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Don’t worry, greed ensures that Kessler Syndrome will get them in the not too distant future. Sure hope you aren’t reliant on GPS or other satellite services, but at least, for a shining moment, shareholders got some value. /s
GPS/GLONASS/Galileo are at ~20,000km vs starlinks ~500km, all the LEO satellites would be fucked but global positioning would be fine. Sounds good to me.
Wouldn’t interference from all the junk in between be at least somewhat of a problem, particularly given that the average GPS receiver already isn’t super sensitive nor accurate?
GPS works under tree cover, I doubt some spread out space junk is much of a problem.
Unlikely. There would be very little, if any, interference with signals unless they were extremely precise. The issue is physical stuff getting destroyed by debris.
Think of a very light sprinkling of rain, but imagine if every raindrop was solid and moving faster than a bullet. Walking out in it would be deadly, but likely wouldn’t affect your cell phone service. Well, besides the tower itself and every structure in the area getting absolutely shredded.
Yeah, I suppose I’m over-estimating the density/amount.
Yup, but scatter might be bad…Still, in principle, better satellites live…
Starlink is a very low orbit. Even if something like that happened, it would clean itself up in like five years
When 2 satellites collide, the pieces don’t all stay on the same altitude. Even though none of them will be in a stable orbit, all it takes is for one piece to smack into a satellite that’s a bit higher up before it de-orbits, and boom, now you’ve got a debris field that won’t de-orbit.
Pieces don’t gain kinetic energy in a collision. Even if they collide and get sent off in an “upwards” direction, it’s not up very far relative to the orbit, and that’s just a less circular orbit at lower speed that will burn up even faster
For you scenario to work, there would have to be a chain reaction
- collision, sending a few pieces upwards
- during that small number of orbits they survive, collision, sending a few pieces upward
- repeat many times
Each chance is remote enough, and ricocheting pieces only go so far, and any higher satellites they could reach are also low orbit, that I can’t imagine how remote the chances of this happening are
Kessler syndrome is a real worry, but not in this low orbit
Sorry, you’re probably right. It’s a thing I expect to be problematic if the future. Of course all problems will burn up in the atmosphere…
Not wrong, and yet small parts of that ‘orbit’ would kinetically increase, in a Kessler sort of way…
and isn’t that a nice thought, but no, it raises orbit fairly naturaly…
The satellites are constantly giving themselves small boosts to maintain orbit and then are deorbited in 5 years when they run out of fuel. It should be well less than 5 years to resolve a LEO Kessler type situation from starlink.
Where’s the FCC and ITU on this?
“Don’t worry, you can just build one on the moon. You can even pay me to use my rockets to get there.” - Elon
It will also harm the ability to use rockets in the long time, as satellites are abandoned when decommissioned, and create debris in low earth orbit.
Starlink satellites are low enough that they’ll burn up after a few years.
Capitalism!
Takes money. Does nothing. China builds lunar science complex with particle accelerators and all the cool shit.
*Terms and conditions apply
**Rocket may or may not be capable of reaching low earth orbit, payload fractions subject to change, not responsible for loss of equipment, habitat, or lives
Don’t forget all the fun chemicals they leave in the atmosphere when they deorbit.
We’re so fucked.
In fact, increasing Earth’s albedo by pumping certain types of chemicals into the higher layers of the atmosphere has been proposed as a possible geoengineering solution that could slow down global warming.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire project was architected as a way to completely sidestep regulatory approval and test geoengineering theories before climate change really starts to pop. Elon and his fellow plutocrats are undoubtedly sociopathic enough to do that.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I think that’s how we end up in a train perpetually circling the frozen earth.
Honestly astronomy from earth is notoriously difficult, for various reasons.
- there’s already a lot of light pollution, due to atmospheric light dispersion, so finding a good spot for telescopes is already difficult.
- there’s the issue that images become blurred, again because atmosphere.
- We already have telescopes in space, why no re-use them with an additional camera?
Spaceflight is unstoppable at this point. I look at the colonization of Mars like a distillation process: we remove all of the restless assholes and billionaires from Earth, and they leave us and leave us the fuck alone. That’s a good thing; We should support it.
The problem is radio wavelengths are much longer than visible light thus the huge size of radio telescopes on earth, which would also make a space-based one a challenge
ooh i see
Honestly astronomy from space is notoriously difficult, for various reasons.
- It takes a lot of energy and infrastructure to propel a telescope into space.
- Radiation can cause issues with electronics, so they all need to be hardened.
