I have started to see what I think are star link satellites at night on walks with my kids. It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky and is changing the literal stars my kids will grow up with. It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.
> It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.
I worked on technology for years that the FCC effectively killed for stupid reasons. So it’s heartening to me that someone can still just do stuff and build things. It’s amazing. If you asked me 10 years ago I would have thought that getting something like Starlink off the ground would’ve been impossible due to red tape.
The thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different. To one person it can mean, "don't put the construction garbage in the river." To another it can mean "not one single Delta Smelt can be scared because of this construction."
And because it's so flexible, in states like California where we have aggressive environmental laws, it's leveraged as the NIMBY trump card. When it can't block a project, the process is used to make it inordinately expensive and take decades. One example would be the environmental studies for the CA High Speed Rail.[1]
The deregulation stuff isn’t about nimby. It’s making nimby 10x worse by making it hyper local. That means poor people who are poorly organized get boned. State regulations tended to help with that.
I live in upstate NY, the rebuild of the GOP here is around hyper local issues, mostly apartments and solar. MAGA changed the discourse and allows the rabble rousers to say the quiet part out loud. (Ie bike infrastructure and apartments will bring poor black people to rape and pillage)
Do you have any specific examples of how new state regulations actually eased the regulatory burden for building something? Adding new regulations at the state level almost never removes the hyper local restrictions, it just adds a new layer of compliance on top.
How can the solution to burdensome regulations be MORE regulation?
A law banning certain types of regulations at a lower level I would not call “state regulation” I would call that deregulation.
I suppose I agree with you that the solution to burdensome regulation is to write new laws which forcibly deregulate lower level things. But calling laws like that “state regulation” is true only in the most technical sense. Your example is a textbook example of deregulation.
The problem most ignore is that you will either have public regulation from the government or private regulation from companies.
Would you rather have a published regulation that is subject to democratic and judicial review and applies equally to every one. Or a company terms of service that forces binding arbitration and your only recourse is to not use the service?
I lived in a neighborhood with an hoa and it was the worst form of regulation I've ever dealt with. I own a health care provider and the regulation when it was direct medicaid was infinitely better than after it was privatizatized with managed care.
To be fair, part of the inordinate expense is just because it takes longer for the environmental reviews (costs are in expected year of construction, so pushing a project a decade into the future can increase costs by 30-40+% (inflation + interest) depending on the specifics, even if everything else costs the same).
That's why the cost estimates for CA HSR jump a bunch every time an administration hostile to it enters the white house.
> project a decade into the future can increase costs
A very good point.
I don't agree we can blame Trump for HSR though. 2/3 of the time that has passed have had Democrats in the white house. HSR is nearly all pure-California-style self-inflicted wound. And honestly it's just the most visible project California has failed with, there are many others. The one I'm personally angry about is Prop 1. We're now 12 years after, and have no additional water resources even broken ground. It's shameful.
It’s an fully intra-state train line in a state that has an economy bigger than France. California should be able to build an entire EU-style HSR network with zero regard to what’s happening federally.
CA can and did recently, but that's money that will need to come from and/or could have gone to other programs/etc.
I think the most recent cut was $4+ billion in federal funds for HSR. It's going to come from cap and trade instead, but the state could have had both.
Agriculture uses 90% of the water in California growing cotton, alfalfa and almonds, which are all very water intensive, Humans watering their lawn, drinking water and bathing, use a fraction.
Note: The way they divide up water usage. They have a third category, listed As environment, but that’s misleading because the people who have the water rights can always use a lot more water at their discretion at any time. where as the common citizen cannot.
We can in part. Like you said, it took a ton of time because of environmental review, and that's on the state. With that said, construction didn't begin until 2015, and Trump pulled billions in funding in his first term in 2016 and did the same in 2024.
infrastructure building is a bad word in the United States of America currently, Unfortunately, our major competition in the world is building infrastructure like crazy, but there is still hope, Because once that high-speed rail system starts building west to east or even east to west, all those areas in the middle of the country will change their tune. They will all be fighting on getting a piece of the rock, or I should say a piece of the rail.
The only mistake California made was not including one of the adjacent states as a destination, be it to Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Portland, all of a sudden business interests and those crazy Republicans would be on board because they’re concerned about missing out on making money, which is basically God in America.
I may not live to see it. but once they start going interstate with high-speed rail anywhere within the United States, the tune will change. It’s just amazing that so many people are short-sighted about it. More of that short-term thinking humans are famous for.
Note: Those who think ahead long-term obviously have already bought land on both sides of the route of that high-speed rail line in California, and probably along the proposed route leading to Las Vegas in the future, and the same applies to any possible line to Phoenix or to the Arizona high plateau.
No cope to it the Republicans in California are powerless, but when there was an opportunity at the last minute to lobby on putting the line on the eastern side of the Central Valley (which probably added three or four years to the process), guess what they cried like babies, to put it on the eastern side of the valley even if it meant more delays.
Originally, the line was scheduled to run on the western side because that side was less populated. In other words, you had pretty much a clear lane as far as the right-aways were concerned, and this scenario will play out once high-speed rail runs out of California to the east.
All those conservative red areas will all of sudden change their tune, and there is no cope again money is God in those red areas that is the one thing those red areas understand particularly those at the top that and taking away the vote, firing a gun or blaming a worker that is less fortunate.
Given the nightmarish nimby gridlock I’m less and less convinced it’s a good thing. I’d rather have people mad about windmills being eyesores than be perpetually chained to oil and gas for energy, as an example. I’m also not a fan of endless roadblocks to all manner of construction, even for such simple things as housing.
Yes, having a data center that raises your utilities costs by 300% jammed down your throat because the local mayor got blatantly bribed shouldn’t be a thing, especially when it’s powered by mobile gas turbines that stink up the entire area (note: I’m not against data centers on principle, but there are many ways for ultra-wealthy interests to leave people hosed). But things like faintly visible mini-sats don’t seem like a big deal, subjectively, unless you work at an observatory.
You might have thought they were stupid reasons but protecting a public good is a very important and challenging task. Unlike the FCC, spaceX isn’t accountable to democratic forces and can do antisocial things with the shared resource and there will be little we can do about it.
“Protecting the public” is the propaganda. In practice, you have a regulatory system that gives every minority interest an effective veto on development, disregarding the global cost/benefit analysis. In our case it was church microphones and other tiny minorities that held up deployment of technology to take advantage of spectrum white spaces.
There may be examples of protecting the public good being propaganda designed to hide the reality of using regulation to protect a minority interest. But there are also countless examples of true public good objectives being served by regulation.
One example is environmental dumping regulation. Unregulated release of chemicals into the environment by a minority harms everyone. In north Carolina entire watersheds are polluted with forever chemicals because the power company was dumping transformers in rivers. Now no one can eat fish.
I am not saying we shouldn't have an electric grid. But clearly their unregulated right to dispose of transformers is in their direct economic interests and against the public interest. And clear simple regulation can support better development with reduced harm.
I dont follow your example and am not familiar with that issue. But I would be the first to acknowledge regulatory process can be abused and irrational but that doesn't mean it is always bad or worse that other approaches.
I agree with you that regulation should have a cost benefit analysis. I would remind you that it often does, look at the public comment process, congressional debate, judicial opinions where that analysis is done in public view.
I would argue that there are improvements to be made like requirements to make predictions on the effects of a regulation and a sunset if the predictions don't match outcomes and a mandatory sunset of all regulation based on time and changed circumstances.
But I would rather have the government regulatory process than anthropic, or Facebook, or Uber or cursor being able to change their terms of service to implement adaptive pricing or training on my data or making digital clones of my family and using them to advertise in misleading endorsements.
except it's not so much about do stuff and build things, it's about literally raping the planet, extorting and exploiting everyone including retirement savings, and also to "move fast and break things" which we know understand better was really meant to mean "remove accountability for the richest people", a.k.a. remove public oversight. Taxes for the poor, and the money goes to multi-billion dollar corps. Vaccines? Red tape! Safety belts? Red tape! Environmental concerns? Red tape!
And by the way this guy is responsible for the death of multiple hundred thousands deaths according to estimates. Because he championed removal of Red tape and shutdown of that allegedly "criminal organization" (his words), USAID. Tell that your children.
“This agency has funded everything from research projects to groups that oppose the government. In Mexico, 'Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción' has received proven support from this agency. So how is it that these so-called 'aid' agencies get involved in politics?" Sheinbaum questioned.
Likewise The Nation, which hates Trump and Musk: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/usaid-trump-musk-... (“Trump and Musk’s war against the agency should be opposed on principle. But we can’t overlook that USAID has been a destructive arm of American imperialism for decades.”).
There’s lots of rich countries to do this aid. China is investing in infrastructure without interfering with local politics. The world’s military hegemon has too much of a conflict of interest to do this job.
I feel that way about street advertising, beautiful European cities with historical buildings all around and suddenly a big screen/panel asking you to buy whatever.
You can see it all over the USA, there are many localities and routes that have banned outdoor advertising, and when you're traveling on a parkway with nothing but trees on either side and then you come to the end and there are billboards every 100 yards it's really noticable.
The first time I saw a giant floating tv billboard at the beach was the first time I felt the urge to sink a vessel. I found it offensive but everyone else seemed to just accept it as normal.
> And there was a lot of billboards in front of these manufacturers' shops. And when they uncovered, we could see through the window a lot of Bolivian people like sleeping and working at the same place. They earn money, just enough for food. So it is a big social problem that was uncovered, and the city was shocked by these news.
Wow it’s like when I move some pieces of wood or other items near my shed outdoors and I see a bunch of activity that I never knew existed.
Change is inevitable. I love seeing artificial objects in space, because it shows that we, humanity, are finally getting there.
Elon doesn't own space, he just happens to be the one who is currently best at making it reachable. There is plenty of space for everyone else, and others will get there, eventually.
I could eat myself up with envy over the money he's making from it... or be glad that it's at least someone getting rewarded for moving humanity forward (while also being an asshole), rather than someone who is starting wars to profit from insider trading...
I wonder what you mean by "moving humanity forward". Just technological advancements without other considerations? In my opinion it should at least require reducing human suffering, and if ao he has done more harm than good
The guy in charge of it has demonstrated that he'll cut people off from accessing it on a whim, though, so it's not really cheap and easy access for the entire globe. It's access for the selected people.
Other Internet providers at least have true boards of directors, shareholders with decision power, etc. One person doesn’t have the power to snap their fingers and make decisions based on how much ketamine they’re on at the time.
I understand that you want Russia to have access to it without interruption but until there is some sort of "International law" regarding those newer ways of providing Internet, politics will win.
There are millions of people in Africa and rural areas around the world who have access to the internet because of these satellites. This massively reduces human suffering. Millions of people can now get medical information, farming, manufacturing techniques, talk to experts around the world. Connecting people to the wealth of human knowledge has a huge impact on reducing suffering. It also just directly saves lives by connecting people in an emergency to people who can help. Additionally, Ukraine would have lost the war a long time ago if these satellites didn’t exist. You could go on for a long time listing the ways these satellites reduce suffering.
Government could be the creator of this just like it was with GPS. We are very tolerant of government innovation and infrastructure when it’s a military resource. But when it’s a pure public good everyone claims it’s wasteful or less efficient than the private sector.
Why do we need to let this be a monopoly controlled by one person. A king in a board room is still a king.
This is the opposite of a monopoly, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are both planning competing constellations. Eventually there will be many competing constellations in orbit delivering service.
>Government could be the creator
Okay so why wasn’t it? The lifetime funding for NASA is 700+ billion dollars. With that incredible sum of money they weren’t able to even make reusable rockets let alone the satellite constellation. Launching a constellation with NASA’s pre-SpaceX approach (using Russian rockets) would have been literally impossible because Russia could have never built nearly enough rockets. Launching even a small fraction of Starlink would have consumed the entire NASA budget several times over.
Comparing GPS and Starlink doesn’t really even make sense because the scope of each project is so vastly different. Starlink if delivered by the same people who made GPS, would have been literally impossible, because the mass to orbit is orders of magnitude larger than the GPS project. Starlink was only possible because of the efficiency provided by SpaceX’s reusable rockets and the leading minds in the government literally said that reusable rockets were impossible and impractical until SpaceX actually delivered reliable reusable rockets.
Could logically, logistically, financially and technologically also require politically. That’s the only thing that has been missing. When there was a political will there was a space race. Remove the political motive and suddenly it isn’t happening. Why do you conflate all of those abilities when it’s merely a political problem.
Before SpaceX demonstrated viability of reusable rockets nearly every single government industry expert on the topic dismissed the idea of reusable rockets as impractical and infeasible.
It’s not simply a matter of political will, the quality of what governments have been able to produce just is no match for what companies can do. It’s the same for rockets as it is for cars, computers, or anything else. Ever heard of a government-made car? There were a few that came out of the Soviet Union and they were laughably bad and only obtainable in small quantities. Rockets and satellites are the same way, the government just does not have the same incentives to produce things that companies have.
The proof is in the rockets. Compare SpaceX’s rockets with any government developed rockets anywhere in the world, it’s not even close.
Falcon 9, Heavy, Starship, Dragon. The government never would have come close to developing any craft like these let alone being able to launch a constellation like Starlink.
We don't need to have space literally transformed into junkyards to make progress, and there is nothing going wrong with going a lower pace if it means reduced impact on the rest of society.
Every year that you delay Africa and south asia getting to western levels of development equals tens of thousands of under-5 deaths that could have been avoided.
Most of Africa and Southeast Asia has Internet connectivity that is cheaper and more ubiquitous than in North America. They are very well served by an extensive cellular network. Satellite Internet is not what is holding them back.
Your focus should be on junkyards on earth, which are exponentially greater in number on a surface area that is a fraction of the surface area of observable space. You’re complaining about a potentially artificial speck of light in the sky while plastic litters the highway you commute on, and India produces literal rivers of trash.
> I love seeing artificial objects in space, because it shows that we, humanity, are finally getting there.
The problem is that nobody asked the other 8.3 billions people what they think about seeing stuff in the sky. For the benefit of 1/1000th of humanity (~10 million starlink users).
No, this is not really moving forward, it's just a traffic jam and pollution in an otherwise pristine space - for money.
It's just the money.
If we were actually going to Mars, then yes, but somehow he made himself the 'First Trillionaire' - without even so much as getting out of Earth's orbit.
This is NFT progress, in that, there is some plausible economic value in NFTs, but in reality, it's just a hustle.
No - money it's a materialization of the expression of power. Desire is a subset of that.
The 'power' part is one of the most important things to understand.
In our every day lives, we see regular people 'creating value by working' and 'collecting money' and then 'spending according to their needs and desires'.
We see things like groceries, fuel, food - it all seems like relatively open and mostly kind of fair system - and it is, at that level.
But significant amount of wealth is accumulated into structure and by individuals that have power totally disproportinate to their value creation.
Kings of England didn't rule 'arbitrarily' - they owned most of the land - that was their power.
If you own all the land, the serfs can't escape your taxation - however you think you can create value, it will be taxed away.
Corporations have incredible economies of scale and leverage through division of labour that individuals could ever have - and - they are even 'limited liability.
We set individual up to compete against goliaths, and then give those goliaths special advantages.
'Parts of the Economy' are relatively fair, just, open etc. but much/most of it is not, it's a game of power leverage and accumulation, as it always has been. It's that part that people don't have a strong instinct for.
You're not wrong - but when people say 'we vote with our money' ... it ends up being misleading, because of our instinct to think that individuals make those decisions collectively with their choices and will. Generally it's 'who has the power (and therefore the money)' will make those decisions.
It's a fine point, because some people believe that everything is controlled by a cabal of secret bankers and rich people and that's not true either.
'Nobody is charge' - that's also unsettling. But there are centres of great influence, many of which do not have our best interests at heart.
Who is envious of his trillions? I'm certainly not. I am very annoyed at someone who buys elections, literally promising a million dollars for a vote, and then running in and gutting key portions of the US government, and playing fast and loose with our data - at a bare minimum.
We will be investigating him for decades and he deserves every second of it.
I do happen to be a misanthrope, but I suspect a lot of people who aren't also have distaste for your expression of joy at seeing the night sky full of satellites.
I do like big cities and their skylines though, sure.
Yea but it introduces a lot of issues for space travel and other satellites. The useful space in space we have is extremely limited. A single company shouldn't be able to just clutter space at will.
1. That's not true.
2. It's not "at will" if you actually read the article you're commenting under you'd see it is about them _applying for a license_ to do something.
Taken literally you are technically correct, but...
1. Space is big, but LEO is not that big and if a single company clutters it enough, other organisations might start bumping into issues like 'if i don't get sign off from starlink corp, i might hit one of their satelites on the way up and my insurance wont cover that so I cant afford to launch given the risks of being sued by elon'.
2. Applying for a licence in this context, mostly means greasing the right palms (preferably the pudgy bruised ones).
It introduces no issues for space travel. And what exactly do you want to happen here? LEO to stay empty because no one else is able to fill it and for spacex to not to try to expand because the regulatory process isn't perfect according to your standards?
The best way to create change is to create the conditions where change is necessary. If Elon causes Kessler syndrome in low earth orbit, it will quickly be illegal to launch satellites without permits.
did you read the article? it is already illegal to launch satellites without permission, hence the article (above the fold in the summary) is stating SpaceX applied for permission :)
Someone said it would "quickly be illegal to launch satellites without permits", then you/they found out that is already illegal, and you nitpicked about who you need permission from.
It feels like there's no feasible solution here that would please you guys.
Should we all democratically vote on every satellite launched into space individually? It's already our elected representatives that approve it.
Does it really? Every time I heard the "we'll run out of space" FUD argument it was followed by a drastic increase of satellites in orbit with no issue...
We're also facing a climate and pollutant crisis as a species so we seem only capable of thinking in the short term. We're not doing that well right now after only a brief period of industrialisation.
Yes, so let's think long term. How do we keep it rolling? Perhaps we will need to continue to advance our technology, especially moving industries to space where there is no ecosphere.
There are various satellite finder apps. I suspect you'll find starlink satellites are mostly too dim to see - with most of what's visible being other older satellites
You can see them very easily at dusk. It’s dark enough but they are still in sunlight making them very clearly visible.
There is always one or more easily visible (by design).
you can’t see the majority of starlinks with the naked eye, what you’re seeing is either some other constellation or freshly launches starlinks that are still orbit raising. once starlinks are at altitude they actively manage their reflection angles to avoid bouncing light back at earth
I wonder if (this part specifically) is a solvable problem? Is it their altitude that causes them to shine? Perhaps finally a commercial use for Vantablack?
Their brightness is a mixture of a lot of things, including the huge PV arrays and the angle they have with the sun when they cross the terminator between night and day.
Starlink have already put a lot of effort into their satellites being much less bright than most satellites, including tilting their PV away from earth during the terminator crossing, so from what I've read you'll mainly see them while they're being deployed and while de-orbiting.
(Part of my still-expanding draft blog post about space data centres is to work out how bright a million much larger objects would look. If they were in the orbit with the most sun, that's a terminator-following sun-synchronous orbit, which is maximum brightness).
I watch them come up over the horizon right after sunset. Only a couple specific trajectories are visible and they disappear pretty quick. Later on in to a clear night and after your eyes adjust to the darkness, you can find them all over the sky. They look like very faint stars speeding around. It's quite spectacular and hunting them makes for a fun activity with others while relaxing in a hot tub.
Out of interest, where are you on this scale? I don't think I've ever been better than a 6 from those star pictures, despite how I'd otherwise categorise where I live as suburban/rural transition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale#/media/File:How_l...
The compute part may be a rack or a cabinet worth of GPUs (though TBH the public designs are currently vague to the point of being artistic impressions), but they also need to come with a PV array big enough to power that, plus a cooling array that's going to be close to 25% as big as the PV array regardless of what unit size they go for in the end.
If they settle on making e.g. 120 kW satellites, that would be about 400 m^2 for the PV and another 100 m^2 for the radiator.
Yes; their video pertains to two specific proposals for the data centres, unfortunately I am finding that *all* the various proposals fail to make sense but for different reasons.
Yes but would these need to be in LEO? I would imagine that they would aim for farther orbits to spend a smaller percentage of their time in Earth's shadow
Perhaps there will be communications nodes in LEO with high bandwidth directional links to heavy compute nodes in higher orbits? At some point I would assume that the jurisdiction of the FCC no longer applies? Or maybe you use laser links?
I still cannot believe it's economical to have "data centers in orbit" but I guess the truth will be seen in whether or not it actually happens.
Even very optimistic estimates (by people who aren't Elon Musk) say it will take a decade to get the costs low enough to be worthwhile for LEO; higher orbits are much more expensive.
Anything up there needs to reflect as much as possible to avoid building up heat. That which it can’t reflect is absorbed and needs to be emitted as efficiently as possible. Vantablack would likely make it absorb heat readily and glow in the near-IR.
Counterintuitively, the best way to make satellites less visible for ground observers is actually to make them MORE reflective. You want the reflection off the nadir side of the vehicle to be as specular (mirror-like) as possible so that the light reflected from the sun only makes it to a single point on the Earth's surface.
It’s not the visual that bothers me. It’s the evidence of a monopoly that is being built that will dominate humanity for the benefit of literally one person
As long as the externalities are paid for, I don't see the problem. Musk has made the world a worse place in many ways, but I don't see how this is one of them.
You're saying if someone offered you a billion dollars to launch a satellite no different from most other satellites already in space, you would say, "No, thank you, madam!" I'm skeptical, but if you insist, I'll take you at your word.
I have a hard time blaming anyone other than the internet monopolists and the FCC for this. If we had similar regulations as the UK (you lay infrastructure that serves Internet users, you must also rent this infrastructure out at regulated rates to other ISPs), we could have had a much quicker buildout of high speed internet service, instead of regional monopolies which defeated even the great Google.
Starlink’s total addressable market is only so large because of these monopolies. As sad as it is that astronomy will never be the same, it is a strong net positive for the world that fast internet be available at an affordable price.
More than 2/3 of all active satellites are part of the SpaceX/Starlink constellation, and it's a full 3/4 of those in LEO, which are the biggest contributor to the glints we can see in the night sky.
They're such an enormous part of the problem that it does a disservice to the problem to not metaphorically shine a spotlight on them.
I didn't say whether I thought it was a huge problem. I just said it was a problem, and identified the largest contributor to that problem.
But really, what point are you trying to make? I don't need to think that satellites glinting in the night sky are the literal worst problem facing humanity for that to be a valid topic of discussion.
To anyone thinking that 18m² isn't that big for how large the space is, please recall how bright reflective things shine during the day when you hit the right angle.
To give an easy visualization for most people (average Americans, really, because most other people in the world already know what a meter looks like), imagine that the average doorknob is about 1m above the floor, so imagine basically the bottom part of a typical interior door is about 1m sq. Now, make a square out of 18 of those pieces wide by 18 pieces high.
Except for those few of us who grew up interested in science, because science pretty much world-wide (even in the USA) uses metric for pretty near everything. I've used metric for my entire life, and been ridiculed for it that entire time by all the same morons that think any interest in science makes you a "nerd" even if you also happen to play and enjoy sports (despite almost the entire rest of the world standardizing on metric long ago), and despite the fact that most folks in the USA are already using metric themselves every single day. Yet somehow metric is "too hard to learn, waaah!" (It's based on tens, just like our money. Too complicated? Gimme a break!) Hell, our sugary fizzy drinks even all come in 1 and 2 liter bottles, FFS!
A gigantic source of light in the sky that lights up a part of the Earth and is too bright to look at is... the sun. I think we're all used to the sun.
What do you think is being proposed, exactly? Some sort of alternative sun that's going to shine on the entire earth, that we'll all be forced to look at?
I’m pretty sure the plan is to have tens of thousands of them so that they can hand off from one satellite to the next. I know this tech would have been fantastic when I used to work on oil rigs in super remote locations.
Oh wow, that would pretty limiting. Thank you for that heads up!
I see that from the 400 miles altitude they filed with the FCC, you'd expect them to be able to provide maybe an extra 2 hours before + after sunrise/sunset near the equator. However, that appears to improve to almost 4 hours at 50 degrees latitude - assuming 30 degrees of elevation is sufficient for the light to not get too scattered through the atmosphere. If you assume a much more conservative 60 degree elevation requirement then it would be 3 hours before+after sunrise/sunset at 50 degrees latitude.
It also depends on the season, but this has a much smaller effect than latitude.
Shortening the night by a combined 6-8 hours might be quite useful for operations in Ukraine which occur near 50 degrees latitude.
It's not. USSR and Russia experimented with space mirrors and was able to light significant territory. It was a successful program, but in 1993 Russia had no money to continue the project, so it was wrapped up.
Even if it's a government, you pollute the whole sky instead of one country's. This should be done only as a joint world effort, something that is not going to happen. It is very sad.
I went on a backcountry camping trip last year and was stargazing as one does. Kept seeing satellites. Was cool at first (used to be a rarity) but it got more and more annoying.
And for what? So that we can have more internet? Oh that’s just what we need. To spend even more time online. I’m sure Elon is quite excited for all of us, no matter where we are, we can be plugged into X just like him!
Laughable to imply that an individual retail investor will have any say or influence on a corporation as large as SpaceX in which Musk has a controlling stake.
SpaceX has many investors, not owners. If you don't have any say in how the company is run you're not an owner.
SpaceX utilizes a dual-class share structure where CEO Elon Musk retains between 82.4% and 85% of the total voting power, despite only owning roughly 42% of the company's actual equity.
I'm the opposite, I feel more depressed when the government controls our lives instead of hard working people who've proven themselves in the marketplace.
You know the point of democracy is that the government is also run by people who've proven themselves in a marketplace, right? It's just one where having more money doesn't entitle you to vastly more power, which is, you know... one well-established failure mode even of private marketplaces...
Well, you seem to be giving blanket support to the government and conflating it with democracy.
I thought a good example of the pinnacle of government bureaucracy in action acting undemocratically both undermines your position and, secondly, might have you alter your opinion a bit.
You've, essentially, just appealed to authority to justify your position.
Uhhh no. I was pointing out the fallacy of GP portraying “government” outcomes (they’re the only ones that made a blanket statement) as somehow characteristically not generated by marketplace victories.
Actually many forms of government mandate and authority are generated by marketplace mechanisms, many of which are actually more true to desirable marketplace dynamics than those we see in private marketplaces, due to concentration of power, which is a known failure mode of marketplaces in general.
The idea that “government” is some mysterious mythical entity that just exists outside of people’s input and outside of marketplace forces is juvenile.
Neither government nor private market outcomes are intrinsically more legitimate than the other.
> Actually many forms of government mandate and authority are generated by marketplace mechanisms, many of which are actually more true to desirable marketplace dynamics than those we see in private marketplaces, due to concentration of power, which is a known failure mode of marketplaces in general.
Isn't government the highest concentration of power? They, typically, hold a monopoly on taking money with the threat of violence. Seems ripe for market failure.
Yes. But that’s why we created checks and balances between branches and across local state and federal. And have a balance of direct democracy and representative republic institutions. That’s why the rule of law matters.
And just like you can have a good form of government or a bad form of government you can have a good form of market capitalism and a bad form. A monopoly is not market capitalism, it’s the equivalent of a monarchy. Say what you will but even the UK has checks and balances on the monarchy.
The marketplace is distributed. A monopoly is not. You’re confusing the two and ignoring the harm the winner of market competition does when they escape competition.
You’re also ignoring that a government is accountable to people. A corporation is not.
You are missing the point. It’s not that I don’t find technological progress inspiring, it’s that it is an emerging monopoly that will capture a common good with no accountability and permanently deprive people of a precious opportunity.
You can say what you want about Musk (I personally think that he is an appaling human being), but Starlink represents everybody who pays for starlink to get access to the internet, not just Elon.
This is incredibly regressive thinking. Any technology or human progress changes the world around us. Do you lament the construction of new buildings or roads because they change the natural landscape? Would you prefer we never explore space or build anything new?
IMO it’s a marvel to look up at the sky and see man made objects flying through the sky, it’s incredibly inspiring to see the great feats of engineering that humans are capable of.
Also if you look up at the night sky you can still see ALL the stars, it’s just that you can now see a few extra tiny dots flying by, it subtracts nothing from the average stargazer’s view.
Your children will get much more amazing and inspiring sights from space telescopes and spacecraft that this new space industry will enable. They will benefit from new science and manufacturing techniques that are enabled by cheap access to space.
>when it’s the government
The government had a monopoly on space access for the past half century and barely managed to put a handful of extremely expensive objects in space. They were never capable of creating reusable rockets or lowering the cost of access to space in a meaningful way. Maybe it feels nicer when governments do it, but cheap access to space will never happen if they are the ones running the show.
I am a progressive. But ownership of the commons is something that requires careful policy decisions. The same applies to utilities, the open ocean, wireless spectrum.
We shouldn’t allow monopolies in the name of progress or the monopolistic rent seeking will stifle progress.
The government could have absolutely done all of this and more if there was any commitment to the investment. Instead nasa had its budget gutted.
My kids won’t have a future with any opportunity if resources are so concentrated that their bargaining power can’t have any effect in the world.
>The government could have absolutely done all of this
Yeah they totally could have, so why didn’t they? World governments have had massive budgets for space agencies for like 70 years, yet they were never able to build reusable rockets or do anything other than send a handful of extremely overpriced novelty science projects into space.
You say they could do it, but there’s no evidence to support that they ever actually would.
No private company would have been able to bootstrap the basic research upon which spaceX is now building its business.
The government isn’t a commercial for profit enterprise. It serves a different function, specifically providing services for which markets won’t be functional like fire departments, policing, broad categories of infrastructure.
And your argument is a distraction. Just because government doesn’t do something well doesn’t justify granting a monopoly to a private actor. And if a monopoly is necessary then it should be a regulated utility like power generation, telecom etc.
The space shuttle was laughably bad compared to SpaceX’s rockets and they were not really rapidly reusable. They required an extensive refurbishment which involved disassembling the entire craft. The process took upwards of 6 months to re-fly. It also cost close to 1 BILLION per mission to fly it (that’s more than 10x what it costs to fly a SpaceX rocket).
What exactly are you saying is a monopoly? SpaceX is not a monopoly by any stretch, they are competing with Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, ULA, Relativity, and others.
>providing services for which markets won’t be functional
We are talking about a situation (launches, satellite constellations) where the government had a monopoly for 70 years and then transitioned to a market model. Since switching to a market model mass to orbit has gone through the roof and costs have fallen off a cliff. So much so that entirely new types of missions are now possible because of the increased access to space (Starlink is one such example).
We are specifically seeing the opposite of your “markets won’t be functional” statement; the market is so much better than the state-run enterprise that the idea of returning to the old model would be unthinkable.
By this logic we should also enjoy every time someone puts a motorway through woodland. Just look at the human achievement embodied in all that concrete!
Well some creations are more marvelous than others, maybe you wouldn’t find a concrete road beautiful or interesting, though arguably you totally could (many people still to this day find the enduring road/aqueduct infrastructure of Ancient Rome to be beautiful and inspiring), but looking at a city skyline with massive skyscrapers and intricate infrastructure is very inspiring.
Humans are capable of incredible feats of engineering and many man-made things are extremely inspiring.
Money is also a voting system. He can decide those things only because people voted for him with their money. The issue is, not everybody has same voting power in this system. But then again people who have more power were voted for previously by others. So it's kind of representative democracy.
Compounding interest just skewes the balance so that being voted for earlier is worth more than being voted for later.
I'm not saying it's a good system, but it's "aiming" for realtively good things. Just needs a bit of rebalancing regarding what activities help people get voted for. Basically harm shouldn't pay, squatting on limited resources shouldn't pay.
Good, god, no, money represents the balance of power in a system, there's not thing 'representative' about it from a civic perspective, completely the opposite.
If you give your money to someone else you are giving them power. And people in power are going to represent you in context of decision making. Regardless of how well they do it.
I feel the exact same way after I saw a Starlink line flying over. It made me feel like any sci-fi movie where your entire environment has been purchased and is controlled by corporations. It was a sad feeling knowing even the sky has been claimed by someone now with zero repercussions.
It's not one person though. If zero people were using Starlink, then it would be that one person's vanity up there, but since it seems people do find it useful, those satellite lines represent humans being able to connect with modern technology out in the Sahara or in the ocean. For sailors to keep in touch with loved ones and to have a less dreary existence on long ocean voyages. And not to fret, China's managed to land a reusable rocket, so soon they'll have their own constellation up there so it's not just that one particular person making a mess of things.
What we're seeing is humanity managing to become a space faring civilization. I look up and yearn to be up there as well. I'll never make it to space, but it would give me such joy if my children's children had the opportunity to.
> those satellite lines represent humans being able to connect with modern technology out in the Sahara or in the ocean
Or basic locations in Europe, that can be as close to 20km from a big city. There are a ton of spots where you have at best spotty 4G coverage or no coverage at all.
Used to live where we had 1Mbit ADSL, and no cell ... Trust me, you feel the limitations of that. Keeping your PC running 24/7 to download/buffer, so you can use your day traffic for more important stuff.
Starlink is a insane deal in my eyes. Sure, it uses a lot of power but your paying the same as typical vDSL in Germany. And ironically, ... Starlink is faster then the fixed lines we have here in the "3th" biggest city in Germany.
People really underestimate how much underinvestment there has been in Internet connectivity even in rich countries.
I live in the center of a capital of small EU country and I'm scheduled to get fiber Q3 this year. Copper is getting tired and flakey, 5G is overcrowded. There's been close to no progress in residential internet for the past 15 years.
It is one person who controls it, at his discretion who gets to share in the utility. What your saying can also be true without such an ownership model, right?
No. We’ve tried that for decades now and it hasn’t worked out very well for getting the world connected. The entire rural earth has been neglected. Even in silicon valley my neighborhood only got fiber this year and its saddled with crappy TV bundle deals, bad mobile apps built with wrapped web pages, poor service, and we-will-sell-your-data anti privacy provisions. Starlink has none of that.
Not necessarily, but in any case not a monopoly. E.g. Elon Musk now owns all highways: better or worse? Some distributed ownership seems useful as it distributes power accordingly.
What percentage of spaceX stock does humanity own? What about Elon?
Can the government shut off your access to GPS? No. Can spaceX shut off your access to their network? Yes.
Do you have rights to judicial review if government harms you? Yes. If spaceX does? Probably not because their terms of service create a contract not a legal right.
We're not space faring. We just put up satellites. There's nothing for us outside of the earth. It would take months of travel just to get to the useless barren wasteland that is Mars.
Maybe some day we'll be mining asteroids near Earth or something. Maybe we'll mine the moon. Going to/living on different planets is pretty much science fiction though. It's hard enough to live on the earth, it's gonna be 1000 times harder to live anywhere else.
Can't speak to the world as a whole but the US has we spent 50 years gutting most government functions that aren't part of the police/military/surveillance apparatus (and many of those as well). SpaceX itself is an example of the primary mechanism of this: Diverting funding to private, no-bid contracts that remove both market forces and democratic oversight from those services while also ballooning their costs
Yea, and medical costs - including those paid for by medicare, often for people who aged into the program with worse health, which in turn is partially attributable to a tendency to avoid preventative care earlier in life due to higher costs - in the US are drastically more expensive than elsewhere, primarily because of this exact pump: Providers, insurance, equipment manufacturers, and various middleman orgs have arisen to deal with a system that is riddled with cost-inflating private-public partnerships and regulatory band-aids to mitigate small parts of the mess that end up having second-order effects that mostly also raise costs.
I believe some functions are simply best performed by non-profit-motivated government agencies. However, I would usually prefer an actual unregulated or black market over the corrupt frankenstein of private-public partnerships
Private here is meant to refer to the "private sector", as in using a company, not the existence of the contract being classified or something. I suppose SpaceX is publicly traded now, but that distinction also, in my opinion, is not the important one here. At any rate, if you think I'm wrong or mistaken, I'm happy to hear you out, but you're going to have to go into a little more detail if your intent is to convince me. Like I am not even sure what "paired" means in this context
Paired means at least two companies get the contract. SpaceX to my memory has always been paid less when that happens.
Examples are
CCrew - Boeing
CCargo - Sierra, SpaceX is now a sub for another company bc their engines are made in Ukraine.
HLS - Blue Origin
NSSL - ULA, Blue Origin (Maybe RKLB)
NRO Starshield GMTI - Northrop Grumman
SDA - York Space
SEA-2 - OneWeb
>Can't speak to the world as a whole but the US has we spent 50 years gutting most government functions that aren't part of the police/military/surveillance apparatus (and many of those as well).
It's the likes of Boeing and Lockheed vs SpaceX not Government vs Private Sector. That's how it's worked since Apollo.
>SpaceX itself is an example of the primary mechanism of this: Diverting funding to private, no-bid contracts that remove both market forces and democratic oversight from those services while also ballooning their costs
This is the core of the disinformation. SpaceX has always been cheaper, see Europa Clipper for one of the most egregious examples. The post SpaceX era is also cheaper for the government because of the shift in contract types. That's how you hear Boeing is losing money on Starliner and Air Force 1, because companies now eat the losses they used to pass on. Raytheon (and SpaceX mind) dropped out of SDA because of this.
The contracts are also openly bid. And if they aren't classified you can bid too. Lots of these contracts don't even have pré-qualification.
This stuff is known to anyone that follows the industry. In fact, the fact other companies are involved makes it more expensive because they charge more than SpaceX per unit of work. But government keeps its leverage and industrial base.
The person you read from who claimed (I can tell they aren't original thoughts) these things is lying to you and any cursory check (sometimes just reading articles instead of just headlines is enough).
It's like the X company isn't paying taxes, "this is a bad thing" stories, then you look at the balance sheet and not only is the company paying taxes, it's lifetime and operationally unprofitable, so it has no corp tax incidence (like anyone doing part time work at minimum wage or below (at a charity))
I stand corrected that all these contracts are no-bid, though some functions still are. I remain skeptical that paired contracts do much to help competition or efficiency in a market that tends toward consolidation, and am unsure why you add the unrelated point about corporate taxes, which isn't particularly revelatory: It's well-understood that a ton of companies operate in a mode that doesn't chase profitability, and indeed this seems to be disincentivised by the tax structure. People who are upset about how corporations operate financially should push for changing this on a policy level
SpaceX and the current space polity dreamt up under Reagan and Bush and delivered by Obama is a complete bipartisan win. Things are cheaper, faster and more abundant in the sector.
Launch, Human Spaceflight, Satellites and Satellite Internet are now (and for most of a decade) been primarily American. Even the foreign competition is largely American (See Telesat)
Paired contracts (openly bid from a larger pool of qualified companies mind), a fixed cost for delivering ends/products etc have meant lower costs to the government, redundancy in case of failure, less time between having an idea and having it implemented (HASTE, LUCAS and Starshield).
Of course there's the risk that this means companies exit the market if they can't deliver in the old environment (SDA, Starshield) but there's still the option for old companies to compete in truly novel projects (F-47) with the old contracting system. And pairing also allows the government to bring in new companies to the fold to compete with the old guard.
As for corporate taxes, those articles are standard fare to direct misplaced anger at companies that aren't doing well on the whole (because they've never turned a profit or are in a low margin business) or are reinvesting all their money(something that's supposed to be a good thing). We aren't talking about transfer pricing and similar shenanigans. Accountants just roll their eyes. But it breeds unnecessary anger (See the "BlackRock is buying single family homes"; "SpaceX has got ~$30B of government subsidies" nonsense too)
>It's well-understood that a ton of companies operate in a mode that doesn't chase profitability
In the end these articles insinuate that said company isn't paying their fair share/ is freeloading on the polity.
The responses to the articles clearly show that it's not well understood.
It's the best and worst of times, but we should at least have clarity on what's better and what's worse.
While there's a lot of truth to your "gutting most gov't functions" claim, you might want to compare SpaceX's subsidies and launch costs with those of the gov't's traditional providers. And look at myriad $billions that have been squandered on the Senate Launch System.
There are plenty of solid reasons to despise Elon - no need for counterfactuals.
I would rather things like internet not be provided by entities that are incentivised by profits, controlled by one or a few individuals, none of whom are publicly accountable. I am actually willing to tolerate some inefficiency for the upsides of that tradeoff, but I think lots of governments manage to do utilities competently, too
I not only haven't mentioned Musk a single time, but have thought this for my entire adult life. Utilities should be public goods. Hell, this isn't even that unpopular an opinion. Not everything boils down to culture war or mindless gossip about particular famous rich people
Also frankly I would mind companies like SpaceX being contracted to build and sell satellites a lot less than them also continuing to control or operate them
I'm not talking about Musk, or culture war stuff. The rest is fine.
The government has Starshield. And several other non SpaceX satellite systems. They famously sent four (4) recievers of that sort to Ukraine.
There's this idea out there that SpaceX is somehow stealing from NASA. Paired with the notion/assumption that the government builds its space vehicles. Completely incomprehensible.
Once you notice the pattern of how these companies are started you will see that there is a hidden hand of government behind much of what we think is an independent, market driven, capitalistic enterprise. Whether it’s Facebook or Oracle or Palantir or SpaceX it’s all the same. Heck even the founding of Silicon Valley itself can be viewed to be government driven. The bottom line is national security is not going to be left to the whims of a market when the pentagon has a black budget that can eclipse all of VC spending with the stroke of a generals pen.
This is a totally accurate post. It’s amazing how many free market zealots aren’t aware of the government foundation under SV. They think they sprout all wealth creation on their own because they are just that brilliant.
While there's some truth to this, the early investments in Palantir and Facebook from In-Q-Tel were tiny. For Palantir, the contracts with a single government agency were far more capital than the investment.
As a broad generality, governments are utter crap at inventing/building/operating bleeding-edge technologies at giga-scale. Exceptions are generally narrow-focus military hardware, plus flood control, aqueducts, and other "obviously needed for the nation's welfare" stuff.
Are they actually worse than businesses though? The internet, jet engines.. in fact whole swaiths of technology have been created under governments not enterprises. This just feels like an economic concept people blindly accept.
Except that they aren’t. In fact they do most of the basic research that isn’t commercially viable that lays the groundwork for business to later commercialize. There would be no Waymo without the darpa self driving prizes. No uber without GPS. I could go on and on.
Russia and China are coming as well. Expect all big countries have hundreds of thousands of low orbit sats. It required in order to be a powerful military nation. Without it a country is doomed.
It's inevitable that at some point, a hostile nation will, ah, "disagree" with this laissez faire approach and start launching junk satellites at the Starlink constellation. That should be fun.
Take the trolling elsewhere. I don’t like monopoly. I don’t like monarchy. They lead to human suffering and stifling of innovation. Your playground insults about soy anything are unbecoming of HN.
Very untrue. Go somewhere with low light pollution and you'll see them in the dead of night. I was out in rural Australia and used a satellite tracker app to confirm what I was seeing - they are very distinctive and definitely visible.
They are not overwhelming, mind you, but I did notice them immediately. They stood out enough that I wondered what they were and started researching, that alone says something about the prevalence.
Edit: An LLM tells me that this is partly unique to how far South Australia is and the positioning of the sun in Australia's Summer. But I lack the physics knowledge to confirm that.
What percentage of satellites are launched and controlled by spaceX? When is a market considered a monopoly? When does a monopoly cause harm. Those are the questions you should be asking because if you want to participate in the innovation process there has to be a market where you can participate and not be squashed by a monopoly.
Agreed - I'd consider this public pollution caused by extremely greedy billionaires ruining the planet. They could only amass money because they did not care about social responsibilities prior to do so; any contrary statement made by them to this is only lies, lies and more lies.
Unfortunately you need a government that cares for the whole; in the USA oligarchs rule, so the general public are treated as paying slaves.
I agree with you. I still stand by the statement because it was a neutral observation that should be stated.
Many people are too morally outraged to think straight anymore, as plainly demonstrated, but who can blame them. Hope they take it as a gentle nudge for them get out of the outrage cycle.
"I'd consider this public pollution caused by extremely greedy billionaires ruining the planet."
This is such a weird framing, as if Starlink was a frivolous project for some rich person's fun.
There is genuine demand for orbital ISP from people, including people in poorer countries whom a better connectivity may help improve their incomes and lives, where an alternative is basically impossible (you won't get optic fibre in the Himalayas or Papua or the Andes anytime soon, if ever).
20 million people are now using Starlink and that number will almost certainly grow to maybe ten times as many, eventually. Ukraine uses Starlink to defend itself from being devoured by an aggressor. Sailors and other people in far away places use Starlink to keep in touch with their families.
Did you know that before Starlink, the South Pole Base had just 2x256 kB connection for everyone?
I get the "pollution" angle, but not the "hey, one guy is ruining the planet" angle. At the very least, all the customers are complicit, and I would add all the governments that don't seem to be able to build terrestrial connections for their own population.
But the government doesn’t have to allow a monopoly to exist. SpaceX wouldn’t exist without government contracts and support. The government should cultivate an ecosystem not a monopoly.
In my YC batch there were rocket companies. We should see more.
But the origin of SpaceX is not one of a government-cultivated monopoly. There were more than 200 space startups so far, I believe, and the vast majority of those simply went belly up. SpaceX was once an absolutely unremarkable element of this large set and they almost went belly up as well - their fourth (and first successful ) launch of Falcon 1 was literally the last one that they had money for. Even 5 years into their existence, no one would be able to foretell that it will be them and not anyone else who eventually becomes the behemoth is its.
If someone really fits the description of a quasi-monopoly systematically supported by the government for decades, it is Boeing and ULA in general. They get/got all the cost-plus contracts that were the real cash cow. SpaceX only got fixed-cost contracts.
I rooted for a lot of companies, my favorite was Armadillo Aeronautics by John Carmack, because I admire Carmack. But space seems to be genuinely hard.
That’s a very reductionist and dismissive take. Also it’s rude.
I’m an occasional astrophotographer, and the baseline of photos you can took are absolutely breathtaking now. Seeing this destroyed in real time is depressing.
I used to see a rare flyby of a satellite in the complete dark, but now it’s much more, and besides my personal annoyance, many people much more serious about sky and space are rightfully angry. Maybe you can ask them to grow up, too.
Not every progress is good progress. We should understand that by now. You should understand that better than all of us combined, since you’re apparently grown up, way more than us.
And you're the judge of this based on your likes and hobbies?
Anyway, I agree. Just ask the people blocking the HS2 or CaHSR about how sad the train plowing through their communities makes them feel. We need to tear down all trains, not every progress is good progress
Would you say it might at least be fair to discuss how things that affect everyone are decided upon or how externalities are compensated for? Or should it be free for all?
If there is a lot of change to how the night sky looks like could perhaps be worth a discussion on if the process is still the right one (and if it is global enough).
Yet with how political and dramatized the discussion around this is even on this website here, I fear that any opportunity to block or delay more SpaceX satellites will be used to the fullest.
I am concerned that this might hinder innovation. If you involve other countries, would this not be likely to become an extremely hard and slow regulatory process?
I understand that SpaceX's mitigation methods have been effective, and that the current satellites are on average around the limit of being visible to the naked eye under a very dark sky.
Personally I am eager to see more of these satellites enable 5G like cellular coverage outdoors in rural areas.
Perhaps I am more open to change in the appearance of nature than others. Some oppose also wind turbines in our mountains, where I usually think that they look cool and typically make the landscape more interesting.
I feel similarly. For example, when I see wind farms it gives me hope that we are moving towards more sustainable fuels. It also makes me feel like I've lived long enough to see the future.
With that said, I think we should have honest conversations about the benefits vs. the impacts, but also realize nothing is stagnant, not even nature.
I don't have the answers here, I a afraid, but not having at least the broader discussion might also not help (not sure what is already happening there, though).
The impartiality of those processes is a bit in question when the prime mover here is so far in bed with the executive that he gets to go up on stage during inauguration to sieg a few heils.
(And is then given a free hand to fire whomever he wants from the federal government.)
It's not reductionist - planes and their vapor trails are a constant presence in the sky there and in many places. Far more obvious than even these 5-10x as many satellites will be. I'm sure there are cloud photographers who are bothered by plane but, as with Starlink, there are people getting good value from them. There are even photographers embracing them. I think you see the world how you're familiar with as good or at least acceptable but anything different as bad.
People are louder about things that have not yet taken hold because it's easier to stop them. The constant rumble of airplanes in the sky is a problem actually, but it's far more entrenched. Why is it difficult to understand that people notice and care about negative externalities of so-called "progress"?
Because it's a negative unhappy view. It's not enjoyable to hear people complaining about problems or imaginary problems everywhere - and it really is everywhere. It's hard to find news about exciting new technology without rampant negativity from the commenters. I suppose HN is particularly negative about technology but so is mainstream culture. It's also irrational - the world keeps getting better in leaps and bound but we hardly celebrate that. High speed low latency affordable internet in any remote place in the world is amazing!
Perhaps another offputting aspect of this is Musk-hate. People were excited about SpaceX and Tesla a decade ago. It was a rare burst of popular techno-optimism, but now they aren't able to appreciate anything Musk does because their minds are clouded with hate.
I don't think people have to be happy about everything happening around them, especially if they're tangibly harmed by them. "Good vibes only" is a toxic mentality. It only makes you ignore other people's view and pushes you inside your own bubble deeper.
The problems you declare imaginary creates real problems for many scientists. Mostly for astronomers. There are projects created solely to track space objects and space debris, so they can find windows to do their experiments without affected by these satellites. It's not Starlink only. We're crowding space so much that probability of Kessler Syndrome is increasing ever faster.
The world gets better and better, that's true, but it's not linear. How hard is it to accept that we make, sometimes costly, mistakes? Many "wonder" chemicals turned out to be deadly. We used to drink radon infused water. PFAS dangers have been knowingly hidden from general population for decades. Overuse of plastics is showing its effects now. I mean, we used to spray DDT to people's hair.
