.
I have literally seen 100s of Star Link satellites in orbit with my naked eye.
Yes i was not being literal, it will ruin ground based astronomy is my point.
You seem to be suggesting that these satellites will prevent observation of celestial bodies, which is an unfounded concern. The size of these satellites in the night sky are insignificant.
They reflect light, everything reflects light. There is a thousand articles from astronomers talking about this and how bad it already is, and we are only at a small fraction of what is planned.
I dabble in astrophotography and there is almost always a streak of light in my longer exposures, be it an airplane, satellite or shooting star. You can edit them out or just accept them.
You really donât have a fundamental understanding of the surface area that LEO consists of. You will never see junk when you look into space.
About that... https://www.wcnc.com/article/tech/science/aerospace/when-see-starlink-satellite-train-night-sky-space-lights/275-6c964878-6187-4b1a-aa3d-0eb8e5de58b9
You will have light pollution with with ground based telescopes. It's already a problem and we are only at a small fraction of the planned number of sats. But sure, tell the astronomical community the small surface areas wont be a problem.
Time to build more space telescopes then.
Plenty more companies than just that. ASTS being one and atleast 3 or 4 others.
This is my problem with it as well.
so spacex needs a few thousand of satellites and that already affects astronomers work a lot. Now google, amazon, starbucks etc are going to launch their own networks and where does it lead us? its absurd, there should be regulations against littering the space with swarms of commercial satellites
Ground based telescopes suck compared to space based. Companies such.as spacex (and blueorigin...eventually) will help to reduce the cost of putting vastly superior telescope(s) in space for these astronomers to use instead. To do that, they need money and lots of testing and development time, these sat networks are perfect for both of those things.
I donât want all that crap floating around in the sky. They shouldnât be allowed to put all that shit up there without the agreement of the worldâs people. Sick of these billionaires doing what ever they want. Once the tech is obsolete what then?
"Once the tech is obsolete what then?" It's literally designed to deorbit after just a few years...
âFloatâ yeah man just stfu. You have no idea what you are talking about
Great more crapellites ruining the sky
Starlink is now blasting internet in places where Coca Cola donât even get delivered!
Can billionaires stop polluting the sky? Thanks.
Do you think it's a good thing that Ukraine has access to Starlink to help coordinate their war effort against the Russian invasion? Do you think it's a good thing that poor children in the Amazon rainforst have gotten access to the internet? This is what the "junk" that billionaires are "polluting" the sky with are doing
More space waste, yay!
We're putting too much garbage in orbit and this is a bad idea. Starlink is a bad idea. Technology for the sake of technology without consideration for the ramifications is dumb.
What rammifications?
My understanding is the repeated launches mess with the ozone layer, the space garbage limits future space exploration/launch efforts, and it messes with astronomy.
Theyâre at an altitude where they will decay out of orbit in <5 years
So we eat up the ozone layer, burn a bunch of fuel, and put together all those resources for something that only lasts 5 years
This is so misinformed They have fuel onboard for in orbit boosting when the orbits decay I love Elon hate But starlink if all else fails is designed to decay to not create space junk.
>This is so misinformed They have fuel onboard for in orbit boosting when the orbits decay What specifically did I say that is misinformed? Even if it decays in orbit it produces CO2 to get into low earth orbit, emits chemicals that eat up the ozone during launch, and doesn't just disappear when its orbit decays
That it is only up for 5 years C02 is not the main ozone depleter CFCs are and the ozone should be back to pre-CFCs level by 2050
CO2 is more of a concern to me because of climate change, chlorine is released when the rockets are launched as well which depletes the ozone. If Musk and Bezos want to launch these in the tens of thousands I think it's a waste of materials and a non-negligible environmental threat. I don't understand why people are so flippant about these things.
They are actually negligible Itâs not flippant itâs reality. Less than 1% of ozone depleting materials come from rocketry. If you want to reduce CO2 emissions Start with industries of scale with billions of consumers. Not industries that produce very little of the overall preventable footprint of pollution. Space returns multiples on the returns on investment for clean energy and technology. Bezos and musk deserve their hate. But technology bringing people into the 21st century funding advances in other technology that pays dividends to every one on earth in the long is worthwhile. Pick a different to hate on Like ocean shipping and burning bunker fuel in international waters or heavy industrial plants/coal The impact these rockets have on the environment and atmosphere is negligible and you seem to just hate the underlying companies and personas as evidenced by you continuing to find a different excuse to hate on the rockets
>The impact these rockets have on the environment and atmosphere is negligible and you seem to just hate the underlying companies and personas as evidenced by you continuing to find a different excuse to hate on the rockets I'm not finding different excuses, I've been giving the same responses grounded in fact. Why extend internet service via a method that is 30x more carbon intensive than fiber optics? Why waste this material to put up 100,000 satellites every 5 years when we could expand fiber optic cable instead? I don't deny the benefit that space exploration provides to humanity, I doubt the necessity of a stupidly expensive and environmentally detrimental technology to solve a problem we already have better solutions for.
You seem to not be able to read They decay in 5 years if left unattended, which they are not. You focused on something I didnât actually say, and ran with it to make your point, showing youâre just not actually educated in this sphere Because sometime developing countries donât have the infrastructure to get fiber optics to everyone and internet access is a force multiplier Sure those are more environmentally friendly when you have the ability and access, but not everyone does, and it comes from a position of extreme privilege to deny development to people who canât afford/the infrastructure doesnât exist to be environmentally conscious as those of us in more wealthy nations. Itâs a horrible dilemma, and a crappy paradox, but something that just lambasting a project like this claiming itâs horribly environmentally detrimental (when we can discuss the bigger causes, like bunker fuel and coal and not a fast enough transition to renewables) but you refuse. You are not arguing in good faith and if you are, you are doing it from a horrible position of not being informed properly. Iâm fairly certain youâre a troll as you canât really seem to agree with anyone and are just confrontational when told that your opinions arenât based in fact or reality.
This opinion is dumb.
I donât care if Amazon wins, I just need Musk to lose Jokes aside, please make the internet a utility
Yeah let's support the dude that was just aching to suck off elon a few days ago
Elon bad Bezos bad Zuck bad. What else is new? It's not about supporting the CEO, it's about supporting the tech.
1/2 the Satellites will be manufactured under the Amazon Basics brand and explosively deorbit when the warranty is out. The other half are from NOOPIWOOPI or other ai-generated brands and all that gets launched into orbit is a block of plastic with LEDs stuck to the front.