- Typically satellites use older proven technology to make sure that they don’t run into new issues, which means they’re not able to be bleeding edge.
- New technology is next to impossible to add to a space telescope, meaning upgrades rarely happen, if ever. Ground telescopes can continuously upgrade with relative ease.
There’s a lot of pros and cons. Neither solution is better than the other. They’re only better at certain things. We need both.
The seemingly straightforward solution is that SpaceX needs to be legally required to get into the radio astronomy business. As part of being allowed to launch such noisy satellites. If they are going to wreck radio astronomy on Earth’s surface, they should have to launch orbital radio telescopes of such quality and quantity that SpaceX is actually a vast net boon on radio astronomy. This should simply be a legally required cost of doing business if they want to launch so many noisy satellites. Yes, these orbital telescopes would have a finite lifespan and need to be regularly replaced to be updated, but thankfully the greatest rocket company on Earth will be legally required to launch them regularly.
That could potentially help, but only to nations/groups that they give the data to. Other groups would still be getting fucked.
It’s scientific data, and considering the context, the rightful property of all mankind. Give it universally to any an all.
Easier said than done.
Thats the plan - and nothing will be done because there is no law, no faith, only money.
Democrats are no better. They’ll argue for women’s or trans rights (when convenient) but even most of their "progressive voters still worship at the altar of Money and think to limit greed in any meaningful way is inherently sinful.
Agree with the money worship thing, disagree with democrats not being better. Arguing for people’s rights IS better.
Fuckin space garbage is what it is.
Yes it was impressive that they landed a rocket again once, but the quantity of launches and satellites is doing nothing good for anyone. It should’ve been a stepping stone for better technology, but instead they’re just mining money. Privately owned space engineering is a disgrace to humanity.
Space engineering used to unite even the worst opponents as with the international space station, but now those institutions are underfunded, while billionaire space-musk can shoot his loads into the atmosphere without any regard to the rest of the worlds population living inside said sphere.
Tax the asshole already.
When people talk about taxing these horrible people I think of tax as being a euphamism
the quantity of launches and satellites is doing nothing good for anyone
Except for the millions of people accessing internet via Starlink to whom the alternative is either no internet, slow internet or extremely expensive internet.
Enshittification happens to all things, sadly.
It happens really early with that fuckin’ weasel in charge.
I was excited about starlink when it was announced, but already it’s way too expensive, already bows to actual totalitarians and isn’t affordable on the ocean and not available in remote places without a license.
And with more satellite constellations planned by amazon and others, it seems the kessler syndrome is just a question of time.
On the Kessler point, Starlink birds fly at an altitude where they will deorbit in 4-8 years if they go dead, so that particular orbit will always be fairly clean, and if a Kessler event does happen, the debris will deorbit in a reasonable length of time.
Where will they go after they deorbit? Do we get em back?
They burn up on re-entry, at least they’re supposed to.
And by doing so, aluminium in them is attacking the ozone layer that is already having a tough time…
Thanks, atmosphere 🙂❤️ that’s interesting design! Will any of the debris reach the planet or is it designed to break apart in a particular fashion?
Will any of the debris reach the planet
Not in a solid form. There may be some undesirable effects though at greater numbers, we don’t really have good data. Here’s a blog post by the European Space Agency talking about a couple studies on the effects of satellite reentry. Note that the satellites they simulated were significantly larger than the Starlink satellites.
My understanding is they’re designed to completely disintegrate.
A portion of the debris from collisions would enter elliptical orbits though so might need more time to de-orbit. But loosing all LEO satellites and even just 4-8 years without use of LEO would be an absolute catastrophe. You could still launch satellites to medium or geosynchronous orbit though.
already bows to actual totalitarians
Care to elaborate?
Turkey and Russia. It’s clear that profit seeking corporations would bow, but then Elon screams bloody murder when reactionary forces in Brazil manipulating social media get censored.
What about Turkey and Russia? Starlink doesn’t work in Russia.
Follow the news so we don’t have to catch you up.
Replies like this from people like you is why social media sucks. Thanks for your contribution on keeping it so.
I feel like that explanation is missing a verb or something.
To bow, or bow down or kneel for. But I’m not going to google that for you haha. The basic problem is that starlink theoretically has immense power so it becomes a political tool. He bows to those ones but not to legitimate democratic interests.