I don't care about high-speed low latency internet in the middle of a jungle. While I can understand its applications for remote sensing applications, there can be other ways to do that.
Personally, I don't "hate" anyone, it's a so strong of a word, but I dislike who damages ordinary people's lives for monies the same. For me Tesla's outrageous claims and AI datacenters' footprint is a bigger source of dislike. Starlink works at least, but it doesn't mean I'm favorable against its existence.
When the world is transforming to the techno-dystopias the SciFi books I have read warned about, how can I be happy? There's nothing to be excited about right now, maybe except renewable energy and some aspects of electric cars. Other than that we're going full-bore surveillance and oppression combined with destruction of nature and planet turned up to 11.
Many weapons designers thought they were making war “more humane” by creating weapons that killed faster and more decisively.
Haber, on chemical warfare: “The gas weapons are not at all more cruel than the flying iron pieces; on the contrary, the fraction of fatal gas diseases is comparatively smaller, the mutilations are missing.”
> Many weapons designers thought they were making war “more humane” by creating weapons that killed faster and more decisively.
Do you think the world would be better off if we still killed ourselves with swords instead of drones? The result is the same. A death is a death. The real cause of wars is not "better weapons".
Maybe somewhat ironically, I think this is an overly cynical take.
People can acknowledge a difference of values and recognize what they consider a destruction of the commons without their stance being distilled to simply being a hater.
Would you also considering people who bemoan the degradation of Lake Erie by industrialists of the last century as “crab mentality”?
Similarly, people at the time took what may be closer to the opposite stance: “Fundamentally this level of environmental degradation was accepted as a sign of success.”
LEO is not the place to worry about Kessler syndrome.
Mostly, Kessler syndrome isn’t something to worry about at all; there are just a lot of orbital planes available. But in LEO, the mechanics don’t even apply.
Not to be alarmist, but suppose a galactic federation judges that
humans in their current state of development will pose a danger to
other civilizations when they imminently attain warp capability, so as
a safety precaution they need to be confined to their planet for at
least a millennium. An agent of the federation posing as human
manipulates the population into allowing 100,000 satellites to be
deployed. With that done, federation scientists solve the many-body
problem for the exact necessary speed and trajectory of a small meteor
to shatter one of the satellites such that some of its fragments
precisely target its neighboring satellites, and so on, while the rest
get kicked up into higher orbits. Life goes on but any enterprise that
depends on penetrating the debris field becomes infeasible.
As expected, higher altitudes, higher mass, and lower surface areas correlate to longer deorbit times. It looks like altitude has an extreme effect on deorbit times, as you can see the 100 KG satellite (solar min) deorbits in a little under 2 years at 400 KM, but over 15 years at 500 KM. So 1.25x the altitude results in 7.5x the deorbit time.
Stuff at 800-1000 KM can take centuries to deorbit, and that's within both NASA's (under 2000 KM) and the ESA's (under 1000 KM) definitions of LEO. There is a definition for VLEO of under 450 KM, which would have fairly short deorbit times, and therefore a relatively mild Kessler Syndrome.
Indeed. It's something investors should worry about for the data centres and if SpaceX will bankrupt itself instead of giving them a return on their investments, but it's not something where general space enthusiasts should worry about Starlink: the timescale for orbital decay is long enough to kill a company, but short compared to a lifetime.
For less starving people? For less child abuse? For less climate change?
I look up at the night sky and i want to see stars and the endlessness of the universe and don't want to be reminded that Elon Musk will poisen our atmosphere.
Not really, all three of them are sociological problems. And, at least for the first and last, we could already have mostly solved them but for the intransigent insanity of various political cults.
It's not technological progress we need; it's cultural progress.
Logistics of food distribution is a technological problem, and nowadays famines tend to happen less due to absolute shortage of food in a wider region, rather than due to insufficiently developed transport infrastructure.
IIRC no place in the world which has hard-paved highways has ever seen a peacetime famine. That's almost exclusively the domain of mud road territories. Of course, this is partly a correlation (mud road territories have worse governance and more banditry), but there is causality as well.
Well the only thing that has ever solved starvation is improved technology, child abuse I think has nothing to do with satellites, and managing climate change requires massive energy and technology resources especially in space.
So clearly you are in favor of starvation and human suffering due to climate change because of your irrational distaste for seeing satellites in orbit.
I suspect the root cause is you've overdosed on propaganda on the internet.
The Starlink satellites burn up in the atmosphere as they end their useful life. The metals that the satellites are made up of don't vanish in the thin air up there. They burn and just hang up there. Now, whether or not this is an impending disaster is for you to decide, but that's the theory of it.
i also read history. my people were basically oppressed for centuries. if you think today is bad you're privileged and silly, and probably possess a w2 mentality where you get a paycheck every 2 weeks and think that's somehow oppressive.
That’s not how the curve of history has always bent. There were long periods of extreme inequality where most people were serfs and a few controlled the assets. That is the norm, the recent period of opportunity.
I have no problem with billionaires. Or trillionaires. I do have a problem with monopoly because it destroys the very ecosystem that creates the increased well being you describe.
Not only you didn’t get the point, but you still hold on to your delusions:
> life for our kin will only be better.
Right? In this subscription economy? Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved? You can’t afford to rent the house you loved let alone buy it? (previous generations could afford) the list goes on and on.
Maybe stop spreading lies and see things more objectively?
Being objective doesn't mean laser focusing on the negatives. For instance:
> Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved?
You know how many movies the average peasant watched in the 1800s? 0. The closest equivalent was live theatre and that was an expensive luxury. You'd also likely get see one or more of your children die to diseases that are trivially treatable or preventable today.
you know there's more to life than just subscribing to services meant for the Lowest Common Denominator right? and of those people literally billions are happy to pay for them.
edit: not LCD the screen… if you thought thats what i meant then… nvm… not even gonna say it lol iykyk
Mine is OLED, perhaps this is the reason I am not among those billions :(
EDIT: You edited your comment after I submit my response. You cannot put arbitrary abbreviations and expect people to read your mind. Anyway, there is no point in arguing with you.
..you good bro? Anyway, things are improving but that doesn’t mean people can’t have a say in what tradeoffs they are willing to accept in return for progress.
A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.
Uhhh, I don't know what you're reading, but the comment I was replied to was complaining about the "subscription economy" and not having enough time to watch movies as evidence why life is getting worse.
> A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.
The vast majority of humanity has benefited from progress, compared to most decades and certainly centuries in the past. So I don't really know what your point is here?
But do you really think life has been getting better in the last 10 years say?
Do you think trickle down economics works?
Are you happy with the way things are going under this administration, which favours those BILLIONAIRES you mentioned, but couldn’t really give a damn about the rest of us or the commons?
Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?
> But do you really think life has been getting better in the last 10 years say?
Uh, yeah. My TV's much better, my video games are better, programming is easier and more fun with these new AI options added on top of better frameworks than we had in the past, there are way more restaurants serving better food, way more great shows and movies, there's mainstream awareness of the ills of social media, I can take driverless taxis around my city, I can tap to pay pretty much everywhere, wayyyyyy more of my friends work remotely. I'm 40 now, and myself + most of my friends + family are making more money now than we were at 30.
> Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?
You sound like you've been reading a bunch of gloom and doom scenarios. Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights. Stop reading so much negative news that's telling you the sky is falling and that everything is going to shit.
Of course there are massive problems and inequities we're solving, of course! But that's always been the case. Relax. Breathe. Put it in perspective.
All those things are not necessities of life. Food, shelter and energy have become more expensive and poverty rates have barely shifted and are currently getting worse.
Your response is basically 'Works on my machine!'.
And speaking of touching grass; what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) under this administration will mean to our commons?
I'll tell you, it means the new rule will make it easier to legally destroy wildlife habitats. And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back, because solar is woke or something. I guess you're OK with that too, since it doesn't impact you (yet).
Even though living standards have improved in the last 100 years overall, it's not a guarantee it will continue like that, if we let the Robber Barons take full control again.
> Your response is basically 'Works on my machine!'.
The majority of people in Western countries are not in the lower income brackets, but in the middle and upper brackets. Plus extreme poverty has been in decline all across the world. In other words, things are working well on MANY people's machines, not just mine. And they're beginning to work better on many more.
> what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)
> And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back
Yes, there are new+continuing problems in the world. Duh. And not everything is getting better all the time. Duh.
These things will always be true.
What's your point? Why do you and other people like you feel compelled to bring up obvious statements like this anytime anyone tries to say that things are generally getting better? You act as if when people say things are getting better they are saying things are perfect. Nobody thinks things are perfect. But you react as if it's some sort of crime against humanity to list ways in which life is genuinely getting better for many hundreds of millions, if not billions of people over the decades.
What is this allergy that you have toward acknowledging progress when there is progress? Why do you think that somehow warrants some totally unnecessary lecture about how there are still obviously problems in the world?
> it's not a guarantee it will continue like that
Again, has anyone ever said or even implied that progress is guaranteed to continue happening automatically?
> Of course there are massive problems and inequities we're solving, of course! But that's always been the case. Relax. Breathe. Put it in perspective.
You're just not someone who has to deal with these problems. Are we solving them? Not sure what you're being that of.
> Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights.
I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective
> You're just not someone who has to deal with these problems. Are we solving them? Not sure what you're [basing] that of.
Almost every major measure of human progress and prosperity over time?
What are you basing your doom and gloom beliefs on?
> I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective
I would wager my perspective is much broader than yours. Being so anxious and pessimistic that you only focus on the negative, to such a degree where when people point out real positive progress you feel COMPELLED to say something negative, doesn't mean you have a broad perspective. It just means you're miserable.
But I'm not talking about luxuries like super cars that most people couldn't afford.
I'm talking about the necessities of life. Food, shelter and energy have become more expensive and under this administration's policies it's not getting any better.
Poverty rates have barely improved and under this administration desire to reduce SNAP budget heavily, what do you think this will do to child poverty rates?
>watching their children die from easily curable infections, enduring routine tooth extractions without anesthesia, working six-day weeks around lethal machinery, watching entire neighboring towns slowly starve to death in famines, living in huts that were crawling with insects, subject to the brutal whims of whoever their local thug ruler happened to be with no human rights at all, and often being enslaved by the millions and worked to death in brutal conditions. Those softies just couldn't possibly imagine how truly hard we have it today.
A significant portion of the human populace still lives like this in various degrees today. You are just blind to it because you'd rather live in your delusion for comfort.
What's your point? Progress is not perfection. There will always be human suffering. Acknowledging that there's progress is not the same thing as ignoring the fact that there's suffering. I don't know what sort of cult mindset got everybody to believe that those are the same thing, but it's horrible and delusional and incredibly illogical.
I think the point is: some people will be left behind while reaching the described space era, just like the way it happened with many previous leaps and left behind those populations that are suffering from now-easily-curable diseases. And this time around, it seems like only a minority that are billionaires will be able to move forward, and we all will be left behind.
I believe it should’ve been possible to not leave so much people behind and so much behind. Requiring those at the front to not leave people so far behind (and forcefully funneling away their riches if they do) would’ve been enough.
Life is better for the poorest in society than it's ever been, thanks in large part to the nonstop proliferation and cheapening of technology in the past 200 years, esp. the past 100. I can't for the life of me understand why you people are so focused on trying to drag down the top when you could be focused on further bringing up the bottom. It's just such a miserable negative perspective on life, like crabs in a bucket.
> And this time around, it seems like only a minority that are billionaires will be able to move forward, and we all will be left behind.
I don't think this is true. Of course, rich people will always benefit the most from any technological advances. But there is no indication that the average Joe will be worse off in say, 20 years, compared to today. Medical advances alone coming down the pipeline will likely tip the scales towards future average Joe being better off compared to today. If I have to make a choice, for example: do I want to cut the deaths from diseases by half and fill the sky with Starlink satellites, or do nothing? I am picking the better medicice and Starlink-filled sky.
If you wanna look into another example search for the Abercrombie Plan in Edinburgh: it was a very ambitious urbanistic plan to "modernize" this city. For instance they proposed to demolish all of the historical Georgian and Victorian buildings in Princes Street and replace them with brutalist buildings and a motorway.
People have different definitions of progress. I have found that people who are "progressive" on one axis can often be quite conservative on another. Look at the SF Bay Area. While it is quite progressive in the political-ideology sense, we oppose construction that would cause literal progress in the material conditions of the citizenry. "Manhattanization" has been a word used for decades to oppose the thought of densifying SF. My neighbors here in North Bay come out in arms to oppose light bollards on a public footpath. We cannot even progress our footpaths. Rather than build a larger, more inclusive, and cheaper city, you will find countless proponents for rent control - a solution to the question of, "how can I use the law to keep my apartment cheap while refusing to accommodate any more people in the city?"
You are seeing this in this thread. I doubt anyone likes to be described as contra-progress. But nevertheless people would rather conserve the current night sky than see it transmute into a shimmering sea of a million artificial satellites. It's not really obvious to me why one state should be preferable to the other.
Yes? We don't have to blindly and constantly be making progress on everything at all cost. Look around you, look at what all this progress did to the world we live in.
Then our descendants will talk about how they were held back by our greedy ancestors who just wanted to be able to look at the night sky and see only natural stars, and they'll be right.
Also let me guess, you have high speed internet avaiable at your house so starlink isn't your only high-speed option right now?
I resent my recent ancestors for tearing up all our cities in favour of motorways, and grateful only that it wasn’t worse. They thought that was progress though, and that cars were the only way to move into the future.
I’m not against advancing in this area, but there is nuance. Progress can be short sighted.
Or they will talk about how we rushed too fast to clutter space and now can’t escape earth orbit because of a cloud of dangerous shrapnel and are going to go extinct without being multi planetary.
Progress is a very human centric view. But if you consider earth as a whole system, we have over optimized the system for our benefit while the other parts of the system hugely suffered (other species, environment etc.).
We need to ensure our progress is balanced taking into account the whole system instead of just one part.
African here living under and shit hole government who has no interest in improving the lives of the people. Starlink has been a game changer! An absolute game changer. I do not support Elon Musk but just putting out there that Starlink is helping kids in remote areas with no electricity (they use small solar panel) to access the Internet.
A monopoly can do good in the world. I am glad this is beneficial to you. I worry, given the history of monopoly behavior, that it will flip to extreme rent seeking in the not distant future.
Most people cannot afford to have it in their home. They will get access at school or shopping centre. Most kids don't have phones either but I really do get your point. The other danger is they tend to be susceptible to fake news and stories made up using AI. I have had cousins from the village send me a picture of a mermaid claiming she was caught in one of the rivers.
> I have had cousins from the village send me a picture of a mermaid claiming she was caught in one of the rivers.
For what it's worth, this also happens with printed books.
I wasted the latter half of my teens taking New Age occultism and magical powers as a profound topic rather than a literature and culture topic, thanks to a combination of a bookstore chain near where I grew up and a mother who also took this all very seriously.
I wasn't suggesting that books are some kind of paragon of "truth". But as I think most HN readers would agree, there's just something… tangible about them that seems to stimulate the brain in a way that ephemeral images on a screen don't.
This reads like you aren’t a parent and haven’t experienced the effects of social and peer pressure. We don’t allow screen time but our kids cousins do. Where do you think watching you tube happens? Should we monitor every moment of their lives and ban them from going to their cousins house?
It's pretty painful, and makes a lot of work from home impossible between meetings, image pulls, etc. Until starlink I had to do development on a cloud vm
Yeah, how is that mars colony plan going realistically. have they figured out the bits about how humans are going to survive in a toxic irradiated environment for months on end? I want it to happen, but I honestly havent heard much from spacex about it other than we have to be allowed to develop cheap rockets. There's a lot more involved in a journey to mars than just cheap launch costs.
It’s not binary. We can colonize space without granting that right to a monopoly. Or doing it a way that creates a cloud of projectiles around the planet
The word 'colonization' has become rather toxic, though. Maybe we need a new word for occupying barren planets where there's no native life being displaced?
My ancestors on my moms side pioneers in covered wagons that settled the west. My ancestors on my dad’s side were Amazonian natives that lost most their tribe to disease and ranchers driving them off their land. It’s important to learn from history so as to not repeat it. It might feel like the lefts critique of history is toxic unless your family dies from a repeat of that brutality.
I fully agree history is important to be known for the premise of not repeating it. But the narative is that 10 generations later depending which side you were on, that somehow your to blame and you owe the losing side something.
The stolen land meme is a good example. My parents in 60s migrated to the u.s and in no way am I to blame or responsible for what occored just because of where I live.
Do I feel bad for what happened? Absolutely. But those were nethanderal times where everything was primitive instinct. Its not the world we live in today.
Its highly unlikely that an indigenous population would adopt the colonizer's term. If you look at demographics of those who use that definition of term its mostly people of Anglo-Saxon decent. And its the same people who are living on stolen land.
they were also going around killing each other and ripping out hearts from living people as sacrifices, so given enough time they would have done the same thing.
What world do you want to live in? A monopoly where a corporation can decide who lives and dies? Because that’s effectively what you are arguing for up and down this thread.
No-one is “colonizing space”, you’re just being conned by a man who figured out he can make a lot of money by convincing people that such fantasies could be real.
The US spends up to $4 billion a year just to keep a few people alive on the ISS. And they can’t stay there too long because it’s too dangerous to their health. The idea that we’re going to “colonize space” in the foreseeable future is laughable.
Sending robots to space is still a form of building presence there. Not every colonist has to be a human. In fact, they are probably coming last, into pre-prepared positions and bases.
No. It’s more don’t buy all the lawns in the entire country and then dye the grass purple and then rent it back to me at 50% of my wages. Thats what happens in a monopoly.
There is a lot to criticize about governments. And there are many bad ones. But structurally a corporation has no obligation to represent society, government does.
Comments like this always make me lol. It's a pointless comment. Do something about it if you think the government doesn't represent you. Or shut the fuck up.
A nuke in LEO would make the environment so radioactive for some time to fry every single satellite that crosses the lower van allen belt. After some time (months, may be a few years) radiation goes back to normal levels and you can launch satellites again.
Fun fact, the first nuke in space had a lot of people very nervous as it was thought that making satellites impossible forever was a possibility, and quite a few did fail due to the nuke.
Which government ? And based on the past few month, if your are thinking of the US governemnt; I can assure you that it is actively being harmful to me.
I have no love for SpaceX but at least I can take a subscription or invest and the stock and pretend that those satellites are beneficial to me.
There isn’t a single US government owned satellite that is not actively harmful to me at the moment.
Its working for me. Have you ever thought of moving to a territory where your properly represented? If your in the u.s. i think you can still walk across the Canadian border.
SpaceX needs to claim there’s a need for 100k more satellites to prop up unreasonable valuations. This is no different than Elon claiming Tesla owners would be renting out their cars as FSD taxis while at work (next year, we swear guys!!!)
In a functioning economy he’d have faced criminal charges for knowingly misleading investors and customers about a dozen times over by now. It’s one thing to set lofty goals internally to keep your workforce motivated and innovative. It’s something else entirely to state things publicly with a targeted date when you know there’s absolutely no chance it will ever happen.
I believe he said Teslas are meant to appreciate in value too because you get income from renting them out when you're not using your car. They'll just drive around and work as a taxi while you're not using it.
Turo (then Relayrides) partned with GM to allow you to rent your own vehicle out while you were at work or anywhere, so it's not science fiction, it was done back in 2012 and the concept was the same, your vehicle will help pay for itself.
Every mile logged by autonomous driving, every accident caused by a human vs autonomous vehicle where the human is at fault, will make insurance companies price risks accordingly. So far, autonomous vehilces doing very well in the cities where they operate.
It's inevitable these two concepts will merge, and it solves many problems with lack of access to affordable transportation especially for those who can't drive. Public transportation can't survive on fixed route, major infrastructure spends like rail and bus and meet the needs of the greatest number of people.
That will not work for a long time for peak hours and remote areas with too little of customers.
Everyone has to travel into our city in the morning to work, everyone does it with their own car they are proud of and see as essential at the same time while standing in traffic for 20-30 minutes extra.
And then what do you get? You get YOUR car back, smelly, stinky, dirty for saving a little bit of money?
We already have a 'drive yourself' car rentel system here and the lowest price for an avg car is 8 Euros per Hour for the time and 40 cents for 1km.
I also don't think insurance will be that much cheaper for autonomous driving. The insurance for a normal car is not expensive already, we have very few car incidents.
It might even become more expensive because you are driving more km per year.
If Bitcoin...that has nothing behind it, can´t realistically be used for financial transactions, and is essentially just a virtual NFT... can hold at $60,000 for years, So then....SPCX that has nothing behind it, and realistically will never offer any business value that is even 0,01% of expectations...can then certainly hold at $150 for years...
Apple announced AirPower and then didn’t end up shipping it. In a “functioning economy” should Tim Cook be indicted for misleading investors? Obviously not.
The only decent argument for the criminal case you are talking about would be if it was an outright lie with no intent whatsoever to deliver on the promise, but there’s obviously a huge effort to deliver on the robotaxi promise. Just ask any of the thousands of employees who work on the Tesla robotaxi and self driving software every day, just visit Austin and observe the ubiquitous cybercabs driving around the city.
They obviously haven’t realized the dream yet but it doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually, especially when you can physically see the progress first hand.
Your argument seems mostly driven by your disagreement with the founder’s politics instead of any rational argument against their technology.
As the comment you are replying to does not, on its face, seem to have a political bia you should be explicit about where/how you identified that bias. Without this you are the one injecting politics not the OP.
> > Apple announced AirPower and then didn’t end up shipping it. In a “functioning economy” should Tim Cook be indicted for misleading investors? Obviously not.
Apple doesn't have a history of having to pump the stock to survive. Also it's a pretty ubiquitous company and they delivered a pretty life changing product for all of us.
On the other hand Tesla has a history of lying constantly and also life and customer experience is pretty much the same in the sectors of the economy that they attacked , as a matter of fact a 2002 Mercedes (the year in which Tesla was founded) is better in many departments compared to a 2026 Tesla
I don't recall her agitating for a race war online. Maybe I missed it.
If the salutes were one weird thing it'd be one thing. But Musk spends all day online talking about how much better white society is than everything else and how foreigners are destroying society and need to be dealt with extremely harshly.
“White” has nothing to do with it, but you can’t understand the argument because your intellectual toolbox has only two ideas in it: blank-slate cultural relativism, and Nazism. If it’s not one it must be the other. Thus, the only way you can explain a country like Bangladesh is to chalk its predicament up to exogenous factors that wouldn’t carry over in migration. And anyone who has a different view must be a Nazi, obviously.
If you assume a dichotomy between blank-slate cultural relativism and nazism, then you’re correct that everyone who thinks 100,000 Bangladeshi immigrants is materially different than 100,000 Americans must hold that view solely due to skin-color prejudice. If you take it as axiomatic that America would have turned out materially identically if Bangladeshi settlers had been on the Mayflower rather than British Puritans, then yes, everyone who doesn’t agree with you in immigration is in fact a Nazi.
I'm very sorry but you are simply not going to convince me that "wow this entire national population is just plain worse than this other population and if we let them in it'll ruin our country" is meaningfully distinct here.
What I see here is agreement with Musk's odious beliefs and a desire to avoid mean names being used to describe these beliefs.
When Starlink first became available here in poor-ish Central-EU, I was excited. Then, only months later, but after years of planning: EU funding brought fiber to my farm area, at ~$25/900mbps 10ms.
While my story is just n=1, I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
However, I am dumb, and very open to be convinced.
The number of people who are not covered by above-mentioned fiber/cell network, and can afford Starlink as it is priced now, will be extremely small (likely making Starlink unviable as a profitable business).
> The number of people who are not covered by above-mentioned fiber/cell network, and can afford Starlink as it is priced now, will be extremely small
People vastly overestimate the purchasing power in places like India. Most of the purchasing power is concentrated in the top 1% of the population and most of that 1% lives in urban areas with fiber connectivity. The bottom 90% don’t even make $1K/person/year. Even a $10/month subscription (1/5th of what it costs right now) would be 10% of the total income, which at those income levels, would never be a priority.
> would be 10% of the total income, which at those income levels, would never be a priority.
People vastly underestimate the subjective importance of the Internet for people. 10-20% of the total income seems like a very realistic figure, even if it means spending some days hungry.
People struggling for food, water, medicine, shelter will not in any world spend 10% of their income on internet. Thinking that they will is out of touch with reality and would only be a valid chain of thought when you’ve not seen what real poverty looks like.
People vastly overestimate the subjective importance of the internet if they think people with relatively little historic exposure to and practical use for the internet would rather go hungry or have a worse marriage for their daughter to replace the erratic internet connection on their phone and cybercafe use with a high speed broadband connection in their house...
When I was a teenager in early post-Communist Czechia, Internet connection was also expensive. So what we did was that we pooled resources. Five or ten households had a common connection and shared it.
I don't doubt that similar schemes will be used in Africa or India.
That is great, but it also sets the stage for actual fiber to be drawn as it is vastly cheaper to connect to an existing end user network than to build it up from scratch. When a critical mass of villages have built internal networks it will be worth drawing cable for them as well.
Lack of sufficient population density and political instability is what would stop this.
I explicitly mentioned income per person. This is household income, which obviously will be higher than individual income.
And as far as connection pooling goes, India already has 88% 4G and 80% 5G coverage in the villages. Far cheaper connections are already available that are already being leveraged in a way that you describe. The market where Starlink is appealing is much smaller.
Global cellular operator revenue is approx $1T. They have put their toe in the water with direct-to-cellular support for starlink, and have bought spectrum to improve this. I'm sure they basically want to offer cellular to everyone in the world and get a good chunk of that $1T. Maybe they want 20% of it? Sounds crazy, but China Mobile, Verizon, and Deutsche Telecom each have 10%. Sounds it's not so wild that they can grab a big chunk, especially if they can find new customers that are not already connected.
And of course they can also continue to grow their broadband internet access business.
I suppose they will likely start putting cameras and other data sensors on the satellites so they can sell other data for mapping, positioning services, agriculture, weather, etc. The incremental cost to add this to the platform will be almost nothing compared to existing systems.
It will take years if not more to be technical capable to have modems so good that they can communicate with a starlink satelite in any reasonable 'day to day' way.
And Starlink already increased prices again.
And without Sparship and prooving that they actually can reuse it, they can't hold the price point.
Starlink satelites do not scale very well. They need v3 and even with v3 this doesn't scale efficently.
Right now we do not even have the antenna technology in current high end smartphones for 'easy to use, normal speed' mobile to satelite communication.
And funny enough, the more local mobile phones you would have, which want to send data to a satelite, the harder the problem gets due to interference.
With 5g we do already a lot of beam forming etc. Try beamforming into 500km space with uncoordinated random amount of mobile devices with very very little sending power and one satelite 'beamforming' its a few hundred square miles.
Starlink accounted for 69% of SpaceX revenue pre-merger and is speculated to be already profitable including launch costs.
And this is all before they launch a phone or something, or replace global fiber interconnect with a lower latency space-based alternative, replace all forms of space based telecommunications (TV, Satellite Radio, etc). Starlink is a $1T+ business without even getting creative.
It's not that simple. Yes, newer standards push for higher frequencies to get more bandwidth, but 5G for example also uses the old sub GHz bands with excellent range and penetration.
For launches of our Starlink satellites, the Company does not recognize any inter-segment revenue, rather those launch costs are capitalized in satellites in Property, plant, and equipment, net. We allocate a significant amount of launch capacity to our Connectivity segment, and expect to allocate a significant amount to our AI segment in the future. Our Space segment revenue only reflects our customer launches and customer activities.
For launches dedicated to deploying our Starlink satellites, we capitalize the associated costs within our Connectivity segment and depreciate them over time, and we do not recognize revenue for those launches in our Space segment.
The launch cost for Starlink is in the connectivity segment. It has to go somewhere on your balance sheet and you can't magic it away.
If you manufacture cement and you also sell premixed concrete in another division it's a similar thing. Or any other company that sells both raw material and finished product.
Here they are saying it's in the connectivity segment costs instead of them buying it at retail. That's all there is.
That's how analysts can estimate launch costs ~$20MM and $600k for satellites as opposed to the idea that launch is $0 for Starlink and the cost is hidden in the space segment.
Yeah but it doesn't become a Trillion dollar business if they don't solve the Starlink Satelite v3 issue.
They need Starship to be able to send v3 up, without v3 it doesn't scale well enough.
Starship still hasn't proven it can actually bring up the relevant payload high enough and they need it to be reusable otherwise costs will increase.
And they already exist and only have 10 Million customers. They need to get countries on their side like India but these countries are not stupid. Elon Musk showed them very clearly what he can do like his statements he did when Ukraine war started.
Unless you're trying to do something like high frequency stock trading, this does not really matter. Most of the added latency is added in the hops themselves, as packets are being classified and routed. Your generic Internet user won't be able to see any difference.
You need to take error into account, too. Can atmospheric conditions corrupt the transmission (this is not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know)? If so then your latency and bandwidth will both suffer.
EDIT: also, in the very likely case that the packet is not addressed to the satellite itself, routing comes into play. In the best-case scenario where the satellite is somehow able to transmit the packet directly to its destination the distance it travels is actually doubled. If the packet instead gets transmitted from the satellite to a base-station which then routes it through fiber-optics then there's no point in trying to argue that the satellite connection is the faster of the two even if that is true.
Often the bigger difference is just that fiber never goes in a straight line, even if it’s going to the right city. All that pesky geography gets in the way and makes the path longer.
As far as I can tell it almost exclusively follows the existing roads in Europe. Probably an easier way to secure rights in one go like rails used to be for telco lines.
Given the size of the ocean (ie, there's so many other places that a ship can drop anchor other than right on a cable), I would assume this would be intentional sabotage any time it happens.
Well, my informed (I guess? it's first hand) opinion says exactly what the PC said. And no the plan has been underfoot for so long that it really pretty much has nothing to do with the current regime even though I am sure like any regime they'd say they did it from the scratch.
I'd say we are getting really great at getting broadband to everyone than giving enough bread and education and healthcare to everyone :D (ignore the smiley, this sucks)
... would there really not be regulations on giant unmanned ships? That seems concerning, though I could certainly understand international / maritime law having a gap.
Crews on those ships are spending nearly all their time maintaining them.
Many flag and port states already allow One Man Bridge Operation (OMBO) in many circumstances. This means there's basically on person on the bridge, and maybe one other person down in the engine room keeping an eye on a floating city block moving through the water at 15 knots
This idea that putting $500m+ of assets in the water, but thinking that even one person on the boat is too many has got to be one of the silliest things in modern capitalism (obviously the crown goes to orbital AI data centers).
The same bosses will pay multiple security guards, in addition to staff, to guard <$10m in goods at a Walmart. But when 50x the goods are in the ocean, suddenly the staff is the limiter?
Yeah, autonomous shipping makes sense for naval/coastguard drones but not much else. Shipping companies can pay most of the staff Filipino wages, and they run around doing all sorts of maintenance tasks, not just navigation and contro.
Now the crew will be very pleased if they get a Starlink connection rather than the ridiculously small crew connectivity allowance Inmarsat et al will give them, but that all depends on shipping companies not having to pay premium prices for maritime connectivity.
Space Bears have been saying this for quite a while, we live in megalopolis which already are covered very efficiently and we are only becoming more urban. Of course their voice was drowned because rockets are essentially giant penises piercing the atmosphere and hence the intersection of nerds getting excited for the sake of technical prowness and rich guys who don't get laid who seem to be nowadays at the helm of the intelligentia didn't want to hear none of that.
On top of that add the reusability stunt streamed in 4k making them extrapolate a not well defined pivotal leap for ROI....and there you have it , it's the Apollo sinkhole all over again with money being lit on fire an essentially no quality of life ROI for society.
At least the Apollo mission got us the ability to deliver nukes to Moscow in 30 minutes or less. This will be a total sinkhole.
All the while we are held hostage by a Nation with consumption rates which are a thenth of ours and we still have the audacity to reject nuclear fission because it's "dangerous"
Here along the BC Coast, the organization I work for has an expansive sensor network. Weather stations, CTDs, custom equipment in watersheds, research facilities with all kinds of equipment to monitor, and so on. There is no broadband or fiber on remote islands along the coast. We used to use satellite internet, and getting data off of our main hubs (everything is relayed to the hubs by radio) was very slow and precarious. Since starlink it's a breeze. We will finally be able to get video feeds off of some of the stations; a totally untenable concept before.
Sure, and that's great, but this is an extremely small niche case right? No one is denying that there are some cases where Starlink is amazing, but niche products don't usually command a $1T value.
Note that I am not claiming they'll get sales anywhere near to close to the TAM. It's not like Wikipedia's market value is even close to {peak price of Encyclopedia Britannica} * {number of people on the internet} even despite it no longer being generally contested which of Wikipedia and Britannica is now better.
I mean, it’s actually not that bad of a play at least here in AK.
There’s billions of dollars in monitoring and maintaining remote sites / handling remote connectivity, doing bespoke SaaS tools, etc. Like, literally high hundreds of millions or low billions.
It allows technical folk to live wherever they’d like as long as they’re working remotely.
The mobile applications, particularly in the case of airline aircraft, have also been compelling and worth a lot of money to SpaceX.
Starlink has also brought broadband Internet to a vast number of people that would not have had it otherwise. This will boost the worldwide economy by an enormous amount.
Starlink only has 10 Million customers, too expensive for most countries already.
Starlink brought internet to a lot of people who had it before already but made it easier for them.
Its still quite a interesting technology, given, but for the fact that he destroys potentially our atmosphere, has control over war critical tech, can do survailance and wants to send out A Lot MORE into our space, its a net negative for at least 7-8 BILLION people while 10 Millionen people benefit from it.
And they even increased the price just a few weeks back...
I don't think rurp was saying there is no market, just that there was no obvious realistic TAM worth 1.6 trillion (going by the amount given by the S-1). How many people living remotely in an area with no fibre do you really expect there to be?
It’s a niche, yes, but there could be others like it. No idea about how the company should be valued. We pay them chump change for our services, but enough that with any scale it could be meaningful. And their reach is pretty incredible, so, there is a lot of potential there.
> There is no broadband or fiber on remote islands along the coast.
I have family on the USA side of the islands. Kenmore Air is subsidized, but the trees are so darn tall that at many homes, Starlink is not an option. (they like the trees and use directional microwave, which sucks for Zoom)
FWIW it may be tenable now as Starlink has gotten much better at tree/obstruction avoidance in the signal and will preemptively switch the satellite it's using when an obstruction is approaching. Id check again.
When COVID hit, I knew a lot of engineers who decided to move to rural areas / small farms because they could leverage Starlink to work remotely.
Last year, when I asked whether they still liked Starlink, all of them said it is amazing, but they had gotten fiber coverage in their area from a local provider, so they don't use it anymore, or just use it as a backup.
I think Starlink was a huge demand signal that there were people willing to pay a premium for faster-than-radio internet. So, unless they manage to be cheaper and faster than fiber, I don't think there is much of an endgame there.
But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.
Meanwhile, as one of those engineers, they ran fiber down the highway a mile from my house circa 2021, but they did not do any upgrades at all to the last mile infrastructure so I still only have a ~10Mbps DSL option for wired internet at that house, which is a big step up from literally no wired option before, but still vastly inferior to Starlink. (The terrain makes terrestrial wireless a nonstarter in the area). I've since moved back to civilization, but I still own the house. As far as I know, there are no plans at all to improve the last mile infrastructure.
Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.
> there are no plans at all to improve the last mile infrastructure
The economics of laying fiber to the premises are heavily driven by density of potential customers * probability that a potential customer will sign up if you run fiber down their street. You can get reasonable intuition by focusing on the density alone & ignoring the competition / pricing side of things.
I'm not familiar with current US construction costs to install fiber but have some intuition from Australia.
With Australia's national broadband network project from a decade or so ago, it'd cost in the ballpark of $100 AUD per meter to run fiber down the street in an underground trench - most of the capex is digging the holes in the ground etc, the cost of the cable itself is essentially free. The construction budget for a suburb would be something like $2000 / premises. To give a ballpark estimate, suppose 25% of your budget is the premises-specific work to connect the house to the cable running down the street, if they choose to sign up for your broadband plan. That leaves at most $1500 / premises for the rest of your capex budget, so the economics only work if you've got a neighbourhood with a density of least one house every 15 meters. Those numbers aren't exact but they'd be in the ballpark.
There's a bit of variability in the cost per meter to install, if you can reuse existing poles & run the cable aerially that might be only 30%-40% of the cost of digging holes, so you might be able to support a lower density suburb that way & still stick to your construction budget.
In Australia for the lower density rural / semi-rural areas they'd use fixed wireless, & finally satellite for the remote extremely low density areas where it didn't even make sense to build a wireless tower.
it is well known that Australia has an extremely lazy workforce that refuse to put in any real work.
the best example here is the stupid residential building cost. nowadays it costs over $1m AUD or $700k USD do a first floor 2bedroom 1 bathroom extension for an existing house in good condition. That is significantly more expensive than building a big house in the US.
I'm fairly sure there are also houses in Australia being built for less than $1m AUD given there are new houses being sold for less than $1m AUD with no indication those developers are making a loss.
nice straw man, you can of course find houses below $1m when you go to regional areas where job opportunities simply do not exist. how about you just compare construction cost in Sydney with say those expensive part of the US, e.g. LA and SF?
let's don't even start on the quality of those new builds, that would be the laughing stock of the entire world.
I was only trying to talk about Starlink here, as that is what TFA is about. Starlink is AMAZING in-flight, out at sea, etc.. But since you brought it up:
> Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.
So, where does the rest of the valuation come from?
It feels like it comes from the alien simulation-theory overlords.
I mean, it was a response to a claim, without evidence, that it was valuable.
Is your position that _you_ can make assertions without evidence but that lesser mortals may not contradict you without writing a paper on the subject?
I’m convinced that a large part of the user base of this site is genuinely, literally, solipsistic.
The simple answer is that SpaceX is worth about 1900 billion dollars at today's stock price. It's the 7th most valuable company on Earth.
According to an AI I asked, about 50% of that value is Starlink, with space launches and AI making up about 25% each.
The Starlink business depends on their cheap space launch tech, so using these rough numbers capability I'd say it is worth 75% of the company, or $1400B.
Er, don’t believe everything the magic robots tell you. Like, seriously, why on earth could you believe an LLM on this? Have we completely lost all power of critical thinking?
And i brought an argument. You said it makes space-x very valuable and i explain that the amount of payload we even send up is very limited which contracditcs 'very valuable'.
I then explain further what Elon Musks plan is to sell us his trillion dollar company or how you frame it 'very valuable' and explain why it doesn't work
There are areas where the bureaucratic hurdles to changing anything and the incentives for changing anything work out to nothing ever changing. I assume in 20 years most of Berlin is still going to have 50mbit/s max. I hear residents of New York have completely given up and are using 5G modems because putting up new cables just isn't practical. On the other hand, these cities do have a significant minority of flats with gigabit internet, so if you care you can pick a modern building with modern cabling. Maybe the segment who both live in old apartments and also are willing to pay for fast internet is too small to bother with.
> But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.
There's also drones and front-line trenches, but your point still stands.
The problem with LEO constellation is wasted airtime outside of the country that owns it. Starlink just let anyone pay for the service irrespective of legality and let the leftovers go to waste, but most sane people can't accept that model.
They just launch those sats, and straight up serve Internet illegally. Those are the bonkers parts.
India is super super poor still I cannot imagine they would build out domestic Starlink for hypothetical wars before other actual critical infrastructure.
To launch a starlink style system, you need to be able to rapidly design and produce hundreds of thousands satellites and launch them within relatively short period of time with extremely high success rate. only the largest industrialized nation on earth can do that. india is 30-50 years away from such achievement.
To give you some quick ideas - for the total of 330 space launches in 2025, the US had almost 200, China had close to 100 launches, Russia had 17 launches, the rest of the world had the remaining 20 in total.
India was the first country to reach Mars on its first attempt. ISRO is a highly capable org, and cost effective. India also was #4 to land on the moon after the USSR, USA and China - beating Japan to the punch. SpaceX is yet to deliver a payload to the moon or Mars - orbit or lander.
How many countries can claim the achievement of developing nuclear weapons? Does that make North Korea somehow an inherently more successful country than Germany?
Spending money on a space program while hundreds of millions of your citizens are living in extreme poverty is obscene (unless it provides significant economic value)
> Spending money on a space program while hundreds of millions of your citizens are living in extreme poverty is obscene
Why? According to Wikipedia they spend like $1.4b annually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO That's like an extra $10 for each of these citizens living in "extreme poverty".
And what's the cutoff? Like 10% of the US population is under the poverty line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States. Is NASA "obscene" too? Granted that's not the same as "extreme poverty" but it's still a bad look in the richest country in the world, right?
> unless it provides significant economic value
Investments in science and technology generally do. Rich countries are advanced in science and technology.
> Does that make North Korea somehow an inherently more successful country than Germany?
Your argument is all over the place. This thread is about if India could tackle LEO comsats, but perhaps you're seeing it through a lens of prestige/success.
> Spending money on a space program while hundreds of millions of your citizens are living in extreme poverty is obscene
You'll love Gil Scott-Heron's classic that wrestled the same ideas in the 1960s USA, titled Whitey on the Moon
That only matters if you want to know how much an average individual can spend. Gross GDP is more relevant when you're discussing how much the state could spend on defence programs.
Yeah who knows poor infrastructure might let India skip fiber in some areas entirely. Maybe it’s not that hard to launch a domestic Starlink if Blue Origin/ SpaceX will bring your satellites up cheaply .
>And for that reason the EU, India, China and Russia will build their own Starlink alternatives.
I don't know about the rest, but Russia started working on its own Starlink well before the war. We have the North and Siberia where satellite internet is the only option. Another target market is Russian Railways which would love to have internet in the trains not only when they pass areas with mobile coverage.
Not just cruise ships, but practically every boat with a bed in it. People sailing on small boats all around the world have starlink now. It's kind of a game changer in a lot of ways for small boats.
Starlink has its uses, but I really don't understand those who get starlink while living in built-up areas.
Starlink is just a re-skin of the "Wireless optic" thing a lot of ISPs are pushing because they would prefer not having to lay cables and instead have everyone use 5g routers. Of course, the service isn't comparable, but regular people don't necessarily know it. Fiberoptic is still king, and probably will be for a long time.
There's nothing comparable to direct fiberoptic cable, and anyone who says otherwise immediately outs themselves as being a sellout or having anti-consumer motives. In 100 years it may be different, but I'm probably not going to be around in 100 years, so...
I don’t see why it would be different in 100 years. The fibre might be slightly better (hollow core fibre will increase speed from 2/3c to nearly c), but, absent new physics, it’s hard to imagine anything beating _that_.
I remember 10-15 years ago The Gathering, Norways biggest LAN party, had a wifi sponsor, and there were talks about how soon we don't even need wired internet, because wifi is getting so good with wifi 6 and all. Crazy thing to claim about a sports hall with 5000 computers and even more mobile devices.
I can't say we are much closer to that goal now :)
For war it is. Drones and other unmanned aircraft are the future of warfare. That's the whole reason why every country now heavily invests in low orbit sats.
It's not about consumers. Also not for spacex. Defence contracts are zillion times more worth. Once you are in you reach the end level as a business.
Russia has attempted to jam Starlink satellites but with very limited success. The problem for Russia is that the constellation is enormous and uses highly directional phased-array radios which are naturally resistant to jamming. They can temporarily jam a few birds over a limited area but don't have the resources to effect sustained denial. We might eventually see them escalate to kinetic strikes on the satellites.
You are right about drones, but Starlink etc is still used a lot by forward deployments of troops. Afaik it has revolutionised the ability to contact these deployments. But I'm not an army guy
Family lives in Rio/Brazil. With the efforts from our government every year that passes, public safety becomes worse and suburban areas get more marginalized, it got to a point where the drug traffickers from my area start cutting the fibers and leaving letters on mailboxes saying that from now on, anyone who wanted internet had to get their illegal internet.
Which meant shitty speeds and if you have a problem with billing/service you cannot complain to anyone. Their service would go down for days and there is nothing you can do besides rely on shitty 4G. When Starlink became available in Brazil this was the lifesaver for my family
So the drug traffickers that cut the fiber have no problem with your Starlink dish outside your home, and don't break it and/or threaten you? If they care, that seems like an oversight they will soon correct once enough people start using it.
They clearly don't want to threaten all the people directly for protection money. That limits what they are willing to do for the scheme. So they cut the cable at places where people are not. This is both efficient in employee time as well as in risk. Starlink antennas can be installed on roofs or in places that aren't easily visible.
Also you could install it in things that don't look like it since it only needs an mostly unobstructed view in a cone to the sky. For example I could se an installation in a fake rain barrel, old bathtub inside a stack of firewood. some cloth coverings also would work so it doesn't have to be open either.
The only way to find the actual installations would be survey flights that take pictures and compare the data. Then send out inspectors to see if changes on buildings hide starlink antennas.
I think the only effect will be that the scheme will go away. Alternatively they could just improve their service so it competes on performance and price with starlink.
A brazilian favela is not a representation for a global satelite network which consumes and produces a lot of energy and co2 to be send up and poisens our atmosphere when theybreak down.
There was no evaluation of the obvouse shitty problem in such areas.
And as i said, metal tubes do break radio signals.
That is freaking amazing. I want to be clear that reusable first stage of Falcon 9 + Starlink is the coolest tech that I have ever seen. It was just that for me, the financials didn't work out.
I have a friend who lives 1.5hrs outside Toronto and needs Starlink because ISPs don’t offer anything useful. Same with a family member with a house even closer to Toronto. These aren’t far off North Ontario rural houses and there’s tons of people living up there.
I have fiber (I can get up to 300 Gbps at my home in the Seattle area, but I got opted for the 2Gbps) and I have Starlink as backup/failover. I previously used my mobile service for that but learned the hard way that when there's a large internet outage in the area, as it did when we had a bad storm, so does mobile service, either power loss or it can't support the influx of everyone using their phone internet. So now I have starlink as a backup. It's a very small portable unit that I can also take when camping. It's a great service. Also it's powering a lot of airlines now, it's fast and reliable to the point I can watch youtube and tiktok on my flights.
300Gbps? Is that typo? Unless you are connecting to some very particular infrastructure on the other one, nothing you could possibly connect to could use it, and you would need gear that would be somewhat high end even for server grade.
(I know you said you didn't select that option, but just the idea that it's even offered to residential units is mind blowing).
I just checked, and now it is 50 Gbps. Not long ago it was 300 Gbps when I moved into my house. I guess they lowered it. Not really any use for such speeds in a residential home anyways.
That was my thinking as well here in EU farmland. I would use it as a backup. I really wanted to have an excuse to use the cool af Starlink tech. However, after half a decade the fiber has gone down 3 times, and I just shared my iPhone's LTE as a hotspot in 2 cases, and in the third I did yard work for 20 minutes.
With their current pricing, they can't compete with local vendors. These local vendors charge like $10/month for 100-200mbps (vendor/bundle dependent) speeds, with no data-capping. For just $5 extra, they also bundle 20+ OTT channels, including netflix and prime video (HD only).
And yes, fiber connections are everywhere here for past 5 years... and I'm from a very small town here.
I think that while Starlink is a technical innovation its primary benefit is as a political innovation: it lets you sidestep a lot of politics.
Rural communities in the US should have high speed internet, just like efforts were made to give them electricity back in the day. But the layers of politics and dysfunction in the way are deep.
If we can get internet from the sky, it's hard to justify digging up the earth with cables for the same thing.
I realize Space X "pollutes" space and astronomy is also important, but it's not more important than communications and information for people on earth.
I disagree, maintaining a giant fleet of satellites is almost certainly more expensive in the long run than just running a lot of cable. Not that cable doesn’t need maintenance but Starlink needs to replace every satellite every five years. And they can’t recycle a thing, they just burn up.
You’re presenting a false choice. It isn’t “Starlink or no internet”, it’s “why not other internet options?”
A v2 Starlink satellite costs $800K and on average 25 are launched at once. Launch cost for a reusable Falcon 9 is $15 million. So that's $1.4 million per satellite to orbit lasting 5 years that's $280K / sat / y, or $2.8 billion / y to maintain a constellation of 10,000. And SpaceX is not known for complacency. The unit cost will continue to drop.
On the other hand there are currently $63 billion (22.5 years of Starlink cost) of rural broadband subsidies active in the US and it hasn't come close to running all that fiber. So $63 billion to not even finish the US vs $2.8b / y to provide service to the entire world. I think it's safe to conclude that the satellite option is in fact much cheaper.
Starlink has 10 MILLION customers. Thats just nothing.
All the investment in Fiber and mobile towers are long lasting investments.
Starlink NEEDS v3 to scale because they already have scaling issues. They need Starship, which doesn't work yet, to work to even send v3 up there.
And while Spacex has some first mover advantage, other companies start doing the same which will eat their margins. Makes it even more complicated to run all of it.
They have to do 300k orbit correction already last year, kessler syndrom can happen which will block access to space for all of us.
We don't even know yet how dangerous the poisoning of our atmosphere will be.
If the entire world used Starlink it would grind to a halt. They’d need to spend exponentially more to have more satellites to provide that necessary bandwidth.
You still need a powerline to your house, sewer and water.
There are plenty of fibers and dark fibers on power pools.
Starlink doesn't 'just' pollute the night sky for EVERY SINGLE HUMAN (8 Billion people) it can also poisen our atmosphere when they re-enter and burn up.
Modern installation is direct bury. There are no trenches, no way to run new cables without new directional drilling. In any already built areas, these projects are constantly hitting gas, water, sewer, cable, electric, and other already buried infrastructure. Maybe (probably) it's still cheaper than launching satellites but it can be quite disruptive.
if the incumbent(s) don't invest in infrastructure (which can actually be cheap) and start losing customers at 3mb to starlink, they can justify the expenditure.
In much of the US, internet companies run a racket. While there are often multiple providers to choose from, if you want reliable service at good speeds, you end up with two, or if you're really lucky, three options. One of those options is Starlink.
Well, it has proven itself to be a very useful military asset in Ukraine.
The rural & underdeveloped area and the niche applications (ex: ships and planes) will bring-in some cash.
And in addition, the US Army will pretty much guaranty it to be in the green: it wants this capability plus some control over it.
If it was civilian only, I doubt the economics would make much sense, specially given the amount of satellites and their short lifespan combined with the overall shrinking market (rural flight to cities + fiber deployment on land).
I have a really good friend who used Starlink for his cottage in Canada and as soon as there was broadband he switched away. Starlink was unreliable and slow compared to what he has now.
In my country today the people who use it the most are in northern cities that don't even have roads going to them.
I live in India and have used 1Gbps Fiber since almost 10 years and pay only 40$ for it. Internet access in India is quite cheap and fiber is quite easily available
Many places have incompetent government that can't/won't build proper infrastructure. For example, the US has allocated around $50B for rural broadband and almost nothing has been built.
1 billion of that rural broadband funds was allocated to SpaceX, but the Biden administration revoked it in 2020. I wonder which has connected more rural Americans
I don't think you have that right; BEAD funds were not originally allowed to be awarded for technologies other than Fiber. No one had been awarded in 2020. Many ISPs had been awarded for Fiber projects by 2025, but under this administration, the NTIA changed the rules so LEO could get the funds and rug pulled the original awardees. States had to start the bidding process over under the new rules. SpaceX took home something like a billion dollars at that point (it pays to make large campaign donations, I guess!). Projects should finally get underway later this fall in most states.
It was a controversy because the program specified were for 2025, but the FCC rescinded in 22' with justification that SpaceX was unlikely to meet the future goal.
This was viewed within the context of the ongoing Biden-Musk fued, which included Tesla exclusion from EV manufacturer meetings and alleged FAA approval slowdowns for SpaceX.
There's many isolated communities abroad that benefit from this coverage. Plus, when I begin my solo sailing adventure, I intend to use Starlink as my primary method to maintain contact, of course with traditional methods serving as backup.
The sailing-around-the-world (and similar) market is obviously miniscule. The isolated communities probably tend to be on the less affluent part of the world, so it doesn't seem to justify a 100x expansion.
We have starlink. It’s better than a lot of ISPs we’ve had. I think of them as the new hughes.net. If you are worse than them, you go out of business.
They can’t remotely repeat with local ISPs now that fiber is being rolled out.
Starlink: I have spent 4-5 days debugging cables because in some ketamine fueled manic episode, elon thought he could do better than RJ-45.
Local ISP: “We’ll be happy to run fiber and new ethernet through your existing network conduits, trench to the curb, and help bodge in active poe ethernet repeaters for runs that are too long.”
Edit: As for satellite light pollution, yeah, that sucks, but it’s something like 0.001% (if that) of the problems we have because Silicon Valley tech campuses stay lit up like Christmas trees all night. (And those are probably dwarfed by porch lights, street lights, etc.).
We’re in one of the darkest spots in the region and can pretty much always walk around without lights at night. Seriously, how bright do you need unoccupied spaces in the cities to be at night?
> Local ISP: “We’ll be happy to run fiber and new ethernet through your existing network conduits, trench to the curb, and help bodge in active poe ethernet repeaters for runs that are too long.”
I live in a major metro with a half a dozen apartments constructed within a block of me while I've lived here and this is very much not the case. I call them, they say they'll be happy too and then they ghost me. Of course I also can't get Starlink.
> I live in a major metro with a half a dozen apartments constructed within a block of me
Good chance Starlink (or any satellite-based internet for that matter) probably won't do well for you either tbh. Too many clients in too tight of an area all fighting for such a small slice of bandwidth and birds overhead.
India really has very deep penetration of 5g, and at very low cost. There might be a rare place that starlink might be needed but really I cannot image starlink having much consumer/retail uptake in india. Not needed, and too expensive. There might be commercial users - offshore rigs etc, but india is too densely populated for there to be many 'truly remote' locations.
India has still not permitted starlink to start ops.
Australian here. We generally have 1st world internet for most towns. The moment you are outside suburbia, speeds are embarrassingly slow. On my own farm, we dont even have power, or city water, and little to no mobile / cellular reception. We are like hundreds of thousands of other people with rural property here. I suspect the same is true in New Zealand, much of South America, Pacific Islands, Indian Ocean Islands, rural Canada, and often times rural USA.
Fiber deployment is bottlenecked by Baumol's Cost Disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect. There's basically no productivity gains being made in how quickly skilled laborers can deploy fiber. Like everything else involving skilled labor, the price keeps going up.
> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
Starlink has a Military arm called Starshield. If strategically important to US military and other militaries who are partners of the USA, that will be many millions/billions.
Recently I flew on a long-distance (so at least a dozen hours of flight time) low-budget airline that had 60 Mbps download/12 Mbps upload and it specifically called out SpaceX Starlink for being able to provide this for free. A video call went smoothly. There was connectivity from takeoff to landing with no interruption in between. This was the best airline experience I've had yet.
I flew Delta about 6 months ago and they had something similar, also for free, but they use Viasat. I think most of the big airlines were moving this way anyway to be honest, Starlink just has a good opportunity for advertising.
Gate to gate (if the plane door is closed) wifi has been a thing for most (all?) of the US airlines for awhile. Delta's wifi is ok, but I routinely have issues. It could be a combination of older technology on the plane and worse satellite network, but it's supposedly nowhere near as good as plane with Starlink.
I also use Starlink at my house in Italy. I'm in a decent sized town, but there is no fiber available. It has worked great, and more importantly took about 10 minutes to setup.
I believe Viasat internet satellites are placed in geostationary orbit, whereas SpaceX Starlink is not, so the service Viasat provides is already blown out.
In Europe, even rural areas tend to be fairly close to cities, whereas in North America, lots of farms are really remote. This map from NASA [0] should give you an idea of how remote some areas can be.
Now, 99% of these areas have electricity from the grid and analogue phone lines, so there's no reason why we couldn't also run fibre out to them, but for political reasons that's fairly unlikely to happen anytime soon.
Right the areas that companies took money to roll out high speed internet to, then just kept the money and called DSL high speed or just did nothing. The government should keep giving companies money and investing in them. It's brilliant.
Exactly. Central Europe is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet outside of Asia. High population density makes fiber more economical, and low population density, the inverse. As other la have pointed out, India actually has very deep fiber penetration exactly for this reason. The Americas, by contrast, are largely devoid of people which makes the economics of any networking infrastructure harder
There are many places, even in the US, where your only alternative is--believe it or not--dial-up modems. Others had painfully slow--1 Mbps up, 5 Mbps down--Internet.
Stop using Telstra then. There’s an abundance of NBN resellers who sell better packages for cheaper than Telstra. At this point Telstra is just for old people who don’t want to change the services they’ve always been with.
If you compare 100/40 plans to starlink, starlink is about 10aud more over the best reseller promotion I can see, but has the occasional promotion; and getting cheaper.
If you are churning plans anyway, and that's the speed you want, you should have starlink in the mix.
I fully expect the NBN wholesale to keep getting more expensive, while I expect satellite providers to get cheaper.
Elon turning off Russian access to Starlink by whitelisting only authorized terminals in the region was a turning point for Ukraine's success. The conflict has proven that modern warfare depends on Starlink and its mimics.
'A new piece of electronic warfare equipment appears more precisely targeted, apparently capable of jamming Starlink terminals on the ground across an area of up to 20 square kilometers.'
The specifics of an implementation of this are objectively absurd. Power requirements alone make this a non-starter. If that weren’t enough, it would be a declaration of war.
Not to mention they are spending an awful lot of money on developing anti-satellite missiles for having a working directed-energy weapon that can do the same.
I'm sure they are experimenting with directed-energy ASAT technology though, because why wouldn't they?
Same. I bought a cabin, which had the equivalent of pretty good DSL. I got starlink and immediately cancelled it when 2gbps fiber arrived 9mo later. Fiber is rolling out faster than a lot of people think.
When a telco provides poor quality service somewhere, people have no choice but to pay them as price takers. When there are options, telcos have to provide better service to win your business. Telcos with monopolies have always been rent-seekers. It happens time and time again that some newcomer comes up, and just the hint of competition gets Verizon/Spectrum/etc to suddenly build new tech and dig some trenches.
^^^ Exactly this. I live in just such an area (one where Cable and DSL providers successfully bribed local officials to get fiber blocked so the two of them could split the city between them). They're both literally the worst Internet service providers I've ever had, but the only two choices besides insanely expensive celphone service providers.
Spectrum here rolled out fiber when other companies did. I'm pretty sure it is because it is the same subsidized last mile fiber and not because they were inspired by competition.
See the reason Google Fiber existed [1]. It wasn't for a product, it was to kick the pants of all the monopolistic broadband providers. Now, you have similar motivation on a global scale.
Starlink was an attempt to grab the rural broadband funding that supported that fiber rollout in the US. It was too slow, so the money went to fiber and traditional ISPs instead. Fiber may well have come faster without starlink.
Subsidies make anything possible. Your grandkids will be paying for that fibre. Starlink is revolutionary for long last-mile links that will never be economic.
I'd agree with the last part of your comment. Because at least India doesn't depend upon Starlink for broadband access. Even in remote regions, now that it has seen first hand what modern economic and tech blockade means (after struggling for decades with older sanctions including related to nuclear tests and thank goodness it did that), it really isn't very keen on Starlink and wants home-grown alternatives (which definitely will take time) and also is now indicating to multiple players that they are welcome (but within limits and regulations).
Musk isn't pushing Starlink for "upside" for the people or your "central EU", or Africa, or India, or the moon (let's just assume for the time being), Musk is hoping to saturate the market and remain the only player or only major player, and Musk wants that perceived dependency as a weapon, as a tool of control. I won't be shocked if Musk later lobbies for "ah, too many satellites up there already.. it'd be dangerous to send more… ". In fact I am counting on that.
> where they have <.1% the money
That's another part where, again, I'd agree with the last part of your comment. That country has so many people that just from one region if enough rich people (and sadly with the great divide there are way too many), if they need it, it will outspend too many countries from Europe single-handedly when it comes to Starlink or satellite Internet access.
Having said that, these things are not this black and white… but I've tried at least one part, or rather a fraction of one part I'd say.
Satellite Internet is one of the best things I'd say but I'd bet my spare kidney that not in the hands of Musk and Musk is trying hard that he/Starlink becomes the almost single player, first mover etc etc.
It works on planes, ships, and in remote areas with no coverage. I live in Canada where the whole of Europe would fit many times over, nothing else would work in the remote areas at that scale. My parents live in Panama and use starlink to get reliable high speed internet at the beach. Even when the power goes out, their solar panels keep the internet online.
We have a smaller number of ISPs due to the cost of submarine cables, and ISP prices were high due to profit-seeking. After Starlink came, the incumbent ISPs started to offer unlimited packages for the first time.
Also, Starlink is good as a backup connection for rural areas too.
Eeh even ther its a stretch , when people talk about Africa - they should really specify where exactly. PLaces like SouthAfrica [1] already have a robust Fiber network with accelerated buildout of FTTH. Ditto for most of Eastern Africa countries which have FTTH to most of the major cities and subururbs with accelerated buildouts ongoing.
Unless its a conflict area most regions are getting wired up pretty fast to enhancce business connectivity - the speeds and bandwith for starlink make noe economic sense once a developing pop are factored in.The only major push for many countries approvals is basically strong armed and shaken down by the US admin on behalf of Musk[2].
I feel like no-earth orbit is always going to beat out low-earth orbit in the long-term. I live an area that the USDA classifies as rural and I now have multiple fiber options, including municipal. This isn't to say that Starlink doesn't have its place and I only see it becoming more niche over time and facing more competition in the LEO segment.
I live in what is probably the first place to get these things in the world, but it feels like fiber is being built at an extremely rapid pace. Just in the past couple of years it seems like Google and AT&T fiber went from being a relatively confined thing to being available everywhere in the city, and everywhere outside, and at my friend's ranch 100 miles in the middle of nowhere. Everywhere.
Given that fiber's been around for literal decades, though, and the Internet hasn't recently gotten more popular or anything, why would this suddenly have changed? I could believe what people are saying re. Starlink providing competition and finally incentivizing fiber buildouts
Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.
Having lived in Central America, imagine all the workers that are laying the internet cables going back at night and digging them up to sell. A government that, 50% of the time, won't actually build anything when given the funding, and usually can't get the funding anyways. Plus, in some parts, weather can result in internet going out and, given the government, staying out for quite a while.
It's a fair point that those in poorer places will have less money, but for instance, Mexico's Starlink pricing is pretty standard, it's like 50-100 EUR per month. They pay it anyways because they need it, and because it's the best option.
Starlink is a great decentralization for anyone living under corrupt dysfunctional governments, where they can't rely on that centralized system.
Who digs up fibres to sell? It's worthless material. Copper yes but nobody lays that anymore. If it even has to be metal it's usually mostly aluminium.
You'd be amazed at how unintelligent about things tweakers are. They don't know it is fibre when they are taking it. It doesn't keep all of the users on the other end of those lines from losing signal.
>Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.
Except there's rich parts like Germany or Austria where internet infra is poorly run due to monopolistic telco capture and regulations keeping infra upgrades costs high, and so have slower and more expensive internet than Starlink in some areas. Poorer nations of EU often have faster internet than the richer ones so poverty is not a reason.
So Starlink is definitely still relevant. I've seen several small/medium businesses here in Austria that have a starlink terminal as a backup.
Yes and just to add, the infra itself is pretty cheap. The cost comes from the labor and regulatory complexity. Budapest for instance has dirt cheap fibre just about everywhere.
I have a good friend who relies upon Starlink for connectivity for his home in southeastern Ohio (USA).
We've worked through all of the other alternatives there, including using cellular modems with directional antennas mounted up high on a mast pipe and multi-carrier aggregation tricks like Speedify. There is no local WISP serving the area, no fiber, no coax for DOCSIS, and xDSL is either a bad joke, basically basically abandoned, or both in much of the US in 2026.
So far, Starlink is the win.
(I'm pleased to hear that things are better than that for you in your neck of the woods.)
There's a market for it, think internet on vacation, on ships, trains, planes, and underdeveloped / remote areas (some of which skipped wired internet entirely and just have 3/4/5G).
But you're also showing a lot of bias and ignorance towards Africa and India and their financial means.
I think in most markets the advantage SpaceX has is it isn't paying huge fees for Spectrum, the frequencies it owns were very cheap. Eg in the USA I think the providers spent nearly $100 Billion on spectrum where SpaceX can compete without that cost.
Starlink is a problem that solves itself. If enough fiber rolls out that there's no more customers, they'll scale back satellites (since they only last 3-5 years).
> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India
Many in Canada have no broadband options. My gf has this because otherwise, no internet access. Even cellphone reception is spotty where she is in rural Canada.
There's a lot of places without fiber, e.g. all the ships/jets etc. there's a lot of low-density areas, there's islands with no internet or VERY expensive internet
Ships and jets are different segments from residential. Planes are definitely a textbook use case for satellite internet, but just like airlines are in a race-to-the-bottom for everything from in-flight snacks to legroom, they're not going to spring for premier high-quality internet service, they're just going to scrape by with the bare minimum. The market potential is not spectacularly impressive. Meanwhile, for residential services, rural areas continue to shrink, the people remaining in rural areas tend to be poorer, and the rural areas where rich people live have fiber, because the rich people can pay for it. Satellite internet will remain a crucial service for certain rural populations, but it's not going to take over the world, and it's not going to justify an order of magnitude more launches. Let's stop beating around the bush: the bull case for both Starlink and SpaceX is that the US military sees them as indispensible military assets, the former for global logistics, and the latter for the rapid weaponization of space.
I wouldn't be surprised if the EU and ISPs are funding fibre to remote locations _because_ of Starlink competition.
Taxis and minicabs all over the world were unreliable, expensive, and unsafe before Uber came along with some healthy competition. The same dynamic is happening here between Starlink and rural fibre.
From a purely utilitarian standpoint, direct to cell feels like a good thing to me. Large swathes of Scotland don't even have sufficient mobile connection to send a text message (some people will tell you that's a good thing, but I'm not one of them).
I agree with that, but it's great for a greenfield project/area. Say, Mars or very high and low latitudes, or ships/airplanes.
However, once you are in an area of "civilization," there is not only an opportunity for fiber, but also maybe the locals don't want a foreign power controlling your citizens' data access. India + China = 35% of the global population, and Starlink is not legal in either place.
Meanwhile, the free speech absolutist is focused on breaking up the ~5.4% of the globe, (EU) where Starlink is legal.
Yes, but those are different reasons. Eventually we'll have many different providers offering LEO internet. Competition is the best way to solve this. The benefits of LEO internet is obvious.
No, I disagree, maybe. The terrestrial Internet was literally designed to route around a nuclear war. That was its initial purpose, was it not?
Starlink needs ground stations, which are visible from orbit, and can be Shaheded... unless every Starlink terminal can also become a down-link.. which would be cool. However, then it all still relies on terrestrial fiber, right? Or, then that would be a Starlink-only WAN?
I don't want to call out a specific HN'er, but he is an HN hero. Years ago, in person, he told me he was bored. I tried to convince him to work for Starlink in Redmond, as what could be cooler than working on an entire new satellite laser-based Internet 2 backbone?! This was back when GMaps labeled that office "A Place of Worship."
I failed at that, because he probably saw that the entire concept was questionable. My point here is that this is all very complicated, and while Starlink is the coolest tech in my lifetime, it still relies on terrestrial fiber in the end.
Please, help me work through this. I am likely very confused.
Starlink can now jump the connections satellite to satellite, and curve them around the planet. You need to knock out not just the nearest ground station but also the stations the traffic can be rerouted to for the constellation to be meaningfully degraded. Stations that are spread across multiple countries and continents.
In which case, yes, SpaceX can also spin up new makeshift ground stations using off the shelf user terminals.
The current ground stations use specialized transceivers, but that's an efficiency improvement, not a fundamental limitation.
> I failed at that, because he probably saw that the entire concept was questionable.
There's a lesson there: if you think you understand a bleeding edge emerging technology better than Musk does, think again. Think for a long time - maximum reasoning effort.
It's not impossible that you truly are, but it is unlikely.
Internet routing around nuclear war not because it's cable but it's because it's an inter connected network (ie "internet"). Meaning there's multiple routes to the same destination.
People who live out in rural areas. Think farmers, or just people who love living out on their own lands, common enough in the US. I have a friend who lives off Starlink internet, it would cost way too much to get internet all the way to his property, not really worth it.
Though all these satellites might give fixed-location folks higher bandwidth, they could also service many more concurrent mobile customers. Connectivity would probably be better too because more satellites would be in view.
Also, don't underestimate the benefit of robust competition, even if you don't use starlink.
It might come down with more satellites and more breaking up service into different levels.
Imagine a cheap emergency-text-message level of service (like apple has, or maybe the garmin inreach type service). Then a compete-with-cellular cheap version for limited cellular service. Then a car service (premium-connectivity+satellite). then on up to residential broadband.
also, with more satellites might come the ability to talk to each other laterally, more load balancing and fewer ground stations. might be drive prices down.
More satellites increases the cost, not the reach, and so, not the customer base. I've worked in internet for 20+ years. The problem with "cheap emergency-text-message level of service" is not that it's not possible. It already exists (really Iridium offers that with a tiny modem that plugs into your cell phone). It's like observing that doing internet for your village or neighborhood is pretty easy and cheap, especially with cooperation from city hall, which is often a possibility. It's easy to beat incumbent telcos locally at internet services.
The argument incumbents make is that once that happens, the government will be responsible, first for paying for the entirety of telecom infrastructure outside of well-populated areas. Second governments need infrastructure wherever there is a border, or even the tiniest of villages, and getting dsl service in a border post will often mean paying for 100km of cable laying (or at the very least microwave towers).
And so governments make these services impossible at any scale through legislation. So either SpaceX pushes these through with "help" from Trump, or this doesn't happen.
There is a reason everybody RAN out of the global satellite data business in 2010 (and government bail outs mean that those people are still in business at $0 valuation). Satellite launches do not pay for the income that the market can provide. Then you calculate with Elon's numbers and well, frankly you get the usual outcome with Elon. "Yes, you improved the economics ... but not to the point of profitability, can you do another factor of about 2? No? Sorry then". And, yes, I realize that the problem with that factor of 2 is that it's not physically possible (technically SpaceX could get another 30% or so cost reduction with an RDE engine). That is why SpaceX owns Starlink. It's value is negative (meaning it would be stuck running a loss without access to SpaceX investors)
I live in the suburbs in the bay area in California, and starlink offers a significantly better quality of service than charter spectrum cable service, which is my only other option. Considering the current state of our government, I don't see things improving anytime soon.
They aren't, at least not yet. It's more a reflection of how bad internet service is in places you wouldn't think it would be, at least here in the states. My as-advertised gigabit cable service slows to an utter crawl around Netflix O'Clock, And multi-hour+ outages are a regular occurrence.
Regarding latency, starlink satellites are low enough that it just isn't an issue.
I had a hilarious interaction with a Spectrum technician when I was dealing with an oversubscribed node with my home service (same issue you're describing here).
He was a line tech and was fully aware that my slowness wasn't related to the line, and as he replaced all the lines to my house he enthusiastically recommended that I report the company to the FTC and demand a refund for the service degradation which wasn't meeting their advertised speeds. He actually gave me great advice for getting my case escalated and I was refunded for several months on my service.
They eventually got the node upgraded (I was once struggling to get 60Mbps down on the same line I'm getting >1G on today), and they're upgrading everything to DOCSIS 4.0 currently. I'm not trying to sell you on them, just saying they'll likely work their problems out in the long run. Fundamentally, coax line connection's floor is Starlink's ceiling as long as the nodes are able to keep up.
Here in Alaska it’s literally better than the cable internet (except apparently for gaming but I don’t really game), and $10/mo cheaper for a starlink roam.
At where we are building our cabin, it’s infinitely cheaper than the alternatives lol.
One place where fiber cables cannot reach would be... way up in the air. Think about how many people fly each day and then remember how poor internet connectivity and speeds are at 40,000 ft.
I live in a major Indian city and 1 gig fiber up and down is $30. We've also got really good 4G/5G in most places. Also in the super remote areas WiMAX is (still) an option.
I am also in rural EU and have 1 house that has fiber, and another, 10 minute drive away has nothing, not even cell signal and it won't get anything any time soon. Starlink is basically the only option.
I suppose one real upside is that in very regulated areas with only one operator this gives them some baseline regarding service that they actually need to beat.
Here in rural USA, we were paying $150 for very slow DSL, and now we're paying about $50 for quite fast Starlink.
In Asia I was paying $50 for very fast fiber, but that was in a major city; out at the farm you're on the mobile networks. So if I build a house out there and can do Starlink, I will do it.
Plus, there's the whole Starlink Roam thing: in California this summer, I see more and more vans with the little Starlink rectangle on top. "Work from Campsite" is pretty compelling, honestly.
I live in an area of the US where the only alternatives are 3.5 megabit DSL which stops working when it rains or Hughesnet, so basically no real competition at all.
They seem to be expanding even across rural America. These days it's fairly common for small and medium size towns to have access to 500mbps-1gbps for $50-$90 per month, and essentially all small cities and above.
Reddit is overflowing with threads where people are getting AT&T to give them 1gbps for $30-$35 per month. Comcast has repeatedly offered me 1gbps for ~$50/m for five years locked-in. I have no practical use for it.
The US has more broadband than it knows what to do with at this point. Somebody needs to figure out a mass public use for home 1gbps+.
It is far from complete but yeah I got co-op 1 gig fiber in my rural 56k only area like 2-3 years ago. Some places nearby still don't have it but expansion is ongoing. Some select areas are starting to offer 2 gig but im unsure what most users would use it for.
India has one of the fastest and cheapest internet in the world. In fact you can get an extremely fast download atop Himalayan mountains in comparison to remote USA
It's closer to only 10% the money to spend on such things, and that gap is closing rapidly. The poorest African countries these days still have a GDP in the low thousands per capita, and poorish central Europe trends to have low tens of thousands per capita. I could see 5 families in rural west Africa or something deciding to pool their funds to get one shared Starlink connection if they didn't have cheaper internet available some other way.
Moreover the utility of internet connection faces an extreme amount of diminishing returns - hear me out on this. You can very easily download an entire plaintext book on a subject you need to study up on in a few seconds with even a 100 Kbps connection, from any where and for any reason, and that's immensely valuable if previously you didn't have access to it before. You can't stream YouTube on it, but a YouTube instructional victory makes whatever you're doing merely easier, not possible.
WhatsApp and text messages, as well. It's very cheap to send a couple bytes back and forth to coordinate eg local market prices in fish, and so if you and a couple buddies team up to get one starlink connection you can very quickly tear the volatility of your local first market prices to shreds. I'm extrapolating from an earlier study that found just such an effect after cell phones were introduced to rural areas.
I guess my overall point is don't rule out the transformative effects that a few very reliable low bandwidth connections can have on an area. If the Romans discovered AM radio (possible given their late tech) we'd probably all still be speaking Latin, even though they couldn't play Fortnite.
Not all of us live in places with EU funding. I worked at a rural farm in California and the EU refused to fund our network infrastructure. We had few reliable options, and Starlink turned out to be the best.
It's less about India and more about Usanai where urban sprawl is all the rage which makes wiring it impossible… and capitalist-driven-development doesn't help.
This was always the sour economics of satellite internet.
Satellite internet works for a low density of customers spread evenly across the globe. But customers are not spread evenly they mostly live in megalopolist regions that can be served more efficiently with land infrastructure.
Worse most of the people not in the megalopolists have less money to spend on internet services.
So your customer base are limited to people who aren't already served by better/cheaper terrestrial internet, but who can pay for better internet.
Those people exist but the history of satellite internet service hasn't been a massive money printer. Most providers have struggled to stay solvent let alone produce great returns for shareholders.
Paul Allen wanted to build a megaconstellation back in the 1990s but then Iridium went bankrupt twice.
Iridium ended up being rescued by the US military. I wonder if this is ultimately SpaceX's plan.
And the satellite internet business has been a dog since forever.
Even starlink only makes sense if you ignore the absolutely immense capital investment in it. And they're probably hiding losses in the launch division considering it's losing money despite 80% of its business being launching starlink satellites (they blame starship but that was supposed to be funded by NASA).
> > And the satellite internet business has been a dog since forever.
So is the nuclear reactor business but at least with that you gain independence from Iran whereas the satellite dog business gives you independence from the tyrant T-mobile or Verizon...
Yes, boondoggle subsidies allow you to un-economically bring fiber to a subset of random places. I say this as the beneficiary of one such boondoggle. It doesn't scale well
I have a friend who does not live that remote in Australia and his choice is either "satellite" internet or starlink.
It's not even a choice because "skymuster" (the satellite option) can't even be considered internet. I remember him taking about getting 7 seconds of latency at one point. It's actually impressive how terrible it is.
India? LOL, India has internet connectivity of scale the kind most other countries couldn't dream of. Though most of it, sadly, is IPV4 and concentrated in oligopolies (which for now are still "generous" enough to give us 5G for cheap).
I suspect what is going on is just a matter of relative density. I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "central EU," but just guessing from a map I get Romania as the least population dense country that I would think of as Central Europe at 83 / km3. That is more than double the US pop density and if it were a US state only 15 out of 50 would be more dense. So then taking the least population dense region of the least dense country I get Tulcea with 23 / km3. That's 66% of the density of the US (37) which would come in at 34 / 50 if it were a US state.
So the most sparsely populated region of the most sparsely populated country in Central Europe is just a bit below average for the US. Our least dense state is Alaska at 0.5 / km3 or almost 50x less dense than that. But that's almost cheating. So lets take mainland only and that's Wyoming, with 2.3, so 10x less densely populated than the outlier in Central Europe.
So basically the US is just really damn empty to the point there just isn't any comparison in Central Europe and that's why it's so hard to get internet access out there.
My parents live in New York State, 8 miles from the main east-west transportation and data corridor. They still have no high speed wired internet options. No fiber, no cable, no DSL, and dialup ISP has been retired long ago. Their only option is satellite. This is in 4th most populous state in the US, and #1 highest GDP/capita. Internet across the United States does not have the penetration many think, the US is vast.
I live not to far from NYC and I think it’s fantastic. Comcast was charging me 75 a month and Starlink charges me 40 for the same service which is generally excellent
You are in a dense population. A large chunk of the world (and many people even in the US) are in low density environments where fiber rollouts are too expensive.
You’d be surprised how poor broadband Internet coverage is outside of major metropolitan areas in the United States. Some places are simply off-grid, or have to rely on dial up. All you have to do is drive an hour out and there’s no more Internet.
the next generation of satellites base stations that are currently going up remove the need for base stations
you’ll have similar throughout and latency direct to your phone
but since this dream has been mired by delays, the starlink base station is still convenient
lots of people that would otherwise be stationary for reliable internet can go on the road
week long festival campsites have lots of people who aren’t taking any PTO that connect to their teams during the day time, while everyone else has nonexistent cellular service solely due to the overloaded networks
I would wager that most don’t unsubscribe to starlink in between time they just increase their mobility since its suddenly practical
speaking of PTO, if they are accumulating it but now travelling and never using it then its functionally a raise, all because they keep a starlink subscription
You’re not dumb. It has come up in extremely sophisticated valuations of SpaceX pre-IPO, if I recall off the top of my head, the only business that actually had any value, StarLink, assumes an irrational TAM.
It's not but it's all so tiresome to explain why. Also, those (hypothetical) towers have no ROI because they only serve poor people. Starlink covers the entire world so parts of the world can subsidize service to other parts.
I understand why it's good and necessary for the rural areas to have Starlink. I don't understand the big profit opportunity for Starlink in serving them.
I just finished a long RV trip and I can tell you it's hard to underestimate the importance of internet access (which also means Wi-Fi calling and access to maps and weather) across our entire, enormous nation.
It's important not only for individuals but even more for businesses. Despite cell phone company ads with handsome celebrities in the desert, cell phones actually do not work in many places. But people do need to live and work in those places.
Hardly, and not by a factor of ten - at best it allows for digital mapping and (unreliably) replaces an ePirb.
What it does do, for sure, is encourage people with no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring to have a go and die through lack of prior experience and skills.
Similar things happen in hiking, people who shouldn't be there get encouraged by by how accessible information is to do things whereas before (most) people got info from someone knowledgeable.
Can you source a citation referring to people that had "no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring", and were thus "encouraged" to " go and die through lack of prior experience and skills" via Starlink?
Whether you like it or not, Starlink being an easily-accesible internet service has likely saved dozens of noobs from certain death by offering emergency eSIM services, GPS navigation, or communciation systems that they wouldn't otherwise have. Can I prove it objectively? Likely not (outside of forum anecdotes), but I wasn't the first to make a claim with the burden to do so.
> Can you source a citation referring to people that had "no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring"
Sure - West Australian newspaper pretty much any week of the year - tourists come from all over the globe to visit the vast untamed outback, rent a 4x4, head out, and get into life threatening (sometimes life ending) trouble despite having a phone connection via either mobile towers or starlink. You know, no charge, no backup, no paper maps, no experience, etc.
Whether you like it or not, ePiRBs being an easily accesible service has actually saved dozens of noobs and experienced personal from certain death by offering emergency service alerting - Fact! (and no internet required)
No, I don't like it. Because it relies on someone getting a specialized piece of hardware in advance of an emergency. That's a silly notion.
You could do that, or you could do the 21st century thing, and put up enough satellites to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country. Compatible with any smartphone.
> it relies on someone getting a specialized piece of hardware in advance of an emergency.
Like Starlink? Glad we agree.
> to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country.
Literally does not stop people dying and is not a substitute for knowing what you're doing in remote areas.
The claim was:
For all its minuses the internet makes these long trips 10x easier.
which is false - at best it's a 5% improvement on what was required as prep for long remote trips before Starlink.
A big issue with yelling help! from a remote location rather than having the skill set to self rescue is that now third parties (rescuers) are putting themselves at risk and using their time and resources which may or may not be reimbursed.
In a perfect world, everyone is perfectly knowledgeable and prepared for any eventuality and nothing bad and unexpected ever happens at all.
May I remind you what world are we living in?
Denying emergency comms to people who didn't buy specialized hardware because "they should have prepared better" sounds like social darwinism to me.
Especially in an age when everyone has in their pocket a smartphone that's crammed full of advanced RF tech. Starlink has Direct to Cell on new sats, iPhones can use GEO satcom - what's your excuse?
So, you want to save people, but you also want people who were not "prepared for remote areas" to just die somewhere, out of contact and out of your sight, and you also want to bitch about how stupid and unprepared they were?
Yes and people lived without internet. You should be one of those.
What an argument.
Internet access is good.
You can call your relatives and check in. That has been huge. My relatives traveled the US in the 80s and could call home maybe once a week? Month? Now intl calls are free.
You don't need to check everything everyime like social media apps brainrot.
Many, many businesses do, including ones we all like such as power and water and firemen, etc. Th thrust of my comment was about business and public infrastructure as a social good.
The star link network is actually remarkably cost effective in getting internet access to rural areas. There's a reason that these areas still have poor connectivity: it's just not cost effective for anyone to build land based infrastructure there.
SpaceX spend a few billions on StarLink. But if you look at how much network operators have spent over the years on cables, base stations, etc. it's not all that much for a network that offers high bandwidth access all over the planet.
Adding 100K more satellites is going to make Star Link a direct competitor to many of these operators.
It occurred to me after reading the original story that if space based internet gets fast enough, we'll stop using any other kind for most purposes. That means, as a platform, SpaceX could carry a significant amount of the entire world's internet traffic. No wonder Elon is interested.
But the long tail isn't served. The reality of your statement turns out to be that, if there aren't enough customers to justify an expensive tower or wire, no service will be provided at all.
Because Indonesia has a massive population, far more people than the US and much more densly populated. It's internet users are vastly mobile as opposed to desktop or LAN connections. The US geographic landscape and computer use landscape are entirely different.
Indonesia has less people, ~280 vs ~340 million for the US.
> much more densly populated.
Technically true, but as I said in my comment I'm talking about remote/small islands, closer to Flores/Papua to the east, not Jawa where the overwhelming majority (as in, literally more than half the country) of the population lives. Jawa alone has ~145 million people, Sumatra around 60 and Sulawesi around 20, the rest are spread out all over the country and the densities are much smaller, not to mention that those smaller regions have much fewer resources available to them to begin with.
> It's internet users are vastly mobile as opposed to desktop or LAN connections.
The comment I was replying to was talking about companies/the gov't being reluctant to erect cell towers though? So I don't see the relevancy here, I was saying that even tiny, sparsely populated islands in some of the poorest regions of Indonesia have cell tower coverage, and with those towers, decent internet.
> The US geographic landscape and computer use landscape are entirely different.
Arguably it's infinitely easier to erect infrastructure when you're not an archipelago. Plus, the US is the richest country on earth, I'm sure you guys can figure out how to string along fiber even in the most rural of areas, you've somehow managed to do it across the atlantic ocean after all.
It has everything to do with the lack of competition. US tax payers paid $4 billion to AT&T in 2004 for fiber to -every- home. And that was never delivered, yet they keep getting more money. This is regulatory capture.
I can give an example. My parents live in the UK, and their house was built in 1985. A couple of years ago the copper phone line had to be replaced as it had degraded somebow. The operator had to dig up and reinstall their driveway, brick pathway and garden. Now the operator is installing fibre to replace copper phone lines, so again they need to dig it up.
One days work for one house. Multiply that across an entire nation, and work out how much diesel is burned for that. Where they live you can't get cable (not very common in the UK), but if it was available I guess there would have been another digging day in the 90s.
If your trip to desert is worth polluting whole low orbit and high atmosphere is debatable. Same goes for hypothetical business there. Maybe building towers would be a better idea in long term.
A couple of billion people are doing to join the global middle class over the coming decades. They don’t have pre-existing cable and phone networks that have been in the ground for 50+ years they can incrementally upgrade to broadband. Rich countries spend trillions getting to the point where most people have some sort of wired broadband option. If newly middle income countries want to pursue the same route, it will take decades.
Starlink short circuits that process. It means newly minted middle income people my dad’s village in Bangladesh can get broadband now instead of in 2050. Replicate that story all over South and South East Asia and Africa.
but is providing access to internet for billions of people worth not being able to see the big dipper as clearly at night? I say yes, but only just barely
What percentage of humans are urban dwelling and don’t even see the stars at night? Related there aren’t many places on earth where you can still see the Milky Way. In that way a similar trade off has been made with no forethought whatsoever. Should this time be different? I think so.
Rather than deciding for them from your bubble of privilege in your fiber-connected utopia, you could just ask these poorer countries if it is worth trading global full, high-speed internet access for "not being able to see the big dipper as clearly at night".
Or just watch what they do when presented with the choice.
That you would think to ask this shows how out of touch you are.
The vast majority of people wouldn't think twice if that was the trade-off to get connected.
We should be talking instead of governmental oversight, and whether it makes sense to restrict/regulate satellite constellations for science or culture activities.
I think there should be regulation, but clearly the people and the market wants this, so it's going to happen.
And there is regulation. SpaceX works with astronomers and their satellites are coated to reduce glare and use of sun visors for example.
The limitations on the current T-Satellite service have a lot to do with the spectrum being shared with terrestrial towers and the low number of satellites.
The new constellation will be physically closer, with much larger antennas and a much larger number of satellites with a much higher capacity per satellite. It will also use dedicated spectrum with no terrestrial interference. Coverage and speed will be improved tremendously.
You’re still limited to the transmission and receive capabilities of mobile devices which already struggle with current cell networks. I’m
Not arguing it won’t be nice for people truly remote, but people keep acting like this will replace cell towers, which it won’t.
The limitations of mobile devices are mostly due to regulation (power limits and spectrum allocation and other requirements) and not inherent to the technology of handheld devices. And despite this, you can increase performance almost arbitrarily if you are able to increase the size and power and number of the antennas on the other side.
Yes, the Gen3 Starlink Direct-to-Cell constellation won't replace cell towers in urban or suburban areas. But I believe it could replace them in rural areas.
Did I say that? I’m being realistic and not drinking the Elon koolaid. I think starlink is great and it’s hugely improved life for a lot of people and made remote work a lot nicer.
Do we really need that? Most of us are fine with relays. The coverage in remote parts could be handled by way fewer sattelites. 100k is a lot of sattelites. Seems that with 100k leo we’d have 24/7 live coverage of every inch on earth but do we really want that?
> we’d have 24/7 live coverage of every inch on earth but do we really want that?
I think you misunderstand the maths a bit. If the goal is high bandwidth, which requires high density, for specific, randomly distributed, parts of the earth, then, by the fundamental laws of gravity and orbits, you'll also have coverage over the rest of it, whether you like it or not.
Just coverage is already provided by the 600-something direct to cell satellites already in orbit yes, but you need more if you want it to be useful beyond loading text-only posts or sending SMS
It also creates a private internet on which “private enterprise” does not have to abide by the Constitution or any subordinate laws.
Sure, it’s just “fear mongering” now, just like digital ID, digital currency, mass surveillance, and speech police were 30 or so years ago, but what happens when terrestrial cable internet gets too expensive and everyone’s subject to Elon’s space internet?
It’s basically the similar playbook as the cable/copper phone network giving way to the internet and wireless and … whoopsie … you also have a tracking and permanent surveillance device on you with no ability to keep thousands of corporations harvesting your body for data and information.
This would allow you to throw a flock camera up literally anywhere on earth. If we are being honest, we are probably only a couple years out from real Orwellian mass surveillance states, totally censored and mined communications, and general purpose compute restricted or made illegal I wouldn't even be surprised. All the incentives lead right to that and we are halfway there in many ways already.
I hate to break it to you, you are already in an "Orwellian mass surveillance state" and just don't realize it, just as the majority of people in the Orwellian mass surveillance state also were not aware of.
Case in point, are you aware that the whole 2+2=5 line was a deliberate falsification of a perfectly sound and even healthy statement that Orwell stole and perverted, i.e., 2 + 2 + the people's enthusiasm = 5 ???
Then, when you start finding out that the CIA, at the same time that it was conducting its MKUltra "experiments", was aggressively buying up all the rights to 1984 and then pushed them into schools and made the movies in close collaboration with Propagandawood; you have to at least start asking yourself extremely uncomfortable questions about whether 1984 was actually a warning or preconditioning, aka grooming.
The CIA did help fund some movies of 1984 to make them more anti-totalitarian and anti-Soviet, but that's not the same thing as them buying up all the rights to it.
There are already zero private companies that have to follow the constitution, since it never applied to them, ever.
As another person mentioned, radio crosses international boundaries, but it is regulated by regulating ground equipment and people and organizations on the ground. You'll see some countries on https://starlink.com/map that are greyed out because of regulatory issues... for example, some countries such as India heavily control the use of satellite comms
Do ISPs have to comply with the 1st ammendment? My understanding was that they have some sort of common carrier law but net neutrality did not hold up.
You have a very peasant perspective. And that's not meant as an insult, it's just the kind of perspective of a peasant about what is going on in the kingdom, let alone in the palace's inner chambers.
Do you think Starlink is somehow extraterritorial or something? They're no more or no less a "private internet" than any other ISP. People need to get a reality check. Hacker news is becoming one of the most luddite places on the internet.
At what point are people going to have a conversation about all the pollution and the consequences of so many satellites burning up (metals and other toxic stuff) in the atmosphere and fragments falling wherever.
100k... how much can we keep putting up and let keep falling around the world? Multiple other companies and countries want to do the same as SpaceX.
The thing that's also not grasped is because of the low earth orbit nature of these satellites they eventually succumb to drag and only have a useful lifespan of ~5 years. Using that and 100,000 satellites that means the constellation will take ~54 satellites/day to maintain, they're also quoted as being 2 tons which about the weight of a Sedan/SUV. Reframing it it's like if Comcast had to crash 54 supercars into a brick wall everyday to keep their infrastructure up and all that material also got dispersed throughout the atmosphere. SpaceX is already making/launching ~10 satellites a day and metaphorically crashing them into a brick wall, the wall is just ~5 years away.
Humans have been around for a long time but also don't live very long, but to sustain this internet infrastructure for an average person's lifespan it'd take ~16 replacement cycles. In terms of human civilization timescales this infrastructure cant/won't be sustainable for very long. Personal opinion but I think we should figure out how to run network cables to remote places better, we managed to do it with gas and electricity.
100k satellites is kind of insane, why not a smaller number of satellites which are more powerful, like the satellites from AST Spacemobile? It should be possible to launch smaller number of satellites without sacrificing progress
No. I'm saying that if the population is set to fall, we can crank resource spend per person all the way up, and enable growth that way. With a little side benefit of QoL improvements.
Which requires a massive jump in labor productivity, mind. But if the optimistic takes on AI are right, such a thing is not impossible.
I may have blown the math, but the last time I calculated I figured there were about 35 Starlink satellites above the horizon at my latitude. Looking into the suburban early night sky I see zero, one, or two satellites with about equal probability.
I think the hypothesis this leads to is that the "don't shine" techniques Starlink is using are working. I'm guessing the ones I see are either not Starlink or are Starlinks transitioning to their working orbit (they don't do full "dark mode" until they are in place.) If in place units shown I'd see a lot more.
So at least, maybe it won't all be gloom and doom. But if it is all gloom, at least it will have little sparkles floating around it.
30 yard wide solar array from 300 miles away. There's a brief period of the day where they're visible but hardly a risk of making a dent in your view of the sky especially compared to ordinary terrestrial light pollution.
I'm in a heavily light polluted city (Phoenix) and even with all the air and light pollution, can still see satellites every moment past 2AM to the east. At least this time of year.
They don't stop you from seeing the stars, but I find them very distracting. Makes the experience of looking up at the stars on a quiet night less peaceful, I find.
Sucks for regular astronomy then, where long exposures are the norm.
Equally sucks for radio astronomy where the bloody things leak into spectrums they (Starlink) pinky promised to keep clean. And successive generations have worsened the problem, again despite promises to improve.
Sucks being out bush stargazing and then seeing a massive constellation to remind you of Musk's wealth and influence. It's no longer possible to totally escape visual reminders of civilisation
Observations with the LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) radio telescope last year showed that first generation Starlink satellites emit unintended radio waves that can hinder astronomical observations. New observations with the LOFAR radio telescope, the biggest radio telescope on Earth observing at low frequencies, have shown that the second generation ’V2-mini’ Starlink satellites emit up to 32 times brighter unintended radio waves than satellites from the previous generation, potentially blinding radio telescopes and crippling vital research of the Universe.
Still, at least they are talking about maybe doing something. Eventually. Perhaps.
"It is important to note that Starlink is not violating current regulations, so is doing nothing wrong. Discussions we have had with SpaceX on the topic have been constructive," said Tingay. "We hope this study adds support for international efforts to update policies that regulate the impact of this technology on radio astronomy research that are currently underway."
Sounds like not transmitting but just electronics existing in space.
This is directly the opposite of the implication of using Ku/Ka bands they shouldn’t have (which is what the agreements were with astronomy groups - aka “pinky promise”).
Starlink is leaking into radio astronomy bands, they initially said there wouldn't be a problem, but there was. They've later stated it would addressed in Gen-2 - it got worse.
> Starlink is not violating current regulations, so is doing nothing wrong.
Might be time to make global regulations on spectrum usage in space? That could take a while.
There are many past examples of companies "not violating current regulations" despite leaking toxins and other now recognised violations of the commons.
> Starlink is leaking into radio astronomy bands, they initially said there wouldn't be a problem, but there was.
Again, these are two different things and conflating them is not productive. The initial discussion with Starlink and the astronomy community that I followed closely was explicitly about conflicts on the service frequencies (i.e. the thing unique to Starlink). They were cooperative with that.
Now it turns out electronics in space emit EM noise and that is the thing showing up in astronomy and it has nothing to do with the RF internet side. Non-Starlink satellites emit it as well but the sheer volume of starlink sats makes it easier to detect theirs.
The distinction matters because the same thing will happen with any constellation regardless of its purpose if it has onboard computers, batteries, solar arrays, etc.
I’m for passing regulations on this emissivity, but the framing that this is some kind of rug pull by spacex is dumb. They could have participated in the community the legally required amount like the Chinese do and we’d be in a much worse position.
I'm not confident after all government investigations and lawsuits against Elon and his companies were dropped when Elon illegally accessed government systems, illegally took government data, illegally terminated government employees, and illegally eliminated government departments and programs while creating billions in expenses while pretending his intention was to help anyone but himself.
Then just wait until the next administration. If they are building with technology that relies on the FCC being gutted, they will be in for a world of hurt when that changes.
It will be the first generation with widespread space travel. My children will have consumer access to a view that no one had seen until 1961 and only government employees had seen since.
If you all are so sad about it do something about it.
Like travel less, spend less on technology
You're part of the problem. It's not just you but it is you too.
So what I will tell my grandchildren is "The old
Geezer Americans are fucking losers who fucked you over before you were born. You don't owe them any respect."
I have seen both stars and satellites from suburbs and some urban areas. They are not very remote. There is a lot to see if you look. I do not like the light pollution but as it stands it is not the end of star gazing.
I think when it comes to watching the night sky, weighing to populated areas isn't necessarily right. It's not like you should value rural folks' view of the night sky less.
Paraphrasing (strawmanning?) the original - it doesn't matter if StarLink has ruined the night sky if city dwellers can't see the it. Well, I believe it still matters a lot. And we're still talking about nearly 1/2 the world population here.
You forgot about the radio spectrum pollution which affects the night and day sky right now .. and for the foreseeable future given the lack of progress in addressing that leakage.
My mom lived with overpriced, underdeveloped, unreliable, and slow internet for years. Now she pays less for fast, reliable, sometimes improving bandwidth that doesn't go down for weeks after a storm. Progress is often gross, but it can be a lifesaver.
One cool thing about Starlink is that it can potentially improve latency across the world. In optical fibers the light travels only two thirds as fast due to the index of refraction. But in space you can use a laser to send the data in a straight line in a vacuum.
Um yeah but the transmission path is longer and the equipment and signal processing on each hop also adds latency. I really doubt it'll make much of a difference.
I mean with satellite it's longer. You have to go up and down, and starlink sats prefer sending data streams back to the ground as soon as they can (because the laser interconnect capacity is limited).
And variable, no less due to the high differential speed of the satellites. And the signal conditioning is much more involved than on the ground.
My understanding is that Starlink can only service ~6-7 houses per square mile today. The US is ~95/sq. mile on average. 80% of Americans live in "cities."
Anchorage metro is ~15/sq. mile; Yuma, AZ is ~36. The Nashville metro is ~250.
Also, Starlink satellites spend ~70% of their time over the ocean. This will impact the utilization ratio of their gear and force them to launch still more satellites.
Simultaneously though, those 80% of Americans that live in cities/within the typical commuting distance of a metropolitan area are also the ones that are usually serviced by at least one broadband or fiber provider. Because of this:
- Having slowly-increasing pressure on those often-monopoly broadband/fiber carriers because people have the option to swap to Starlink, adds competitive pressure for them to improve their service, reduce prices, etc
- The remaining 20% of the population that lives on the 60-80%+ of the land who currently have terrible options, but fit well within the density restrictions of current-gen Starlink satelites, suddenly have options
That's great, they still are bound by physics to spend ~70% of their time over the ocean. I would guess ~80%+ of their time is spent where there are effectively no people.
In developed countries ISPs and telcos have to open their lines up to competition and homes pay less and have much more choice. We don't need satellites when the fiber already exists, its just hoarded.