Especially once starlink and others can make landline based internet connections obsolete by pricing them out - which they are not currently doing though, but it seems only a matter of time with competition. Basically we could get to a situation where there are only like 2 or 3 internet provider practically controlling internet globally.
They won’t be able to price landline based connections out as long as they have to replace their satellites every 5 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re running at a loss currently.
I’m pretty sure they ran the numbers for potential profits and determined it’s a goldmine - in the long run. Maybe they’ll need to increase the lifespan of satellites. Their internal launch costs are pretty low already. Amazon wants to build it’s own constellation and is building new glen partially because they can’t get launch slots from SpaceX. I’m sure you can find some numbers to do some napkin math.
Theoretically they can serve the whole world with internet without requiring only minimal land based infrastructure. That is a gigantic market they can reach. And incredibly power to wield for such a psycho.
Another strange case is high-frequency trading on stock exchanges - because light is faster in the vacuum of space compared to fiberglass they can trade on the stock exchanges around the world like nobody else can. Not sure how much money that makes.
When I searched “Elon bows to Turkey” I got this story about Twitter censoring some tweets during the Turkish election… Is that what you’re talking about?
Yeah. Which is in stark contrast to Musk’s rhetoric in Brazil, which had a legal court order for censoring. Maybe Ukraine/Russia wasn’t the best example. My point is that it’s immense power. In the hands of a soulless corporation it’s bad enough but an outright fascist like Musk is much worse.
It’s extremely affordable on the ocean. What are you talking about?
Just until recently satellite internet was really expensive. Like only large corporations could afford it. And the bandwidth was shit. Also it was barely available in the deep northern and southern hemisphere. Sure it’s considered expensive for the regular kayaking dude. But it’s insanely more available than ever before.
The dudes an asshole. But don’t invent arguments.
Yeah it’s much cheaper, but still like $250 excessively expensive compared to $50 land based starlink. For no technical reason since there is vastly less utilization on ocean. It’s price gauging because of lack of alternative and because rich cruisers can afford it. So poor people are still forced to use cell phone based internet (or starlink) only near the coast and nothing has changed. For me it’s a disappointment. Of course that is just capitalism.
Theoretically the sea could be one of the cheapest places to live if you build and maintain your own solar powered electric boat. Or use kite power. No taxes, produce your own electricity, produce your own water, incinerating toilet and emit only grey water. The one thing that is missing is cheap internet.
Wouldn’t it be nice if those sattelites would work together instead of against eachother. What if Amazon worked together with starlink, and the other companies offering internet so there would be less sattelites in the sky. Why does every sat internet company need their own fleet of sattelites
Well presumably to make more money lol. The good thing is that there will at least be some competition to bring prices down and keep service quality up. A monopoly would be bad. But of course that leads to more satellites. This really shows how our capitalist system can’t really make rational decisions that are for the benefit of humanity. Ideally we’d have a separate economic institution to regulate industry like this under direct democratic control.
This. I wish I had more than one up vote I could give for this comment.
agreed. it’s a technology we need but like everything meant to improve humanity, it should be publicly owned (no, not the stock market - truly public).
starlink wouldn’t have a leg to stand on (in the US, can’t speak for elsewhere) if isps were held to installing/maintaining/upgrading infrastructure that was already paid for by the federal government decades ago and then the isps just didn’t do the work.
That’s a nice thought, but
- Starlink has no old infrastructure
- Rural and remote customers are difficult to wire up
Even in the best case where US was close to 100% wired up like we paid for, Starlink would have a market in remote areas world wide, RVs, aircraft, ships
We managed to wire up large swaths of rural area for electricity back in the 1930’s
Somehow capitalism has become about more profiteering, self-serving, instant gratification
But also there were no choices. Starlink may be a valid choice and the infrastructure is already there
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In a lot of places, that only happened because people banded together and made it happen for their area - the existing suppliers weren’t interested, even with federal loans available. That’s where the “Electric Co-op” companies came from.
The US government asked the big ISPs how much it would take to wire everyone up to high-speed Internet, then passed a bill to give them a ludicrous lump sum to do so (IIRC it was hundreds of billions). The money was split between dividends, buying up other companies, and suing the federal government for attempting to ask for the thing they’d paid for, and in the end, the government gave up. That left loads of people with no high-speed Internet, and the ISPs able to afford to buy out anyone who attempted to provide a better or cheaper service. Years down the line, once someone with silly amounts of money for a pet project and a fleet of rockets appeared, there was an opportunity for them to provide a product to underserved customers who could subsidise the genuinely impossible-to-run-a-cable-to customers.