It's an American company polluting the night sky for the entire world, for a service that will ultimately be access gated by the US government/private industry. That's where the negative sentiment is coming from. Who cares which of the many equally shitty US billionaires/oligarchs is funding it?
I think the end game is convenience. Nobody really needs anything more than 200mb/s. If the average person can have their entire family stream their favorite Netflix show at the same time then that’s good enough. “Now lil Jimmy can watch it in the minivan too!”
I remember ~20 years ago upgrading my house line to get something crazy like 0.5mbs and the sales guy telling me that I didn't really need it and was wasting money upgrading from my current ~0.2mbs.
Those numbers are fudged of course, I don't remember exactly how long ago or from what to what I was upgrading. My point is that we've always been having people say you don't need faster internet. And yet, I still want, and use, faster internet. 200mbs I would consider fine. But I'd still feel the difference at 500mbs or 1gbs.
I doubt you are the average consumer though. Now days I think the biggest average consumer use case is streaming and game downloading, with game downloading being the biggest “I want it now!” impulse. But do you need 1gb service to download that call of duty game every year? I even think most people could get by with 50mb/s and not even know as long as the latency keeps up. If it’s fast enough to stream Bluey the masses are content.
It's sort of amazing that people still say these sorts of things today.
I don't think it's at all inconceivable where people in the future are streaming high resolution multi modal personal sensor arrays to AI that is running in a data center...and ditto we are streaming ever more content back.
That's just the in vogue answer of 2026. There are undoubtedly endless innovations that I can't envision that will require ever more resources.
My point is just that every single "X ought to be good enough" has been proven false. And the only times where we see consumption really plateau are due to other reasons than desire (like cost).
Uploading large files is probably the biggest thing, 4k video streaming (out) while others in my house are streaming in or playing games with no slowdown.
I remember watching hours pass uploading files on my 200 mbit. Still take time but much faster with gigabit (measured at 940 bmit, so not the full 1gbit)
Eh, I've got 200mb/s fiber for cheap. It's pretty good and definitely bottlenecked by crowded wifi and upstream sources moreso than the ISP. Ethernet helps somewhat.
At the same time, I do kind of want more bandwidth just so I can download massive files like model weights quickly, host a web service out of my own house, seed torrents, etc. What might cryptocurrency look like if typical residential internet speeds were measured in gb/s? Perhaps bitcoin might be capable of more than 7 tps!
I think the main goal is direct to phones rather than being an alternative to fiber. But it's also a very good option for people living in rural areas with poor service (shoddy DSL).
population crashing will have people concentrate around cities like what is happening in Tokyo because that is where all other services will be. Rural is economic poverty.
I spent last weekend under some of the darkest sky you'll find in the eastern US. Miles from cell service. I had a starlink portable with me and it was nice to get some service and stay in touch, but to watch the sky is to see satellites everywhere.
I've spent a dozen or so weeklong stretches in the last few years completely off grid, only connection being bringing up the inReach once a day. At this point I actually get anxiety at the end of such a trip, knowing that I'm going to be wading through a morass of notifications and slack/email/texts. Doing a once or twice a day sync via starlink didn't really bother me so much when I'm out in the backcountry this last trip.
I'd love to be rid of all of it, but that's not how the world works today.
It’s just that, while so much of the sky is static, it’s impossible to gaze at without your attention being grabbed by the moving flick of light, it takes active effort to ignore it. So it’s a totally different experience stargazing now vs 20 years ago.
Starlink satellites are intentionally designed to be very dark, but they become more visible when the sun is about to come up or if there are super bright light sources on the ground nearby to reflect off of them.
If there are super bright light sources on the ground nearby that are bright enough to produce a visible reflection off a satellite, you are about to be dead.
Yeah, I meant to point out there that there is a tension between the technology that I don't mind, but the infrastructure for it that I do mind. I don't really know what the answer is. I do know that we're probably not going to put this toothpaste back in the tube.
I love being off-grid with just my slow inReach Mini 1. I can communicate in case of an emergency, but otherwise it's a great forcing function to not be hyper connected. I worry if I brought the portable Starlink with I'd connect much more than necessary.
> I'd love to be rid of all of it, but that's not how the world works today.
Why do we think the human made world is out of our control? Learned helplessness? We could stop this. We do not need Satrlink.
Starlink will fail. And this will be more likely the more satellites they put up[1][2]. Or the more wars we get in. It will not be hard to cause a major destruction of all Starlink satellites [3].
There is an accounting explanation for this (boring as it sounds). Stock analysts (who don’t want to use their brains too much) often use “EBITDA” (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) to compare companies. The reasoning is that those items can often be used in “creative” ways to make a company look better than it is so strip them out before comparing.
Starlink sats are launched into a decaying orbit so after something like 5 years they burn up and need to be replaced. It is very flattering to SpaceX’s financials to launch lots of satellites if you look at it from an EBITDA point of view because it basically looks like they have a lot of recurring earnings even though 20% per year has to be amortized because it burns up in the atmosphere.
Am I right to understand that it will do nothing to big cities, where you share the radio frequency with lots of users just like a wifi? What it the minimum radius where two satellites will not interfere with each others (chatgpt says 40-130km radius if not allocated more spectrum)?
If that understanding is correct it means the addressable market is countryside and transportation (planes/ships/RV). Which necessarily makes starlink at most a fairly modest size ISP in terms of valuation?
Surely it’ll be an issue some day for other space activities with all the SpaceX kit up there? I know space is very large :) but surely it’d be hard to scan, calculate and control trajectories of millions of orbiting tiny things when you’re launching rockets and things? A spacex satellite almost crashed into the Chinese space station some years ago and the Chinese had to perform an evasive manoeuvre I believe
With modern automation and AI, tracking and adjusting paths is better every year. Also, anything with malfunctioning movement will quickly descend and burn up in the atmosphere at that very low orbit.
Yes and I'll become another space industry. Cleanup. Sort of like how (coal/ocean/etc) pollution is both a problem and multi billion dollar a year industry.
Satellites flying at 360km (the target altitude for starlink V3) deorbit very quickly without regular burns. Dead starlink satellites are guaranteed to come down within 5 years.
I read that by syncing up several space telescopes, astronomers can use something called interferometry to make them work together as one large telescope.
I wonder it's possible for Starlink to attach small telescopes on each of these satellites, and if so, if this could lead to a massive PR win for them and a science win for humanity, while at the same time helping to combat any genuine concerns from the public about Starlink harming astronomy. Just an idea (again I don't know if it's possible).
It's not physically impossible. But the engineering reality isn't promising.
You'd need micro-meter alignment accuracy across the constellation for optical observation. For radio observation it might be possible - but I'm not sure if it would be useful.
Launching complimentary ordinary space-telescopes would also be good PR.
He promised a lot. Really a lot. I doubt it will happen. Still waiting the SolarCity, Gigabattery, 4680, and CyberTruck he promised. Instead I get solar burst. CATL, CATL, recalled and finger cutting. And let's not talk about AutoPilot FSD. Waymo is way ahead NOW. Mars? I double down my invest in Shanghai exchange now.
You want them to pay a multi-trillion dollar clean-up and cancer fund for car-sized multi-year-service-life satellites burning up in the atmosphere? How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay?
EDT: I should have clarified I'm not only talking about incumbent satellite companies because people are replying about the launch volume. Think about pollution from oil companies and coal plants and consider how that compares to an aerospace company. How much have polluting companies been fined relative to multiple trillions of dollars?
Would be nice for oil and gas companies to pay for all the emissions say, starting when they found out about it and decided to lie to the public. Maybe also bring charges against the PR firms they used since given those same PR firms worked for the tobacco industry clearly they won't stop until there are consequences.
we cannot have private trillionaires milking "privatize the profits and social the costs"
no more, it has to end immediately
they aren't just silo-ing their wealth, they are leveraging against societies, funding far-right violent politics against society
even the evil Koch-brothers have cancer wings in hospitals around the country, Musk doesn't give a dime to charity, just his own foundation which he controls to only do what he wants to manipulate
also, criminal murder charges for those who enable actions like, "poisoning a water supply," "creating an opiode epidemic," "giving millions of people cancer, knowingly"
I just don't understand why, killing one person is murder, but killing hundreds over many years is, "just the cost of doing business."
"Elon Musk's company has now lofted more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined — and its lead is likely to grow over the coming months and years."
(And most of the other providers don't plan for theirs to burn up within a few years. Giant disposable LEO constellations are new.)
The satellites aren't worse. It is the rockets that are worse. On the way up they emit various things into the stratosphere, which is about the worst place you can emit stuff when it comes to affecting the atmosphere.
It has not been a major problem so far because in its entire history humanity has only launched around 35000 rockets that have reached the stratosphere. Ramp that rate up significantly and it comes something we serious need to worry about.
(That's not to say that space debris reentering the atmosphere isn't bad. It also unfortunately deposits various things in the upper atmosphere that we really do not want to put there).
You may want to compare the flight profiles of jets and rockets, what layers of the atmosphere they emit in, and how the effects of the things they omit vary by where in the atmosphere they are emitted.
> Niobium and hafnium do not occur as free elements in nature, but are refined from mineral ores. They are used in semiconductors and superalloys.
> In addition to these two unusual elements, a significant number of particles contained copper, lithium and aluminum at concentrations far exceeding the abundance found in meteorics, or ‘space dust.’ “The combination of aluminum and copper, plus niobium and hafnium, which are used in heat-resistant, high-performance alloys, pointed us to the aerospace industry,’’ Murphy said.
What I don't understand is where are the Starlink competitors. Supposedly the UK government owns a stake of 10% in OneWeb and yet they are planning to use Starlink for trains.
Is it really just too hard to put enough satellites in orbit to be competitive with Starlink?
Why do you see things as negativeism vs positivism? Do you not live in a world where good and evil are syncretic? That mindset is bizarre, to me.
My personal experience with Starlink is that it's an expensive LTE alternative. It's not a broadband replacement, the entire thing is pretty clearly a coverup for dual-use technology in low earth orbit:
Starshield was adapted from the global communications network Starlink but brings additional capabilities such as target tracking, optical and radio reconnaissance, and early missile warning. [0]
Reality doesn't hinge around negativism and positivism. It's a mixture of both, it's unhealthy to pretend that technology only has positive uses and cannot ever have negative side effects.
Starlink is going to become a phone carrier that doesn’t have to pay for pole or tower access. This is the real story, so long att, verizon, and T-Mobile. Starlink is going to beat them on price and availability. Just think, no international calling fees or hassle and cheaper mobile rates.
Starlink is going to be a cellular company, except instead of maintaining cheap metal frames, they have to physically launch the antennas to space every 5 years.
A more accurate description would be that starlink will become the trunk, and possibly the service. Local cell services will own the poles but will essentially provide access for starlink customers. It's not a bad business idea, actually. People pay $30-40 a line for starlink cell service, starlink provides the big pipes so to speak and splits the bill with the local companies that put up the last mile towers.
In rural areas you can put up isolated 5G towers that have their own dish connection to starlink, no need to string a line to the towers anymore...
It was never necessary to run fibre to any specific individual tower. Microwave backhaul works fine of you have good coveragef the area. Less well if you don't. If cell providers wanted to put up enough towers that's a self solving problem.
I live in the land of trees (Maine) and cell service sucks, line of sight between microwave towers is a non-starter AFAICT, but line of sight to the sky is do-able everywhere.
It's true that obstructions above the ground level would decrease the distance you can get line-of-sight to the next tower at the same tower height (a 40 m pole-style tower could have only 20 km LoS to an equally tall tower with 30 m tree cover vs 40 km for no tree cover, meaning 4× as many to cover the same area; effect is less if you use taller lattice towers at one end or both, of course) but it also decreases the range you can get out of the connection from tower to UE, not exactly to the same extent, but close enough. The change from GEO to LEO for satellite backhaul means that satellite is more technically competitive, sure, but microwave backhaul is possible, at least for basic mobile service (I would not want to use it for fixed wireless without even more tower density)... if you wanted to blanket even the mostly empty land between the two towers with good mobile coverage, which is way more towers than what most MNOs would want to purchase.
I wonder if it would be possible for Starlink to use less reflective materials for their satellites so that the sky is less polluted for the astronomers.
"University of Surrey is developing Vantablack as a coating for satellites in earth orbit, to reduce encroachment upon ground-based optical astronomy."
Last time I checked, you couldn't get a public IPv4 through Starlink, let alone a fixed one. This makes it a non-starter as a backup link for self-hosters, a use case it is well suited for.
You do get a public IPv6 IP, which is fine for most people (and with a simple script on a cron can keep a AAAA up to date, not that it changes often). And like someone else said, if you insist, you can use something like tailscale to punch a hole in Starlink's global NAT.
And: What are the externalities of this? The current 10700 satellites are expected to have a lifespan of about five years. So, averaging these burning up in the upper atmosphere there will be one deorbit ever four hour.
If I were to ask my relevant government regulator if I were allowed to burn the equivalent of a few electric cars every day without capturing/scrubbing the pollution they would laugh me out of the room.
But ”in space” nobody can hold you accountable, so burning an order of magnitude more like this is somehow on the table.
It's horrifying. I don't remember acid rain or CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer, but I'm good enough at pattern recognition to see it playing out again.
I feel like I already have internet access pretty much everywhere with cell towers, and even then if I went to the middle of alaska or montana I could already get sattelite internet before starlink with hugesnet which is fine as long as you're not gaming or something.
But at the same time I think the low-earth-orbit is pretty nice in terms of latentcy, it's a pretty innovative approach.
I just don't get the idea behind AI datacenter sattelites and moving all this non-comms equipment up in space.
It is very important for an unstable/eccentric person like Elon Musk to be the new AOL and "own the internet", which is what could happen if he launches 100k satellites. Elon Musk will use his power to make political decisions.
Musk has acknowledged withholding Starlink Service to thwart Ukrainian attack on Russia. Musk had conversations with a Russian official that led him to worry that an attack on Crimea could spiral into a nuclear conflict, so he made the decision to thwart Ukraine.
Right or not, such decisions should be made by elected representatives, not an eccentric trillionaire.
I've read the entire series of Culture novels and don't recall seeing "starmind" as a term anywhere. Mind, yes, but used in a somewhat different context, as the minds are both sentient conversational AI entities with equal or greater intellect to a meat-based human or alien, and also semi-godlike AI powers (a single Mind has the capacity to have a 1:1 conversation with all of the residents of an Orbital if it wants to).
On twitter yesterday, someone posted a question about SpaceX/xAI making a poor financial decision and Musk answered saying SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of the Earth. His megalomania is really running wild so I would not put much stock in this. They are asking the FCC for permission to launch 100k satellites which puts this very much in the "aspirational" category. They neither have plans nor approval to do it. This is a combination of ego and signalling to SPCX investors because it's down nearly 10% from IPO.
If you think that's concerning for the nightsky, wait till China's competitor, SpaceSail, tries to catch up.
This is the problem with a private or single nation creating a system like this and then politicizing it or using it for war. It forces other nations to compete.
The night sky shouldn't belong to any individual company or nation. We should all have a say on whether this is something we're willing to give up. Including the more-than-human world
So, at some point, will our devices connect to their corporate offices in any environment, even without providing access to your network, short of putting it inside a Faraday Cage?
I think this is cool and all, especially watching all of the launches, but I don't understand why we aren't all talking about the growing potential of a Kessler Syndrome and are inability to access spaces for a century or so. Maybe I'm completely out-of-touch but it seems like a massive downside for only a small upside.
How did we collectively accept that it's ok that a private company can forever change how our sky looks like (especially at night) for the generations to come?
This is so dystopian but it seems nobody cares. The most important thing is to have fast internet to watch cool AI-generated videos.
People are complaining about their views getting polluted, they’re not saying they literally can’t see the night sky. If you’d like hn comments to be smarter, consider starting with your own.
So over 100K starlink sats and then another 50K mirror sats (see that other HN post). Leaving aside the very tragic destruction of the night sky for observers, I’m afraid for the day we have a cascade of satellite debris events that send us backwards an and pretty much destroy our spacefaring ability.
I can't wait until this junk starts to collide and blocks us from making any space flights. This has to happen and probability grows with the square of the number of orbiting satellites.
People seem to have a poor understanding of just how much space there is up there. It's just very empty up there. And these things are in precisely controlled orbits that are well documented, etc. Even if you simplify your thinking of orbits to a 2D (square area), it's a lot of space.
But that would be a mistake of course. Low earth orbit is three dimensional. Star Link uses several altitude bands of about 20-30km each. It's 330-360km for the v3 satellites. The volume of that is about 17 billion cubic kilometers. About 13x the volume of all the water in the oceans. Accidental collisions are not going to be a frequent thing. These things are going to be many kilometers apart.
I was surprised recently to read that the centre-point of the orbits of the starlink satellites doesn't actually correspond to the earth's physical centre. Instead, they orbit around the centre of Elon Musk's ego. As he moves over the surface of the planet, the constellation actually shifts its orbits in response.
soooo good that they'll burn up one day and this nonsense can finally end.
investors provide infinite capital to nonsense projects so that the showman can create an endless show that will attract new nonsense capital.
sorry but already in rural morocco they have 200 mbit internet for 20 bucks a month. Yes there are some 6 wheeled vehicles roaming the planet that might really benefit from these 100k satellites. but for 99.9% of everyone else? we're good!
"...we're good." ?
It seems that you are excluding all of the actual users onboard with Starlink tech. I'm one. I had choices and Starlink was a welcome addition to the short list.
In a short time, Starlink proved to be that disruptive "invention" that changed everything. There are already millions of users. Nobody is forced to use Starlink. Yet here we are.
Whether there are investors or not, a positive cashflow and the millions of users prove that Starlink is not just valid to our society at large, but wildly so. My opinion is that it is almost as disruptive as cell phones when they became affordable.
Current number of paid subscriptions: 12 million +. So, actual users is many times that, if subscribers generally represent multiple users per account. Think "Household". And then, if one extrapolates users under institutional, municipal, state or military, the numbers are astronomically increased. Just, individuals walking around inside a Dollar General store...
Well Starlink has 12 million subscribers, which is already more than 0.1% of the population, so clearly you are incorrect that 99.9% of people don't want it...
well .0014 is 40% more than 0.001, so it isn't THAT close.
Although even if we grant you your assumption about 99.9%, doesn't this show that you can still have a business if that is true? 12 million customers is a sustainable business.
Probably not that many lives, maybe like a handful of hikers every year I would guess? I think what attracts hikers in the first place is the danger, and the idea that they're exploring an area that is "outside of civilization"
starlink satellites are in low orbits and will deorbit in a few years at most if bricked; to stay in orbit, they use ion thrusters to counter drag from the very uppermost reaches of the atmosphere.
Some of the debris from a collision may end up in an orbit with a higher apogee, perigee will necessarily still be at or below the altitude of the last collision and will be subject to some of the same low-orbit aerodynamic drag that starlink satellites experience; passes through lower altitudes will apply drag that will first drop the apogee and will then eventually cause the debris to reenter.
How can it linger in a higher orbit. Maybe some of the debris gets a kick which increases its velocity, but you need two velocity boosts to circularise the orbit, no? So I figure at worst you get an elliptical orbit which will still decay
Kessler is much less of a problem at their altitude (480km). Debris has too much drag and would get pulled down too quick to have a sustained Kessler situation. It's possible, but very very unlikely at that altitude.
You could still generate a mess for 5-10 years at that altitude. Even if it self-clears you still destroy the constellation and deny access to LEO for years.
1. Orbiting objects never try to avoid each other.
2. They're in high enough orbits that atmospheric drag is not a significant factor such that debris can last decades or centuries.
Starlink fails both as they constantly maneuver and they're in low orbits that are constantly cleaned by the atmosphere.
And I'd add that "kessler syndrome" is actually a statistical process, not a rapid sudden cascade of satellites crashing into each other. It takes years to decades for it to actually "happen". It's not something that can be caused by military action either.
Back in the day, "Kessler syndrome" was a fairly good way to articulate the fears of many scientists - whose delicate one-off "flagship" scientific research satellites had huge costs and lead times, if things started going wrong up there.
And overall, today's space powers are much more careful about not making messes in orbit.
I see you haven’t read the paper. How long do you think Kessler syndrome is projected to take? How long do you think natural clearing of debris at Starlink’s altitudes is?
Freeways are not 3 dimensional and they don't have an automatic cleanup that cleans up things within a pretty short time. Also area we are talking about is fucking gigantic. Also accidents are going to be very rare as sats deorbit themselves end of live and even if they break and can't move anymore, other sats that can still move can evade them.
Always surprises me how people feel identified with progress they didn’t participate with. These satellites have nothing to do with you. You didn’t build them nor researched about them. These are the toys of a far-right asshole. It sucks
Commercially speaking, does Starlink really need 100x bandwidth?
Starlink's target market is limited. It is very good for ships, remote area, but not necessary in cities where most people live.
I am not sure whether the launch and maintenance cost of another 100k satellites is necessary for such a limited market, unless the cost of launch (Starship) and the satellites themselves drops greatly.
I have started to see what I think are star link satellites at night on walks with my kids. It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky and is changing the literal stars my kids will grow up with. It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.
> It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.
I worked on technology for years that the FCC effectively killed for stupid reasons. So it’s heartening to me that someone can still just do stuff and build things. It’s amazing. If you asked me 10 years ago I would have thought that getting something like Starlink off the ground would’ve been impossible due to red tape.
People can still "do stuff and build things" while having consideration for environmental impacts.
The thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different. To one person it can mean, "don't put the construction garbage in the river." To another it can mean "not one single Delta Smelt can be scared because of this construction."
And because it's so flexible, in states like California where we have aggressive environmental laws, it's leveraged as the NIMBY trump card. When it can't block a project, the process is used to make it inordinately expensive and take decades. One example would be the environmental studies for the CA High Speed Rail.[1]
[1] - https://ifp.org/fast-track-democratically-approved-transit-p...
The deregulation stuff isn’t about nimby. It’s making nimby 10x worse by making it hyper local. That means poor people who are poorly organized get boned. State regulations tended to help with that.
I live in upstate NY, the rebuild of the GOP here is around hyper local issues, mostly apartments and solar. MAGA changed the discourse and allows the rabble rousers to say the quiet part out loud. (Ie bike infrastructure and apartments will bring poor black people to rape and pillage)
Do you have any specific examples of how new state regulations actually eased the regulatory burden for building something? Adding new regulations at the state level almost never removes the hyper local restrictions, it just adds a new layer of compliance on top.
How can the solution to burdensome regulations be MORE regulation?
In NC there is a state rule that bans HOAs and local authorities from stopping people building cisterns to catch and store rainwater
I am in NC and didn’t know this. Cool. Where you be at?
>State regulations tended to help with that.
A law banning certain types of regulations at a lower level I would not call “state regulation” I would call that deregulation.
I suppose I agree with you that the solution to burdensome regulation is to write new laws which forcibly deregulate lower level things. But calling laws like that “state regulation” is true only in the most technical sense. Your example is a textbook example of deregulation.
The problem most ignore is that you will either have public regulation from the government or private regulation from companies.
Would you rather have a published regulation that is subject to democratic and judicial review and applies equally to every one. Or a company terms of service that forces binding arbitration and your only recourse is to not use the service?
I lived in a neighborhood with an hoa and it was the worst form of regulation I've ever dealt with. I own a health care provider and the regulation when it was direct medicaid was infinitely better than after it was privatizatized with managed care.
To be fair, part of the inordinate expense is just because it takes longer for the environmental reviews (costs are in expected year of construction, so pushing a project a decade into the future can increase costs by 30-40+% (inflation + interest) depending on the specifics, even if everything else costs the same).
That's why the cost estimates for CA HSR jump a bunch every time an administration hostile to it enters the white house.
> project a decade into the future can increase costs
A very good point.
I don't agree we can blame Trump for HSR though. 2/3 of the time that has passed have had Democrats in the white house. HSR is nearly all pure-California-style self-inflicted wound. And honestly it's just the most visible project California has failed with, there are many others. The one I'm personally angry about is Prop 1. We're now 12 years after, and have no additional water resources even broken ground. It's shameful.
It’s an fully intra-state train line in a state that has an economy bigger than France. California should be able to build an entire EU-style HSR network with zero regard to what’s happening federally.
CA can and did recently, but that's money that will need to come from and/or could have gone to other programs/etc.
I think the most recent cut was $4+ billion in federal funds for HSR. It's going to come from cap and trade instead, but the state could have had both.
Agriculture uses 90% of the water in California growing cotton, alfalfa and almonds, which are all very water intensive, Humans watering their lawn, drinking water and bathing, use a fraction.
Note: The way they divide up water usage. They have a third category, listed As environment, but that’s misleading because the people who have the water rights can always use a lot more water at their discretion at any time. where as the common citizen cannot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California
https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/
We can in part. Like you said, it took a ton of time because of environmental review, and that's on the state. With that said, construction didn't begin until 2015, and Trump pulled billions in funding in his first term in 2016 and did the same in 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail
If CA had moved quickly, that wouldn't have been an issue, or at least as much of an issue, but because construction took so long to start, it was.
> The thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different.
I know, that's why we've developed all of these systems of representation to discuss and come to reasonable regulatory standards.
But that's neither here nor there in regards to the point being made that people can still build things in a regulated environment.
In California at least we no longer build housing or infrastructure. Not much of it, anyway.
infrastructure building is a bad word in the United States of America currently, Unfortunately, our major competition in the world is building infrastructure like crazy, but there is still hope, Because once that high-speed rail system starts building west to east or even east to west, all those areas in the middle of the country will change their tune. They will all be fighting on getting a piece of the rock, or I should say a piece of the rail.
The only mistake California made was not including one of the adjacent states as a destination, be it to Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Portland, all of a sudden business interests and those crazy Republicans would be on board because they’re concerned about missing out on making money, which is basically God in America.
I may not live to see it. but once they start going interstate with high-speed rail anywhere within the United States, the tune will change. It’s just amazing that so many people are short-sighted about it. More of that short-term thinking humans are famous for.
Note: Those who think ahead long-term obviously have already bought land on both sides of the route of that high-speed rail line in California, and probably along the proposed route leading to Las Vegas in the future, and the same applies to any possible line to Phoenix or to the Arizona high plateau.
Blaming “republicans” for California’s inability to build a train line within California is an ungodly level of cope.
No cope to it the Republicans in California are powerless, but when there was an opportunity at the last minute to lobby on putting the line on the eastern side of the Central Valley (which probably added three or four years to the process), guess what they cried like babies, to put it on the eastern side of the valley even if it meant more delays.
Originally, the line was scheduled to run on the western side because that side was less populated. In other words, you had pretty much a clear lane as far as the right-aways were concerned, and this scenario will play out once high-speed rail runs out of California to the east.
All those conservative red areas will all of sudden change their tune, and there is no cope again money is God in those red areas that is the one thing those red areas understand particularly those at the top that and taking away the vote, firing a gun or blaming a worker that is less fortunate.
Isn't that where Silicon Valley is located? I'm pretty sure Californians are building things.
The things being built in Silicon Valley don't include much housing or infrastructure. Mostly just software and other IP.
Given the nightmarish nimby gridlock I’m less and less convinced it’s a good thing. I’d rather have people mad about windmills being eyesores than be perpetually chained to oil and gas for energy, as an example. I’m also not a fan of endless roadblocks to all manner of construction, even for such simple things as housing.
Yes, having a data center that raises your utilities costs by 300% jammed down your throat because the local mayor got blatantly bribed shouldn’t be a thing, especially when it’s powered by mobile gas turbines that stink up the entire area (note: I’m not against data centers on principle, but there are many ways for ultra-wealthy interests to leave people hosed). But things like faintly visible mini-sats don’t seem like a big deal, subjectively, unless you work at an observatory.
Empirically, we can't. We can barely even build EV chargers.
You might have thought they were stupid reasons but protecting a public good is a very important and challenging task. Unlike the FCC, spaceX isn’t accountable to democratic forces and can do antisocial things with the shared resource and there will be little we can do about it.
“Protecting the public” is the propaganda. In practice, you have a regulatory system that gives every minority interest an effective veto on development, disregarding the global cost/benefit analysis. In our case it was church microphones and other tiny minorities that held up deployment of technology to take advantage of spectrum white spaces.
There may be examples of protecting the public good being propaganda designed to hide the reality of using regulation to protect a minority interest. But there are also countless examples of true public good objectives being served by regulation.
One example is environmental dumping regulation. Unregulated release of chemicals into the environment by a minority harms everyone. In north Carolina entire watersheds are polluted with forever chemicals because the power company was dumping transformers in rivers. Now no one can eat fish.
I am not saying we shouldn't have an electric grid. But clearly their unregulated right to dispose of transformers is in their direct economic interests and against the public interest. And clear simple regulation can support better development with reduced harm.
I dont follow your example and am not familiar with that issue. But I would be the first to acknowledge regulatory process can be abused and irrational but that doesn't mean it is always bad or worse that other approaches.
I agree with you that regulation should have a cost benefit analysis. I would remind you that it often does, look at the public comment process, congressional debate, judicial opinions where that analysis is done in public view.
I would argue that there are improvements to be made like requirements to make predictions on the effects of a regulation and a sunset if the predictions don't match outcomes and a mandatory sunset of all regulation based on time and changed circumstances.
But I would rather have the government regulatory process than anthropic, or Facebook, or Uber or cursor being able to change their terms of service to implement adaptive pricing or training on my data or making digital clones of my family and using them to advertise in misleading endorsements.
Some people want to live in Star Trek, but don't want to look up and see McKinley Station in the sky...
You've never been to a dark sky area and seen how many Starlinks are flying around in the sky already. Its not one object in the sky.
It is inevitable. There are other companies and other countries.
Welp, it’s inevitable. Pack it up. No point trying to improve things
Right.. let's stop SpaceX from doing it. Don't worry, China will be kind and will also stop.
Have you considered other people, the majority?
It is not because can do something that they should.
What are the "stupid reasons"? Are they "regulations"?
except it's not so much about do stuff and build things, it's about literally raping the planet, extorting and exploiting everyone including retirement savings, and also to "move fast and break things" which we know understand better was really meant to mean "remove accountability for the richest people", a.k.a. remove public oversight. Taxes for the poor, and the money goes to multi-billion dollar corps. Vaccines? Red tape! Safety belts? Red tape! Environmental concerns? Red tape!
And by the way this guy is responsible for the death of multiple hundred thousands deaths according to estimates. Because he championed removal of Red tape and shutdown of that allegedly "criminal organization" (his words), USAID. Tell that your children.
> shutdown of that allegedly "criminal organization" (his words), USAID.
Even the President of Mexico, who hates Trump, agreed on that one: https://www.newsweek.com/trump-musk-unexpected-ally-push-shu...
“This agency has funded everything from research projects to groups that oppose the government. In Mexico, 'Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción' has received proven support from this agency. So how is it that these so-called 'aid' agencies get involved in politics?" Sheinbaum questioned.
Likewise The Nation, which hates Trump and Musk: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/usaid-trump-musk-... (“Trump and Musk’s war against the agency should be opposed on principle. But we can’t overlook that USAID has been a destructive arm of American imperialism for decades.”).
There’s lots of rich countries to do this aid. China is investing in infrastructure without interfering with local politics. The world’s military hegemon has too much of a conflict of interest to do this job.
> literally raping the planet
Explanation needed.
I feel that way about street advertising, beautiful European cities with historical buildings all around and suddenly a big screen/panel asking you to buy whatever.
I lived for a few years in Hawaii, where they have banned most outdoor advertising. Having seen the difference, I strongly support such initiatives.
You can see it all over the USA, there are many localities and routes that have banned outdoor advertising, and when you're traveling on a parkway with nothing but trees on either side and then you come to the end and there are billboards every 100 yards it's really noticable.
Vermont doesn't allow it either and it remains the most beautiful state IMO
The first time I saw a giant floating tv billboard at the beach was the first time I felt the urge to sink a vessel. I found it offensive but everyone else seemed to just accept it as normal.
São Paulo: Cidade Limpa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
> And there was a lot of billboards in front of these manufacturers' shops. And when they uncovered, we could see through the window a lot of Bolivian people like sleeping and working at the same place. They earn money, just enough for food. So it is a big social problem that was uncovered, and the city was shocked by these news.
Wow it’s like when I move some pieces of wood or other items near my shed outdoors and I see a bunch of activity that I never knew existed.
That is an interesting take. Now I probably can‘t unsee it.
I'm sorry I brought this upon you...
It only adds to the others.
I had read that some municipalities in switzerland were banning them.
Me, I just do what I can and at least trash the ones covering the windows on public transport here.
It is legal to cover windows with advertising?
No idea. They put cardboard things, they don't entirely cover the window but they are very large and annoying.
A slingshot is a worthy investment for opponents of outdoor video advertising
Where in Europe have you seen this?
Don't want to doxx myself but no outdoor ads on the main street here.
Maybe Stockholm has some.
Change is inevitable. I love seeing artificial objects in space, because it shows that we, humanity, are finally getting there.
Elon doesn't own space, he just happens to be the one who is currently best at making it reachable. There is plenty of space for everyone else, and others will get there, eventually.
I could eat myself up with envy over the money he's making from it... or be glad that it's at least someone getting rewarded for moving humanity forward (while also being an asshole), rather than someone who is starting wars to profit from insider trading...
I wonder what you mean by "moving humanity forward". Just technological advancements without other considerations? In my opinion it should at least require reducing human suffering, and if ao he has done more harm than good
I agree with this. But imo its pretty clear that cheap and easy access to the internet on the entire globe is a clear win.
The guy in charge of it has demonstrated that he'll cut people off from accessing it on a whim, though, so it's not really cheap and easy access for the entire globe. It's access for the selected people.
Doesn't that hold for all internet providers? I'm not familiar with SpaceX cutting people of, but that doesn't sound out of line compared to industry.
Other Internet providers at least have true boards of directors, shareholders with decision power, etc. One person doesn’t have the power to snap their fingers and make decisions based on how much ketamine they’re on at the time.
I'm sorry that I don't agree with you that a out of touch board of directors or shareholders are better from the get go than Musk.
Killing Russian access was good, no?
I understand that you want Russia to have access to it without interruption but until there is some sort of "International law" regarding those newer ways of providing Internet, politics will win.
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They also have cut off people who paid, though. It's currently being paid for and had another cutoff for Ukraine in early February.
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Almost all of us already have that, and the rest can as well.
The problem is not 'space' - it's getting ourselves sufficiently organized.
The brief history of the internet suggests to me that this is not a clear win.
It's already pretty cheap, global and universally available.
They don't mean technological advancements.
It's the same neo-liberal aggression couched in rhetorical trickery.
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There are millions of people in Africa and rural areas around the world who have access to the internet because of these satellites. This massively reduces human suffering. Millions of people can now get medical information, farming, manufacturing techniques, talk to experts around the world. Connecting people to the wealth of human knowledge has a huge impact on reducing suffering. It also just directly saves lives by connecting people in an emergency to people who can help. Additionally, Ukraine would have lost the war a long time ago if these satellites didn’t exist. You could go on for a long time listing the ways these satellites reduce suffering.
Government could be the creator of this just like it was with GPS. We are very tolerant of government innovation and infrastructure when it’s a military resource. But when it’s a pure public good everyone claims it’s wasteful or less efficient than the private sector.
Why do we need to let this be a monopoly controlled by one person. A king in a board room is still a king.
>Why do we need to let this be a monopoly
This is the opposite of a monopoly, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are both planning competing constellations. Eventually there will be many competing constellations in orbit delivering service.
>Government could be the creator
Okay so why wasn’t it? The lifetime funding for NASA is 700+ billion dollars. With that incredible sum of money they weren’t able to even make reusable rockets let alone the satellite constellation. Launching a constellation with NASA’s pre-SpaceX approach (using Russian rockets) would have been literally impossible because Russia could have never built nearly enough rockets. Launching even a small fraction of Starlink would have consumed the entire NASA budget several times over.
Comparing GPS and Starlink doesn’t really even make sense because the scope of each project is so vastly different. Starlink if delivered by the same people who made GPS, would have been literally impossible, because the mass to orbit is orders of magnitude larger than the GPS project. Starlink was only possible because of the efficiency provided by SpaceX’s reusable rockets and the leading minds in the government literally said that reusable rockets were impossible and impractical until SpaceX actually delivered reliable reusable rockets.
If they could have, they would have.
Could logically, logistically, financially and technologically also require politically. That’s the only thing that has been missing. When there was a political will there was a space race. Remove the political motive and suddenly it isn’t happening. Why do you conflate all of those abilities when it’s merely a political problem.
Before SpaceX demonstrated viability of reusable rockets nearly every single government industry expert on the topic dismissed the idea of reusable rockets as impractical and infeasible.
It’s not simply a matter of political will, the quality of what governments have been able to produce just is no match for what companies can do. It’s the same for rockets as it is for cars, computers, or anything else. Ever heard of a government-made car? There were a few that came out of the Soviet Union and they were laughably bad and only obtainable in small quantities. Rockets and satellites are the same way, the government just does not have the same incentives to produce things that companies have.
The proof is in the rockets. Compare SpaceX’s rockets with any government developed rockets anywhere in the world, it’s not even close.
Falcon 9, Heavy, Starship, Dragon. The government never would have come close to developing any craft like these let alone being able to launch a constellation like Starlink.
We don't need to have space literally transformed into junkyards to make progress, and there is nothing going wrong with going a lower pace if it means reduced impact on the rest of society.
Every year that you delay Africa and south asia getting to western levels of development equals tens of thousands of under-5 deaths that could have been avoided.
Most of Africa and Southeast Asia has Internet connectivity that is cheaper and more ubiquitous than in North America. They are very well served by an extensive cellular network. Satellite Internet is not what is holding them back.
Maybe they should work on that then.
Your focus should be on junkyards on earth, which are exponentially greater in number on a surface area that is a fraction of the surface area of observable space. You’re complaining about a potentially artificial speck of light in the sky while plastic litters the highway you commute on, and India produces literal rivers of trash.
Orthogonal issues. Will the trash on earth be reduced if we start littering low orbit with junk?
I didn’t say I am against change. I said I am against one man owning a monopoly on a common good.
If technological progress requires monopolies and the road toward serfdom is that really a path we want?
There are other companies who have also begun and there will other countries doing it as well.
That’s good. But we are a long way from a competitive market.
Change is inevitable but not all changes are.
> I love seeing artificial objects in space, because it shows that we, humanity, are finally getting there.
The problem is that nobody asked the other 8.3 billions people what they think about seeing stuff in the sky. For the benefit of 1/1000th of humanity (~10 million starlink users).
No, this is not really moving forward, it's just a traffic jam and pollution in an otherwise pristine space - for money.
It's just the money.
If we were actually going to Mars, then yes, but somehow he made himself the 'First Trillionaire' - without even so much as getting out of Earth's orbit.
This is NFT progress, in that, there is some plausible economic value in NFTs, but in reality, it's just a hustle.
> It's just the money.
Money is a materialization of human desire.
No - money it's a materialization of the expression of power. Desire is a subset of that.
The 'power' part is one of the most important things to understand.
In our every day lives, we see regular people 'creating value by working' and 'collecting money' and then 'spending according to their needs and desires'.
We see things like groceries, fuel, food - it all seems like relatively open and mostly kind of fair system - and it is, at that level.
But significant amount of wealth is accumulated into structure and by individuals that have power totally disproportinate to their value creation.
Kings of England didn't rule 'arbitrarily' - they owned most of the land - that was their power.
If you own all the land, the serfs can't escape your taxation - however you think you can create value, it will be taxed away.
Corporations have incredible economies of scale and leverage through division of labour that individuals could ever have - and - they are even 'limited liability.
We set individual up to compete against goliaths, and then give those goliaths special advantages.
'Parts of the Economy' are relatively fair, just, open etc. but much/most of it is not, it's a game of power leverage and accumulation, as it always has been. It's that part that people don't have a strong instinct for.
Well it’s both of those things.
Power is exercised according to desire.
You're not wrong - but when people say 'we vote with our money' ... it ends up being misleading, because of our instinct to think that individuals make those decisions collectively with their choices and will. Generally it's 'who has the power (and therefore the money)' will make those decisions.
It's a fine point, because some people believe that everything is controlled by a cabal of secret bankers and rich people and that's not true either.
'Nobody is charge' - that's also unsettling. But there are centres of great influence, many of which do not have our best interests at heart.
hey mom wants you to get off the couch and come for dinner, meatloaf is ready
Ok ... but you have to at least try be funny!
Who is envious of his trillions? I'm certainly not. I am very annoyed at someone who buys elections, literally promising a million dollars for a vote, and then running in and gutting key portions of the US government, and playing fast and loose with our data - at a bare minimum.
We will be investigating him for decades and he deserves every second of it.
He is not a trillionaire anymore, though.
I think you're missing the wood for the trees. He's still insanely wealthy.
Getting where, exactly?
> or be glad that it's at least someone getting rewarded for moving humanity forward
Forward back to fascism. No thanks. He already caused astonishing harm.
> I love seeing artificial objects in space,
Kind of fucked up lol
> rather than someone who is starting wars to profit from insider trading...
Your moral and ethical bar is Trump?
Do you like looking at city skylines? I'm not a misanthrope so I like seeing humanity's progress.
I do happen to be a misanthrope, but I suspect a lot of people who aren't also have distaste for your expression of joy at seeing the night sky full of satellites.
I do like big cities and their skylines though, sure.
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Yea but it introduces a lot of issues for space travel and other satellites. The useful space in space we have is extremely limited. A single company shouldn't be able to just clutter space at will.
1. That's not true. 2. It's not "at will" if you actually read the article you're commenting under you'd see it is about them _applying for a license_ to do something.
Taken literally you are technically correct, but... 1. Space is big, but LEO is not that big and if a single company clutters it enough, other organisations might start bumping into issues like 'if i don't get sign off from starlink corp, i might hit one of their satelites on the way up and my insurance wont cover that so I cant afford to launch given the risks of being sued by elon'. 2. Applying for a licence in this context, mostly means greasing the right palms (preferably the pudgy bruised ones).
It introduces no issues for space travel. And what exactly do you want to happen here? LEO to stay empty because no one else is able to fill it and for spacex to not to try to expand because the regulatory process isn't perfect according to your standards?
Yes.
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The best way to create change is to create the conditions where change is necessary. If Elon causes Kessler syndrome in low earth orbit, it will quickly be illegal to launch satellites without permits.
Kessler syndrome isn't possible in the StarLink orbit.
did you read the article? it is already illegal to launch satellites without permission, hence the article (above the fold in the summary) is stating SpaceX applied for permission :)
Asking permission from whom? The entire world or just the corrupt bonkers folks?
Someone said it would "quickly be illegal to launch satellites without permits", then you/they found out that is already illegal, and you nitpicked about who you need permission from.
It feels like there's no feasible solution here that would please you guys.
Should we all democratically vote on every satellite launched into space individually? It's already our elected representatives that approve it.
Does it really? Every time I heard the "we'll run out of space" FUD argument it was followed by a drastic increase of satellites in orbit with no issue...
We're also facing a climate and pollutant crisis as a species so we seem only capable of thinking in the short term. We're not doing that well right now after only a brief period of industrialisation.
We're doing extremely well compared to an unimaginably long period of pre-industrialization.
In the short-term. Thanks for proving my point on perspective.
Yes, so let's think long term. How do we keep it rolling? Perhaps we will need to continue to advance our technology, especially moving industries to space where there is no ecosphere.
There is nothing more abundant than the extra room there is in space!
Earth orbit is more constrained, but it's very far from full. Geostationary orbits are about 20% full, but the rest is practically empty still.
There are various satellite finder apps. I suspect you'll find starlink satellites are mostly too dim to see - with most of what's visible being other older satellites
You can see them very easily at dusk. It’s dark enough but they are still in sunlight making them very clearly visible. There is always one or more easily visible (by design).
There's more like 30 always visible...
The 1 I suspect is some other satellite
Visible in RF. That doesn't mean literally visible. They few that are seen are those still in sunlight when the observer is not.
you can’t see the majority of starlinks with the naked eye, what you’re seeing is either some other constellation or freshly launches starlinks that are still orbit raising. once starlinks are at altitude they actively manage their reflection angles to avoid bouncing light back at earth
I wonder if (this part specifically) is a solvable problem? Is it their altitude that causes them to shine? Perhaps finally a commercial use for Vantablack?
Their brightness is a mixture of a lot of things, including the huge PV arrays and the angle they have with the sun when they cross the terminator between night and day.
Starlink have already put a lot of effort into their satellites being much less bright than most satellites, including tilting their PV away from earth during the terminator crossing, so from what I've read you'll mainly see them while they're being deployed and while de-orbiting.
(Part of my still-expanding draft blog post about space data centres is to work out how bright a million much larger objects would look. If they were in the orbit with the most sun, that's a terminator-following sun-synchronous orbit, which is maximum brightness).
I watch them come up over the horizon right after sunset. Only a couple specific trajectories are visible and they disappear pretty quick. Later on in to a clear night and after your eyes adjust to the darkness, you can find them all over the sky. They look like very faint stars speeding around. It's quite spectacular and hunting them makes for a fun activity with others while relaxing in a hot tub.
Out of interest, where are you on this scale? I don't think I've ever been better than a 6 from those star pictures, despite how I'd otherwise categorise where I live as suburban/rural transition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale#/media/File:How_l...
Would the “datacenter” satellites be much larger? I thought each of them was only going to carry a rack or a cabinet worth of GPUs?
Much larger.
The compute part may be a rack or a cabinet worth of GPUs (though TBH the public designs are currently vague to the point of being artistic impressions), but they also need to come with a PV array big enough to power that, plus a cooling array that's going to be close to 25% as big as the PV array regardless of what unit size they go for in the end.
If they settle on making e.g. 120 kW satellites, that would be about 400 m^2 for the PV and another 100 m^2 for the radiator.
Have you seen Real Engineering's analysis? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpdUNMt2yg
Yes; their video pertains to two specific proposals for the data centres, unfortunately I am finding that *all* the various proposals fail to make sense but for different reasons.
They would be as large as your average hyperloop capsule.
Yes but would these need to be in LEO? I would imagine that they would aim for farther orbits to spend a smaller percentage of their time in Earth's shadow
Perhaps there will be communications nodes in LEO with high bandwidth directional links to heavy compute nodes in higher orbits? At some point I would assume that the jurisdiction of the FCC no longer applies? Or maybe you use laser links?
I still cannot believe it's economical to have "data centers in orbit" but I guess the truth will be seen in whether or not it actually happens.
> At some point I would assume that the jurisdiction of the FCC no longer applies?
The FCC has regulatory jurisdiction for communications on US objects in space, regardless of distance from earth.
Depends how cheap they can launch them.
Even very optimistic estimates (by people who aren't Elon Musk) say it will take a decade to get the costs low enough to be worthwhile for LEO; higher orbits are much more expensive.
Anything up there needs to reflect as much as possible to avoid building up heat. That which it can’t reflect is absorbed and needs to be emitted as efficiently as possible. Vantablack would likely make it absorb heat readily and glow in the near-IR.
Counterintuitively, the best way to make satellites less visible for ground observers is actually to make them MORE reflective. You want the reflection off the nadir side of the vehicle to be as specular (mirror-like) as possible so that the light reflected from the sun only makes it to a single point on the Earth's surface.
You can see that SpaceX (and probably other LEO operators as well) are already doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfJWli7YKPw
This video is a good visual illustration of that effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8I25H3bnNw
It’s not the visual that bothers me. It’s the evidence of a monopoly that is being built that will dominate humanity for the benefit of literally one person
Lucky for us that he cares about humanity But others have similar ambitions and are making progress.
This is a bit like suggesting we slather cars in vaseline to prevent traffic jams.
Maybe we could just blast Anish Kapoor into space on a one-man prison vessel instead?
This strikes me as NIMBYism at a global scale. At least you've got yours right!
Its more the other way around. Its mostly used by the wealthiest few percent, the majority of the world has to pay for the damage it causes.
As long as the externalities are paid for, I don't see the problem. Musk has made the world a worse place in many ways, but I don't see how this is one of them.
I price the externalities at infinite price. They cannot be paid.
You're saying if someone offered you a billion dollars to launch a satellite no different from most other satellites already in space, you would say, "No, thank you, madam!" I'm skeptical, but if you insist, I'll take you at your word.
this thread is about satellites cluttering the night sky. Is SpaceX paying for this? Not the mention the CO2 emissions of all the rockets.
You're right. Private launches are undertaxed. Launch cost used to be so prohibitive that it didn't matter, but regulation hasn't kept up.
I have a hard time blaming anyone other than the internet monopolists and the FCC for this. If we had similar regulations as the UK (you lay infrastructure that serves Internet users, you must also rent this infrastructure out at regulated rates to other ISPs), we could have had a much quicker buildout of high speed internet service, instead of regional monopolies which defeated even the great Google.
Starlink’s total addressable market is only so large because of these monopolies. As sad as it is that astronomy will never be the same, it is a strong net positive for the world that fast internet be available at an affordable price.
It's hard to find hard numbers, but IIUC even ignoring Elon's Space Program:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/gx04-who-owns-the-most-s...
* Most satellites were private owned, for communications or resource.
* Most government owned satellites have military use, the people that is trying to spy or nuke you or your neighbor.
* A small part is used for science and altruistic activities.
More than 2/3 of all active satellites are part of the SpaceX/Starlink constellation, and it's a full 3/4 of those in LEO, which are the biggest contributor to the glints we can see in the night sky.
They're such an enormous part of the problem that it does a disservice to the problem to not metaphorically shine a spotlight on them.
I had trouble finding another source that summed up the data so nicely, but other sources did corroborate these figures: https://satfleetlive.com/blogs/how-many-satellites-in-orbit/
>which are the biggest contributor to the glints we can see in the night sky.
>They're such an enormous part of the problem
What an incredible life of privilege you must live to perceive a few glints in the sky as a huge problem.
I didn't say whether I thought it was a huge problem. I just said it was a problem, and identified the largest contributor to that problem.
But really, what point are you trying to make? I don't need to think that satellites glinting in the night sky are the literal worst problem facing humanity for that to be a valid topic of discussion.
You'll be sad to know there's another mf trying to put a mirror to reflect sunlight near twilight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflect_Orbital
I think this needs to be addressed with a crowd-funded projectile. This sort of stuff must be done on a planetary-scale consensus basis only.
What a terrible tyranny of the majority problem that would be. I reject this idea completely
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To anyone thinking that 18m² isn't that big for how large the space is, please recall how bright reflective things shine during the day when you hit the right angle.
18x18 is 324m^2
To give an easy visualization for most people (average Americans, really, because most other people in the world already know what a meter looks like), imagine that the average doorknob is about 1m above the floor, so imagine basically the bottom part of a typical interior door is about 1m sq. Now, make a square out of 18 of those pieces wide by 18 pieces high.
Americans will measure with anything but the metric system.
And if they do, they will call it things like "square doorknob".
Except for those few of us who grew up interested in science, because science pretty much world-wide (even in the USA) uses metric for pretty near everything. I've used metric for my entire life, and been ridiculed for it that entire time by all the same morons that think any interest in science makes you a "nerd" even if you also happen to play and enjoy sports (despite almost the entire rest of the world standardizing on metric long ago), and despite the fact that most folks in the USA are already using metric themselves every single day. Yet somehow metric is "too hard to learn, waaah!" (It's based on tens, just like our money. Too complicated? Gimme a break!) Hell, our sugary fizzy drinks even all come in 1 and 2 liter bottles, FFS!
I feel "about a 8 floor building" would be a good ROM :)
Whoops, I overcooked my last minute edits while almost asleep. Yeah, I'm was off by 18x there.
For Americans: this is roughly 3500 sqft.
So very roughly a 300kW spotlight pointed at a relatively small area (wild guess at around 1km^2, anyone done the maths?)
Edit: A 5km diameter spot illuminated from 600km altitude.
Every colleagues watch face.
A gigantic source of light in the sky that lights up a part of the Earth and is too bright to look at is... the sun. I think we're all used to the sun.
I personally am _not_ used to seeing the sun after sunset and before sunrise.
Neither is nature, this sounds like an environmental disaster waiting to happen
considering plants grow just fine with grow lights, they don't really care. same with co2, they LOVE CO2
Nature is more than just plants.
> they LOVE CO2
Plants can absorb some more CO2 and it improves their growth slightly but saying they LOVE CO2 is an exaggeration.
They turn it into sugar, what's not to love?
Solar panels aren't nature. Shining lights on solar panels is not going to be an environmental disaster.
everyone’s seen ads before, mind if I put a giant ad in the sky for everyone to look at?
Don't give these ghouls ideas.
The idea of putting a PepsiCo or Coca-Cola ad on the moon dates backs to the 60's, when we first went there.
If one person owned the sun and could charge all humanity for access to its light then maybe that would be a relevant example
What do you think is being proposed, exactly? Some sort of alternative sun that's going to shine on the entire earth, that we'll all be forced to look at?
Wut? This has to be some sort of a scam. There's no way you're going to be reflecting enough light from hundreds of kilometers away.
It works fantastically well for construction and military applications.
Based on what? You get the light of the moon for about 5 minutes.
I’m pretty sure the plan is to have tens of thousands of them so that they can hand off from one satellite to the next. I know this tech would have been fantastic when I used to work on oil rigs in super remote locations.
It still would only work close to sunrise or sunset. You cannot get hours of extra light this way.
Oh wow, that would pretty limiting. Thank you for that heads up!
I see that from the 400 miles altitude they filed with the FCC, you'd expect them to be able to provide maybe an extra 2 hours before + after sunrise/sunset near the equator. However, that appears to improve to almost 4 hours at 50 degrees latitude - assuming 30 degrees of elevation is sufficient for the light to not get too scattered through the atmosphere. If you assume a much more conservative 60 degree elevation requirement then it would be 3 hours before+after sunrise/sunset at 50 degrees latitude.
It also depends on the season, but this has a much smaller effect than latitude.
Shortening the night by a combined 6-8 hours might be quite useful for operations in Ukraine which occur near 50 degrees latitude.
It's not. USSR and Russia experimented with space mirrors and was able to light significant territory. It was a successful program, but in 1993 Russia had no money to continue the project, so it was wrapped up.
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I really hope it's a scam, because if not, and this is allowed to exist, we're fucked.
oh dear, the stakes are so high
> You'll be sad to know there's another mf trying to put a mirror to reflect sunlight near twilight
This has been approved:
* https://ca.pcmag.com/networking/16760/fcc-approves-reflect-o...
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866452
Even if it's a government, you pollute the whole sky instead of one country's. This should be done only as a joint world effort, something that is not going to happen. It is very sad.
I went on a backcountry camping trip last year and was stargazing as one does. Kept seeing satellites. Was cool at first (used to be a rarity) but it got more and more annoying.
And for what? So that we can have more internet? Oh that’s just what we need. To spend even more time online. I’m sure Elon is quite excited for all of us, no matter where we are, we can be plugged into X just like him!
> It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky
SpaceX has many owners, especially post-IPO. You, too, can buy the sky and sell the sky.
Elon owns 80% of voting shares, and 42% overall.
>> SpaceX has many owners, especially post-IPO. You, too, can buy the sky and sell the sky.
Perfect, how can this not be a win win for anyone not involved?
An opportunity for everyone to become wealthy and scale our riches together.
Without Elon, how would so many of us .. “ever have made it”?
Laughable to imply that an individual retail investor will have any say or influence on a corporation as large as SpaceX in which Musk has a controlling stake.
The parent comment of your reply is intending to create more laughs than less.
SpaceX has many investors, not owners. If you don't have any say in how the company is run you're not an owner.
SpaceX utilizes a dual-class share structure where CEO Elon Musk retains between 82.4% and 85% of the total voting power, despite only owning roughly 42% of the company's actual equity.
Ownership means nothing without control.
I'm the opposite, I feel more depressed when the government controls our lives instead of hard working people who've proven themselves in the marketplace.
You know the point of democracy is that the government is also run by people who've proven themselves in a marketplace, right? It's just one where having more money doesn't entitle you to vastly more power, which is, you know... one well-established failure mode even of private marketplaces...
That chat control vote in the EU sure was sometime, wasn't it?
Are you attempting to make an argument? Because just off-handedly referencing topic-du-jour doesn't exactly achieve that.
Well, you seem to be giving blanket support to the government and conflating it with democracy.
I thought a good example of the pinnacle of government bureaucracy in action acting undemocratically both undermines your position and, secondly, might have you alter your opinion a bit.
You've, essentially, just appealed to authority to justify your position.
Uhhh no. I was pointing out the fallacy of GP portraying “government” outcomes (they’re the only ones that made a blanket statement) as somehow characteristically not generated by marketplace victories.
Actually many forms of government mandate and authority are generated by marketplace mechanisms, many of which are actually more true to desirable marketplace dynamics than those we see in private marketplaces, due to concentration of power, which is a known failure mode of marketplaces in general.
The idea that “government” is some mysterious mythical entity that just exists outside of people’s input and outside of marketplace forces is juvenile.
Neither government nor private market outcomes are intrinsically more legitimate than the other.
> Actually many forms of government mandate and authority are generated by marketplace mechanisms, many of which are actually more true to desirable marketplace dynamics than those we see in private marketplaces, due to concentration of power, which is a known failure mode of marketplaces in general.
Isn't government the highest concentration of power? They, typically, hold a monopoly on taking money with the threat of violence. Seems ripe for market failure.
Yes. But that’s why we created checks and balances between branches and across local state and federal. And have a balance of direct democracy and representative republic institutions. That’s why the rule of law matters.
And just like you can have a good form of government or a bad form of government you can have a good form of market capitalism and a bad form. A monopoly is not market capitalism, it’s the equivalent of a monarchy. Say what you will but even the UK has checks and balances on the monarchy.
Just copy/paste my first comment back here
The marketplace is distributed. A monopoly is not. You’re confusing the two and ignoring the harm the winner of market competition does when they escape competition.
You’re also ignoring that a government is accountable to people. A corporation is not.
You're not the only one: "Beyond the limit: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787042
China's Falcon 9 clone (long march 10b) is ready to go. Will you feel better when most of those sky dots are Chinese?
>what I think
Did you actually check with a satellite tracker, maybe show your kids and inspire them with what humanity can accomplish?
You are missing the point. It’s not that I don’t find technological progress inspiring, it’s that it is an emerging monopoly that will capture a common good with no accountability and permanently deprive people of a precious opportunity.
The opportunity to see the night sky they couldn't see anyway?
You can say what you want about Musk (I personally think that he is an appaling human being), but Starlink represents everybody who pays for starlink to get access to the internet, not just Elon.
Oh I agree it's an aberration but it seems unavoidable
This is incredibly regressive thinking. Any technology or human progress changes the world around us. Do you lament the construction of new buildings or roads because they change the natural landscape? Would you prefer we never explore space or build anything new?
IMO it’s a marvel to look up at the sky and see man made objects flying through the sky, it’s incredibly inspiring to see the great feats of engineering that humans are capable of.
Also if you look up at the night sky you can still see ALL the stars, it’s just that you can now see a few extra tiny dots flying by, it subtracts nothing from the average stargazer’s view.
Your children will get much more amazing and inspiring sights from space telescopes and spacecraft that this new space industry will enable. They will benefit from new science and manufacturing techniques that are enabled by cheap access to space.
>when it’s the government
The government had a monopoly on space access for the past half century and barely managed to put a handful of extremely expensive objects in space. They were never capable of creating reusable rockets or lowering the cost of access to space in a meaningful way. Maybe it feels nicer when governments do it, but cheap access to space will never happen if they are the ones running the show.
I am a progressive. But ownership of the commons is something that requires careful policy decisions. The same applies to utilities, the open ocean, wireless spectrum.
We shouldn’t allow monopolies in the name of progress or the monopolistic rent seeking will stifle progress.
The government could have absolutely done all of this and more if there was any commitment to the investment. Instead nasa had its budget gutted.
My kids won’t have a future with any opportunity if resources are so concentrated that their bargaining power can’t have any effect in the world.
>The government could have absolutely done all of this
Yeah they totally could have, so why didn’t they? World governments have had massive budgets for space agencies for like 70 years, yet they were never able to build reusable rockets or do anything other than send a handful of extremely overpriced novelty science projects into space.
You say they could do it, but there’s no evidence to support that they ever actually would.
The space shuttle was reusable.
No private company would have been able to bootstrap the basic research upon which spaceX is now building its business.
The government isn’t a commercial for profit enterprise. It serves a different function, specifically providing services for which markets won’t be functional like fire departments, policing, broad categories of infrastructure.
And your argument is a distraction. Just because government doesn’t do something well doesn’t justify granting a monopoly to a private actor. And if a monopoly is necessary then it should be a regulated utility like power generation, telecom etc.
The space shuttle was laughably bad compared to SpaceX’s rockets and they were not really rapidly reusable. They required an extensive refurbishment which involved disassembling the entire craft. The process took upwards of 6 months to re-fly. It also cost close to 1 BILLION per mission to fly it (that’s more than 10x what it costs to fly a SpaceX rocket).
What exactly are you saying is a monopoly? SpaceX is not a monopoly by any stretch, they are competing with Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, ULA, Relativity, and others.
>providing services for which markets won’t be functional
We are talking about a situation (launches, satellite constellations) where the government had a monopoly for 70 years and then transitioned to a market model. Since switching to a market model mass to orbit has gone through the roof and costs have fallen off a cliff. So much so that entirely new types of missions are now possible because of the increased access to space (Starlink is one such example).
We are specifically seeing the opposite of your “markets won’t be functional” statement; the market is so much better than the state-run enterprise that the idea of returning to the old model would be unthinkable.
By this logic we should also enjoy every time someone puts a motorway through woodland. Just look at the human achievement embodied in all that concrete!
Well some creations are more marvelous than others, maybe you wouldn’t find a concrete road beautiful or interesting, though arguably you totally could (many people still to this day find the enduring road/aqueduct infrastructure of Ancient Rome to be beautiful and inspiring), but looking at a city skyline with massive skyscrapers and intricate infrastructure is very inspiring.
Humans are capable of incredible feats of engineering and many man-made things are extremely inspiring.
Money is also a voting system. He can decide those things only because people voted for him with their money. The issue is, not everybody has same voting power in this system. But then again people who have more power were voted for previously by others. So it's kind of representative democracy.
Compounding interest means, left unchecked, the natural progression is the “voting” power concentrated until there is only a monarch.
A trillion dollars will accumulate $100 billion in passive wealth simply by existing
Compounding interest just skewes the balance so that being voted for earlier is worth more than being voted for later.
I'm not saying it's a good system, but it's "aiming" for realtively good things. Just needs a bit of rebalancing regarding what activities help people get voted for. Basically harm shouldn't pay, squatting on limited resources shouldn't pay.
Good, god, no, money represents the balance of power in a system, there's not thing 'representative' about it from a civic perspective, completely the opposite.
If you give your money to someone else you are giving them power. And people in power are going to represent you in context of decision making. Regardless of how well they do it.
I feel the exact same way after I saw a Starlink line flying over. It made me feel like any sci-fi movie where your entire environment has been purchased and is controlled by corporations. It was a sad feeling knowing even the sky has been claimed by someone now with zero repercussions.
They'll also find a way to use LEO as a sky-based advertising platform.
It's not one person though. If zero people were using Starlink, then it would be that one person's vanity up there, but since it seems people do find it useful, those satellite lines represent humans being able to connect with modern technology out in the Sahara or in the ocean. For sailors to keep in touch with loved ones and to have a less dreary existence on long ocean voyages. And not to fret, China's managed to land a reusable rocket, so soon they'll have their own constellation up there so it's not just that one particular person making a mess of things.
What we're seeing is humanity managing to become a space faring civilization. I look up and yearn to be up there as well. I'll never make it to space, but it would give me such joy if my children's children had the opportunity to.
> those satellite lines represent humans being able to connect with modern technology out in the Sahara or in the ocean
Or basic locations in Europe, that can be as close to 20km from a big city. There are a ton of spots where you have at best spotty 4G coverage or no coverage at all.
Used to live where we had 1Mbit ADSL, and no cell ... Trust me, you feel the limitations of that. Keeping your PC running 24/7 to download/buffer, so you can use your day traffic for more important stuff.
Starlink is a insane deal in my eyes. Sure, it uses a lot of power but your paying the same as typical vDSL in Germany. And ironically, ... Starlink is faster then the fixed lines we have here in the "3th" biggest city in Germany.
People really underestimate how much underinvestment there has been in Internet connectivity even in rich countries.
I live in the center of a capital of small EU country and I'm scheduled to get fiber Q3 this year. Copper is getting tired and flakey, 5G is overcrowded. There's been close to no progress in residential internet for the past 15 years.
It is one person who controls it, at his discretion who gets to share in the utility. What your saying can also be true without such an ownership model, right?
No. We’ve tried that for decades now and it hasn’t worked out very well for getting the world connected. The entire rural earth has been neglected. Even in silicon valley my neighborhood only got fiber this year and its saddled with crappy TV bundle deals, bad mobile apps built with wrapped web pages, poor service, and we-will-sell-your-data anti privacy provisions. Starlink has none of that.
I still don't see why it should be one man rather than commonly owned infrastructure.
So, communism?
Not necessarily, but in any case not a monopoly. E.g. Elon Musk now owns all highways: better or worse? Some distributed ownership seems useful as it distributes power accordingly.
Yeah, I don't know how this whole ARPANET thing is really going to play out...
Looks like you stopped reading after the first sentence.
Or if not, what am I missing?
What percentage of spaceX stock does humanity own? What about Elon?
Can the government shut off your access to GPS? No. Can spaceX shut off your access to their network? Yes.
Do you have rights to judicial review if government harms you? Yes. If spaceX does? Probably not because their terms of service create a contract not a legal right.
We're not space faring. We just put up satellites. There's nothing for us outside of the earth. It would take months of travel just to get to the useless barren wasteland that is Mars.
Maybe some day we'll be mining asteroids near Earth or something. Maybe we'll mine the moon. Going to/living on different planets is pretty much science fiction though. It's hard enough to live on the earth, it's gonna be 1000 times harder to live anywhere else.
One person?
Look at elons comp package and voting share and tell me he isn’t the singular person driving the process and capturing the gains.
Why didn't governments try making it?
The US has tons of spy satellites, why not make some for the folks paying taxes? Why do we have to sell our firstborns (data) to Google for maps etc?
Can't speak to the world as a whole but the US has we spent 50 years gutting most government functions that aren't part of the police/military/surveillance apparatus (and many of those as well). SpaceX itself is an example of the primary mechanism of this: Diverting funding to private, no-bid contracts that remove both market forces and democratic oversight from those services while also ballooning their costs
Medicare, social security and the interest on the debt are the 3 top federal spending categories
Social welfare is the top local spending category in many local/state governments
Yea, and medical costs - including those paid for by medicare, often for people who aged into the program with worse health, which in turn is partially attributable to a tendency to avoid preventative care earlier in life due to higher costs - in the US are drastically more expensive than elsewhere, primarily because of this exact pump: Providers, insurance, equipment manufacturers, and various middleman orgs have arisen to deal with a system that is riddled with cost-inflating private-public partnerships and regulatory band-aids to mitigate small parts of the mess that end up having second-order effects that mostly also raise costs.
I believe some functions are simply best performed by non-profit-motivated government agencies. However, I would usually prefer an actual unregulated or black market over the corrupt frankenstein of private-public partnerships
Private no bid contracts?
Disinformation on the Internet? Never seen it before.
The contracts are not just publicly bid but paired.
Come off this nonsense.
Space is the sphere of government and the launchers and satellites have always been built by companies and SpaceX is very visibly cheaper.
Private here is meant to refer to the "private sector", as in using a company, not the existence of the contract being classified or something. I suppose SpaceX is publicly traded now, but that distinction also, in my opinion, is not the important one here. At any rate, if you think I'm wrong or mistaken, I'm happy to hear you out, but you're going to have to go into a little more detail if your intent is to convince me. Like I am not even sure what "paired" means in this context
Paired means at least two companies get the contract. SpaceX to my memory has always been paid less when that happens.
Examples are
CCrew - Boeing
CCargo - Sierra, SpaceX is now a sub for another company bc their engines are made in Ukraine.
HLS - Blue Origin
NSSL - ULA, Blue Origin (Maybe RKLB)
NRO Starshield GMTI - Northrop Grumman
SDA - York Space
SEA-2 - OneWeb
>Can't speak to the world as a whole but the US has we spent 50 years gutting most government functions that aren't part of the police/military/surveillance apparatus (and many of those as well).
It's the likes of Boeing and Lockheed vs SpaceX not Government vs Private Sector. That's how it's worked since Apollo.
>SpaceX itself is an example of the primary mechanism of this: Diverting funding to private, no-bid contracts that remove both market forces and democratic oversight from those services while also ballooning their costs
This is the core of the disinformation. SpaceX has always been cheaper, see Europa Clipper for one of the most egregious examples. The post SpaceX era is also cheaper for the government because of the shift in contract types. That's how you hear Boeing is losing money on Starliner and Air Force 1, because companies now eat the losses they used to pass on. Raytheon (and SpaceX mind) dropped out of SDA because of this.
The contracts are also openly bid. And if they aren't classified you can bid too. Lots of these contracts don't even have pré-qualification.
This stuff is known to anyone that follows the industry. In fact, the fact other companies are involved makes it more expensive because they charge more than SpaceX per unit of work. But government keeps its leverage and industrial base.
The person you read from who claimed (I can tell they aren't original thoughts) these things is lying to you and any cursory check (sometimes just reading articles instead of just headlines is enough).
It's like the X company isn't paying taxes, "this is a bad thing" stories, then you look at the balance sheet and not only is the company paying taxes, it's lifetime and operationally unprofitable, so it has no corp tax incidence (like anyone doing part time work at minimum wage or below (at a charity))
I stand corrected that all these contracts are no-bid, though some functions still are. I remain skeptical that paired contracts do much to help competition or efficiency in a market that tends toward consolidation, and am unsure why you add the unrelated point about corporate taxes, which isn't particularly revelatory: It's well-understood that a ton of companies operate in a mode that doesn't chase profitability, and indeed this seems to be disincentivised by the tax structure. People who are upset about how corporations operate financially should push for changing this on a policy level
SpaceX and the current space polity dreamt up under Reagan and Bush and delivered by Obama is a complete bipartisan win. Things are cheaper, faster and more abundant in the sector.
Launch, Human Spaceflight, Satellites and Satellite Internet are now (and for most of a decade) been primarily American. Even the foreign competition is largely American (See Telesat)
Paired contracts (openly bid from a larger pool of qualified companies mind), a fixed cost for delivering ends/products etc have meant lower costs to the government, redundancy in case of failure, less time between having an idea and having it implemented (HASTE, LUCAS and Starshield).
Of course there's the risk that this means companies exit the market if they can't deliver in the old environment (SDA, Starshield) but there's still the option for old companies to compete in truly novel projects (F-47) with the old contracting system. And pairing also allows the government to bring in new companies to the fold to compete with the old guard.
As for corporate taxes, those articles are standard fare to direct misplaced anger at companies that aren't doing well on the whole (because they've never turned a profit or are in a low margin business) or are reinvesting all their money(something that's supposed to be a good thing). We aren't talking about transfer pricing and similar shenanigans. Accountants just roll their eyes. But it breeds unnecessary anger (See the "BlackRock is buying single family homes"; "SpaceX has got ~$30B of government subsidies" nonsense too)
>It's well-understood that a ton of companies operate in a mode that doesn't chase profitability
In the end these articles insinuate that said company isn't paying their fair share/ is freeloading on the polity.
The responses to the articles clearly show that it's not well understood.
It's the best and worst of times, but we should at least have clarity on what's better and what's worse.
While there's a lot of truth to your "gutting most gov't functions" claim, you might want to compare SpaceX's subsidies and launch costs with those of the gov't's traditional providers. And look at myriad $billions that have been squandered on the Senate Launch System.
There are plenty of solid reasons to despise Elon - no need for counterfactuals.
I would rather things like internet not be provided by entities that are incentivised by profits, controlled by one or a few individuals, none of whom are publicly accountable. I am actually willing to tolerate some inefficiency for the upsides of that tradeoff, but I think lots of governments manage to do utilities competently, too
I'd like to see a pre SpaceX post like this from you. Anything pre 2015 is fine. Because this is nothing new.
What you're essentially arguing for is SpaceX building this for the government and government being the middleman.
More money would be spent. Not less.
I not only haven't mentioned Musk a single time, but have thought this for my entire adult life. Utilities should be public goods. Hell, this isn't even that unpopular an opinion. Not everything boils down to culture war or mindless gossip about particular famous rich people
Also frankly I would mind companies like SpaceX being contracted to build and sell satellites a lot less than them also continuing to control or operate them
I'm not talking about Musk, or culture war stuff. The rest is fine.
The government has Starshield. And several other non SpaceX satellite systems. They famously sent four (4) recievers of that sort to Ukraine.
There's this idea out there that SpaceX is somehow stealing from NASA. Paired with the notion/assumption that the government builds its space vehicles. Completely incomprehensible.
> There are plenty of solid reasons to despise Elon - no need for counterfactuals.
There really aren't that many. He's kinda a dick and briefly supported the president very publicly.
Most of the other reasons are just as fatuous as this.
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Maybe because republicans spent generations claiming the government can’t and shouldn’t do anything.
Once you notice the pattern of how these companies are started you will see that there is a hidden hand of government behind much of what we think is an independent, market driven, capitalistic enterprise. Whether it’s Facebook or Oracle or Palantir or SpaceX it’s all the same. Heck even the founding of Silicon Valley itself can be viewed to be government driven. The bottom line is national security is not going to be left to the whims of a market when the pentagon has a black budget that can eclipse all of VC spending with the stroke of a generals pen.
This is a totally accurate post. It’s amazing how many free market zealots aren’t aware of the government foundation under SV. They think they sprout all wealth creation on their own because they are just that brilliant.
While there's some truth to this, the early investments in Palantir and Facebook from In-Q-Tel were tiny. For Palantir, the contracts with a single government agency were far more capital than the investment.
> Why didn't the government try...
As a broad generality, governments are utter crap at inventing/building/operating bleeding-edge technologies at giga-scale. Exceptions are generally narrow-focus military hardware, plus flood control, aqueducts, and other "obviously needed for the nation's welfare" stuff.
Are they actually worse than businesses though? The internet, jet engines.. in fact whole swaiths of technology have been created under governments not enterprises. This just feels like an economic concept people blindly accept.
Except that they aren’t. In fact they do most of the basic research that isn’t commercially viable that lays the groundwork for business to later commercialize. There would be no Waymo without the darpa self driving prizes. No uber without GPS. I could go on and on.
Russia and China are coming as well. Expect all big countries have hundreds of thousands of low orbit sats. It required in order to be a powerful military nation. Without it a country is doomed.
Undersea fiber is cool until someone sends a submarine to snip it or sends „not associated ship” to drag anchor over the coordinates of fiber cable.
It is harder to break satellite constellation in a concealed way.
We live in a remote area with no surrounding lights, perfect for star watching.
It disgusts me that now, at all times, I can see strings of man made objects polluting the skies.
This is the same logic Trump used to fight a wind farm put in off the coast of one of his golf courses.
If you're seeing "strings" those are recently launched satellites. Operational satellites are below visual magnitude.
They are not, especially after twilight, or before dawn.
Indeed. Compare https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.03651 with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale
If you believe the hype, just wait until 2029 when it's not a person at all!
You can't launch or transmit without the government's permission.
Come off this nonsense.
The alternative is some company charging the government for the same exact thing.
It's inevitable that at some point, a hostile nation will, ah, "disagree" with this laissez faire approach and start launching junk satellites at the Starlink constellation. That should be fun.
If a different person made them you would say "wow so cool I can see sattelies" now you are soyposting about muh kids. Grow up.
Take the trolling elsewhere. I don’t like monopoly. I don’t like monarchy. They lead to human suffering and stifling of innovation. Your playground insults about soy anything are unbecoming of HN.
"I saw something I didn't like, so I assumed it was the fault of a billionaire I don't like" didn't use to be the top voted comment on HN.
Starlink satellites have low orbits and only reflect sunlight around sunrise and sunset.
Very untrue. Go somewhere with low light pollution and you'll see them in the dead of night. I was out in rural Australia and used a satellite tracker app to confirm what I was seeing - they are very distinctive and definitely visible.
They are not overwhelming, mind you, but I did notice them immediately. They stood out enough that I wondered what they were and started researching, that alone says something about the prevalence.
Edit: An LLM tells me that this is partly unique to how far South Australia is and the positioning of the sun in Australia's Summer. But I lack the physics knowledge to confirm that.
What percentage of satellites are launched and controlled by spaceX? When is a market considered a monopoly? When does a monopoly cause harm. Those are the questions you should be asking because if you want to participate in the innovation process there has to be a market where you can participate and not be squashed by a monopoly.
Agreed - I'd consider this public pollution caused by extremely greedy billionaires ruining the planet. They could only amass money because they did not care about social responsibilities prior to do so; any contrary statement made by them to this is only lies, lies and more lies.
Unfortunately you need a government that cares for the whole; in the USA oligarchs rule, so the general public are treated as paying slaves.
Billionaires are not responsible for this, we the people are. Market forces and society chose this.
You are emotionally disregulated and unable to think critically.
Your second sentence was unnecessary and unproductive and undermined your first point.
I agree with you. I still stand by the statement because it was a neutral observation that should be stated.
Many people are too morally outraged to think straight anymore, as plainly demonstrated, but who can blame them. Hope they take it as a gentle nudge for them get out of the outrage cycle.
"I'd consider this public pollution caused by extremely greedy billionaires ruining the planet."
This is such a weird framing, as if Starlink was a frivolous project for some rich person's fun.
There is genuine demand for orbital ISP from people, including people in poorer countries whom a better connectivity may help improve their incomes and lives, where an alternative is basically impossible (you won't get optic fibre in the Himalayas or Papua or the Andes anytime soon, if ever).
20 million people are now using Starlink and that number will almost certainly grow to maybe ten times as many, eventually. Ukraine uses Starlink to defend itself from being devoured by an aggressor. Sailors and other people in far away places use Starlink to keep in touch with their families.
Did you know that before Starlink, the South Pole Base had just 2x256 kB connection for everyone?
I get the "pollution" angle, but not the "hey, one guy is ruining the planet" angle. At the very least, all the customers are complicit, and I would add all the governments that don't seem to be able to build terrestrial connections for their own population.
But the government doesn’t have to allow a monopoly to exist. SpaceX wouldn’t exist without government contracts and support. The government should cultivate an ecosystem not a monopoly.
In my YC batch there were rocket companies. We should see more.
But the origin of SpaceX is not one of a government-cultivated monopoly. There were more than 200 space startups so far, I believe, and the vast majority of those simply went belly up. SpaceX was once an absolutely unremarkable element of this large set and they almost went belly up as well - their fourth (and first successful ) launch of Falcon 1 was literally the last one that they had money for. Even 5 years into their existence, no one would be able to foretell that it will be them and not anyone else who eventually becomes the behemoth is its.
If someone really fits the description of a quasi-monopoly systematically supported by the government for decades, it is Boeing and ULA in general. They get/got all the cost-plus contracts that were the real cash cow. SpaceX only got fixed-cost contracts.
I rooted for a lot of companies, my favorite was Armadillo Aeronautics by John Carmack, because I admire Carmack. But space seems to be genuinely hard.
Ah yes, won't someone think of the penguins
Blaming this on billionaires instead of “the whole” who are customers of space-x is asinine.
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That’s a very reductionist and dismissive take. Also it’s rude.
I’m an occasional astrophotographer, and the baseline of photos you can took are absolutely breathtaking now. Seeing this destroyed in real time is depressing.
I used to see a rare flyby of a satellite in the complete dark, but now it’s much more, and besides my personal annoyance, many people much more serious about sky and space are rightfully angry. Maybe you can ask them to grow up, too.
Not every progress is good progress. We should understand that by now. You should understand that better than all of us combined, since you’re apparently grown up, way more than us.
>Not every progress is good progress
And you're the judge of this based on your likes and hobbies?
Anyway, I agree. Just ask the people blocking the HS2 or CaHSR about how sad the train plowing through their communities makes them feel. We need to tear down all trains, not every progress is good progress
Would you say it might at least be fair to discuss how things that affect everyone are decided upon or how externalities are compensated for? Or should it be free for all?
Are there not processes in place, with the FCC?
The top comment here is someone lamenting how depressing it is that supposedly a single person owns the night sky.
Another one is asking if we will be the last generation to see the night sky.
If there is a lot of change to how the night sky looks like could perhaps be worth a discussion on if the process is still the right one (and if it is global enough).
That is fair enough.
Yet with how political and dramatized the discussion around this is even on this website here, I fear that any opportunity to block or delay more SpaceX satellites will be used to the fullest.
I am concerned that this might hinder innovation. If you involve other countries, would this not be likely to become an extremely hard and slow regulatory process?
I understand that SpaceX's mitigation methods have been effective, and that the current satellites are on average around the limit of being visible to the naked eye under a very dark sky.
Personally I am eager to see more of these satellites enable 5G like cellular coverage outdoors in rural areas.
Perhaps I am more open to change in the appearance of nature than others. Some oppose also wind turbines in our mountains, where I usually think that they look cool and typically make the landscape more interesting.
I feel similarly. For example, when I see wind farms it gives me hope that we are moving towards more sustainable fuels. It also makes me feel like I've lived long enough to see the future.
With that said, I think we should have honest conversations about the benefits vs. the impacts, but also realize nothing is stagnant, not even nature.
I don't have the answers here, I a afraid, but not having at least the broader discussion might also not help (not sure what is already happening there, though).
> Are there not processes in place, with the FCC?
The impartiality of those processes is a bit in question when the prime mover here is so far in bed with the executive that he gets to go up on stage during inauguration to sieg a few heils.
(And is then given a free hand to fire whomever he wants from the federal government.)
SpaceX has launched satellite under a previous government and even got them to fund deployment.
The ITU has also approved SpaceX actions.
It's not reductionist - planes and their vapor trails are a constant presence in the sky there and in many places. Far more obvious than even these 5-10x as many satellites will be. I'm sure there are cloud photographers who are bothered by plane but, as with Starlink, there are people getting good value from them. There are even photographers embracing them. I think you see the world how you're familiar with as good or at least acceptable but anything different as bad.
People are louder about things that have not yet taken hold because it's easier to stop them. The constant rumble of airplanes in the sky is a problem actually, but it's far more entrenched. Why is it difficult to understand that people notice and care about negative externalities of so-called "progress"?
Because it's a negative unhappy view. It's not enjoyable to hear people complaining about problems or imaginary problems everywhere - and it really is everywhere. It's hard to find news about exciting new technology without rampant negativity from the commenters. I suppose HN is particularly negative about technology but so is mainstream culture. It's also irrational - the world keeps getting better in leaps and bound but we hardly celebrate that. High speed low latency affordable internet in any remote place in the world is amazing!
Perhaps another offputting aspect of this is Musk-hate. People were excited about SpaceX and Tesla a decade ago. It was a rare burst of popular techno-optimism, but now they aren't able to appreciate anything Musk does because their minds are clouded with hate.
I don't think people have to be happy about everything happening around them, especially if they're tangibly harmed by them. "Good vibes only" is a toxic mentality. It only makes you ignore other people's view and pushes you inside your own bubble deeper.
The problems you declare imaginary creates real problems for many scientists. Mostly for astronomers. There are projects created solely to track space objects and space debris, so they can find windows to do their experiments without affected by these satellites. It's not Starlink only. We're crowding space so much that probability of Kessler Syndrome is increasing ever faster.
The world gets better and better, that's true, but it's not linear. How hard is it to accept that we make, sometimes costly, mistakes? Many "wonder" chemicals turned out to be deadly. We used to drink radon infused water. PFAS dangers have been knowingly hidden from general population for decades. Overuse of plastics is showing its effects now. I mean, we used to spray DDT to people's hair.
I don't care about high-speed low latency internet in the middle of a jungle. While I can understand its applications for remote sensing applications, there can be other ways to do that.
Personally, I don't "hate" anyone, it's a so strong of a word, but I dislike who damages ordinary people's lives for monies the same. For me Tesla's outrageous claims and AI datacenters' footprint is a bigger source of dislike. Starlink works at least, but it doesn't mean I'm favorable against its existence.
When the world is transforming to the techno-dystopias the SciFi books I have read warned about, how can I be happy? There's nothing to be excited about right now, maybe except renewable energy and some aspects of electric cars. Other than that we're going full-bore surveillance and oppression combined with destruction of nature and planet turned up to 11.
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The post he was replying to is the reductionist and dismissive take.
And yes progress is good progress.
> And yes progress is good progress.
Many weapons designers thought they were making war “more humane” by creating weapons that killed faster and more decisively.
Haber, on chemical warfare: “The gas weapons are not at all more cruel than the flying iron pieces; on the contrary, the fraction of fatal gas diseases is comparatively smaller, the mutilations are missing.”
> Many weapons designers thought they were making war “more humane” by creating weapons that killed faster and more decisively.
Do you think the world would be better off if we still killed ourselves with swords instead of drones? The result is the same. A death is a death. The real cause of wars is not "better weapons".
In that case, isn't the most logical and reasonable way to fight wars would be to immediately use city-killing nuclear weapons?
Here is another example
https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z...
What happened to you that you became that dismissive?
Was it not a big issue for you that aeroplanes were flying overhead?
Whos responsibility was it that you were living were you lived?
I guess there is a small difference between being able to choose or parents have choosen for you vs. everyone on the whole planet needs to endure it.
We could pass this user forward to a psychology forum for evaluation, I think they'd have a field day with these types of people.
A lot to unpack
/s - obviously
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments
Dude, are you okay?
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> 'My kids had to see a power line going through the country side'
A lot of people get upset about such things, even those are rather more important than just adding to the world's existing widespread internet access.
Wind turbines and solar farms is another one. It’s same people who whinge about crying babies on plane.
All of those three examples are also rather more important than Starlink.
Starlink is cool, and has some niches, but this is a fairly limited argument in its favour.
All three are greener variant of what was already available. Alternatives to starlink weren’t really available.
> you should be celebrating what Elon and his companies have achieved
The level of servility of some people never ceases to amaze me. This sentence is viscerally repulsive to me.
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Maybe somewhat ironically, I think this is an overly cynical take.
People can acknowledge a difference of values and recognize what they consider a destruction of the commons without their stance being distilled to simply being a hater.
Would you also considering people who bemoan the degradation of Lake Erie by industrialists of the last century as “crab mentality”?
Similarly, people at the time took what may be closer to the opposite stance: “Fundamentally this level of environmental degradation was accepted as a sign of success.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught...
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until the kessler effect traps is on this ever-heating rock
LEO is not the place to worry about Kessler syndrome.
Mostly, Kessler syndrome isn’t something to worry about at all; there are just a lot of orbital planes available. But in LEO, the mechanics don’t even apply.
Not to be alarmist, but suppose a galactic federation judges that humans in their current state of development will pose a danger to other civilizations when they imminently attain warp capability, so as a safety precaution they need to be confined to their planet for at least a millennium. An agent of the federation posing as human manipulates the population into allowing 100,000 satellites to be deployed. With that done, federation scientists solve the many-body problem for the exact necessary speed and trajectory of a small meteor to shatter one of the satellites such that some of its fragments precisely target its neighboring satellites, and so on, while the rest get kicked up into higher orbits. Life goes on but any enterprise that depends on penetrating the debris field becomes infeasible.
Why is that?
Depends on how you define LEO. I think the commenter was probably thinking of Very Low Earth Orbit, VLEO.
First graph is a list of deorbit times: https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/deorbit-syst...
As expected, higher altitudes, higher mass, and lower surface areas correlate to longer deorbit times. It looks like altitude has an extreme effect on deorbit times, as you can see the 100 KG satellite (solar min) deorbits in a little under 2 years at 400 KM, but over 15 years at 500 KM. So 1.25x the altitude results in 7.5x the deorbit time.
Stuff at 800-1000 KM can take centuries to deorbit, and that's within both NASA's (under 2000 KM) and the ESA's (under 1000 KM) definitions of LEO. There is a definition for VLEO of under 450 KM, which would have fairly short deorbit times, and therefore a relatively mild Kessler Syndrome.
Indeed. It's something investors should worry about for the data centres and if SpaceX will bankrupt itself instead of giving them a return on their investments, but it's not something where general space enthusiasts should worry about Starlink: the timescale for orbital decay is long enough to kill a company, but short compared to a lifetime.
Because LEO is a degrading orbits, meaning that the satelites fall out of orbit after a few years on their own.
Hope for what?
For less starving people? For less child abuse? For less climate change?
I look up at the night sky and i want to see stars and the endlessness of the universe and don't want to be reminded that Elon Musk will poisen our atmosphere.
> For less starving people? For less child abuse? For less climate change?
Yes. The only way to truly solve these issues is technological progress.
Not really, all three of them are sociological problems. And, at least for the first and last, we could already have mostly solved them but for the intransigent insanity of various political cults.
It's not technological progress we need; it's cultural progress.
Logistics of food distribution is a technological problem, and nowadays famines tend to happen less due to absolute shortage of food in a wider region, rather than due to insufficiently developed transport infrastructure.
IIRC no place in the world which has hard-paved highways has ever seen a peacetime famine. That's almost exclusively the domain of mud road territories. Of course, this is partly a correlation (mud road territories have worse governance and more banditry), but there is causality as well.
Well the only thing that has ever solved starvation is improved technology, child abuse I think has nothing to do with satellites, and managing climate change requires massive energy and technology resources especially in space.
So clearly you are in favor of starvation and human suffering due to climate change because of your irrational distaste for seeing satellites in orbit.
I suspect the root cause is you've overdosed on propaganda on the internet.
How is Elon Musk going to poison our atmosphere?
The Starlink satellites burn up in the atmosphere as they end their useful life. The metals that the satellites are made up of don't vanish in the thin air up there. They burn and just hang up there. Now, whether or not this is an impending disaster is for you to decide, but that's the theory of it.
buddy our ancestors didn’t even have light at night nor heat/ac.
life for our kin will only be better.
we will have space stations where you can visit and see all the stars you want.
there will be space tourism and that will be pretty cool.
that’s what i wanted as a kid and its cool to see it play out irl.
edit: dang didn't expect so many negative people
Why is that better? Because you read about it in a sci fi book?
and what did you read that makes you anti progress and imagination?
History. The general state of humanity is one where wealth and power concentrate.
I am disappointed that SV is shifting to a disregard for the dangers of monopolies and monarchies.
i also read history. my people were basically oppressed for centuries. if you think today is bad you're privileged and silly, and probably possess a w2 mentality where you get a paycheck every 2 weeks and think that's somehow oppressive.
That’s not how the curve of history has always bent. There were long periods of extreme inequality where most people were serfs and a few controlled the assets. That is the norm, the recent period of opportunity.
I have no problem with billionaires. Or trillionaires. I do have a problem with monopoly because it destroys the very ecosystem that creates the increased well being you describe.
Granted “we” are billionaires.
Not only you didn’t get the point, but you still hold on to your delusions:
> life for our kin will only be better.
Right? In this subscription economy? Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved? You can’t afford to rent the house you loved let alone buy it? (previous generations could afford) the list goes on and on.
Maybe stop spreading lies and see things more objectively?
Being objective doesn't mean laser focusing on the negatives. For instance:
> Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved?
You know how many movies the average peasant watched in the 1800s? 0. The closest equivalent was live theatre and that was an expensive luxury. You'd also likely get see one or more of your children die to diseases that are trivially treatable or preventable today.
these people are hopeless.
this is why it is important to give toys and distractions to the masses and meaningless grind so they can stay busy and happy.
while other people actually build the world for them.
Except the “builders” won’t have anyone to sell products to.
Markets require competition and customers.
Except, it’s actually you, who enjoys these toys and distractions.
There will always be people like you, who will accept every single shit, then call them “gift from builders”.
We are talking about handful amount of billionaire who manipulate masses, not Industrial Revolution and technological advancements.
The issues you enumerated were very well addressed in the socialist USSR.
you know there's more to life than just subscribing to services meant for the Lowest Common Denominator right? and of those people literally billions are happy to pay for them.
edit: not LCD the screen… if you thought thats what i meant then… nvm… not even gonna say it lol iykyk
Mine is OLED, perhaps this is the reason I am not among those billions :(
EDIT: You edited your comment after I submit my response. You cannot put arbitrary abbreviations and expect people to read your mind. Anyway, there is no point in arguing with you.
if you thought it means the screen like i said… you proved my point. congrats.
services meant for the LCD. and those people pay for them.
all the context was there. you failed.
lol at you
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And for what?
For a planet which gets warmer and warmer.
When did you became that compliant?
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..you good bro? Anyway, things are improving but that doesn’t mean people can’t have a say in what tradeoffs they are willing to accept in return for progress.
A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.
Uhhh, I don't know what you're reading, but the comment I was replied to was complaining about the "subscription economy" and not having enough time to watch movies as evidence why life is getting worse.
> A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.
The vast majority of humanity has benefited from progress, compared to most decades and certainly centuries in the past. So I don't really know what your point is here?
Of course life now is better than 100 years ago.
But do you really think life has been getting better in the last 10 years say?
Do you think trickle down economics works?
Are you happy with the way things are going under this administration, which favours those BILLIONAIRES you mentioned, but couldn’t really give a damn about the rest of us or the commons?
Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?
> But do you really think life has been getting better in the last 10 years say?
Uh, yeah. My TV's much better, my video games are better, programming is easier and more fun with these new AI options added on top of better frameworks than we had in the past, there are way more restaurants serving better food, way more great shows and movies, there's mainstream awareness of the ills of social media, I can take driverless taxis around my city, I can tap to pay pretty much everywhere, wayyyyyy more of my friends work remotely. I'm 40 now, and myself + most of my friends + family are making more money now than we were at 30.
> Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?
You sound like you've been reading a bunch of gloom and doom scenarios. Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights. Stop reading so much negative news that's telling you the sky is falling and that everything is going to shit.
Of course there are massive problems and inequities we're solving, of course! But that's always been the case. Relax. Breathe. Put it in perspective.
All those things are not necessities of life. Food, shelter and energy have become more expensive and poverty rates have barely shifted and are currently getting worse.
Your response is basically 'Works on my machine!'.
And speaking of touching grass; what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) under this administration will mean to our commons?
I'll tell you, it means the new rule will make it easier to legally destroy wildlife habitats. And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back, because solar is woke or something. I guess you're OK with that too, since it doesn't impact you (yet).
Even though living standards have improved in the last 100 years overall, it's not a guarantee it will continue like that, if we let the Robber Barons take full control again.
> Your response is basically 'Works on my machine!'.
The majority of people in Western countries are not in the lower income brackets, but in the middle and upper brackets. Plus extreme poverty has been in decline all across the world. In other words, things are working well on MANY people's machines, not just mine. And they're beginning to work better on many more.
> what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)
> And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back
Yes, there are new+continuing problems in the world. Duh. And not everything is getting better all the time. Duh.
These things will always be true.
What's your point? Why do you and other people like you feel compelled to bring up obvious statements like this anytime anyone tries to say that things are generally getting better? You act as if when people say things are getting better they are saying things are perfect. Nobody thinks things are perfect. But you react as if it's some sort of crime against humanity to list ways in which life is genuinely getting better for many hundreds of millions, if not billions of people over the decades.
What is this allergy that you have toward acknowledging progress when there is progress? Why do you think that somehow warrants some totally unnecessary lecture about how there are still obviously problems in the world?
> it's not a guarantee it will continue like that
Again, has anyone ever said or even implied that progress is guaranteed to continue happening automatically?
> Of course there are massive problems and inequities we're solving, of course! But that's always been the case. Relax. Breathe. Put it in perspective.
You're just not someone who has to deal with these problems. Are we solving them? Not sure what you're being that of.
> Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights.
I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective
> You're just not someone who has to deal with these problems. Are we solving them? Not sure what you're [basing] that of.
Almost every major measure of human progress and prosperity over time?
What are you basing your doom and gloom beliefs on?
> I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective
I would wager my perspective is much broader than yours. Being so anxious and pessimistic that you only focus on the negative, to such a degree where when people point out real positive progress you feel COMPELLED to say something negative, doesn't mean you have a broad perspective. It just means you're miserable.
10 years ago I couldn’t buy self driving, zero pollution, zero maintenance supercar for next to nothing.
Which self driving supercar is that?
But I'm not talking about luxuries like super cars that most people couldn't afford.
I'm talking about the necessities of life. Food, shelter and energy have become more expensive and under this administration's policies it's not getting any better.
Poverty rates have barely improved and under this administration desire to reduce SNAP budget heavily, what do you think this will do to child poverty rates?
The one that drives millions of people every day
>watching their children die from easily curable infections, enduring routine tooth extractions without anesthesia, working six-day weeks around lethal machinery, watching entire neighboring towns slowly starve to death in famines, living in huts that were crawling with insects, subject to the brutal whims of whoever their local thug ruler happened to be with no human rights at all, and often being enslaved by the millions and worked to death in brutal conditions. Those softies just couldn't possibly imagine how truly hard we have it today.
A significant portion of the human populace still lives like this in various degrees today. You are just blind to it because you'd rather live in your delusion for comfort.
What's your point? Progress is not perfection. There will always be human suffering. Acknowledging that there's progress is not the same thing as ignoring the fact that there's suffering. I don't know what sort of cult mindset got everybody to believe that those are the same thing, but it's horrible and delusional and incredibly illogical.
I think the point is: some people will be left behind while reaching the described space era, just like the way it happened with many previous leaps and left behind those populations that are suffering from now-easily-curable diseases. And this time around, it seems like only a minority that are billionaires will be able to move forward, and we all will be left behind.
I believe it should’ve been possible to not leave so much people behind and so much behind. Requiring those at the front to not leave people so far behind (and forcefully funneling away their riches if they do) would’ve been enough.
Life is better for the poorest in society than it's ever been, thanks in large part to the nonstop proliferation and cheapening of technology in the past 200 years, esp. the past 100. I can't for the life of me understand why you people are so focused on trying to drag down the top when you could be focused on further bringing up the bottom. It's just such a miserable negative perspective on life, like crabs in a bucket.
> And this time around, it seems like only a minority that are billionaires will be able to move forward, and we all will be left behind.
I don't think this is true. Of course, rich people will always benefit the most from any technological advances. But there is no indication that the average Joe will be worse off in say, 20 years, compared to today. Medical advances alone coming down the pipeline will likely tip the scales towards future average Joe being better off compared to today. If I have to make a choice, for example: do I want to cut the deaths from diseases by half and fill the sky with Starlink satellites, or do nothing? I am picking the better medicice and Starlink-filled sky.
dude i dig your sarcasm and i agree with your point
Buddy our anceostors were able to see the night sky.
I don't need a space station with space tourism only the richest can afford and will be still very dangerous to see the stars right now.
What you will see is how Starlink satelites will poisen our atmosphere at re-entry.
so what's the alternative? just don't make any progress?
In the mid 20th century some people believed urban motorways were "progress" and wanted to build them everywhere, see for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_%28New_York_World%27s...
Thank you for sharing this.
This vision is absolutely horryfying, yet at same time incredibly interesting.