If the US had nearly-ubiquitous high-speed terrestrial Internet, there wouldn’t have been enough demand for high-speed satellite Internet to justify making Starlink. I think this is what the other commenter was alluding to.
this is exactly what I meant
This, I’m both very rural and in an RV at the same time. Starlink is literally my only means of playing games. The only other even remotely viable option is LTE internet from something like T-Mobile but out here the towers don’t really have much capacity so I might be able to play the game fine and I might just start disconnecting Midway through a match randomly as the internet struggles to even load a basic web page
Welp, I guess we’ll all have to suffer the consequences so that Lordkitsuna can game in the middle of nowhere. Truly first world problems.
https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere
I’m just saying blindly calling for it to go away entirely (which i see a lot of on stuff like this) isn’t helpful. Clearly they need to tone down emissions but it’s a useful service.
I work 10hr shifts at work and it’s 1hr 30 both to and from work, moving isn’t really an option for me atm. I don’t think it’s unreasonable I’d like to be able to stream my shows or play games with my friends to relax
Welp, I guess we all have to suffer with no internet in rural areas because of some astronomy nerds. I’ll take global, high-speed, expensive, but still affordable internet over some shots of distant nebulas any day. Not a Musk fan, but this sounds like a desperate attempt to find something to dunk on him for. There’s tons of reasons already, but this ain’t one.
The point of this thread is that Starlink only exists to solve this problem because the ISPs were paid to do it the old fashioned way and decided to fuck off with the cash instead. It wouldn’t have solved the RV issue, but if nost rural areas had the cable internet the government bought, then Starlink likely never gets off the ground, pun intended.
Starlink only exists to solve this problem because the ISPs were paid to do it the old fashioned way
This only applies to the US. My point is that by it’s nature it is global, and it competes with all the shitty local monopolistic ISP’s around the world. Like, I intend to do a cross-country tour around mediterranean next year, and from experience, local cell providers there can be quite a lot of hit and miss. If starlink is activated there by the time I’m all set, I’m dropping the cash, no question about it. And yeah, like @spidermanchild said, I’m just a tech bro nomad cosplaying an explorer, but there are also people actually living in those regions that have to deal with this bullshit. I know it’s unpopular opinion but I’d say a push against those local ISP’s and getting those rural people a decent internet connection is ultimately doing more good than whatever inconvenience scientists have to deal with scrubbing trails off telescope imagery and filtering out the radio interferences.
Scientists doing science > tech bro nomads cosplaying as explorers but actually just playing fortnite in a van. You’re also ignoring the other downsides besides spectral emissions. Read the article I linked.
Scientists experiencing slight inconveniences while doing, let’s face it, not that important of a research < people being stranded off civilization by predatory ISP’s, if not lack of any.
For the article, the way I read it, there isn’t a problem currently, and it’s not clear whether it will pose a problem in the future, but the alarm bells have already been rung and even if it proves to be true, it doesn’t sound like something that more tech couldn’t solve - just use different materials and coating or whatever. And I don’t see how it’s specific to starlink - nobody seems to bat an eye about ozone layer when NASA does ISS resupply missions or when China is blowing up satellites on orbit.
You certainly act like a Musk fan.
This thing helps my fun but hurts lot of other people’s fun, fuck em! Who cares about Kessler syndrome and pollution, I gotta game!!
I also live in a rural RV. I’ve been stuck in one and using copper wiring since 2004. I don’t have the money for Starlink, never have, never will. The upfront cost is insane. I also game on copper wires. Solo and multiplayer games, with my friends over discord.
lordkitsuna is the answer, dude. more people getting away from the grind of the big machine to live remote lives far from society is the answer. i don’t like starlink either but these networks are crucial for the modern nomad to exist.
Does the modern nomad need to exist in the first place? Taking your money into an RV so you can guzzle gas on it, and just stream videos while you pretend to enjoy nature?
My rv doesn’t move, i drive a smart fortwo and get 40+MPG
I have solar on my RV and don’t use utility electrical. No propane appliances, heatpump hot water, and heat/cooling. Top rated efficiency washer and a heatpump dryer to go with it. Just because i want to be rural doesn’t mean I’m wasteful.
I’m out here because it’s the only place land is remotely affordable and I’m tired of renting. I saved up what i could, managed to get a great deal on 5 acres. And built up a sustainable rv to live in till i can build a house.
Supposedly there are plans for fiber to deploy in this area within the next 5 years. When that happens I’m all over it, i regularly go on hikes the trails out here in the mountains from old logging roads are amazing.
That doesn’t mean i shouldn’t be allowed some modern entertainment as well
you can just exist in a remote place and not make videos too my friend. sorry that your understanding of what life outside a city looks like has been shaped by the internet instead of reality.
The answer to what? If everyone does this, there won’t be a single remote place on earth that isn’t crawling with sprinter vans. It can’t scale, and it doesn’t need to be specifically catered to. You want the wilderness, you get the wilderness. You want low latency Internet, then get to a fiber connection. We don’t need every first world amenity everywhere.
nah. you can live in the city if that’s what you like. i’ll do what i like. do you really want to alienate non-urban liberals?
depopulation is a possible alternative to preventing swarms of sprinter vans too. you really don’t want to put everyone in a city.
I’m not trying to alienate anyone, I’m trying to understand why low latency gaming needs for digital nomads is worth the real downsides of providing such a service (scientific, GHG, atmospheric tinkering, etc). I also believe that we should leave a lot more of the earth alone and that nature matters. I’m not trying to put people anywhere, just recognizing there are pros and cons to different living schemes, humans are social creatures, and population of 2 areas don’t warrant large societal investments. I’m similarly against a hypothetical drone sushi delivery service for rural Canadadian boreal forests if that happens to have real downsides too.
Privatized networks are a crime and it should be treated legally as such.
Public network for the public.
Pentagon: Link 16+++++v2 go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Starlink is ruining law enforcement here in South America already. Drug cartels and people on illegal activities acting in Amazon rainforest are getting increasingly creative at turning their starlink devices on, then off, then on again at different points. Also, such devices switch hands rather quickly - and international borders sometimes - in order to avoid tracking.
But… memes.
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Expanded: ‘but, how will I receive memes if not for a satellite constellation beaming them to me’
Concern: Starlink will ruin science.
Rebuttal/joke : But… I want memes.
MEMES, BRO, LISTEN BETTER
elon musk is a terrorist that will make astronomy harder if not impossible if he trashes orbits too much
For how lauded the dude is as a visionary entrepreneur, I’m still wondering what one single thing he’s done right to earn the title with any of his businesses. Everything he touches turns to shit even when accounting for run-of-the-mill corporate practices. The dude sucks.
SpaceX is in the business of launching satellites. It’s in their best interest if ground-based astronomy gets harder. They should be required to pay for their negative externalities.
Hahahaha imagine if we made everyone pay for their negative externalities! It would probably be paradise.
It would certainly make it a whole lot harder to be an oil baron.
Theoretically if you started lasering these down somehow from international waters… uh, what would happen? Hypothetically?
The government of whatever country owns those satellites would have an issue with that, regardless of what the law says.
If you did it to satellites belonging to a US company, providing a service used by the US military…
Let’s just say they can deliver explosives to any point on the globe in 30 minutes.
So laser them from the moon. Got it, thanks!
Depends on what flag the boat is flying and what port it left and returned too after.
Vatican. Sri Lanka. Hawaii.
It’s a ship flagged from the Holy Imperial Nation of Ocean-Sea. It’s a floating, autonomous nation-state in the middle of the ocean that harvest food from the sea and desalinates drinking water from the same. Their national history states they haven’t touched land in 2000 years. Also they have lasers and can launch predator satellites. It’s a very fascinating country.
And also how does space law work? If you launched a predator satellite that starts taking these out, again, launched from international waters, is that, like, illegal? Considering they’re a private company?
It would be way more risky, space debris is no joke
What if the predator satellite just ties little rockets to them that are aimed at deep space?
id be chill with a net that had a 99.9999% success rate, that debris is too risky
Then you’d be defeating the careful planning which went into making sure the satellites don’t become a long term problem, by raising them out of the orbits which decay in just a few years and into orbits which never decay.
Perfect!
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please god no
Given that someone owns those satellites, yes.
Outer space is under maritime law, oddly enough.
I would have assumed it’s closer to bird law.
Sending so many satellites also requires so many rocket launchers that Google passed on it because it was too polluting.
Starlink is the poster child of “fuck you, I got mine.”
Google is the second largest shareholder of Space X.
- get rid of “do no evil”
- invest in evil
- ???
- profit!
Google Ventures got a 7.5% stake in SpaceX in 2008 (which wasn’t the second-largest share at the time). Can you point me to resources that say they’re the second-largest shareholder of SpaceX today?