If you wanna look into another example search for the Abercrombie Plan in Edinburgh: it was a very ambitious urbanistic plan to "modernize" this city. For instance they proposed to demolish all of the historical Georgian and Victorian buildings in Princes Street and replace them with brutalist buildings and a motorway.
People have different definitions of progress. I have found that people who are "progressive" on one axis can often be quite conservative on another. Look at the SF Bay Area. While it is quite progressive in the political-ideology sense, we oppose construction that would cause literal progress in the material conditions of the citizenry. "Manhattanization" has been a word used for decades to oppose the thought of densifying SF. My neighbors here in North Bay come out in arms to oppose light bollards on a public footpath. We cannot even progress our footpaths. Rather than build a larger, more inclusive, and cheaper city, you will find countless proponents for rent control - a solution to the question of, "how can I use the law to keep my apartment cheap while refusing to accommodate any more people in the city?"
You are seeing this in this thread. I doubt anyone likes to be described as contra-progress. But nevertheless people would rather conserve the current night sky than see it transmute into a shimmering sea of a million artificial satellites. It's not really obvious to me why one state should be preferable to the other.
Yes? We don't have to blindly and constantly be making progress on everything at all cost. Look around you, look at what all this progress did to the world we live in.
Then our descendants will talk about how they were held back by our greedy ancestors who just wanted to be able to look at the night sky and see only natural stars, and they'll be right.
Also let me guess, you have high speed internet avaiable at your house so starlink isn't your only high-speed option right now?
I resent my recent ancestors for tearing up all our cities in favour of motorways, and grateful only that it wasn’t worse. They thought that was progress though, and that cars were the only way to move into the future.
I’m not against advancing in this area, but there is nuance. Progress can be short sighted.
Or they will talk about how we rushed too fast to clutter space and now can’t escape earth orbit because of a cloud of dangerous shrapnel and are going to go extinct without being multi planetary.
Progress is a very human centric view. But if you consider earth as a whole system, we have over optimized the system for our benefit while the other parts of the system hugely suffered (other species, environment etc.).
We need to ensure our progress is balanced taking into account the whole system instead of just one part.
Unmanaged progress risks permanent harm. There is a way for progress to balance the tradeoffs.
The alternative to Starlink already existed before Starlink. I'm using it right now.
African here living under and shit hole government who has no interest in improving the lives of the people. Starlink has been a game changer! An absolute game changer. I do not support Elon Musk but just putting out there that Starlink is helping kids in remote areas with no electricity (they use small solar panel) to access the Internet.
A monopoly can do good in the world. I am glad this is beneficial to you. I worry, given the history of monopoly behavior, that it will flip to extreme rent seeking in the not distant future.
Hopefully they don't part with books—the way kids in the U.S. have. Hopefully they don't spend all their free time on Tik Tok…
Most people cannot afford to have it in their home. They will get access at school or shopping centre. Most kids don't have phones either but I really do get your point. The other danger is they tend to be susceptible to fake news and stories made up using AI. I have had cousins from the village send me a picture of a mermaid claiming she was caught in one of the rivers.
> I have had cousins from the village send me a picture of a mermaid claiming she was caught in one of the rivers.
For what it's worth, this also happens with printed books.
I wasted the latter half of my teens taking New Age occultism and magical powers as a profound topic rather than a literature and culture topic, thanks to a combination of a bookstore chain near where I grew up and a mother who also took this all very seriously.
I wasn't suggesting that books are some kind of paragon of "truth". But as I think most HN readers would agree, there's just something… tangible about them that seems to stimulate the brain in a way that ephemeral images on a screen don't.
what about being a better parent?
i feel like all these problems people come up with stem from the fact they suck at parenting and have to project.
i and most people i know don’t have these problems. we actually care, and our parents cared about us.
when i was growing up it was kids who drank or smoked (we didn’t have smartphones).
just avoid them.
these days if kids are glued to the phone that’s the parents fault. bad parenting.
take kids to the museum or get them to a classical show or something.
if parents make excuses why they can’t, again L parents.
This reads like you aren’t a parent and haven’t experienced the effects of social and peer pressure. We don’t allow screen time but our kids cousins do. Where do you think watching you tube happens? Should we monitor every moment of their lives and ban them from going to their cousins house?
Hopefully they don't part with books—the way kids in the U.S. have.
my alternative was dial up or a 10 Mbps flaky wireless ISP. Is that what you're using right now?
I remember when I first had 10Mbps at my desktop at work. It was amazing. I wonder how slow that would feel today?
It's pretty painful, and makes a lot of work from home impossible between meetings, image pulls, etc. Until starlink I had to do development on a cloud vm
In some places.
Starlink is a global phenomenon, good ISPs were at best a local phenomenon.
Polluting the sky with junk is not "progress".
Colonizing space is progress.
Yeah, how is that mars colony plan going realistically. have they figured out the bits about how humans are going to survive in a toxic irradiated environment for months on end? I want it to happen, but I honestly havent heard much from spacex about it other than we have to be allowed to develop cheap rockets. There's a lot more involved in a journey to mars than just cheap launch costs.
It’s not binary. We can colonize space without granting that right to a monopoly. Or doing it a way that creates a cloud of projectiles around the planet
The word 'colonization' has become rather toxic, though. Maybe we need a new word for occupying barren planets where there's no native life being displaced?
Not toxic unless you subscribe to the lefts redefinition of the term. Most people wouldn't be here if we didn't colonize the new world.
My ancestors on my moms side pioneers in covered wagons that settled the west. My ancestors on my dad’s side were Amazonian natives that lost most their tribe to disease and ranchers driving them off their land. It’s important to learn from history so as to not repeat it. It might feel like the lefts critique of history is toxic unless your family dies from a repeat of that brutality.
I fully agree history is important to be known for the premise of not repeating it. But the narative is that 10 generations later depending which side you were on, that somehow your to blame and you owe the losing side something.
The stolen land meme is a good example. My parents in 60s migrated to the u.s and in no way am I to blame or responsible for what occored just because of where I live.
Do I feel bad for what happened? Absolutely. But those were nethanderal times where everything was primitive instinct. Its not the world we live in today.
I agree the narrative of blame is harmful and perpetuates that same pattern.
I also have to point out that the effects of that history persist and affect this generation. Lots of financial effects still affect our society.
The indigenous populations probably would.
Its highly unlikely that an indigenous population would adopt the colonizer's term. If you look at demographics of those who use that definition of term its mostly people of Anglo-Saxon decent. And its the same people who are living on stolen land.
they were also going around killing each other and ripping out hearts from living people as sacrifices, so given enough time they would have done the same thing.
and they would have been 100x more brutal.
Two wrongs….
What world do you want to live in? A monopoly where a corporation can decide who lives and dies? Because that’s effectively what you are arguing for up and down this thread.
No-one is “colonizing space”, you’re just being conned by a man who figured out he can make a lot of money by convincing people that such fantasies could be real.
The US spends up to $4 billion a year just to keep a few people alive on the ISS. And they can’t stay there too long because it’s too dangerous to their health. The idea that we’re going to “colonize space” in the foreseeable future is laughable.
Sending robots to space is still a form of building presence there. Not every colonist has to be a human. In fact, they are probably coming last, into pre-prepared positions and bases.
Airplanes?
Also, get off my lawn.
No. It’s more don’t buy all the lawns in the entire country and then dye the grass purple and then rent it back to me at 50% of my wages. Thats what happens in a monopoly.
It’s adorable you think the government represents the people.
There is a lot to criticize about governments. And there are many bad ones. But structurally a corporation has no obligation to represent society, government does.
Comments like this always make me lol. It's a pointless comment. Do something about it if you think the government doesn't represent you. Or shut the fuck up.
it is represent people, but its not which people think actually is
Think that the sky is one nuke away from being 100% clean at any given time.
How?
A nuke in LEO would make the environment so radioactive for some time to fry every single satellite that crosses the lower van allen belt. After some time (months, may be a few years) radiation goes back to normal levels and you can launch satellites again.
Fun fact, the first nuke in space had a lot of people very nervous as it was thought that making satellites impossible forever was a possibility, and quite a few did fail due to the nuke.
I'm in northern Wisconsin right now and the sky looks fucking amazing. Stop being so dramatic.
Which government ? And based on the past few month, if your are thinking of the US governemnt; I can assure you that it is actively being harmful to me.
I have no love for SpaceX but at least I can take a subscription or invest and the stock and pretend that those satellites are beneficial to me.
There isn’t a single US government owned satellite that is not actively harmful to me at the moment.
You use GPS?
Its working for me. Have you ever thought of moving to a territory where your properly represented? If your in the u.s. i think you can still walk across the Canadian border.
SpaceX needs to claim there’s a need for 100k more satellites to prop up unreasonable valuations. This is no different than Elon claiming Tesla owners would be renting out their cars as FSD taxis while at work (next year, we swear guys!!!)
In a functioning economy he’d have faced criminal charges for knowingly misleading investors and customers about a dozen times over by now. It’s one thing to set lofty goals internally to keep your workforce motivated and innovative. It’s something else entirely to state things publicly with a targeted date when you know there’s absolutely no chance it will ever happen.
I believe he said Teslas are meant to appreciate in value too because you get income from renting them out when you're not using your car. They'll just drive around and work as a taxi while you're not using it.
He's more sci-fi author than CEO at this point.
Turo (then Relayrides) partned with GM to allow you to rent your own vehicle out while you were at work or anywhere, so it's not science fiction, it was done back in 2012 and the concept was the same, your vehicle will help pay for itself.
Every mile logged by autonomous driving, every accident caused by a human vs autonomous vehicle where the human is at fault, will make insurance companies price risks accordingly. So far, autonomous vehilces doing very well in the cities where they operate.
It's inevitable these two concepts will merge, and it solves many problems with lack of access to affordable transportation especially for those who can't drive. Public transportation can't survive on fixed route, major infrastructure spends like rail and bus and meet the needs of the greatest number of people.
That will not work for a long time for peak hours and remote areas with too little of customers.
Everyone has to travel into our city in the morning to work, everyone does it with their own car they are proud of and see as essential at the same time while standing in traffic for 20-30 minutes extra.
And then what do you get? You get YOUR car back, smelly, stinky, dirty for saving a little bit of money?
We already have a 'drive yourself' car rentel system here and the lowest price for an avg car is 8 Euros per Hour for the time and 40 cents for 1km.
I also don't think insurance will be that much cheaper for autonomous driving. The insurance for a normal car is not expensive already, we have very few car incidents.
It might even become more expensive because you are driving more km per year.
> He's more sci-fi author than CEO at this point.
L. Ron Hubbard comes to mind.
Now trying to imagine John Travolta portraying Musk.
That's a fine take in my book. The cultleader vibe and endless fanboys..
If Bitcoin...that has nothing behind it, can´t realistically be used for financial transactions, and is essentially just a virtual NFT... can hold at $60,000 for years, So then....SPCX that has nothing behind it, and realistically will never offer any business value that is even 0,01% of expectations...can then certainly hold at $150 for years...
Would you feel the same way if he attached good faith probability estimates to those claims?
I think there would be no point in making the claim if the probability estimates were truly in good faith.
Starlink is legitimately bandwidth saturated in a lot of places though. I think the need is demonstrable.
Apple announced AirPower and then didn’t end up shipping it. In a “functioning economy” should Tim Cook be indicted for misleading investors? Obviously not.
The only decent argument for the criminal case you are talking about would be if it was an outright lie with no intent whatsoever to deliver on the promise, but there’s obviously a huge effort to deliver on the robotaxi promise. Just ask any of the thousands of employees who work on the Tesla robotaxi and self driving software every day, just visit Austin and observe the ubiquitous cybercabs driving around the city.
They obviously haven’t realized the dream yet but it doesn’t mean that they won’t eventually, especially when you can physically see the progress first hand.
Your argument seems mostly driven by your disagreement with the founder’s politics instead of any rational argument against their technology.
AirPower would've been a fraction of a fraction of a single percentage point of Apple's accessory sales
Apple is facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit over Siri features it promised, that it would not charge for or make money off of, but didn't deliver
As the comment you are replying to does not, on its face, seem to have a political bia you should be explicit about where/how you identified that bias. Without this you are the one injecting politics not the OP.
No Lidar, no chance…
> > Apple announced AirPower and then didn’t end up shipping it. In a “functioning economy” should Tim Cook be indicted for misleading investors? Obviously not.
Apple doesn't have a history of having to pump the stock to survive. Also it's a pretty ubiquitous company and they delivered a pretty life changing product for all of us.
On the other hand Tesla has a history of lying constantly and also life and customer experience is pretty much the same in the sectors of the economy that they attacked , as a matter of fact a 2002 Mercedes (the year in which Tesla was founded) is better in many departments compared to a 2026 Tesla
> disagreement with the founder’s politics
Are you talking about the guy who did a double-down Nazi salute to celebrate Trump winning the election?
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I don't recall her agitating for a race war online. Maybe I missed it.
If the salutes were one weird thing it'd be one thing. But Musk spends all day online talking about how much better white society is than everything else and how foreigners are destroying society and need to be dealt with extremely harshly.
“White” has nothing to do with it, but you can’t understand the argument because your intellectual toolbox has only two ideas in it: blank-slate cultural relativism, and Nazism. If it’s not one it must be the other. Thus, the only way you can explain a country like Bangladesh is to chalk its predicament up to exogenous factors that wouldn’t carry over in migration. And anyone who has a different view must be a Nazi, obviously.
“These populations are simply worse people undeserving of any respect or kindness. Oh and they happen to have a consistent racial component.”
George Wallace said this shit too.
If you assume a dichotomy between blank-slate cultural relativism and nazism, then you’re correct that everyone who thinks 100,000 Bangladeshi immigrants is materially different than 100,000 Americans must hold that view solely due to skin-color prejudice. If you take it as axiomatic that America would have turned out materially identically if Bangladeshi settlers had been on the Mayflower rather than British Puritans, then yes, everyone who doesn’t agree with you in immigration is in fact a Nazi.
I'm very sorry but you are simply not going to convince me that "wow this entire national population is just plain worse than this other population and if we let them in it'll ruin our country" is meaningfully distinct here.
What I see here is agreement with Musk's odious beliefs and a desire to avoid mean names being used to describe these beliefs.
Because being in a building Nazis have been in is just like making an actual Nazi salute. Twice.
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When Starlink first became available here in poor-ish Central-EU, I was excited. Then, only months later, but after years of planning: EU funding brought fiber to my farm area, at ~$25/900mbps 10ms.
While my story is just n=1, I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
However, I am dumb, and very open to be convinced.
> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
India is rapidly expanding fiber internet connectivity, even in rural areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Broadband_Network
In addition, 4G/5G coverage is extensive: https://www.ookla.com/articles/india-mobile-connectivity-1h2...
See India in this 5G global coverage map: https://www.ookla.com/articles/5g-map-2026
The number of people who are not covered by above-mentioned fiber/cell network, and can afford Starlink as it is priced now, will be extremely small (likely making Starlink unviable as a profitable business).
> The number of people who are not covered by above-mentioned fiber/cell network, and can afford Starlink as it is priced now, will be extremely small
People vastly overestimate the purchasing power in places like India. Most of the purchasing power is concentrated in the top 1% of the population and most of that 1% lives in urban areas with fiber connectivity. The bottom 90% don’t even make $1K/person/year. Even a $10/month subscription (1/5th of what it costs right now) would be 10% of the total income, which at those income levels, would never be a priority.
> would be 10% of the total income, which at those income levels, would never be a priority.
People vastly underestimate the subjective importance of the Internet for people. 10-20% of the total income seems like a very realistic figure, even if it means spending some days hungry.
People struggling for food, water, medicine, shelter will not in any world spend 10% of their income on internet. Thinking that they will is out of touch with reality and would only be a valid chain of thought when you’ve not seen what real poverty looks like.
People vastly overestimate the subjective importance of the internet if they think people with relatively little historic exposure to and practical use for the internet would rather go hungry or have a worse marriage for their daughter to replace the erratic internet connection on their phone and cybercafe use with a high speed broadband connection in their house...
When I was a teenager in early post-Communist Czechia, Internet connection was also expensive. So what we did was that we pooled resources. Five or ten households had a common connection and shared it.
I don't doubt that similar schemes will be used in Africa or India.
BTW Median income in India is about $3K a year.
That's exactly what's happening. Entire villages are sharing one connection.
That is great, but it also sets the stage for actual fiber to be drawn as it is vastly cheaper to connect to an existing end user network than to build it up from scratch. When a critical mass of villages have built internal networks it will be worth drawing cable for them as well.
Lack of sufficient population density and political instability is what would stop this.
Money
> BTW Median income in India is about $3K a year
I explicitly mentioned income per person. This is household income, which obviously will be higher than individual income.
And as far as connection pooling goes, India already has 88% 4G and 80% 5G coverage in the villages. Far cheaper connections are already available that are already being leveraged in a way that you describe. The market where Starlink is appealing is much smaller.
Global cellular operator revenue is approx $1T. They have put their toe in the water with direct-to-cellular support for starlink, and have bought spectrum to improve this. I'm sure they basically want to offer cellular to everyone in the world and get a good chunk of that $1T. Maybe they want 20% of it? Sounds crazy, but China Mobile, Verizon, and Deutsche Telecom each have 10%. Sounds it's not so wild that they can grab a big chunk, especially if they can find new customers that are not already connected.
And of course they can also continue to grow their broadband internet access business.
I suppose they will likely start putting cameras and other data sensors on the satellites so they can sell other data for mapping, positioning services, agriculture, weather, etc. The incremental cost to add this to the platform will be almost nothing compared to existing systems.
It will take years if not more to be technical capable to have modems so good that they can communicate with a starlink satelite in any reasonable 'day to day' way.
And Starlink already increased prices again.
And without Sparship and prooving that they actually can reuse it, they can't hold the price point.
Starlink satelites do not scale very well. They need v3 and even with v3 this doesn't scale efficently.
This is the right answer. They are building their own cell phone network to compete with major carriers worldwide.
No they sell a story to investors.
Right now we do not even have the antenna technology in current high end smartphones for 'easy to use, normal speed' mobile to satelite communication.
And funny enough, the more local mobile phones you would have, which want to send data to a satelite, the harder the problem gets due to interference.
With 5g we do already a lot of beam forming etc. Try beamforming into 500km space with uncoordinated random amount of mobile devices with very very little sending power and one satelite 'beamforming' its a few hundred square miles.
> to compete with major carriers worldwide.
I don't see a reason why countries with existing carriers would allow that, given the owner's stance about political meddling.
It’s a pretty low margin business, tho, generally.
How would people be able to use internet when they are inside? Perhaps under layers and layers of concrete, think a 50 stories building
The same way they already do with DAS and WiFi routers
So that's a no.
Phone > Satellite connection cannot happen indoors directly, whereas 3-4-5g can, today, not 10 years and billions of R&D into the future
It's a no in the sense that these buildings already have poor/no service today.
Additionally, India is currently banning starlink for national security reasons.
This isn't true
Starlink is currently partnering with United Airlines for Wi-Fi coverage, so that's one thing.
Wifi on Delta has worked spectacularly well (not sarcastic) for like 10 years now.
It's been broken/unavailable on maybe 6 of my flights out of hundreds.
Qatar just announced it's gate-to-gate and free on their aircraft.
Starlink is going to be panopticon surveillance satellites long term - I hope I'm wrong.
Starlink accounted for 69% of SpaceX revenue pre-merger and is speculated to be already profitable including launch costs.
And this is all before they launch a phone or something, or replace global fiber interconnect with a lower latency space-based alternative, replace all forms of space based telecommunications (TV, Satellite Radio, etc). Starlink is a $1T+ business without even getting creative.
For context, that revenue was $18.67 billion in 2025, with a net loss of $4.94 billion.
And we must remember that 6G is in the final stages of development, which has peak speeds of 1 Tbps.
6G will have worse physical penetration than 5G, which makes it worthless in rural areas where 5G is already severely inhibited by tree leaves.
It's not that simple. Yes, newer standards push for higher frequencies to get more bandwidth, but 5G for example also uses the old sub GHz bands with excellent range and penetration.
> in rural areas where 5G is already severely inhibited by tree leaves.
This is not a problem in Africa and India.
You need an /s or a /jk or people will take you seriously.
https://www.google.de/maps/place/Nairobi,+Kenya/@-1.2745409,...
I didn't mean to say there were no trees or leaves in those places, because of course they have massive tropical and subtropical forests.
In most of the world, if a some leaves are in the way, it's quite simple to remove the leaves.
Starlink by itself does not have a net loss.
Starlink made a $4 bn profit last year, and is apparently growing 30% YoY.
Starlink isn't billed for the cost of launches.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/06/29/spacex-secret-laun...
Interesting. I didn't realize that.
It's not true.
It's billed at cost. Not at price.
From Space X prospectus:
For launches of our Starlink satellites, the Company does not recognize any inter-segment revenue, rather those launch costs are capitalized in satellites in Property, plant, and equipment, net. We allocate a significant amount of launch capacity to our Connectivity segment, and expect to allocate a significant amount to our AI segment in the future. Our Space segment revenue only reflects our customer launches and customer activities.
For launches dedicated to deploying our Starlink satellites, we capitalize the associated costs within our Connectivity segment and depreciate them over time, and we do not recognize revenue for those launches in our Space segment.
There's no dispute there with what I said.
The launch cost for Starlink is in the connectivity segment. It has to go somewhere on your balance sheet and you can't magic it away.
If you manufacture cement and you also sell premixed concrete in another division it's a similar thing. Or any other company that sells both raw material and finished product.
Here they are saying it's in the connectivity segment costs instead of them buying it at retail. That's all there is.
That's how analysts can estimate launch costs ~$20MM and $600k for satellites as opposed to the idea that launch is $0 for Starlink and the cost is hidden in the space segment.
Yeah but it doesn't become a Trillion dollar business if they don't solve the Starlink Satelite v3 issue.
They need Starship to be able to send v3 up, without v3 it doesn't scale well enough.
Starship still hasn't proven it can actually bring up the relevant payload high enough and they need it to be reusable otherwise costs will increase.
And they already exist and only have 10 Million customers. They need to get countries on their side like India but these countries are not stupid. Elon Musk showed them very clearly what he can do like his statements he did when Ukraine war started.
Will sending bits to space and back really be faster than fiber? How?
Lightspeed in air is close to c_vacuum. Light speed in fiber is roughly 2/3 c_vacuum. So for transatlantic it might be faster.
Unless you're trying to do something like high frequency stock trading, this does not really matter. Most of the added latency is added in the hops themselves, as packets are being classified and routed. Your generic Internet user won't be able to see any difference.
You need to take error into account, too. Can atmospheric conditions corrupt the transmission (this is not a rhetorical question, I actually don't know)? If so then your latency and bandwidth will both suffer.
EDIT: also, in the very likely case that the packet is not addressed to the satellite itself, routing comes into play. In the best-case scenario where the satellite is somehow able to transmit the packet directly to its destination the distance it travels is actually doubled. If the packet instead gets transmitted from the satellite to a base-station which then routes it through fiber-optics then there's no point in trying to argue that the satellite connection is the faster of the two even if that is true.
Often the bigger difference is just that fiber never goes in a straight line, even if it’s going to the right city. All that pesky geography gets in the way and makes the path longer.
As far as I can tell it almost exclusively follows the existing roads in Europe. Probably an easier way to secure rights in one go like rails used to be for telco lines.
Geography and property lines, twin banes of every infrastructure builder.
Pipelines, Sewer systems, rail too.
Let’s see if we can bring the cost of hollow core fiber down, it would be faster transatlantic even
It will definitely be faster when someone drops an anchor on the undersea cable.
Given the size of the ocean (ie, there's so many other places that a ship can drop anchor other than right on a cable), I would assume this would be intentional sabotage any time it happens.
Exactly…lately they were dragging anchor by „accident” with a ship „totally not associated” with the country that was accused.
With positive thinking and maximum upside ?
We’ll how that prediction turns out…
My informed opinion says that you are wildly wrong.
(Also don’t forget the Starlink related military contracts that SpaceX has.)
> My informed opinion
Well, my informed (I guess? it's first hand) opinion says exactly what the PC said. And no the plan has been underfoot for so long that it really pretty much has nothing to do with the current regime even though I am sure like any regime they'd say they did it from the scratch.
I'd say we are getting really great at getting broadband to everyone than giving enough bread and education and healthcare to everyone :D (ignore the smiley, this sucks)
We already have Starlink. Starlink only has 10 Million customers.
Starlink increased prices just a fwe weeks ago.
So whats stoping the future starlink explosion?
> what[']s stop[p]ing the future Starlink explosion?
Constellation numbers are still below the Kessler syndrome threshold?
Automated cargo ships. Traveling to automated ports.
The 5 wage slaves on current ocean giants aren't even a rounding error on any calculation.
The wage isn’t the problem, it’s the regulations.
... would there really not be regulations on giant unmanned ships? That seems concerning, though I could certainly understand international / maritime law having a gap.
I give coastal piracy about 3-weeks to figure out how to commandeer unmanned cargo ships. I bet they’d be ecstatic.
You think current sea pirates are deterred by an unarmed crew of 5?
taps head
cant' steer without a helm
you think they won't figure out how to hotwire the steer-by-wire controls?
Now, allow me to introduce you to the ID verification. Insert your biometric passport to proceed. /j
No cardboard, no cardboard derivatives, no cellotape.
Crews on those ships are spending nearly all their time maintaining them.
Many flag and port states already allow One Man Bridge Operation (OMBO) in many circumstances. This means there's basically on person on the bridge, and maybe one other person down in the engine room keeping an eye on a floating city block moving through the water at 15 knots
This idea that putting $500m+ of assets in the water, but thinking that even one person on the boat is too many has got to be one of the silliest things in modern capitalism (obviously the crown goes to orbital AI data centers).
The same bosses will pay multiple security guards, in addition to staff, to guard <$10m in goods at a Walmart. But when 50x the goods are in the ocean, suddenly the staff is the limiter?
Yeah, autonomous shipping makes sense for naval/coastguard drones but not much else. Shipping companies can pay most of the staff Filipino wages, and they run around doing all sorts of maintenance tasks, not just navigation and contro.
Now the crew will be very pleased if they get a Starlink connection rather than the ridiculously small crew connectivity allowance Inmarsat et al will give them, but that all depends on shipping companies not having to pay premium prices for maritime connectivity.
Never going to happen in your lifetime.
Salt water, is nasty, it gets everywhere, the environment on boats is damp. Ships are complicated and require constant effort to keep running.
Any sort of "automation" you build in is subject to those same environmental conditions, and wont last long.
Space Bears have been saying this for quite a while, we live in megalopolis which already are covered very efficiently and we are only becoming more urban. Of course their voice was drowned because rockets are essentially giant penises piercing the atmosphere and hence the intersection of nerds getting excited for the sake of technical prowness and rich guys who don't get laid who seem to be nowadays at the helm of the intelligentia didn't want to hear none of that.
On top of that add the reusability stunt streamed in 4k making them extrapolate a not well defined pivotal leap for ROI....and there you have it , it's the Apollo sinkhole all over again with money being lit on fire an essentially no quality of life ROI for society.
At least the Apollo mission got us the ability to deliver nukes to Moscow in 30 minutes or less. This will be a total sinkhole.
All the while we are held hostage by a Nation with consumption rates which are a thenth of ours and we still have the audacity to reject nuclear fission because it's "dangerous"
Here along the BC Coast, the organization I work for has an expansive sensor network. Weather stations, CTDs, custom equipment in watersheds, research facilities with all kinds of equipment to monitor, and so on. There is no broadband or fiber on remote islands along the coast. We used to use satellite internet, and getting data off of our main hubs (everything is relayed to the hubs by radio) was very slow and precarious. Since starlink it's a breeze. We will finally be able to get video feeds off of some of the stations; a totally untenable concept before.
Sure, and that's great, but this is an extremely small niche case right? No one is denying that there are some cases where Starlink is amazing, but niche products don't usually command a $1T value.
If you read the SpaceX IPO docs, the vast majority of their self-stated addressable market is AI enterprise SaaS tools.
I’m not joking.
And they claimed their TAM was 20% of world GDP!!!
Their IPO made me look up what TAM was, and TBH it looks like the kind of metric where you're allowed to draw the boundaries however you like.
To the extent that they're not actually wrong about that TAM:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_addressable_market#/medi...
Note that I am not claiming they'll get sales anywhere near to close to the TAM. It's not like Wikipedia's market value is even close to {peak price of Encyclopedia Britannica} * {number of people on the internet} even despite it no longer being generally contested which of Wikipedia and Britannica is now better.
I mean, it’s actually not that bad of a play at least here in AK.
There’s billions of dollars in monitoring and maintaining remote sites / handling remote connectivity, doing bespoke SaaS tools, etc. Like, literally high hundreds of millions or low billions.
Starlink is wonderful for many reasons.
It allows technical folk to live wherever they’d like as long as they’re working remotely.
The mobile applications, particularly in the case of airline aircraft, have also been compelling and worth a lot of money to SpaceX.
Starlink has also brought broadband Internet to a vast number of people that would not have had it otherwise. This will boost the worldwide economy by an enormous amount.
Starlink only has 10 Million customers, too expensive for most countries already.
Starlink brought internet to a lot of people who had it before already but made it easier for them.
Its still quite a interesting technology, given, but for the fact that he destroys potentially our atmosphere, has control over war critical tech, can do survailance and wants to send out A Lot MORE into our space, its a net negative for at least 7-8 BILLION people while 10 Millionen people benefit from it.
And they even increased the price just a few weeks back...
I don't think rurp was saying there is no market, just that there was no obvious realistic TAM worth 1.6 trillion (going by the amount given by the S-1). How many people living remotely in an area with no fibre do you really expect there to be?
In the future, nobody will have to work (thanks AI!) and we'll all be digital nomads roaming the earth living off of 0DTE option gainz and UBI. /s
The owner of starlink is planning to be the only remaining capitalist. UBI is not for the US, a return to indentured servitude is.
The nice thing about there only being one capitalist is that it’ll be easy for the rest of us to deal with him.
> It allows technical folk to live wherever they’d like as long as they’re working remotely.
Turns out a simple water cooler technology is enough. We are all back to office because of efficiency.
It’s a niche, yes, but there could be others like it. No idea about how the company should be valued. We pay them chump change for our services, but enough that with any scale it could be meaningful. And their reach is pretty incredible, so, there is a lot of potential there.
> There is no broadband or fiber on remote islands along the coast.
I have family on the USA side of the islands. Kenmore Air is subsidized, but the trees are so darn tall that at many homes, Starlink is not an option. (they like the trees and use directional microwave, which sucks for Zoom)
Sounds like a similar setup to GAIA on Galiano Island in BC, described here: https://www.galianonet.org/about
Can you use a pole.
Or tree mount if not [a] protected [species]
Douglas Firs are silly tall in the PNW.
FWIW it may be tenable now as Starlink has gotten much better at tree/obstruction avoidance in the signal and will preemptively switch the satellite it's using when an obstruction is approaching. Id check again.
When COVID hit, I knew a lot of engineers who decided to move to rural areas / small farms because they could leverage Starlink to work remotely.
Last year, when I asked whether they still liked Starlink, all of them said it is amazing, but they had gotten fiber coverage in their area from a local provider, so they don't use it anymore, or just use it as a backup.
I think Starlink was a huge demand signal that there were people willing to pay a premium for faster-than-radio internet. So, unless they manage to be cheaper and faster than fiber, I don't think there is much of an endgame there.
But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.
Meanwhile, as one of those engineers, they ran fiber down the highway a mile from my house circa 2021, but they did not do any upgrades at all to the last mile infrastructure so I still only have a ~10Mbps DSL option for wired internet at that house, which is a big step up from literally no wired option before, but still vastly inferior to Starlink. (The terrain makes terrestrial wireless a nonstarter in the area). I've since moved back to civilization, but I still own the house. As far as I know, there are no plans at all to improve the last mile infrastructure.
Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.
> there are no plans at all to improve the last mile infrastructure
The economics of laying fiber to the premises are heavily driven by density of potential customers * probability that a potential customer will sign up if you run fiber down their street. You can get reasonable intuition by focusing on the density alone & ignoring the competition / pricing side of things.
I'm not familiar with current US construction costs to install fiber but have some intuition from Australia.
With Australia's national broadband network project from a decade or so ago, it'd cost in the ballpark of $100 AUD per meter to run fiber down the street in an underground trench - most of the capex is digging the holes in the ground etc, the cost of the cable itself is essentially free. The construction budget for a suburb would be something like $2000 / premises. To give a ballpark estimate, suppose 25% of your budget is the premises-specific work to connect the house to the cable running down the street, if they choose to sign up for your broadband plan. That leaves at most $1500 / premises for the rest of your capex budget, so the economics only work if you've got a neighbourhood with a density of least one house every 15 meters. Those numbers aren't exact but they'd be in the ballpark.
There's a bit of variability in the cost per meter to install, if you can reuse existing poles & run the cable aerially that might be only 30%-40% of the cost of digging holes, so you might be able to support a lower density suburb that way & still stick to your construction budget.
In Australia for the lower density rural / semi-rural areas they'd use fixed wireless, & finally satellite for the remote extremely low density areas where it didn't even make sense to build a wireless tower.
your numbers are completely meaningless.
it is well known that Australia has an extremely lazy workforce that refuse to put in any real work.
the best example here is the stupid residential building cost. nowadays it costs over $1m AUD or $700k USD do a first floor 2bedroom 1 bathroom extension for an existing house in good condition. That is significantly more expensive than building a big house in the US.
I'm fairly sure there are also houses in Australia being built for less than $1m AUD given there are new houses being sold for less than $1m AUD with no indication those developers are making a loss.
nice straw man, you can of course find houses below $1m when you go to regional areas where job opportunities simply do not exist. how about you just compare construction cost in Sydney with say those expensive part of the US, e.g. LA and SF?
let's don't even start on the quality of those new builds, that would be the laughing stock of the entire world.
Didn't know Perth was a regional area now, my mistake.
I was only trying to talk about Starlink here, as that is what TFA is about. Starlink is AMAZING in-flight, out at sea, etc.. But since you brought it up:
> Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.
So, where does the rest of the valuation come from?
It feels like it comes from the alien simulation-theory overlords.
According to SpaceX itself 93% of the company's value is in AI IIRC.
99% of the value is goodwill towards musk
God I hope not. That’s terrifying.
> where does the rest of the valuation come from?
AI data centers in space, of course!
SpaceX is by far the most cost effective way in this world to send things into space.
That is very valuable.
Not according to their prospectus (which was what was asked about), where it accounted for slightly under 2% of SpaceX's market.
No its not.
The payload we send to space is very limited and the 300% increase in the few last years was ONLY starlink itself.
Thats the issue Musk has to sell it to the investors and his idea is datacenter payload.
Just that he would need to send 300 Starships up there to even install a smallish datacenter like his own colossus 1.
Starship is not done yet, we have not seen it fly up there and return for 300 times at all.
"No it's not" replies and silent downvotes instead of arguments didn't use to be how HN worked.
Sad to see this place becoming a normal web forum.
I mean, it was a response to a claim, without evidence, that it was valuable.
Is your position that _you_ can make assertions without evidence but that lesser mortals may not contradict you without writing a paper on the subject?
I’m convinced that a large part of the user base of this site is genuinely, literally, solipsistic.
My position is more that it's OK to mention a well known and easily verifiable fact without digging out authoritative sources.
… No, I mean, on the face of it it’s a surprising claim. Why do you think it is valuable? What is the market?
The simple answer is that SpaceX is worth about 1900 billion dollars at today's stock price. It's the 7th most valuable company on Earth.
According to an AI I asked, about 50% of that value is Starlink, with space launches and AI making up about 25% each.
The Starlink business depends on their cheap space launch tech, so using these rough numbers capability I'd say it is worth 75% of the company, or $1400B.
Er, don’t believe everything the magic robots tell you. Like, seriously, why on earth could you believe an LLM on this? Have we completely lost all power of critical thinking?
I don't downvote.
And i brought an argument. You said it makes space-x very valuable and i explain that the amount of payload we even send up is very limited which contracditcs 'very valuable'.
I then explain further what Elon Musks plan is to sell us his trillion dollar company or how you frame it 'very valuable' and explain why it doesn't work
There are areas where the bureaucratic hurdles to changing anything and the incentives for changing anything work out to nothing ever changing. I assume in 20 years most of Berlin is still going to have 50mbit/s max. I hear residents of New York have completely given up and are using 5G modems because putting up new cables just isn't practical. On the other hand, these cities do have a significant minority of flats with gigabit internet, so if you care you can pick a modern building with modern cabling. Maybe the segment who both live in old apartments and also are willing to pay for fast internet is too small to bother with.
While i would love to have 1 gb, 50mbit is not bad and every normal person i know of, wouldn't call it bad at all or see it as an issue.
So not a problem
> But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.
There's also drones and front-line trenches, but your point still stands.
And for that reason the EU, India, China and Russia will build their own Starlink alternatives.
To offset costs they'll then provide it for civilian use, competing with Starlink in the above areas.
The problem with LEO constellation is wasted airtime outside of the country that owns it. Starlink just let anyone pay for the service irrespective of legality and let the leftovers go to waste, but most sane people can't accept that model.
They just launch those sats, and straight up serve Internet illegally. Those are the bonkers parts.
India is super super poor still I cannot imagine they would build out domestic Starlink for hypothetical wars before other actual critical infrastructure.
They have nukes and are always on the verge of war with Pakistan (who also have nukes). I'm sure they have money for war, everyone always does.
They have an actual space program that launches actual satellites. They have also been in several actual, non-hypothetical wars.
To launch a starlink style system, you need to be able to rapidly design and produce hundreds of thousands satellites and launch them within relatively short period of time with extremely high success rate. only the largest industrialized nation on earth can do that. india is 30-50 years away from such achievement.
To give you some quick ideas - for the total of 330 space launches in 2025, the US had almost 200, China had close to 100 launches, Russia had 17 launches, the rest of the world had the remaining 20 in total.
India was the first country to reach Mars on its first attempt. ISRO is a highly capable org, and cost effective. India also was #4 to land on the moon after the USSR, USA and China - beating Japan to the punch. SpaceX is yet to deliver a payload to the moon or Mars - orbit or lander.
> the first country to reach Mars on its first attempt
Well doing it decades later than others did help with that.
How did that help them?
And how does it matter why they succeeded when the question is "are they capable of doing a Starlink?"?
How many[1] others? Not many countries can claim that achievement, industrialized or not, which is telling.
1. The answer is 3.: USA, USSR, and the European Space Agency
How many countries can claim the achievement of developing nuclear weapons? Does that make North Korea somehow an inherently more successful country than Germany?
Spending money on a space program while hundreds of millions of your citizens are living in extreme poverty is obscene (unless it provides significant economic value)
> Spending money on a space program while hundreds of millions of your citizens are living in extreme poverty is obscene
Why? According to Wikipedia they spend like $1.4b annually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISRO That's like an extra $10 for each of these citizens living in "extreme poverty".
And what's the cutoff? Like 10% of the US population is under the poverty line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States. Is NASA "obscene" too? Granted that's not the same as "extreme poverty" but it's still a bad look in the richest country in the world, right?
> unless it provides significant economic value
Investments in science and technology generally do. Rich countries are advanced in science and technology.
> Does that make North Korea somehow an inherently more successful country than Germany?
Your argument is all over the place. This thread is about if India could tackle LEO comsats, but perhaps you're seeing it through a lens of prestige/success.
> Spending money on a space program while hundreds of millions of your citizens are living in extreme poverty is obscene
You'll love Gil Scott-Heron's classic that wrestled the same ideas in the 1960s USA, titled Whitey on the Moon
What makes you think india is "super super" poor? India's GDP is humongous (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...).
India's total exports are in the same ballpark as the Netherlands, a country with half the population of the city of Bombay.
India may not be a poor country, but GDP doesn't capture the real state of india's wealth.
The denominator
The page you need to look at is GDP per capita:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
…which lists India as #148, below countries like Zimbabwe, Haiti, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Palestine.
That only matters if you want to know how much an average individual can spend. Gross GDP is more relevant when you're discussing how much the state could spend on defence programs.
Same as Russia, yeah. But Reliance Jio seems to have announced something. Don't know if it'll actually happen.
Yeah who knows poor infrastructure might let India skip fiber in some areas entirely. Maybe it’s not that hard to launch a domestic Starlink if Blue Origin/ SpaceX will bring your satellites up cheaply .
>And for that reason the EU, India, China and Russia will build their own Starlink alternatives.
I don't know about the rest, but Russia started working on its own Starlink well before the war. We have the North and Siberia where satellite internet is the only option. Another target market is Russian Railways which would love to have internet in the trains not only when they pass areas with mobile coverage.
Not just cruise ships, but practically every boat with a bed in it. People sailing on small boats all around the world have starlink now. It's kind of a game changer in a lot of ways for small boats.
That's easily like a what... $10 million/year market? Checks out!
(Only being snarky, obviously as a consumer it's great to have an option like this)
There are likely way more smaller boats with starlink than there are massive cruise ships with starlink.
As with the data centers, starlink is not actually what people think it is. There’s a military purpose underlying its public front
[dead]
Starlink has its uses, but I really don't understand those who get starlink while living in built-up areas.
Starlink is just a re-skin of the "Wireless optic" thing a lot of ISPs are pushing because they would prefer not having to lay cables and instead have everyone use 5g routers. Of course, the service isn't comparable, but regular people don't necessarily know it. Fiberoptic is still king, and probably will be for a long time.
There's nothing comparable to direct fiberoptic cable, and anyone who says otherwise immediately outs themselves as being a sellout or having anti-consumer motives. In 100 years it may be different, but I'm probably not going to be around in 100 years, so...
I don’t see why it would be different in 100 years. The fibre might be slightly better (hollow core fibre will increase speed from 2/3c to nearly c), but, absent new physics, it’s hard to imagine anything beating _that_.
Maybe neutrino comms for long distance? :)
I remember 10-15 years ago The Gathering, Norways biggest LAN party, had a wifi sponsor, and there were talks about how soon we don't even need wired internet, because wifi is getting so good with wifi 6 and all. Crazy thing to claim about a sports hall with 5000 computers and even more mobile devices.
I can't say we are much closer to that goal now :)
Starlink has more suburban and urban users because there are lots of enclaves without service, reliable service or unlimited service.
Most people I talk to who use starlink in an urban setting are not in such a situation, they are just using it because "satelite internet cool"
For war it is. Drones and other unmanned aircraft are the future of warfare. That's the whole reason why every country now heavily invests in low orbit sats. It's not about consumers. Also not for spacex. Defence contracts are zillion times more worth. Once you are in you reach the end level as a business.
Didn't we just see that wired drones are the current peak over wireless, and Russia is at this moment jamming satellite drone control...
Russia has attempted to jam Starlink satellites but with very limited success. The problem for Russia is that the constellation is enormous and uses highly directional phased-array radios which are naturally resistant to jamming. They can temporarily jam a few birds over a limited area but don't have the resources to effect sustained denial. We might eventually see them escalate to kinetic strikes on the satellites.
You are right about drones, but Starlink etc is still used a lot by forward deployments of troops. Afaik it has revolutionised the ability to contact these deployments. But I'm not an army guy
Family lives in Rio/Brazil. With the efforts from our government every year that passes, public safety becomes worse and suburban areas get more marginalized, it got to a point where the drug traffickers from my area start cutting the fibers and leaving letters on mailboxes saying that from now on, anyone who wanted internet had to get their illegal internet.
Which meant shitty speeds and if you have a problem with billing/service you cannot complain to anyone. Their service would go down for days and there is nothing you can do besides rely on shitty 4G. When Starlink became available in Brazil this was the lifesaver for my family
So the drug traffickers that cut the fiber have no problem with your Starlink dish outside your home, and don't break it and/or threaten you? If they care, that seems like an oversight they will soon correct once enough people start using it.
They clearly don't want to threaten all the people directly for protection money. That limits what they are willing to do for the scheme. So they cut the cable at places where people are not. This is both efficient in employee time as well as in risk. Starlink antennas can be installed on roofs or in places that aren't easily visible.
Also you could install it in things that don't look like it since it only needs an mostly unobstructed view in a cone to the sky. For example I could se an installation in a fake rain barrel, old bathtub inside a stack of firewood. some cloth coverings also would work so it doesn't have to be open either.
The only way to find the actual installations would be survey flights that take pictures and compare the data. Then send out inspectors to see if changes on buildings hide starlink antennas.
I think the only effect will be that the scheme will go away. Alternatively they could just improve their service so it competes on performance and price with starlink.
A Starlink antennna would create a lot of reflection in anything metal like a barrel or bathtub (why would you even have a bathtub on the roof?).
Finding it would be very easy as these houses are not huge houses, enter the house, snip the cables.
Besides that, its all hypotetical. Just because in some random shitty neigherhood this issue exists, doesn't mean anything anyway.
This is a common Brazilian issue you're dismissing.
Very fitting.
How is it fitting?
A brazilian favela is not a representation for a global satelite network which consumes and produces a lot of energy and co2 to be send up and poisens our atmosphere when theybreak down.
There was no evaluation of the obvouse shitty problem in such areas.
And as i said, metal tubes do break radio signals.
That is freaking amazing. I want to be clear that reusable first stage of Falcon 9 + Starlink is the coolest tech that I have ever seen. It was just that for me, the financials didn't work out.
I have a friend who lives 1.5hrs outside Toronto and needs Starlink because ISPs don’t offer anything useful. Same with a family member with a house even closer to Toronto. These aren’t far off North Ontario rural houses and there’s tons of people living up there.
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I have fiber (I can get up to 300 Gbps at my home in the Seattle area, but I got opted for the 2Gbps) and I have Starlink as backup/failover. I previously used my mobile service for that but learned the hard way that when there's a large internet outage in the area, as it did when we had a bad storm, so does mobile service, either power loss or it can't support the influx of everyone using their phone internet. So now I have starlink as a backup. It's a very small portable unit that I can also take when camping. It's a great service. Also it's powering a lot of airlines now, it's fast and reliable to the point I can watch youtube and tiktok on my flights.
300Gbps? Is that typo? Unless you are connecting to some very particular infrastructure on the other one, nothing you could possibly connect to could use it, and you would need gear that would be somewhat high end even for server grade.
(I know you said you didn't select that option, but just the idea that it's even offered to residential units is mind blowing).
No, not a typo. Ziply has 300 Gbps at my house if I want to pay $900 a month. Instead I pay $65 for 2 Gbps
You likely meant 50 Gbps as its what come up on their website and some recent US fibre discussions.
In any case even 50Gbps likely a huge part of their total throughput and you wont be abble to use it at full speed. So its pure marketing.
I just checked, and now it is 50 Gbps. Not long ago it was 300 Gbps when I moved into my house. I guess they lowered it. Not really any use for such speeds in a residential home anyways.
Usually there is a 300 Mbps - 10 Gbps range of offerings.
That was my thinking as well here in EU farmland. I would use it as a backup. I really wanted to have an excuse to use the cool af Starlink tech. However, after half a decade the fiber has gone down 3 times, and I just shared my iPhone's LTE as a hotspot in 2 cases, and in the third I did yard work for 20 minutes.
From India here:
With their current pricing, they can't compete with local vendors. These local vendors charge like $10/month for 100-200mbps (vendor/bundle dependent) speeds, with no data-capping. For just $5 extra, they also bundle 20+ OTT channels, including netflix and prime video (HD only).
And yes, fiber connections are everywhere here for past 5 years... and I'm from a very small town here.
I think that while Starlink is a technical innovation its primary benefit is as a political innovation: it lets you sidestep a lot of politics.
Rural communities in the US should have high speed internet, just like efforts were made to give them electricity back in the day. But the layers of politics and dysfunction in the way are deep.
If we can get internet from the sky, it's hard to justify digging up the earth with cables for the same thing.
I realize Space X "pollutes" space and astronomy is also important, but it's not more important than communications and information for people on earth.
I disagree, maintaining a giant fleet of satellites is almost certainly more expensive in the long run than just running a lot of cable. Not that cable doesn’t need maintenance but Starlink needs to replace every satellite every five years. And they can’t recycle a thing, they just burn up.
You’re presenting a false choice. It isn’t “Starlink or no internet”, it’s “why not other internet options?”
More expensive for whom?
A v2 Starlink satellite costs $800K and on average 25 are launched at once. Launch cost for a reusable Falcon 9 is $15 million. So that's $1.4 million per satellite to orbit lasting 5 years that's $280K / sat / y, or $2.8 billion / y to maintain a constellation of 10,000. And SpaceX is not known for complacency. The unit cost will continue to drop.
On the other hand there are currently $63 billion (22.5 years of Starlink cost) of rural broadband subsidies active in the US and it hasn't come close to running all that fiber. So $63 billion to not even finish the US vs $2.8b / y to provide service to the entire world. I think it's safe to conclude that the satellite option is in fact much cheaper.
Starlink has 10 MILLION customers. Thats just nothing.
All the investment in Fiber and mobile towers are long lasting investments.
Starlink NEEDS v3 to scale because they already have scaling issues. They need Starship, which doesn't work yet, to work to even send v3 up there.
And while Spacex has some first mover advantage, other companies start doing the same which will eat their margins. Makes it even more complicated to run all of it.
They have to do 300k orbit correction already last year, kessler syndrom can happen which will block access to space for all of us.
We don't even know yet how dangerous the poisoning of our atmosphere will be.
> provide service to the entire world
If the entire world used Starlink it would grind to a halt. They’d need to spend exponentially more to have more satellites to provide that necessary bandwidth.
600k excluding launch
Its very easy to dig.
You still need a powerline to your house, sewer and water.
There are plenty of fibers and dark fibers on power pools.
Starlink doesn't 'just' pollute the night sky for EVERY SINGLE HUMAN (8 Billion people) it can also poisen our atmosphere when they re-enter and burn up.
Assuming there are poles (or trenches) for electricity, cable is a modest addition.
Modern installation is direct bury. There are no trenches, no way to run new cables without new directional drilling. In any already built areas, these projects are constantly hitting gas, water, sewer, cable, electric, and other already buried infrastructure. Maybe (probably) it's still cheaper than launching satellites but it can be quite disruptive.
I think that's the idea of robust competition.
if the incumbent(s) don't invest in infrastructure (which can actually be cheap) and start losing customers at 3mb to starlink, they can justify the expenditure.
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In much of the US, internet companies run a racket. While there are often multiple providers to choose from, if you want reliable service at good speeds, you end up with two, or if you're really lucky, three options. One of those options is Starlink.
In NYC we’re often only wired for one provider. 5G home internet was a big deal in finally opening up that competition.
Well, it has proven itself to be a very useful military asset in Ukraine.
The rural & underdeveloped area and the niche applications (ex: ships and planes) will bring-in some cash.
And in addition, the US Army will pretty much guaranty it to be in the green: it wants this capability plus some control over it.
If it was civilian only, I doubt the economics would make much sense, specially given the amount of satellites and their short lifespan combined with the overall shrinking market (rural flight to cities + fiber deployment on land).
I have a really good friend who used Starlink for his cottage in Canada and as soon as there was broadband he switched away. Starlink was unreliable and slow compared to what he has now.
In my country today the people who use it the most are in northern cities that don't even have roads going to them.
I have it, I live in a very rural place.
I've had to reset the router 3 or 4 times in two years. I don't suffer outages even in thunderstorms.
It may be slow compared to fiber or something, but it's the fastest steam game downloads I've ever had personally (no big city life).
But reliability has been almost 100%
I wonder if that was at the beginning. They've been quietly launching so many satellites over time.
Unreliable usually means not a clear signal? May have needed to adjust the install.
He probably had it pointed at trees. It was super reliable for me when I worked from a rural location in Maine for a couple of months.
I don’t know why India is mentioned here.
I live in India and have used 1Gbps Fiber since almost 10 years and pay only 40$ for it. Internet access in India is quite cheap and fiber is quite easily available
Many places have incompetent government that can't/won't build proper infrastructure. For example, the US has allocated around $50B for rural broadband and almost nothing has been built.
1 billion of that rural broadband funds was allocated to SpaceX, but the Biden administration revoked it in 2020. I wonder which has connected more rural Americans
Obviously Starlink has connected far more Americans than unbuilt rural fiber. Starlink did get $730M in BEAD grants more recently.
I don't think you have that right; BEAD funds were not originally allowed to be awarded for technologies other than Fiber. No one had been awarded in 2020. Many ISPs had been awarded for Fiber projects by 2025, but under this administration, the NTIA changed the rules so LEO could get the funds and rug pulled the original awardees. States had to start the bidding process over under the new rules. SpaceX took home something like a billion dollars at that point (it pays to make large campaign donations, I guess!). Projects should finally get underway later this fall in most states.
s1artibartfast is correct; Starlink was awarded RDOF money that was later rescinded.
It was a controversy because the program specified were for 2025, but the FCC rescinded in 22' with justification that SpaceX was unlikely to meet the future goal.
This was viewed within the context of the ongoing Biden-Musk fued, which included Tesla exclusion from EV manufacturer meetings and alleged FAA approval slowdowns for SpaceX.
Ah, fair. I read BEAD in another comment and conflated the two.
BEAD still hasn't been spent.
There's many isolated communities abroad that benefit from this coverage. Plus, when I begin my solo sailing adventure, I intend to use Starlink as my primary method to maintain contact, of course with traditional methods serving as backup.
The sailing-around-the-world (and similar) market is obviously miniscule. The isolated communities probably tend to be on the less affluent part of the world, so it doesn't seem to justify a 100x expansion.
I think the theory is that they can expand the infrastructure enough that conventional fiber etc. stops being competitive.
I don’t see how. Maybe someone here can attempt the napkin math. But the satellites have much shorter lifespans than fiber.
We have starlink. It’s better than a lot of ISPs we’ve had. I think of them as the new hughes.net. If you are worse than them, you go out of business.
They can’t remotely repeat with local ISPs now that fiber is being rolled out.
Starlink: I have spent 4-5 days debugging cables because in some ketamine fueled manic episode, elon thought he could do better than RJ-45.
Local ISP: “We’ll be happy to run fiber and new ethernet through your existing network conduits, trench to the curb, and help bodge in active poe ethernet repeaters for runs that are too long.”
Edit: As for satellite light pollution, yeah, that sucks, but it’s something like 0.001% (if that) of the problems we have because Silicon Valley tech campuses stay lit up like Christmas trees all night. (And those are probably dwarfed by porch lights, street lights, etc.).
We’re in one of the darkest spots in the region and can pretty much always walk around without lights at night. Seriously, how bright do you need unoccupied spaces in the cities to be at night?
> Local ISP: “We’ll be happy to run fiber and new ethernet through your existing network conduits, trench to the curb, and help bodge in active poe ethernet repeaters for runs that are too long.”
I live in a major metro with a half a dozen apartments constructed within a block of me while I've lived here and this is very much not the case. I call them, they say they'll be happy too and then they ghost me. Of course I also can't get Starlink.
> I live in a major metro with a half a dozen apartments constructed within a block of me
Good chance Starlink (or any satellite-based internet for that matter) probably won't do well for you either tbh. Too many clients in too tight of an area all fighting for such a small slice of bandwidth and birds overhead.
My area has both ATT fiber and the local cable service. Both fast and reasonably (for the US) priced.
My neighbor has starlink. Very weird.
How about the sea traffic and jet plane market?
About 36 thousand planes and 105 thousand of 100 tonnes ships (not a lot) or 57 thousand of over 1000 tonnes ships...
At what ever unit economic price... That is not exactly massive market globally.
What about them?
This is great right? Lets pollute our sky for 8 Billion people that tyjen can send a whatsapp message to people while sailing.
Awesome!
Starlink has worked great for us so far from Europe to Polynesia. Prices keep going up, so would be nice if the service had actual competition.
The backups are sadly becoming trickier, as fewer and fewer carry SSB radios or operate shore stations.
And yet we do have SSB, and also an Inreach as backups. You never know when Elon wakes up and decides he doesn't like sailors.
India really has very deep penetration of 5g, and at very low cost. There might be a rare place that starlink might be needed but really I cannot image starlink having much consumer/retail uptake in india. Not needed, and too expensive. There might be commercial users - offshore rigs etc, but india is too densely populated for there to be many 'truly remote' locations.
India has still not permitted starlink to start ops.
Australian here. We generally have 1st world internet for most towns. The moment you are outside suburbia, speeds are embarrassingly slow. On my own farm, we dont even have power, or city water, and little to no mobile / cellular reception. We are like hundreds of thousands of other people with rural property here. I suspect the same is true in New Zealand, much of South America, Pacific Islands, Indian Ocean Islands, rural Canada, and often times rural USA.
Fiber deployment is bottlenecked by Baumol's Cost Disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect. There's basically no productivity gains being made in how quickly skilled laborers can deploy fiber. Like everything else involving skilled labor, the price keeps going up.
> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
Starlink has a Military arm called Starshield. If strategically important to US military and other militaries who are partners of the USA, that will be many millions/billions.
https://www.spacex.com/starshield
Recently I flew on a long-distance (so at least a dozen hours of flight time) low-budget airline that had 60 Mbps download/12 Mbps upload and it specifically called out SpaceX Starlink for being able to provide this for free. A video call went smoothly. There was connectivity from takeoff to landing with no interruption in between. This was the best airline experience I've had yet.
OK, so for this, Starlink is AMAZING! In-flight Starlink is undeniable.
The first time I experienced it, I could not believe what was happening. I messaged my nerd friends with screenshots of https://speed.cloudflare.com/
Also, their required zero-friction UX is the shiznit.
Then, I fell asleep as I finally had theoretical time off.
I flew Delta about 6 months ago and they had something similar, also for free, but they use Viasat. I think most of the big airlines were moving this way anyway to be honest, Starlink just has a good opportunity for advertising.
Starlink speed and bandwidth is way ahead of any of the existing satellite internet providers.
Gate to gate (if the plane door is closed) wifi has been a thing for most (all?) of the US airlines for awhile. Delta's wifi is ok, but I routinely have issues. It could be a combination of older technology on the plane and worse satellite network, but it's supposedly nowhere near as good as plane with Starlink.
I also use Starlink at my house in Italy. I'm in a decent sized town, but there is no fiber available. It has worked great, and more importantly took about 10 minutes to setup.
I believe Viasat internet satellites are placed in geostationary orbit, whereas SpaceX Starlink is not, so the service Viasat provides is already blown out.
Long latency makes Viasat good for some things and not so good for others.
I’ve read so many posts from both CEOs and programmers about their higher in-flight productivity thanks to be offline.
It used to be one of the best parts of a cruise, a week without internet! But it’s pretty decent these days
And this is exactly why we don't need internet on planes.
Yeah, planes are noisy enough without making them into a call center cubicle farm.
Voice and video calls are both outlawed in the US by the DOT.
And the FAA, FCC and as part of the Labour agreement with the Flight staff
In Europe, even rural areas tend to be fairly close to cities, whereas in North America, lots of farms are really remote. This map from NASA [0] should give you an idea of how remote some areas can be.
Now, 99% of these areas have electricity from the grid and analogue phone lines, so there's no reason why we couldn't also run fibre out to them, but for political reasons that's fairly unlikely to happen anytime soon.
[0]: https://assets.science.nasa.gov/content/dam/science/esd/eo/i...
It's very popular in rural US where running wired broadband is cost prohibitive.
There are many parts of the US that are very spread out, and thus running wires to every home is expensive without subsidies.
Right the areas that companies took money to roll out high speed internet to, then just kept the money and called DSL high speed or just did nothing. The government should keep giving companies money and investing in them. It's brilliant.
Exactly. Central Europe is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet outside of Asia. High population density makes fiber more economical, and low population density, the inverse. As other la have pointed out, India actually has very deep fiber penetration exactly for this reason. The Americas, by contrast, are largely devoid of people which makes the economics of any networking infrastructure harder
There are many places, even in the US, where your only alternative is--believe it or not--dial-up modems. Others had painfully slow--1 Mbps up, 5 Mbps down--Internet.
Its also a pricing thing; in Australia our nationalised provider keeps getting more expensive, starlink is now getting cost-competitive.
Stop using Telstra then. There’s an abundance of NBN resellers who sell better packages for cheaper than Telstra. At this point Telstra is just for old people who don’t want to change the services they’ve always been with.
If you compare 100/40 plans to starlink, starlink is about 10aud more over the best reseller promotion I can see, but has the occasional promotion; and getting cheaper.
If you are churning plans anyway, and that's the speed you want, you should have starlink in the mix.
I fully expect the NBN wholesale to keep getting more expensive, while I expect satellite providers to get cheaper.
Elon turning off Russian access to Starlink by whitelisting only authorized terminals in the region was a turning point for Ukraine's success. The conflict has proven that modern warfare depends on Starlink and its mimics.
Some day before invading Taiwan China and Russia will try to take them all down: https://archive.is/AMIxX
'A new piece of electronic warfare equipment appears more precisely targeted, apparently capable of jamming Starlink terminals on the ground across an area of up to 20 square kilometers.'
Here's the result of Russia's efforts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpX5mqeK5PI
China has a huge microwave to destroy any kind of Starlink over its head.
Citation Needed.
The specifics of an implementation of this are objectively absurd. Power requirements alone make this a non-starter. If that weren’t enough, it would be a declaration of war.
Not to mention they are spending an awful lot of money on developing anti-satellite missiles for having a working directed-energy weapon that can do the same.
I'm sure they are experimenting with directed-energy ASAT technology though, because why wouldn't they?
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Same. I bought a cabin, which had the equivalent of pretty good DSL. I got starlink and immediately cancelled it when 2gbps fiber arrived 9mo later. Fiber is rolling out faster than a lot of people think.
Would fiber have come so fast without starlink as a threat though
Thanks Elon!
What's the reasoning? That people won't switch away from the more expensive, slower, less reliable service if you get there a bit later?
Starlink isn't wildly expensive, nor is it unreliable or slow, but it loses the comparisons.
When a telco provides poor quality service somewhere, people have no choice but to pay them as price takers. When there are options, telcos have to provide better service to win your business. Telcos with monopolies have always been rent-seekers. It happens time and time again that some newcomer comes up, and just the hint of competition gets Verizon/Spectrum/etc to suddenly build new tech and dig some trenches.
^^^ Exactly this. I live in just such an area (one where Cable and DSL providers successfully bribed local officials to get fiber blocked so the two of them could split the city between them). They're both literally the worst Internet service providers I've ever had, but the only two choices besides insanely expensive celphone service providers.
Spectrum here rolled out fiber when other companies did. I'm pretty sure it is because it is the same subsidized last mile fiber and not because they were inspired by competition.
See the reason Google Fiber existed [1]. It wasn't for a product, it was to kick the pants of all the monopolistic broadband providers. Now, you have similar motivation on a global scale.
[1] https://gdt.com/blog/whatever-happened-to-google-fiber/
How ironic that Google wanted to be a monopoly buster.
Starlink was an attempt to grab the rural broadband funding that supported that fiber rollout in the US. It was too slow, so the money went to fiber and traditional ISPs instead. Fiber may well have come faster without starlink.
Subsidies make anything possible. Your grandkids will be paying for that fibre. Starlink is revolutionary for long last-mile links that will never be economic.
I'd agree with the last part of your comment. Because at least India doesn't depend upon Starlink for broadband access. Even in remote regions, now that it has seen first hand what modern economic and tech blockade means (after struggling for decades with older sanctions including related to nuclear tests and thank goodness it did that), it really isn't very keen on Starlink and wants home-grown alternatives (which definitely will take time) and also is now indicating to multiple players that they are welcome (but within limits and regulations).
Musk isn't pushing Starlink for "upside" for the people or your "central EU", or Africa, or India, or the moon (let's just assume for the time being), Musk is hoping to saturate the market and remain the only player or only major player, and Musk wants that perceived dependency as a weapon, as a tool of control. I won't be shocked if Musk later lobbies for "ah, too many satellites up there already.. it'd be dangerous to send more… ". In fact I am counting on that.
> where they have <.1% the money
That's another part where, again, I'd agree with the last part of your comment. That country has so many people that just from one region if enough rich people (and sadly with the great divide there are way too many), if they need it, it will outspend too many countries from Europe single-handedly when it comes to Starlink or satellite Internet access.
Having said that, these things are not this black and white… but I've tried at least one part, or rather a fraction of one part I'd say.
Satellite Internet is one of the best things I'd say but I'd bet my spare kidney that not in the hands of Musk and Musk is trying hard that he/Starlink becomes the almost single player, first mover etc etc.
Outside of war, ships and planes, I agree with you, that their benefit doesn’t seem like all that.
But then again, I never thought WiFi would take over wired network cables, but now even my desktop is connected with WiFi.
I also didn’t think cellular would be a replacement for copper or fiber, but now my modem for the apartment is 5G.
Both ended up being good enough, easier and cheaper (!)
It works on planes, ships, and in remote areas with no coverage. I live in Canada where the whole of Europe would fit many times over, nothing else would work in the remote areas at that scale. My parents live in Panama and use starlink to get reliable high speed internet at the beach. Even when the power goes out, their solar panels keep the internet online.
I am from Sri Lanka, which is a large island.
We have a smaller number of ISPs due to the cost of submarine cables, and ISP prices were high due to profit-seeking. After Starlink came, the incumbent ISPs started to offer unlimited packages for the first time.
Also, Starlink is good as a backup connection for rural areas too.
Eeh even ther its a stretch , when people talk about Africa - they should really specify where exactly. PLaces like SouthAfrica [1] already have a robust Fiber network with accelerated buildout of FTTH. Ditto for most of Eastern Africa countries which have FTTH to most of the major cities and subururbs with accelerated buildouts ongoing. Unless its a conflict area most regions are getting wired up pretty fast to enhancce business connectivity - the speeds and bandwith for starlink make noe economic sense once a developing pop are factored in.The only major push for many countries approvals is basically strong armed and shaken down by the US admin on behalf of Musk[2].
[1]https://ctcommunications.co.za/blog/south-africa-fiber-rollo...
[2]https://tech.yahoo.com/science/articles/us-pushes-nations-fa...
Still no 100% coverage and export promotion is part of Foreign Affairs work.
I feel like no-earth orbit is always going to beat out low-earth orbit in the long-term. I live an area that the USDA classifies as rural and I now have multiple fiber options, including municipal. This isn't to say that Starlink doesn't have its place and I only see it becoming more niche over time and facing more competition in the LEO segment.
I live in what is probably the first place to get these things in the world, but it feels like fiber is being built at an extremely rapid pace. Just in the past couple of years it seems like Google and AT&T fiber went from being a relatively confined thing to being available everywhere in the city, and everywhere outside, and at my friend's ranch 100 miles in the middle of nowhere. Everywhere.
Given that fiber's been around for literal decades, though, and the Internet hasn't recently gotten more popular or anything, why would this suddenly have changed? I could believe what people are saying re. Starlink providing competition and finally incentivizing fiber buildouts
Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.
Having lived in Central America, imagine all the workers that are laying the internet cables going back at night and digging them up to sell. A government that, 50% of the time, won't actually build anything when given the funding, and usually can't get the funding anyways. Plus, in some parts, weather can result in internet going out and, given the government, staying out for quite a while.
It's a fair point that those in poorer places will have less money, but for instance, Mexico's Starlink pricing is pretty standard, it's like 50-100 EUR per month. They pay it anyways because they need it, and because it's the best option.
Starlink is a great decentralization for anyone living under corrupt dysfunctional governments, where they can't rely on that centralized system.
Who digs up fibres to sell? It's worthless material. Copper yes but nobody lays that anymore. If it even has to be metal it's usually mostly aluminium.
You'd be amazed at how unintelligent about things tweakers are. They don't know it is fibre when they are taking it. It doesn't keep all of the users on the other end of those lines from losing signal.
What are you basing this view on, sounds like you have personally seen this happen?
On multiple occasions I have had my fibre service go down because of this.
They dig up the fibre to check that it isn't copper.
Starlink is popular in rural England. Trenching fibre to farmland isn't economical and poor DSL is often the only other option.
>Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.
Except there's rich parts like Germany or Austria where internet infra is poorly run due to monopolistic telco capture and regulations keeping infra upgrades costs high, and so have slower and more expensive internet than Starlink in some areas. Poorer nations of EU often have faster internet than the richer ones so poverty is not a reason.
So Starlink is definitely still relevant. I've seen several small/medium businesses here in Austria that have a starlink terminal as a backup.
Yes and just to add, the infra itself is pretty cheap. The cost comes from the labor and regulatory complexity. Budapest for instance has dirt cheap fibre just about everywhere.
I have a good friend who relies upon Starlink for connectivity for his home in southeastern Ohio (USA).
We've worked through all of the other alternatives there, including using cellular modems with directional antennas mounted up high on a mast pipe and multi-carrier aggregation tricks like Speedify. There is no local WISP serving the area, no fiber, no coax for DOCSIS, and xDSL is either a bad joke, basically basically abandoned, or both in much of the US in 2026.
So far, Starlink is the win.
(I'm pleased to hear that things are better than that for you in your neck of the woods.)
There's a market for it, think internet on vacation, on ships, trains, planes, and underdeveloped / remote areas (some of which skipped wired internet entirely and just have 3/4/5G).
But you're also showing a lot of bias and ignorance towards Africa and India and their financial means.
Fibre is better if you have a static point on land like a farm. It works less well if you're in a moving vehicle or if you're at sea.
I think in most markets the advantage SpaceX has is it isn't paying huge fees for Spectrum, the frequencies it owns were very cheap. Eg in the USA I think the providers spent nearly $100 Billion on spectrum where SpaceX can compete without that cost.
Starlink is a problem that solves itself. If enough fiber rolls out that there's no more customers, they'll scale back satellites (since they only last 3-5 years).
Not if you're a publicly traded company and that's a major part of your revenue.
> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India
Many in Canada have no broadband options. My gf has this because otherwise, no internet access. Even cellphone reception is spotty where she is in rural Canada.
There's a lot of places without fiber, e.g. all the ships/jets etc. there's a lot of low-density areas, there's islands with no internet or VERY expensive internet
Ships and jets are different segments from residential. Planes are definitely a textbook use case for satellite internet, but just like airlines are in a race-to-the-bottom for everything from in-flight snacks to legroom, they're not going to spring for premier high-quality internet service, they're just going to scrape by with the bare minimum. The market potential is not spectacularly impressive. Meanwhile, for residential services, rural areas continue to shrink, the people remaining in rural areas tend to be poorer, and the rural areas where rich people live have fiber, because the rich people can pay for it. Satellite internet will remain a crucial service for certain rural populations, but it's not going to take over the world, and it's not going to justify an order of magnitude more launches. Let's stop beating around the bush: the bull case for both Starlink and SpaceX is that the US military sees them as indispensible military assets, the former for global logistics, and the latter for the rapid weaponization of space.
Airlines are already springing for Starlink and can’t charge their customers for it.
Costs get passed on to the consumer. You're paying for it in higher ticket prices, which is where the race to the bottom comes in.
I wouldn't be surprised if the EU and ISPs are funding fibre to remote locations _because_ of Starlink competition.
Taxis and minicabs all over the world were unreliable, expensive, and unsafe before Uber came along with some healthy competition. The same dynamic is happening here between Starlink and rural fibre.
> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India
You just said it yourself:
> Then, only months later, but after years of planning:
Starlink is no replacement for fiber, but even all across the EU and the US there are many places without fiber access.
From a purely utilitarian standpoint, direct to cell feels like a good thing to me. Large swathes of Scotland don't even have sufficient mobile connection to send a text message (some people will tell you that's a good thing, but I'm not one of them).
i live a few miles west of core Palo Alto (technically, still in Palo Alto); Starlink is my only real choice for broadband, and it's great.
The obvious is the cost of deploying. You don't need to dig to add cable. Full country coverage. Worldwide customers.
I agree with that, but it's great for a greenfield project/area. Say, Mars or very high and low latitudes, or ships/airplanes.
However, once you are in an area of "civilization," there is not only an opportunity for fiber, but also maybe the locals don't want a foreign power controlling your citizens' data access. India + China = 35% of the global population, and Starlink is not legal in either place.
Meanwhile, the free speech absolutist is focused on breaking up the ~5.4% of the globe, (EU) where Starlink is legal.
Yes, but those are different reasons. Eventually we'll have many different providers offering LEO internet. Competition is the best way to solve this. The benefits of LEO internet is obvious.
> The benefits of LEO internet is obvious.
No, I disagree, maybe. The terrestrial Internet was literally designed to route around a nuclear war. That was its initial purpose, was it not?
Starlink needs ground stations, which are visible from orbit, and can be Shaheded... unless every Starlink terminal can also become a down-link.. which would be cool. However, then it all still relies on terrestrial fiber, right? Or, then that would be a Starlink-only WAN?
I don't want to call out a specific HN'er, but he is an HN hero. Years ago, in person, he told me he was bored. I tried to convince him to work for Starlink in Redmond, as what could be cooler than working on an entire new satellite laser-based Internet 2 backbone?! This was back when GMaps labeled that office "A Place of Worship."
I failed at that, because he probably saw that the entire concept was questionable. My point here is that this is all very complicated, and while Starlink is the coolest tech in my lifetime, it still relies on terrestrial fiber in the end.
Please, help me work through this. I am likely very confused.
Starlink can now jump the connections satellite to satellite, and curve them around the planet. You need to knock out not just the nearest ground station but also the stations the traffic can be rerouted to for the constellation to be meaningfully degraded. Stations that are spread across multiple countries and continents.
In which case, yes, SpaceX can also spin up new makeshift ground stations using off the shelf user terminals.
The current ground stations use specialized transceivers, but that's an efficiency improvement, not a fundamental limitation.
> I failed at that, because he probably saw that the entire concept was questionable.
There's a lesson there: if you think you understand a bleeding edge emerging technology better than Musk does, think again. Think for a long time - maximum reasoning effort.
It's not impossible that you truly are, but it is unlikely.
Internet routing around nuclear war not because it's cable but it's because it's an inter connected network (ie "internet"). Meaning there's multiple routes to the same destination.
24/7 high fidelity radar of the entire earth’s surface. Probably used by NRO’s sentient system and similar classified skynet projects
People who live out in rural areas. Think farmers, or just people who love living out on their own lands, common enough in the US. I have a friend who lives off Starlink internet, it would cost way too much to get internet all the way to his property, not really worth it.
one difference is that fiber isn't mobile.
Though all these satellites might give fixed-location folks higher bandwidth, they could also service many more concurrent mobile customers. Connectivity would probably be better too because more satellites would be in view.
Also, don't underestimate the benefit of robust competition, even if you don't use starlink.
The price difference for mobile satellite service is rather substantial though.
It might come down with more satellites and more breaking up service into different levels.
Imagine a cheap emergency-text-message level of service (like apple has, or maybe the garmin inreach type service). Then a compete-with-cellular cheap version for limited cellular service. Then a car service (premium-connectivity+satellite). then on up to residential broadband.
also, with more satellites might come the ability to talk to each other laterally, more load balancing and fewer ground stations. might be drive prices down.
More satellites increases the cost, not the reach, and so, not the customer base. I've worked in internet for 20+ years. The problem with "cheap emergency-text-message level of service" is not that it's not possible. It already exists (really Iridium offers that with a tiny modem that plugs into your cell phone). It's like observing that doing internet for your village or neighborhood is pretty easy and cheap, especially with cooperation from city hall, which is often a possibility. It's easy to beat incumbent telcos locally at internet services.
The argument incumbents make is that once that happens, the government will be responsible, first for paying for the entirety of telecom infrastructure outside of well-populated areas. Second governments need infrastructure wherever there is a border, or even the tiniest of villages, and getting dsl service in a border post will often mean paying for 100km of cable laying (or at the very least microwave towers).
And so governments make these services impossible at any scale through legislation. So either SpaceX pushes these through with "help" from Trump, or this doesn't happen.
There is a reason everybody RAN out of the global satellite data business in 2010 (and government bail outs mean that those people are still in business at $0 valuation). Satellite launches do not pay for the income that the market can provide. Then you calculate with Elon's numbers and well, frankly you get the usual outcome with Elon. "Yes, you improved the economics ... but not to the point of profitability, can you do another factor of about 2? No? Sorry then". And, yes, I realize that the problem with that factor of 2 is that it's not physically possible (technically SpaceX could get another 30% or so cost reduction with an RDE engine). That is why SpaceX owns Starlink. It's value is negative (meaning it would be stuck running a loss without access to SpaceX investors)
I live in the suburbs in the bay area in California, and starlink offers a significantly better quality of service than charter spectrum cable service, which is my only other option. Considering the current state of our government, I don't see things improving anytime soon.
Crazy, I didn't realize starlink is in the gigabit range for bandwidth? And how are they getting past the speed of light wall on their latency?
They aren't, at least not yet. It's more a reflection of how bad internet service is in places you wouldn't think it would be, at least here in the states. My as-advertised gigabit cable service slows to an utter crawl around Netflix O'Clock, And multi-hour+ outages are a regular occurrence.
Regarding latency, starlink satellites are low enough that it just isn't an issue.
I had a hilarious interaction with a Spectrum technician when I was dealing with an oversubscribed node with my home service (same issue you're describing here).
He was a line tech and was fully aware that my slowness wasn't related to the line, and as he replaced all the lines to my house he enthusiastically recommended that I report the company to the FTC and demand a refund for the service degradation which wasn't meeting their advertised speeds. He actually gave me great advice for getting my case escalated and I was refunded for several months on my service.
They eventually got the node upgraded (I was once struggling to get 60Mbps down on the same line I'm getting >1G on today), and they're upgrading everything to DOCSIS 4.0 currently. I'm not trying to sell you on them, just saying they'll likely work their problems out in the long run. Fundamentally, coax line connection's floor is Starlink's ceiling as long as the nodes are able to keep up.
Here in Alaska it’s literally better than the cable internet (except apparently for gaming but I don’t really game), and $10/mo cheaper for a starlink roam.
At where we are building our cabin, it’s infinitely cheaper than the alternatives lol.
One place where fiber cables cannot reach would be... way up in the air. Think about how many people fly each day and then remember how poor internet connectivity and speeds are at 40,000 ft.
So Starlink in flights seems like a perfect fit.
I live in a major Indian city and 1 gig fiber up and down is $30. We've also got really good 4G/5G in most places. Also in the super remote areas WiMAX is (still) an option.
I am also in rural EU and have 1 house that has fiber, and another, 10 minute drive away has nothing, not even cell signal and it won't get anything any time soon. Starlink is basically the only option.
I suppose one real upside is that in very regulated areas with only one operator this gives them some baseline regarding service that they actually need to beat.
Here in rural USA, we were paying $150 for very slow DSL, and now we're paying about $50 for quite fast Starlink.
In Asia I was paying $50 for very fast fiber, but that was in a major city; out at the farm you're on the mobile networks. So if I build a house out there and can do Starlink, I will do it.
Plus, there's the whole Starlink Roam thing: in California this summer, I see more and more vans with the little Starlink rectangle on top. "Work from Campsite" is pretty compelling, honestly.
How much did EU taxpayers spend to make that possible?
Very little, EU budget is minuscule - something like 500 euros per person per year.
The annual per capita EU budget doesn't tell us how much was spent to bring fiber to that particular rural area.
It’s definitely less than 500 pp even if they spent all of it on this.
I live in an area of the US where the only alternatives are 3.5 megabit DSL which stops working when it rains or Hughesnet, so basically no real competition at all.
People in rural parts of America where ISPs don't want to expand into.
They seem to be expanding even across rural America. These days it's fairly common for small and medium size towns to have access to 500mbps-1gbps for $50-$90 per month, and essentially all small cities and above.
Reddit is overflowing with threads where people are getting AT&T to give them 1gbps for $30-$35 per month. Comcast has repeatedly offered me 1gbps for ~$50/m for five years locked-in. I have no practical use for it.
The US has more broadband than it knows what to do with at this point. Somebody needs to figure out a mass public use for home 1gbps+.
The word "rural" by definition typically refers to areas outside of a town or city.
Do you think those prices would be available if SpaceX wasn't providing strong competition?
Fastest option I can get where I am is 260 Mbps for $250 from a local wireless ISP...
This makes starlink tempting but for that I'd have to run cabling 50 plus. M to get the this where it has a clear view of the sky...
(Edit) A nearby small town is installing municipal fiber right now, which is great, but that's half an hour away.
It is far from complete but yeah I got co-op 1 gig fiber in my rural 56k only area like 2-3 years ago. Some places nearby still don't have it but expansion is ongoing. Some select areas are starting to offer 2 gig but im unsure what most users would use it for.
India has one of the fastest and cheapest internet in the world. In fact you can get an extremely fast download atop Himalayan mountains in comparison to remote USA
Most people hate Comcast’s and att duopoly so much that’s reason enough to get starlink. I just got it in ca and it works very well
In America for my lifetime I have never been able to get fiber and it’s because America is too large and I live in an affluent suburb.
Lack of competition is the reason. Not the size of the country. Especially in a suburb.
Maybe it’s about the power to control the internet (and what is does and doesn’t serve) worldwide.
How much did it cost to have fiber ran to your house from the road?
Starlink is a military project, but they dont say that in public.
It's closer to only 10% the money to spend on such things, and that gap is closing rapidly. The poorest African countries these days still have a GDP in the low thousands per capita, and poorish central Europe trends to have low tens of thousands per capita. I could see 5 families in rural west Africa or something deciding to pool their funds to get one shared Starlink connection if they didn't have cheaper internet available some other way.
Moreover the utility of internet connection faces an extreme amount of diminishing returns - hear me out on this. You can very easily download an entire plaintext book on a subject you need to study up on in a few seconds with even a 100 Kbps connection, from any where and for any reason, and that's immensely valuable if previously you didn't have access to it before. You can't stream YouTube on it, but a YouTube instructional victory makes whatever you're doing merely easier, not possible.
WhatsApp and text messages, as well. It's very cheap to send a couple bytes back and forth to coordinate eg local market prices in fish, and so if you and a couple buddies team up to get one starlink connection you can very quickly tear the volatility of your local first market prices to shreds. I'm extrapolating from an earlier study that found just such an effect after cell phones were introduced to rural areas.
I guess my overall point is don't rule out the transformative effects that a few very reliable low bandwidth connections can have on an area. If the Romans discovered AM radio (possible given their late tech) we'd probably all still be speaking Latin, even though they couldn't play Fortnite.
It's good to have option in case your own government turns rogue.
Option being Starlink run by the rouge fascist billionaire who tries to use it to manipulate global wars?
Even if your outburst was true, yes.. If your government turns rogue it's better to have 2 options than 1. Period.
Better to have two dictators competing than one dictator controlling everything.
Not all of us live in places with EU funding. I worked at a rural farm in California and the EU refused to fund our network infrastructure. We had few reliable options, and Starlink turned out to be the best.
It's less about India and more about Usanai where urban sprawl is all the rage which makes wiring it impossible… and capitalist-driven-development doesn't help.
This was always the sour economics of satellite internet.
Satellite internet works for a low density of customers spread evenly across the globe. But customers are not spread evenly they mostly live in megalopolist regions that can be served more efficiently with land infrastructure.
Worse most of the people not in the megalopolists have less money to spend on internet services.
So your customer base are limited to people who aren't already served by better/cheaper terrestrial internet, but who can pay for better internet.
Those people exist but the history of satellite internet service hasn't been a massive money printer. Most providers have struggled to stay solvent let alone produce great returns for shareholders.
Paul Allen wanted to build a megaconstellation back in the 1990s but then Iridium went bankrupt twice.
Iridium ended up being rescued by the US military. I wonder if this is ultimately SpaceX's plan.
Space Bears have been saying this forever.
And the satellite internet business has been a dog since forever.
Even starlink only makes sense if you ignore the absolutely immense capital investment in it. And they're probably hiding losses in the launch division considering it's losing money despite 80% of its business being launching starlink satellites (they blame starship but that was supposed to be funded by NASA).
NASA isn't paying for Starship.
They are paying for HLS.
You can't (according to old space companies) build a lunar lander and its launch system for under $10B
The S1 says they SpaceX is providing launch to Starlink at cost. ~$20MM per Tim Farrar and Lionett Pierre. Two industry analysts.
> > And the satellite internet business has been a dog since forever.
So is the nuclear reactor business but at least with that you gain independence from Iran whereas the satellite dog business gives you independence from the tyrant T-mobile or Verizon...
Everyone at sea, uses them now.
> EU funding brought fiber to my farm area
Yes, boondoggle subsidies allow you to un-economically bring fiber to a subset of random places. I say this as the beneficiary of one such boondoggle. It doesn't scale well
I have a friend who does not live that remote in Australia and his choice is either "satellite" internet or starlink.
It's not even a choice because "skymuster" (the satellite option) can't even be considered internet. I remember him taking about getting 7 seconds of latency at one point. It's actually impressive how terrible it is.
This is a military tech.
seems like starlink is useful for armed conflicts
Elon is probably setting sup the infra for space data centers.
I live in Norway. Starlink is cheaper than FTTH by a country mile. At the very least it's going to force down prices for fiber providers.
Also just because FTTH exists does not mean it's reliable.
India? LOL, India has internet connectivity of scale the kind most other countries couldn't dream of. Though most of it, sadly, is IPV4 and concentrated in oligopolies (which for now are still "generous" enough to give us 5G for cheap).
> the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India
Which together have four times more people than the EU. Needs of the many outweigh, you know
India? It has the world’s cheapest data rates and nearly 90% of the population have 5G coverage. They don’t need this.
I suspect what is going on is just a matter of relative density. I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "central EU," but just guessing from a map I get Romania as the least population dense country that I would think of as Central Europe at 83 / km3. That is more than double the US pop density and if it were a US state only 15 out of 50 would be more dense. So then taking the least population dense region of the least dense country I get Tulcea with 23 / km3. That's 66% of the density of the US (37) which would come in at 34 / 50 if it were a US state.
So the most sparsely populated region of the most sparsely populated country in Central Europe is just a bit below average for the US. Our least dense state is Alaska at 0.5 / km3 or almost 50x less dense than that. But that's almost cheating. So lets take mainland only and that's Wyoming, with 2.3, so 10x less densely populated than the outlier in Central Europe.
So basically the US is just really damn empty to the point there just isn't any comparison in Central Europe and that's why it's so hard to get internet access out there.
India can lay some fiber. The secret is that every time a road gets repaved it gets dug up a week later so easy conduit pathway.
(Citation: lived in Gurugram for a few years where I witnessed the same 100ft of sidewalk get rebricked and torn up monthly at least 20 times)
My parents live in New York State, 8 miles from the main east-west transportation and data corridor. They still have no high speed wired internet options. No fiber, no cable, no DSL, and dialup ISP has been retired long ago. Their only option is satellite. This is in 4th most populous state in the US, and #1 highest GDP/capita. Internet across the United States does not have the penetration many think, the US is vast.
I live not to far from NYC and I think it’s fantastic. Comcast was charging me 75 a month and Starlink charges me 40 for the same service which is generally excellent
You are in a dense population. A large chunk of the world (and many people even in the US) are in low density environments where fiber rollouts are too expensive.
> where fiber rollouts are too expensive
Or in cities where fiber gets blocked by cable providers bribing corrupt local officials.
You’d be surprised how poor broadband Internet coverage is outside of major metropolitan areas in the United States. Some places are simply off-grid, or have to rely on dial up. All you have to do is drive an hour out and there’s no more Internet.
But would that have happened that way if Starlink hadn't come about?
the next generation of satellites base stations that are currently going up remove the need for base stations
you’ll have similar throughout and latency direct to your phone
but since this dream has been mired by delays, the starlink base station is still convenient
lots of people that would otherwise be stationary for reliable internet can go on the road
week long festival campsites have lots of people who aren’t taking any PTO that connect to their teams during the day time, while everyone else has nonexistent cellular service solely due to the overloaded networks
I would wager that most don’t unsubscribe to starlink in between time they just increase their mobility since its suddenly practical
speaking of PTO, if they are accumulating it but now travelling and never using it then its functionally a raise, all because they keep a starlink subscription
bigger satellites will bring that to everyone
You’ve clearly never lived in the US! Big place, not a lot of fiber.
You’re not dumb. It has come up in extremely sophisticated valuations of SpaceX pre-IPO, if I recall off the top of my head, the only business that actually had any value, StarLink, assumes an irrational TAM.
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Surely funding cell towers in Africa / India is cheaper and easier to maintain than 100k satellites in space.
It's not but it's all so tiresome to explain why. Also, those (hypothetical) towers have no ROI because they only serve poor people. Starlink covers the entire world so parts of the world can subsidize service to other parts.
> It's not but it's all so tiresome to explain why
I'd really love to hear it. Obviously you aren't obligated to provide an explanation but if someone else does it, I'm all ears.
> Also, those towers have no ROI because they only serve poor people
So why are they being built at all?
Towers aren't ever going to be built to cover the most rural areas. That's why Starlink is needed.
I understand why it's good and necessary for the rural areas to have Starlink. I don't understand the big profit opportunity for Starlink in serving them.
I just finished a long RV trip and I can tell you it's hard to underestimate the importance of internet access (which also means Wi-Fi calling and access to maps and weather) across our entire, enormous nation.
It's important not only for individuals but even more for businesses. Despite cell phone company ads with handsome celebrities in the desert, cell phones actually do not work in many places. But people do need to live and work in those places.
Once upon a time, people did long RV trips without internet access. Or even (cellular) phone access.
Once upon a time people used to walk everywhere.
They did and it used to take a lot of planning, using paper maps, getting lost etc.
Just like once people didn't use electricity or vaccines or indoor plumbing. For all its minuses the internet makes these long trips 10x easier.
> using paper maps, getting lost etc
All part of the adventure!
Hardly, and not by a factor of ten - at best it allows for digital mapping and (unreliably) replaces an ePirb.
What it does do, for sure, is encourage people with no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring to have a go and die through lack of prior experience and skills.
Similar things happen in hiking, people who shouldn't be there get encouraged by by how accessible information is to do things whereas before (most) people got info from someone knowledgeable.
Can you source a citation referring to people that had "no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring", and were thus "encouraged" to " go and die through lack of prior experience and skills" via Starlink?
Whether you like it or not, Starlink being an easily-accesible internet service has likely saved dozens of noobs from certain death by offering emergency eSIM services, GPS navigation, or communciation systems that they wouldn't otherwise have. Can I prove it objectively? Likely not (outside of forum anecdotes), but I wasn't the first to make a claim with the burden to do so.
> Can you source a citation referring to people that had "no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring"
Sure - West Australian newspaper pretty much any week of the year - tourists come from all over the globe to visit the vast untamed outback, rent a 4x4, head out, and get into life threatening (sometimes life ending) trouble despite having a phone connection via either mobile towers or starlink. You know, no charge, no backup, no paper maps, no experience, etc.
Whether you like it or not, ePiRBs being an easily accesible service has actually saved dozens of noobs and experienced personal from certain death by offering emergency service alerting - Fact! (and no internet required)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...
No, I don't like it. Because it relies on someone getting a specialized piece of hardware in advance of an emergency. That's a silly notion.
You could do that, or you could do the 21st century thing, and put up enough satellites to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country. Compatible with any smartphone.
> it relies on someone getting a specialized piece of hardware in advance of an emergency.
Like Starlink? Glad we agree.
> to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country.
Literally does not stop people dying and is not a substitute for knowing what you're doing in remote areas.
The claim was:
which is false - at best it's a 5% improvement on what was required as prep for long remote trips before Starlink.A big issue with yelling help! from a remote location rather than having the skill set to self rescue is that now third parties (rescuers) are putting themselves at risk and using their time and resources which may or may not be reimbursed.
In a perfect world, everyone is perfectly knowledgeable and prepared for any eventuality and nothing bad and unexpected ever happens at all.
May I remind you what world are we living in?
Denying emergency comms to people who didn't buy specialized hardware because "they should have prepared better" sounds like social darwinism to me.
Especially in an age when everyone has in their pocket a smartphone that's crammed full of advanced RF tech. Starlink has Direct to Cell on new sats, iPhones can use GEO satcom - what's your excuse?
> what's your excuse?
I fetch idiots out of remote areas.
With or without Starlink, they're unprepared.
People that are prepared for remote areas have been getting by without it for millennia.
What's you're actual on the ground experience here?
So, you want to save people, but you also want people who were not "prepared for remote areas" to just die somewhere, out of contact and out of your sight, and you also want to bitch about how stupid and unprepared they were?
That sure is a funny way of doing things.
There's LTE from space already btw in Australia. Will one day be a carrier requirement.
Yes, that's the problem.
Yes and people lived without internet. You should be one of those.
What an argument.
Internet access is good.
You can call your relatives and check in. That has been huge. My relatives traveled the US in the 80s and could call home maybe once a week? Month? Now intl calls are free.
You don't need to check everything everyime like social media apps brainrot.
Definitely! I was doing the observing during an RV trip, but my comment was about how it impacts business even more.
People used to die trying to cross the country
Indeed! That explains the popularity (and realism) of the Oregon Trail game.
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Gotta be online 24/7 or what?
Many, many businesses do, including ones we all like such as power and water and firemen, etc. Th thrust of my comment was about business and public infrastructure as a social good.
This is a very wasteful way of getting communications to somewhat compensate the lack of competition in US telco market.
The star link network is actually remarkably cost effective in getting internet access to rural areas. There's a reason that these areas still have poor connectivity: it's just not cost effective for anyone to build land based infrastructure there.
SpaceX spend a few billions on StarLink. But if you look at how much network operators have spent over the years on cables, base stations, etc. it's not all that much for a network that offers high bandwidth access all over the planet.
Adding 100K more satellites is going to make Star Link a direct competitor to many of these operators.
It occurred to me after reading the original story that if space based internet gets fast enough, we'll stop using any other kind for most purposes. That means, as a platform, SpaceX could carry a significant amount of the entire world's internet traffic. No wonder Elon is interested.
Starlink often struggles in thunder storms.
Not enough bandwidth
Yet. I one was one of the first people in Silicon Valley to have DSL when dialup had that same bandwidth problem. I posit it will be solved.
Eh, I think the economics of rural areas play a role as well, and this “wasteful” way is actually very well suited for serving that long tail.
But the long tail isn't served. The reality of your statement turns out to be that, if there aren't enough customers to justify an expensive tower or wire, no service will be provided at all.
That’s my point, they are serviced by solutions like Starlink because they don’t rely on towers or wires and are just available everywhere.
I’m writing this from a small island in a remote country using Starlink, and it’s very popular over here for people that want reliable internet.
Awesome. So we agree!
It has nothing to do with competition. You could have as many competitors as possible and no one is going to put a cell tower up in a remote location.
I've been on tiny Indonesian islands far from anything that could be considered civilization, and they'll have cell towers more often than not.
Because Indonesia has a massive population, far more people than the US and much more densly populated. It's internet users are vastly mobile as opposed to desktop or LAN connections. The US geographic landscape and computer use landscape are entirely different.
> Because Indonesia has a massive population
Indonesia has less people, ~280 vs ~340 million for the US.
> much more densly populated.
Technically true, but as I said in my comment I'm talking about remote/small islands, closer to Flores/Papua to the east, not Jawa where the overwhelming majority (as in, literally more than half the country) of the population lives. Jawa alone has ~145 million people, Sumatra around 60 and Sulawesi around 20, the rest are spread out all over the country and the densities are much smaller, not to mention that those smaller regions have much fewer resources available to them to begin with.
> It's internet users are vastly mobile as opposed to desktop or LAN connections.
The comment I was replying to was talking about companies/the gov't being reluctant to erect cell towers though? So I don't see the relevancy here, I was saying that even tiny, sparsely populated islands in some of the poorest regions of Indonesia have cell tower coverage, and with those towers, decent internet.
> The US geographic landscape and computer use landscape are entirely different.
Arguably it's infinitely easier to erect infrastructure when you're not an archipelago. Plus, the US is the richest country on earth, I'm sure you guys can figure out how to string along fiber even in the most rural of areas, you've somehow managed to do it across the atlantic ocean after all.
Also government subsidised
It has everything to do with the lack of competition. US tax payers paid $4 billion to AT&T in 2004 for fiber to -every- home. And that was never delivered, yet they keep getting more money. This is regulatory capture.
We're not talking about fiber, we are talking about cellphone coverage. As I said, no company will put a tower up in a remote area.
we should lay fiber about it, not do this wasteful atmosphere polluting bullshit
Just a choice of polluting the ground or the air.
How often do you need to replace the cable in the ground compared to the satellites in the air?
I can give an example. My parents live in the UK, and their house was built in 1985. A couple of years ago the copper phone line had to be replaced as it had degraded somebow. The operator had to dig up and reinstall their driveway, brick pathway and garden. Now the operator is installing fibre to replace copper phone lines, so again they need to dig it up.
One days work for one house. Multiply that across an entire nation, and work out how much diesel is burned for that. Where they live you can't get cable (not very common in the UK), but if it was available I guess there would have been another digging day in the 90s.
Installing subterranean cable is presumably a choice right? Couldn't it be above ground?
In my area they did a whole street with fibre in one week.
Do you know what also is important?
To know when a asteroid is on its way to us.
All that satellites make discovering them more difficult.
Could star link add some cameras on the back of those satellites and make the detection actually much better?
If your trip to desert is worth polluting whole low orbit and high atmosphere is debatable. Same goes for hypothetical business there. Maybe building towers would be a better idea in long term.
A couple of billion people are doing to join the global middle class over the coming decades. They don’t have pre-existing cable and phone networks that have been in the ground for 50+ years they can incrementally upgrade to broadband. Rich countries spend trillions getting to the point where most people have some sort of wired broadband option. If newly middle income countries want to pursue the same route, it will take decades.
Starlink short circuits that process. It means newly minted middle income people my dad’s village in Bangladesh can get broadband now instead of in 2050. Replicate that story all over South and South East Asia and Africa.
but is providing access to internet for billions of people worth not being able to see the big dipper as clearly at night? I say yes, but only just barely
This is unironically why I believe lights should be shut off at night. Entire cities.
I'd love to see the sky. Actually see it. Even the most remote places have light pollution, so it's impossible and likely will be going forward.
Maybe it's silly, but it makes me sad.
This is a first world problem that has a first world solution: get in your car and drive to the woods.
What percentage of humans are urban dwelling and don’t even see the stars at night? Related there aren’t many places on earth where you can still see the Milky Way. In that way a similar trade off has been made with no forethought whatsoever. Should this time be different? I think so.
That's a ghoulish thing to say.
Can you empirically say internet access improves wellbeing? Anecdotally, my answer is a resounding "no".
Rather than deciding for them from your bubble of privilege in your fiber-connected utopia, you could just ask these poorer countries if it is worth trading global full, high-speed internet access for "not being able to see the big dipper as clearly at night".
Or just watch what they do when presented with the choice.
That you would think to ask this shows how out of touch you are.
The vast majority of people wouldn't think twice if that was the trade-off to get connected.
We should be talking instead of governmental oversight, and whether it makes sense to restrict/regulate satellite constellations for science or culture activities.
I think there should be regulation, but clearly the people and the market wants this, so it's going to happen.
And there is regulation. SpaceX works with astronomers and their satellites are coated to reduce glare and use of sun visors for example.
I think most of this thread is missing the part where this will also work for cellphones and give you truly global coverage.
* only when you’re outdoors with good line of sight and only in geographic areas they allow.
I’m not sure if that’s true of these use cellular frequencies.
You can already try it with T-Mobile and it’s pretty limited. Great if you need sms and there’s no other towers around. Still requires line of sight.
The limitations on the current T-Satellite service have a lot to do with the spectrum being shared with terrestrial towers and the low number of satellites.
The new constellation will be physically closer, with much larger antennas and a much larger number of satellites with a much higher capacity per satellite. It will also use dedicated spectrum with no terrestrial interference. Coverage and speed will be improved tremendously.
You’re still limited to the transmission and receive capabilities of mobile devices which already struggle with current cell networks. I’m Not arguing it won’t be nice for people truly remote, but people keep acting like this will replace cell towers, which it won’t.
The limitations of mobile devices are mostly due to regulation (power limits and spectrum allocation and other requirements) and not inherent to the technology of handheld devices. And despite this, you can increase performance almost arbitrarily if you are able to increase the size and power and number of the antennas on the other side.
Yes, the Gen3 Starlink Direct-to-Cell constellation won't replace cell towers in urban or suburban areas. But I believe it could replace them in rural areas.
That's usually how satellites work.
There’s some folks here that seem to think otherwise
You really want Starlink to be bad, huh?
Did I say that? I’m being realistic and not drinking the Elon koolaid. I think starlink is great and it’s hugely improved life for a lot of people and made remote work a lot nicer.
Wifi indoors, starlink outdoors
Do we really need that? Most of us are fine with relays. The coverage in remote parts could be handled by way fewer sattelites. 100k is a lot of sattelites. Seems that with 100k leo we’d have 24/7 live coverage of every inch on earth but do we really want that?
> we’d have 24/7 live coverage of every inch on earth but do we really want that?
I think you misunderstand the maths a bit. If the goal is high bandwidth, which requires high density, for specific, randomly distributed, parts of the earth, then, by the fundamental laws of gravity and orbits, you'll also have coverage over the rest of it, whether you like it or not.
Just coverage is already provided by the 600-something direct to cell satellites already in orbit yes, but you need more if you want it to be useful beyond loading text-only posts or sending SMS
I explicitly do not want that
Internet works on phones?
The more you know.
It also creates a private internet on which “private enterprise” does not have to abide by the Constitution or any subordinate laws.
Sure, it’s just “fear mongering” now, just like digital ID, digital currency, mass surveillance, and speech police were 30 or so years ago, but what happens when terrestrial cable internet gets too expensive and everyone’s subject to Elon’s space internet?
It’s basically the similar playbook as the cable/copper phone network giving way to the internet and wireless and … whoopsie … you also have a tracking and permanent surveillance device on you with no ability to keep thousands of corporations harvesting your body for data and information.
This would allow you to throw a flock camera up literally anywhere on earth. If we are being honest, we are probably only a couple years out from real Orwellian mass surveillance states, totally censored and mined communications, and general purpose compute restricted or made illegal I wouldn't even be surprised. All the incentives lead right to that and we are halfway there in many ways already.
I hate to break it to you, you are already in an "Orwellian mass surveillance state" and just don't realize it, just as the majority of people in the Orwellian mass surveillance state also were not aware of.
Case in point, are you aware that the whole 2+2=5 line was a deliberate falsification of a perfectly sound and even healthy statement that Orwell stole and perverted, i.e., 2 + 2 + the people's enthusiasm = 5 ???
Then, when you start finding out that the CIA, at the same time that it was conducting its MKUltra "experiments", was aggressively buying up all the rights to 1984 and then pushed them into schools and made the movies in close collaboration with Propagandawood; you have to at least start asking yourself extremely uncomfortable questions about whether 1984 was actually a warning or preconditioning, aka grooming.
The CIA did help fund some movies of 1984 to make them more anti-totalitarian and anti-Soviet, but that's not the same thing as them buying up all the rights to it.
There are already zero private companies that have to follow the constitution, since it never applied to them, ever.
As another person mentioned, radio crosses international boundaries, but it is regulated by regulating ground equipment and people and organizations on the ground. You'll see some countries on https://starlink.com/map that are greyed out because of regulatory issues... for example, some countries such as India heavily control the use of satellite comms
Do ISPs have to comply with the 1st ammendment? My understanding was that they have some sort of common carrier law but net neutrality did not hold up.
What changes from ISPs and phone companies?
It doesn’t. The network is governed by the FCC and any other regulatory agency where they place RF on the ground.
You have a very peasant perspective. And that's not meant as an insult, it's just the kind of perspective of a peasant about what is going on in the kingdom, let alone in the palace's inner chambers.
Do you think Starlink is somehow extraterritorial or something? They're no more or no less a "private internet" than any other ISP. People need to get a reality check. Hacker news is becoming one of the most luddite places on the internet.
At what point are people going to have a conversation about all the pollution and the consequences of so many satellites burning up (metals and other toxic stuff) in the atmosphere and fragments falling wherever.
100k... how much can we keep putting up and let keep falling around the world? Multiple other companies and countries want to do the same as SpaceX.
The thing that's also not grasped is because of the low earth orbit nature of these satellites they eventually succumb to drag and only have a useful lifespan of ~5 years. Using that and 100,000 satellites that means the constellation will take ~54 satellites/day to maintain, they're also quoted as being 2 tons which about the weight of a Sedan/SUV. Reframing it it's like if Comcast had to crash 54 supercars into a brick wall everyday to keep their infrastructure up and all that material also got dispersed throughout the atmosphere. SpaceX is already making/launching ~10 satellites a day and metaphorically crashing them into a brick wall, the wall is just ~5 years away.
Humans have been around for a long time but also don't live very long, but to sustain this internet infrastructure for an average person's lifespan it'd take ~16 replacement cycles. In terms of human civilization timescales this infrastructure cant/won't be sustainable for very long. Personal opinion but I think we should figure out how to run network cables to remote places better, we managed to do it with gas and electricity.
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100k satellites is kind of insane, why not a smaller number of satellites which are more powerful, like the satellites from AST Spacemobile? It should be possible to launch smaller number of satellites without sacrificing progress
Populations are far below replacement. Degrowth is assured.
Populations may drop, but why would you want quality of life to remain constant?
You'd rather lower quality of land life to enable growth?
Or were you not responding to the argument that avoiding pollution is typical degrowth talk?
No. I'm saying that if the population is set to fall, we can crank resource spend per person all the way up, and enable growth that way. With a little side benefit of QoL improvements.
Which requires a massive jump in labor productivity, mind. But if the optimistic takes on AI are right, such a thing is not impossible.
I guess the Montreal Protocol was "degrowth talk" for you too, huh?
Absolutely. Degrowith is the guilt-fueled poverty mind virus.
Abundance, friends. Nothing stops us.
Will this be the last generation to remember the night sky?
I may have blown the math, but the last time I calculated I figured there were about 35 Starlink satellites above the horizon at my latitude. Looking into the suburban early night sky I see zero, one, or two satellites with about equal probability.
I think the hypothesis this leads to is that the "don't shine" techniques Starlink is using are working. I'm guessing the ones I see are either not Starlink or are Starlinks transitioning to their working orbit (they don't do full "dark mode" until they are in place.) If in place units shown I'd see a lot more.
So at least, maybe it won't all be gloom and doom. But if it is all gloom, at least it will have little sparkles floating around it.
30 yard wide solar array from 300 miles away. There's a brief period of the day where they're visible but hardly a risk of making a dent in your view of the sky especially compared to ordinary terrestrial light pollution.
I'm in a heavily light polluted city (Phoenix) and even with all the air and light pollution, can still see satellites every moment past 2AM to the east. At least this time of year.
That's simply impossible. You must be seeing something else. They aren't that bright.
If you don't take long exposures, the satellites won't cause you much trouble seeing the stars. Regular light pollution is the problem.
They don't stop you from seeing the stars, but I find them very distracting. Makes the experience of looking up at the stars on a quiet night less peaceful, I find.
Sucks for regular astronomy then, where long exposures are the norm.
Equally sucks for radio astronomy where the bloody things leak into spectrums they (Starlink) pinky promised to keep clean. And successive generations have worsened the problem, again despite promises to improve.
Sucks being out bush stargazing and then seeing a massive constellation to remind you of Musk's wealth and influence. It's no longer possible to totally escape visual reminders of civilisation
Starlink actively works with radioastronomy sites to avoid causing interference. They've posted about this before.
Yes, they do post about it.
Yes they do talk about working to avoid causing interference.
That's been ongoing since before the first Starlink went up and has been ongoing as later generations haven't improved.
Second-Generation Starlink Satellites Leak 30 Times More Radio Interference, Threatening Astronomical Observations https://www.astron.nl/starlink-satellites/
Still, at least they are talking about maybe doing something. Eventually. Perhaps.If you have evidence of them causing interference on a spectrum they shouldn’t be on, report it to the FCC. They take that very seriously
Scientists analyze 76 million radio telescope images, find Starlink satellite interference 'where no signals are supposed to be present' (2025)
~ https://www.space.com/astronomy/scientists-analyze-76-millio...
and several other papers over the past half decade.
It's old news that they leak, and old news that F-all gets done about it.
Back to you.
"It is important to note that Starlink is not violating current regulations, so is doing nothing wrong. Discussions we have had with SpaceX on the topic have been constructive," said Tingay. "We hope this study adds support for international efforts to update policies that regulate the impact of this technology on radio astronomy research that are currently underway."
Sounds like not transmitting but just electronics existing in space.
This is directly the opposite of the implication of using Ku/Ka bands they shouldn’t have (which is what the agreements were with astronomy groups - aka “pinky promise”).
Starlink is leaking into radio astronomy bands, they initially said there wouldn't be a problem, but there was. They've later stated it would addressed in Gen-2 - it got worse.
> Starlink is not violating current regulations, so is doing nothing wrong.
Might be time to make global regulations on spectrum usage in space? That could take a while.
There are many past examples of companies "not violating current regulations" despite leaking toxins and other now recognised violations of the commons.
> Starlink is leaking into radio astronomy bands, they initially said there wouldn't be a problem, but there was.
Again, these are two different things and conflating them is not productive. The initial discussion with Starlink and the astronomy community that I followed closely was explicitly about conflicts on the service frequencies (i.e. the thing unique to Starlink). They were cooperative with that.
Now it turns out electronics in space emit EM noise and that is the thing showing up in astronomy and it has nothing to do with the RF internet side. Non-Starlink satellites emit it as well but the sheer volume of starlink sats makes it easier to detect theirs.
The distinction matters because the same thing will happen with any constellation regardless of its purpose if it has onboard computers, batteries, solar arrays, etc.
I’m for passing regulations on this emissivity, but the framing that this is some kind of rug pull by spacex is dumb. They could have participated in the community the legally required amount like the Chinese do and we’d be in a much worse position.
I'm not confident after all government investigations and lawsuits against Elon and his companies were dropped when Elon illegally accessed government systems, illegally took government data, illegally terminated government employees, and illegally eliminated government departments and programs while creating billions in expenses while pretending his intention was to help anyone but himself.
But sure, the FCC might take it seriously.
Then just wait until the next administration. If they are building with technology that relies on the FCC being gutted, they will be in for a world of hurt when that changes.
Brendan Carr seems more interested in settling political scores
That's his job description
Well, yeah, but my problem is with the long exposures that I'm trying to get.
You should be using stacking software anyway. It's a complete non issue.
It will be the first generation with widespread space travel. My children will have consumer access to a view that no one had seen until 1961 and only government employees had seen since.
light pollution already means the night sky is largely invisible outside of remote areas
“You can’t see it most places so who cares if it goes away” is my most charitable interpretation of this.
The majority of people live in cities - and a growing majority.
my comment is pushback against claiming "this generation" as uniquely doomed, and doomerism in general
I've never seen a glacier before, have you?
Glaciers have never been accessible to most people.
The night sky has, until recently.
Are you sure? Most people live in urban centers the last few generations and see few if any stars in the night sky
Yeah. Hiked on and around them in PNW mountains.
And?
Good for you getting that in before they disappear, probably got to see the night sky also, you can tell your grandchildren about that.
* https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
If you all are so sad about it do something about it.
Like travel less, spend less on technology
You're part of the problem. It's not just you but it is you too.
So what I will tell my grandchildren is "The old Geezer Americans are fucking losers who fucked you over before you were born. You don't owe them any respect."
I have seen both stars and satellites from suburbs and some urban areas. They are not very remote. There is a lot to see if you look. I do not like the light pollution but as it stands it is not the end of star gazing.
“Remote areas” make up most of the world.
Weighting by population seems reasonable here!
I think when it comes to watching the night sky, weighing to populated areas isn't necessarily right. It's not like you should value rural folks' view of the night sky less.
Paraphrasing (strawmanning?) the original - it doesn't matter if StarLink has ruined the night sky if city dwellers can't see the it. Well, I believe it still matters a lot. And we're still talking about nearly 1/2 the world population here.
At Farpoint Observatory, this is a major concern for those keeping an eye out for near Earth objects.
Also the last generation to not frequent space. See the night sky up close.
You can only see satellites during twilight when they can reflect sunlight. Don't panic.
Many people have never seen that properly due to light pollution.
go outside right now and look up. it's still there.
Satellites only reflect sunlight when in sunlight. This only happens near sunrise and sunset.
The night sky will be unaffected by satellites for the foreseeable future.
I've been watching satellites at all hours of the night for decades. You might want to double check with reality on that sunrise/sunset claim.
You forgot about the radio spectrum pollution which affects the night and day sky right now .. and for the foreseeable future given the lack of progress in addressing that leakage.
The topic is seeing the night sky.
Parent might be talking about amateur radio astronomy which I agree might be straying from the main argument
Professional radio astronomy - SKA et al.
eg: Scientists analyze 76 million radio telescope images, find Starlink satellite interference 'where no signals are supposed to be present' (2025)
~ https://www.space.com/astronomy/scientists-analyze-76-millio...
and the topic is Starlink (and other sat constellations) and their impact on the sky (visible and non visible).
The message I responded to was about visible light:
"Will this be the last generation to remember the night sky?"
My mom lived with overpriced, underdeveloped, unreliable, and slow internet for years. Now she pays less for fast, reliable, sometimes improving bandwidth that doesn't go down for weeks after a storm. Progress is often gross, but it can be a lifesaver.
That’s great and I’m happy for her. Progress should be for all, not just the developed elite hanging out in tech circles.
Alas, Not In My Low Earth Orbit.
Progress isn't evenly distributed.
That's why we don't deny some access because we can't give everyone. Especially if the dispute is about method
Dude, she pays for it herself on pension.
And besides:
> Progress should be for all, not just the developed elite hanging out in tech circles.
That's... that's basically been the start of every generally available technology that exists today, to benefit of "all."
One cool thing about Starlink is that it can potentially improve latency across the world. In optical fibers the light travels only two thirds as fast due to the index of refraction. But in space you can use a laser to send the data in a straight line in a vacuum.
Um yeah but the transmission path is longer and the equipment and signal processing on each hop also adds latency. I really doubt it'll make much of a difference.
I doubt the transmission path is longer, fiber optic cables aren't laid in perfectly straight lines between all points.
I mean with satellite it's longer. You have to go up and down, and starlink sats prefer sending data streams back to the ground as soon as they can (because the laser interconnect capacity is limited).
And variable, no less due to the high differential speed of the satellites. And the signal conditioning is much more involved than on the ground.
basic math says light travels faster across the surface shorter distances than orbit.
My understanding is that Starlink can only service ~6-7 houses per square mile today. The US is ~95/sq. mile on average. 80% of Americans live in "cities."
Anchorage metro is ~15/sq. mile; Yuma, AZ is ~36. The Nashville metro is ~250.
Also, Starlink satellites spend ~70% of their time over the ocean. This will impact the utilization ratio of their gear and force them to launch still more satellites.
Simultaneously though, those 80% of Americans that live in cities/within the typical commuting distance of a metropolitan area are also the ones that are usually serviced by at least one broadband or fiber provider. Because of this:
- Having slowly-increasing pressure on those often-monopoly broadband/fiber carriers because people have the option to swap to Starlink, adds competitive pressure for them to improve their service, reduce prices, etc
- The remaining 20% of the population that lives on the 60-80%+ of the land who currently have terrible options, but fit well within the density restrictions of current-gen Starlink satelites, suddenly have options
Those are solid points. They also describe Starlink as a niche service with a structurally low TAM.
The new satellites are like 100x better.
That's great, they still are bound by physics to spend ~70% of their time over the ocean. I would guess ~80%+ of their time is spent where there are effectively no people.
In developed countries ISPs and telcos have to open their lines up to competition and homes pay less and have much more choice. We don't need satellites when the fiber already exists, its just hoarded.
I understand no one here likes Elon. But does it mean we find justifications for our collective bias in everything his companies do?
Yes, it would seem so.
I like him! :D
I don't like him. I don't hate him either. He's not a thing in my life. But the companies are, SpaceX etc. do impact me.
Basically I would hate to see HN become Reddit.
It's definitely happening
Relevant news from the past week:
"A joint investigation by The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde":
https://theins.press/en/inv/294635
Basically Russia and China are collaborating in taking down Starlink. Leaked documents showing the plans.
They don't mention social media opinion shaping, but then again the leaked documents are from 2023.
Why do you put the onus on everyone else to make excuses? It sounds very entitled.
I did not get it. But may be the onus is to not have a collective bias?
It's an American company polluting the night sky for the entire world, for a service that will ultimately be access gated by the US government/private industry. That's where the negative sentiment is coming from. Who cares which of the many equally shitty US billionaires/oligarchs is funding it?
Do you feel the same way about Guowang and Qianfan, two very real very large constellations notably not funded by US billionaires?
And are also worse in several ways?
This is a dumb question given that being funded by a US billionaire is what shapes their opinion.
I think the end game is convenience. Nobody really needs anything more than 200mb/s. If the average person can have their entire family stream their favorite Netflix show at the same time then that’s good enough. “Now lil Jimmy can watch it in the minivan too!”
I remember ~20 years ago upgrading my house line to get something crazy like 0.5mbs and the sales guy telling me that I didn't really need it and was wasting money upgrading from my current ~0.2mbs.
Those numbers are fudged of course, I don't remember exactly how long ago or from what to what I was upgrading. My point is that we've always been having people say you don't need faster internet. And yet, I still want, and use, faster internet. 200mbs I would consider fine. But I'd still feel the difference at 500mbs or 1gbs.
I doubt you are the average consumer though. Now days I think the biggest average consumer use case is streaming and game downloading, with game downloading being the biggest “I want it now!” impulse. But do you need 1gb service to download that call of duty game every year? I even think most people could get by with 50mb/s and not even know as long as the latency keeps up. If it’s fast enough to stream Bluey the masses are content.
what you do to fill difference between 200, 500 and 1gb?..
It's sort of amazing that people still say these sorts of things today.
I don't think it's at all inconceivable where people in the future are streaming high resolution multi modal personal sensor arrays to AI that is running in a data center...and ditto we are streaming ever more content back.
That's just the in vogue answer of 2026. There are undoubtedly endless innovations that I can't envision that will require ever more resources.
My point is just that every single "X ought to be good enough" has been proven false. And the only times where we see consumption really plateau are due to other reasons than desire (like cost).
its sort of amazing how people dump so much far fetching speculations in response for such simple and specific questions.
We are quite literally talking about launching 100k satellites into space.
This is necessarily a question that requires thought and speculation about the future.
You can't just flip a switch and do it overnight if it turns out there is demand.
And if there isn't demand, you are going to lose a lot of money.
Uploading large files is probably the biggest thing, 4k video streaming (out) while others in my house are streaming in or playing games with no slowdown.
I remember watching hours pass uploading files on my 200 mbit. Still take time but much faster with gigabit (measured at 940 bmit, so not the full 1gbit)
>Nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM
Eh, I've got 200mb/s fiber for cheap. It's pretty good and definitely bottlenecked by crowded wifi and upstream sources moreso than the ISP. Ethernet helps somewhat.
At the same time, I do kind of want more bandwidth just so I can download massive files like model weights quickly, host a web service out of my own house, seed torrents, etc. What might cryptocurrency look like if typical residential internet speeds were measured in gb/s? Perhaps bitcoin might be capable of more than 7 tps!
But to be fair, I am a nobody.
we let companies in space way too soon. only NASA should have satellites in the US
Fiber is just getting cheaper and cheaper, more resilient, and is faster too. Plus it has no value like copper so thieves dont steal it.
I don’t think it’s wise to pollute all of low earth orbit with Musk’s satellites, that area belongs to all of us collectively.
I think the main goal is direct to phones rather than being an alternative to fiber. But it's also a very good option for people living in rural areas with poor service (shoddy DSL).
population crashing will have people concentrate around cities like what is happening in Tokyo because that is where all other services will be. Rural is economic poverty.
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Casual, totally unnecessary prejudice against rural people to make your point.
I spent last weekend under some of the darkest sky you'll find in the eastern US. Miles from cell service. I had a starlink portable with me and it was nice to get some service and stay in touch, but to watch the sky is to see satellites everywhere.
I've spent a dozen or so weeklong stretches in the last few years completely off grid, only connection being bringing up the inReach once a day. At this point I actually get anxiety at the end of such a trip, knowing that I'm going to be wading through a morass of notifications and slack/email/texts. Doing a once or twice a day sync via starlink didn't really bother me so much when I'm out in the backcountry this last trip.
I'd love to be rid of all of it, but that's not how the world works today.
Your comment was interesting.
i just read somewhere about spacex slowly destroying our dark night skies due to their satellite constellations. Thoughts?
It’s just that, while so much of the sky is static, it’s impossible to gaze at without your attention being grabbed by the moving flick of light, it takes active effort to ignore it. So it’s a totally different experience stargazing now vs 20 years ago.
Starlink satellites are intentionally designed to be very dark, but they become more visible when the sun is about to come up or if there are super bright light sources on the ground nearby to reflect off of them.
If there are super bright light sources on the ground nearby that are bright enough to produce a visible reflection off a satellite, you are about to be dead.
Thats a nice intent i guess but doesn’t seem to work well in practice
Yeah, I meant to point out there that there is a tension between the technology that I don't mind, but the infrastructure for it that I do mind. I don't really know what the answer is. I do know that we're probably not going to put this toothpaste back in the tube.
I love being off-grid with just my slow inReach Mini 1. I can communicate in case of an emergency, but otherwise it's a great forcing function to not be hyper connected. I worry if I brought the portable Starlink with I'd connect much more than necessary.
> I'd love to be rid of all of it, but that's not how the world works today.
Why do we think the human made world is out of our control? Learned helplessness? We could stop this. We do not need Satrlink.
Starlink will fail. And this will be more likely the more satellites they put up[1][2]. Or the more wars we get in. It will not be hard to cause a major destruction of all Starlink satellites [3].
[1] https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/ [2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/kessler-syndrome-crash-clock [3] https://gizmodo.com/russia-is-developing-orbiting-clouds-of-...
If you wish to stop it, then stop it.
I can’t stop. We can stop it.
There is an accounting explanation for this (boring as it sounds). Stock analysts (who don’t want to use their brains too much) often use “EBITDA” (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) to compare companies. The reasoning is that those items can often be used in “creative” ways to make a company look better than it is so strip them out before comparing.
Starlink sats are launched into a decaying orbit so after something like 5 years they burn up and need to be replaced. It is very flattering to SpaceX’s financials to launch lots of satellites if you look at it from an EBITDA point of view because it basically looks like they have a lot of recurring earnings even though 20% per year has to be amortized because it burns up in the atmosphere.
He really does want to speed run everything sci fi, Kessler syndrome here we come!
right panic, wrong fear
starlink are too low to cause kessler syndrome... but his starmind might
Am I right to understand that it will do nothing to big cities, where you share the radio frequency with lots of users just like a wifi? What it the minimum radius where two satellites will not interfere with each others (chatgpt says 40-130km radius if not allocated more spectrum)?
If that understanding is correct it means the addressable market is countryside and transportation (planes/ships/RV). Which necessarily makes starlink at most a fairly modest size ISP in terms of valuation?
Related : how many days to Desaster https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/
Surely it’ll be an issue some day for other space activities with all the SpaceX kit up there? I know space is very large :) but surely it’d be hard to scan, calculate and control trajectories of millions of orbiting tiny things when you’re launching rockets and things? A spacex satellite almost crashed into the Chinese space station some years ago and the Chinese had to perform an evasive manoeuvre I believe
With modern automation and AI, tracking and adjusting paths is better every year. Also, anything with malfunctioning movement will quickly descend and burn up in the atmosphere at that very low orbit.
Space could become so full of junk that it may actually harm operations.
Yes and I'll become another space industry. Cleanup. Sort of like how (coal/ocean/etc) pollution is both a problem and multi billion dollar a year industry.
Satellites flying at 360km (the target altitude for starlink V3) deorbit very quickly without regular burns. Dead starlink satellites are guaranteed to come down within 5 years.
space is very large but low earth orbit is not.
I read that by syncing up several space telescopes, astronomers can use something called interferometry to make them work together as one large telescope.
I wonder it's possible for Starlink to attach small telescopes on each of these satellites, and if so, if this could lead to a massive PR win for them and a science win for humanity, while at the same time helping to combat any genuine concerns from the public about Starlink harming astronomy. Just an idea (again I don't know if it's possible).
It's not physically impossible. But the engineering reality isn't promising.
You'd need micro-meter alignment accuracy across the constellation for optical observation. For radio observation it might be possible - but I'm not sure if it would be useful.
Launching complimentary ordinary space-telescopes would also be good PR.
He promised a lot. Really a lot. I doubt it will happen. Still waiting the SolarCity, Gigabattery, 4680, and CyberTruck he promised. Instead I get solar burst. CATL, CATL, recalled and finger cutting. And let's not talk about AutoPilot FSD. Waymo is way ahead NOW. Mars? I double down my invest in Shanghai exchange now.
Don't forget MacroHard
no, just no
make them pre-pay a multi-trillion cleanup and cancer fund for all the toxic waste, not just the launches but pollution burning up in the atmosphere
* https://satellitemap.space/
* https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellit...
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787042
You want them to pay a multi-trillion dollar clean-up and cancer fund for car-sized multi-year-service-life satellites burning up in the atmosphere? How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay?
EDT: I should have clarified I'm not only talking about incumbent satellite companies because people are replying about the launch volume. Think about pollution from oil companies and coal plants and consider how that compares to an aerospace company. How much have polluting companies been fined relative to multiple trillions of dollars?
Would be nice for oil and gas companies to pay for all the emissions say, starting when they found out about it and decided to lie to the public. Maybe also bring charges against the PR firms they used since given those same PR firms worked for the tobacco industry clearly they won't stop until there are consequences.
Unrealistic, I know, but one can dream.
> How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay?
You are clearly not grasping the magnitude change in how many satellites we used to launch vs how many we are launching nowadays.
In 2026, we are putting 10x as many objects in space as we did just 8 years ago, with Starlink being the bulk of it: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-....
Starlink has 12.5k satellites in space and looking to ramp up massively, the biggest "multi-decade incumbent", oneweb, has 5% as many, about 600.
we cannot have private trillionaires milking "privatize the profits and social the costs"
no more, it has to end immediately
they aren't just silo-ing their wealth, they are leveraging against societies, funding far-right violent politics against society
even the evil Koch-brothers have cancer wings in hospitals around the country, Musk doesn't give a dime to charity, just his own foundation which he controls to only do what he wants to manipulate
pre-pay costs to society before damaging society
also, criminal murder charges for those who enable actions like, "poisoning a water supply," "creating an opiode epidemic," "giving millions of people cancer, knowingly"
I just don't understand why, killing one person is murder, but killing hundreds over many years is, "just the cost of doing business."
We want incumbent multi-decade culprits to also pay appropriately.
Yet you only talk about it when it’s big scary Elon. Cry me a river.
I talk about it all the time.
He's generating a lot more pollution. It's reasonable to want equity around externalities, which is a distinct problem under capitalism.
> How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay?
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
"Elon Musk's company has now lofted more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined — and its lead is likely to grow over the coming months and years."
(And most of the other providers don't plan for theirs to burn up within a few years. Giant disposable LEO constellations are new.)
Do you have any proof that starlink satellites are worse than the tons of space debris that enter the atmosphere every day?
The satellites aren't worse. It is the rockets that are worse. On the way up they emit various things into the stratosphere, which is about the worst place you can emit stuff when it comes to affecting the atmosphere.
It has not been a major problem so far because in its entire history humanity has only launched around 35000 rockets that have reached the stratosphere. Ramp that rate up significantly and it comes something we serious need to worry about.
(That's not to say that space debris reentering the atmosphere isn't bad. It also unfortunately deposits various things in the upper atmosphere that we really do not want to put there).
You may want to compare the emissions of all rockets annually to the emissions of jet planes daily and reconsider your position.
You may want to compare the flight profiles of jets and rockets, what layers of the atmosphere they emit in, and how the effects of the things they omit vary by where in the atmosphere they are emitted.
Yeah we should do something about both issues, good on you for bringing that up
Hmm, I noticed you didn't mention car exhaust in your comment. Perhaps you would like to reconsider your position. I am very smart.
Can't have nice things because someone else is worse
So let's add more???
The amount of matter which enters Earth's atmosphere from non-manmade sources is far higher than any conceivable amount of space junk today.
But a significantly different makeup than plain old rock dust.
It is gonna be mostly aluminum, lithium, and silicon isn't it? Nothing too extraordinary or weird.
Citation needed.
I’m not sure that “we don’t make satellites out of rock and ice” needs a cite, but here you go.
https://research.noaa.gov/noaa-scientists-link-exotic-metal-...
> Niobium and hafnium do not occur as free elements in nature, but are refined from mineral ores. They are used in semiconductors and superalloys.
> In addition to these two unusual elements, a significant number of particles contained copper, lithium and aluminum at concentrations far exceeding the abundance found in meteorics, or ‘space dust.’ “The combination of aluminum and copper, plus niobium and hafnium, which are used in heat-resistant, high-performance alloys, pointed us to the aerospace industry,’’ Murphy said.
No citation required, just some light thinking
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What I don't understand is where are the Starlink competitors. Supposedly the UK government owns a stake of 10% in OneWeb and yet they are planning to use Starlink for trains.
Is it really just too hard to put enough satellites in orbit to be competitive with Starlink?
Starlink has an unfair advantage and is flown on the economically unbeatable falcons.
Soon enough these will start showing ads - I pray for our night sky.
It is incredibly stupid that this is happening instead of doing regular cable which works better and is cheaper
If you think cable can be run to the places where starlink is changing to world, you need to get out more.
I’ve seen it in the Canadian Arctic, remote Australia, right around Africa.
Before starlink these places had dialup, or nothing.
Elon mentioned he is building army of robots. This likely could be a way to manage them.
Who's paying for this cable?
Is that because China applied to launch 200000 satellites?
Applied to who?
the International Telecommunications Union
You mean they followed some international process and didn't go cowboy by assuming the planet belongs to them?
Loving this, not loving the negativeness in this thread.
I wonder what the negativists will say about Reflect Orbital, which uses their Eärendil space mirror to light the world.
* https://www.reflectorbital.com/
Why do you see things as negativeism vs positivism? Do you not live in a world where good and evil are syncretic? That mindset is bizarre, to me.
My personal experience with Starlink is that it's an expensive LTE alternative. It's not a broadband replacement, the entire thing is pretty clearly a coverup for dual-use technology in low earth orbit:
Reality doesn't hinge around negativism and positivism. It's a mixture of both, it's unhealthy to pretend that technology only has positive uses and cannot ever have negative side effects.[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield
If they pay an appropriate tax for light pollution affecting telescopes on earth, I'm all for it.
LVT works just as well in space.
Starlink is going to become a phone carrier that doesn’t have to pay for pole or tower access. This is the real story, so long att, verizon, and T-Mobile. Starlink is going to beat them on price and availability. Just think, no international calling fees or hassle and cheaper mobile rates.
Starlink is going to be a cellular company, except instead of maintaining cheap metal frames, they have to physically launch the antennas to space every 5 years.
How would it work indoors?
A more accurate description would be that starlink will become the trunk, and possibly the service. Local cell services will own the poles but will essentially provide access for starlink customers. It's not a bad business idea, actually. People pay $30-40 a line for starlink cell service, starlink provides the big pipes so to speak and splits the bill with the local companies that put up the last mile towers.
In rural areas you can put up isolated 5G towers that have their own dish connection to starlink, no need to string a line to the towers anymore...
It was never necessary to run fibre to any specific individual tower. Microwave backhaul works fine of you have good coveragef the area. Less well if you don't. If cell providers wanted to put up enough towers that's a self solving problem.
I live in the land of trees (Maine) and cell service sucks, line of sight between microwave towers is a non-starter AFAICT, but line of sight to the sky is do-able everywhere.
It's true that obstructions above the ground level would decrease the distance you can get line-of-sight to the next tower at the same tower height (a 40 m pole-style tower could have only 20 km LoS to an equally tall tower with 30 m tree cover vs 40 km for no tree cover, meaning 4× as many to cover the same area; effect is less if you use taller lattice towers at one end or both, of course) but it also decreases the range you can get out of the connection from tower to UE, not exactly to the same extent, but close enough. The change from GEO to LEO for satellite backhaul means that satellite is more technically competitive, sure, but microwave backhaul is possible, at least for basic mobile service (I would not want to use it for fixed wireless without even more tower density)... if you wanted to blanket even the mostly empty land between the two towers with good mobile coverage, which is way more towers than what most MNOs would want to purchase.
Exactly. Elon Musk does things for (1) fun (2) revenue in order to fuel his real mission: derisk humanity by conquering Mars.
I wonder if it would be possible for Starlink to use less reflective materials for their satellites so that the sky is less polluted for the astronomers.
Sounds like a job for Vantablack
"University of Surrey is developing Vantablack as a coating for satellites in earth orbit, to reduce encroachment upon ground-based optical astronomy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack
Last time I checked, you couldn't get a public IPv4 through Starlink, let alone a fixed one. This makes it a non-starter as a backup link for self-hosters, a use case it is well suited for.
I'm using it for this purpose. You can just run a tunnel/tailscale net/dyndns.
You do get a public IPv6 IP, which is fine for most people (and with a simple script on a cron can keep a AAAA up to date, not that it changes often). And like someone else said, if you insist, you can use something like tailscale to punch a hole in Starlink's global NAT.
They do supply public IPv4 but only to the more expensive plans. https://starlink.com/support/article/1192f3ef-2a17-31d9-261a...
i have one
How much does this cost? Something tells me we could have covered the planet in fibre for the price of these Starlink satellites.
And: What are the externalities of this? The current 10700 satellites are expected to have a lifespan of about five years. So, averaging these burning up in the upper atmosphere there will be one deorbit ever four hour.
If I were to ask my relevant government regulator if I were allowed to burn the equivalent of a few electric cars every day without capturing/scrubbing the pollution they would laugh me out of the room.
But ”in space” nobody can hold you accountable, so burning an order of magnitude more like this is somehow on the table.
It's horrifying. I don't remember acid rain or CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer, but I'm good enough at pattern recognition to see it playing out again.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JD04...
SpaceX has spent under $30 billion for Starlink.
That's less than maintenance opex for mobile networks operators in the US alone.
And how many people each serve?
What does it matter?
>Something tells me we could have covered the planet in fibre for the price of these Starlink satellites.
This isn't true. In fact, the subsidies spent on Fiber in the US, if providently used won't be enough.
Boy it's going to be exciting when we can get Internet access literally everywhere. Excited for humanity's return to space infrastructure!
I feel like I already have internet access pretty much everywhere with cell towers, and even then if I went to the middle of alaska or montana I could already get sattelite internet before starlink with hugesnet which is fine as long as you're not gaming or something.
But at the same time I think the low-earth-orbit is pretty nice in terms of latentcy, it's a pretty innovative approach.
I just don't get the idea behind AI datacenter sattelites and moving all this non-comms equipment up in space.
Then you live in a developed country and do go off grid.
Your experience doesn't match most of the world.
Sign me up! Love the global internet and the tech behind it
It is very important for an unstable/eccentric person like Elon Musk to be the new AOL and "own the internet", which is what could happen if he launches 100k satellites. Elon Musk will use his power to make political decisions.
Musk has acknowledged withholding Starlink Service to thwart Ukrainian attack on Russia. Musk had conversations with a Russian official that led him to worry that an attack on Crimea could spiral into a nuclear conflict, so he made the decision to thwart Ukraine.
Right or not, such decisions should be made by elected representatives, not an eccentric trillionaire.
I am rooting for Blue Origin's Terawave: https://www.blueorigin.com/terawave
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And Amazon going to add their own 100k, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about
There are also several Chinese satellite constellations which will expand more quickly once several Chinese partially reusable rockets are online.
I haven't been helping up with the development, are they getting close?
Competition is going to be grand!
We'll block all of the night sky, deal with it.
They’ll need this for their orbital data centers (aka Starmind) https://www.spacex.com/spacexai/starmind
Elon really needs to drop some cash on Iain Bank’s family, if he’s going to keep stealing ideas/names for his empire.
I've read the entire series of Culture novels and don't recall seeing "starmind" as a term anywhere. Mind, yes, but used in a somewhat different context, as the minds are both sentient conversational AI entities with equal or greater intellect to a meat-based human or alien, and also semi-godlike AI powers (a single Mind has the capacity to have a 1:1 conversation with all of the residents of an Orbital if it wants to).
Ok, Walrus.
ITT don’t build on earth. Also don’t build in space.
On twitter yesterday, someone posted a question about SpaceX/xAI making a poor financial decision and Musk answered saying SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of the Earth. His megalomania is really running wild so I would not put much stock in this. They are asking the FCC for permission to launch 100k satellites which puts this very much in the "aspirational" category. They neither have plans nor approval to do it. This is a combination of ego and signalling to SPCX investors because it's down nearly 10% from IPO.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:57vlzz2...
Maybe he literally means that Space X is wort to him more than the rest of Earth.
If you think that's concerning for the nightsky, wait till China's competitor, SpaceSail, tries to catch up.
This is the problem with a private or single nation creating a system like this and then politicizing it or using it for war. It forces other nations to compete.
The night sky shouldn't belong to any individual company or nation. We should all have a say on whether this is something we're willing to give up. Including the more-than-human world
So, at some point, will our devices connect to their corporate offices in any environment, even without providing access to your network, short of putting it inside a Faraday Cage?
Literally building skynet.
I think this is cool and all, especially watching all of the launches, but I don't understand why we aren't all talking about the growing potential of a Kessler Syndrome and are inability to access spaces for a century or so. Maybe I'm completely out-of-touch but it seems like a massive downside for only a small upside.
More trash in the space
I’m more worried about the geo synchronous ones as they don’t degrade and burn up in the atmosphere
Please stop this.
How did we collectively accept that it's ok that a private company can forever change how our sky looks like (especially at night) for the generations to come?
This is so dystopian but it seems nobody cares. The most important thing is to have fast internet to watch cool AI-generated videos.
So depressing.
i think you need help
I’m shocked by the number of people here thinking you won’t be able to see the night sky because of 100k satellites. Is this site getting dumber?
People are complaining about their views getting polluted, they’re not saying they literally can’t see the night sky. If you’d like hn comments to be smarter, consider starting with your own.
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You can’t get nuanced, well thought out takes here on anything AI and Elon related unfortunately.
It’s frustrating because I often come to HN for the smart contrarian takes. But now I have to search really hard to find the opposite.
The mistake was thinking the majority was smart.
There’s a lot of Elon haters here;
Anything related to Elon will always have the dumbest comment section.
You know it’s dumb when they say things like “it’s not needed. We already have this. i don’t see the point in this new tech” .
The sky gets visually and physically polluted. Some parts of the world that haven’t mastered cables get faster internet. Elon gets richer.
Win-win-win?
Can't wait for Kessler syndrome to actually become a thing.
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The death of astrophotography.
Hopefully LEO constellations can be made redundant with terrestrial comms.
Are there additional terrestrial signal propagation modes that could solve for the same needs as satellite data?
Nothing with that kind of reach on licensed bands for that kind of money with that sort of bandwidth.
Metrics for comparison?
- dollars/gigabit/time
- dollars/bits/distance/time
- channel efficiency metrics in signals
- CapEx, OpEx, Effective Throughput (bits/time), Propagation Latency,
- (Cost_carbon + (Cost_kerosene||Cost_methane||Cost_hydrogen) + Cost_debris_atmosphere + Cost_debris_orbital + Cost_atmospheric_drag + Cost_jetstream_breakdown + Cost_atmospheric_heat)
- Total Cost per Exabyte-Kilometer ($/Exabyte-km)
- Total Cost per bit km
Will it make our sky "cloudy" most of the time?
So over 100K starlink sats and then another 50K mirror sats (see that other HN post). Leaving aside the very tragic destruction of the night sky for observers, I’m afraid for the day we have a cascade of satellite debris events that send us backwards an and pretty much destroy our spacefaring ability.
> 100k more – for 100x the bandwidth
I guess some things do not scale. The only thing that humans are good producing, is garbage.
Think of it less as a comms system with a small increase in bandwidth, and more as a radar system with a larger increase in resolution.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A
I can't wait until this junk starts to collide and blocks us from making any space flights. This has to happen and probability grows with the square of the number of orbiting satellites.
People seem to have a poor understanding of just how much space there is up there. It's just very empty up there. And these things are in precisely controlled orbits that are well documented, etc. Even if you simplify your thinking of orbits to a 2D (square area), it's a lot of space.
But that would be a mistake of course. Low earth orbit is three dimensional. Star Link uses several altitude bands of about 20-30km each. It's 330-360km for the v3 satellites. The volume of that is about 17 billion cubic kilometers. About 13x the volume of all the water in the oceans. Accidental collisions are not going to be a frequent thing. These things are going to be many kilometers apart.
> Even if you simplify your thinking of orbits to a 2D (square area), it's a lot of space.
This is not a spatial problem. It's an intersectionality problem.
i want to see a dark sky at night
If you truly gave a shit, it wouldn’t be this you’re complaining about
How do you know what the parent complains about other than this?
I was surprised recently to read that the centre-point of the orbits of the starlink satellites doesn't actually correspond to the earth's physical centre. Instead, they orbit around the centre of Elon Musk's ego. As he moves over the surface of the planet, the constellation actually shifts its orbits in response.
soooo good that they'll burn up one day and this nonsense can finally end.
investors provide infinite capital to nonsense projects so that the showman can create an endless show that will attract new nonsense capital.
sorry but already in rural morocco they have 200 mbit internet for 20 bucks a month. Yes there are some 6 wheeled vehicles roaming the planet that might really benefit from these 100k satellites. but for 99.9% of everyone else? we're good!
"...we're good." ? It seems that you are excluding all of the actual users onboard with Starlink tech. I'm one. I had choices and Starlink was a welcome addition to the short list.
In a short time, Starlink proved to be that disruptive "invention" that changed everything. There are already millions of users. Nobody is forced to use Starlink. Yet here we are.
Whether there are investors or not, a positive cashflow and the millions of users prove that Starlink is not just valid to our society at large, but wildly so. My opinion is that it is almost as disruptive as cell phones when they became affordable.
Current number of paid subscriptions: 12 million +. So, actual users is many times that, if subscribers generally represent multiple users per account. Think "Household". And then, if one extrapolates users under institutional, municipal, state or military, the numbers are astronomically increased. Just, individuals walking around inside a Dollar General store...
curious where you live that starlink is the best option.
> for 99.9% of everyone else? we're good!
Well Starlink has 12 million subscribers, which is already more than 0.1% of the population, so clearly you are incorrect that 99.9% of people don't want it...
12 million / 8.3 billion => 0.0014 something. so.. 0.1% turns out to be correct. honestly i made the number up and accidentally nailed it
well .0014 is 40% more than 0.001, so it isn't THAT close.
Although even if we grant you your assumption about 99.9%, doesn't this show that you can still have a business if that is true? 12 million customers is a sustainable business.
imagine thinking you speak for the 99.9% lol
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Starlink was funded internally by SpaceX. What investors are you talking about?
SpaceX's money came from outside investors.
… and customers. It’s cashflow positive.
not since X.AI got folded in
Which is unrelated to Starlink?
those who buy & sell stocks & options & provide exit liquidity.
Starlink existed before SpaceX was a public company
Just as a reminder, Musk's actions lead directly to the deaths of (likely hundreds of) thousands of people in the third world: https://archive.ph/20250629012329/https://www.nytimes.com/20..., https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-f...
Enjoy your marginally improved connectivity!
I don't think Musk needs any more money.
EM is an ignorant.
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Musk is nothing if not ambitious
Eh, his promises are ambitious.
And the gullibility of his investors is bottomless.
I too plan on increasing my revenue 100-fold by 2030.
> his promises are ambitious
First scalable launch system and scaled LEO constellation are more than promises.
> And the gullibility of his investors is bottomless
You can certainly have a problem with Elon Musk, but the people who have invested money with him over the years have done quite well for themselves.
So SpaceX is just an overvalued internet provider?
Say what you will, but it's staying above cloud providers.
Not for long because it needs replacement constantly.
Must be the most unsustainable way to provide internet
They launch them all the time, similar to telcos digging up copper to replace fibre or upgrading infra as new tech improves.
They have to, otherwise the internet is gone.
My provider took 3 years from the signing for fibre to the actual delivery. But I still had internet before. Worse but internet.
If SpaceX stops, internet is pretty quickly gone.
And it seems SpaceX is its own best customer when they need to put up and replace so many satellites.
They last 7-10 years so they would need to stop launching for a decade, not going to happen.
They have a average lifespan of 5 years and need constant maintenance
Constant maintenance? What are you talking about? Once they're launched they are never touched till they burn up 7-10 years later.
How could this not end poorly? I cant think of one realistic scenario where there world benefits.
You can’t imagine the number of lives saved with cellular access everywhere and Internet broadband where it has never been?
Probably not that many lives, maybe like a handful of hikers every year I would guess? I think what attracts hikers in the first place is the danger, and the idea that they're exploring an area that is "outside of civilization"
Arguing that broadband internet saves lives reminds me of the argument that Jesus saves lives and the love of Jesus must be spread around the world.
satcoms have been accessible for decades. I have a satellite phone. It's an iPhone 14 Pro. None of this is actually necessary.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
I wonder what spacex will be worth when launching satellites is impossible for a couple hundred years.
It won't be centuries.
starlink satellites are in low orbits and will deorbit in a few years at most if bricked; to stay in orbit, they use ion thrusters to counter drag from the very uppermost reaches of the atmosphere.
https://ai-solutions.com/newsroom/why-starlink-is-lowering-s...
When satellites smash into each other at high velocity, they explode. Some of that debris will end up in higher orbits and linger.
Some of the debris from a collision may end up in an orbit with a higher apogee, perigee will necessarily still be at or below the altitude of the last collision and will be subject to some of the same low-orbit aerodynamic drag that starlink satellites experience; passes through lower altitudes will apply drag that will first drop the apogee and will then eventually cause the debris to reenter.
How can it linger in a higher orbit. Maybe some of the debris gets a kick which increases its velocity, but you need two velocity boosts to circularise the orbit, no? So I figure at worst you get an elliptical orbit which will still decay
Nope, if it goes up it will go down even faster.
Orbits are about speed. Two things colliding cannot have debris coming out at a faster velocity than either of them.
Kessler is much less of a problem at their altitude (480km). Debris has too much drag and would get pulled down too quick to have a sustained Kessler situation. It's possible, but very very unlikely at that altitude.
You could still generate a mess for 5-10 years at that altitude. Even if it self-clears you still destroy the constellation and deny access to LEO for years.
That's not Kessler syndrome though. Is a cascade
Kessler syndrome relies on two key provisions:
1. Orbiting objects never try to avoid each other.
2. They're in high enough orbits that atmospheric drag is not a significant factor such that debris can last decades or centuries.
Starlink fails both as they constantly maneuver and they're in low orbits that are constantly cleaned by the atmosphere.
And I'd add that "kessler syndrome" is actually a statistical process, not a rapid sudden cascade of satellites crashing into each other. It takes years to decades for it to actually "happen". It's not something that can be caused by military action either.
Stop trying to make Kessler syndrome a thing - it was never a thing, it isn’t a thing, it will never be a thing.
It is just pearl clutching by those too afraid of modern life. Gravity wasn’t a documentary.
Hey! I think I saw you on Ars. Or maybe someone there copied and pasted this?
Back in the day, "Kessler syndrome" was a fairly good way to articulate the fears of many scientists - whose delicate one-off "flagship" scientific research satellites had huge costs and lead times, if things started going wrong up there.
And overall, today's space powers are much more careful about not making messes in orbit.
a new hot take spotted : newtonian physics isn't a thing.
let's see how well the freeways work once we stop cleaning up after the accidents.
I see you haven’t read the paper. How long do you think Kessler syndrome is projected to take? How long do you think natural clearing of debris at Starlink’s altitudes is?
Freeways are not 3 dimensional and they don't have an automatic cleanup that cleans up things within a pretty short time. Also area we are talking about is fucking gigantic. Also accidents are going to be very rare as sats deorbit themselves end of live and even if they break and can't move anymore, other sats that can still move can evade them.
I mean it might be a thing in 100 years but we're not even close now
Which means that we need to act responsibly and plan ahead now so that it is not a thing 100 years hence.
Always surprises me how people feel identified with progress they didn’t participate with. These satellites have nothing to do with you. You didn’t build them nor researched about them. These are the toys of a far-right asshole. It sucks
Commercially speaking, does Starlink really need 100x bandwidth?
Starlink's target market is limited. It is very good for ships, remote area, but not necessary in cities where most people live.
I am not sure whether the launch and maintenance cost of another 100k satellites is necessary for such a limited market, unless the cost of launch (Starship) and the satellites themselves drops greatly.
Europe alone has millions of potential customers:
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Connectivity_and_Secure_Com...
But they get internet on their phones for like 15 euros a month because they have competition.
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