★ Amy Star ★the easiest way to become radicalized about astronomy is to open a stargazing app and to make it highlight Starlink satellites
i hate elon musk
"but what about rural internet access?!"
1. SpaceX/Starlink has no path to profitability
2. it will cost over $20-30b to maintain the network - mostly from government subsidies that go directly into Elon's pocket
3. that money could have been used to put down actual fibre lines for WiMAX installations which would be actually-reliable and not pollute the night sky
4. do you really want a far-right transphobe controlling internet access for everywhere that isn't a major city?
Kassil@AmyZenunim Rural internet accessibility is literally laying fiber and setting up sufficient wireless towers to cover until the fiber is fully laid.
It's being done in rural fucking Nevada, it can be done elsewhere.
vibhor 🍑 🏳️🌈@AmyZenunim good that in india the govt is putting actual lines for rural internet , instead of depending on a billionaire !
Eric LawtonHow do rural people get power for their modems and computers?
We have power lines right to the house.
The same, or other, providers could put in fibre, too.
I was going to mention phone lines, which we used to have, but they let them rot. Mine stopped working years ago.
notsoloud@AmyZenunim
Your figure got me curious about starlink maintenance costs. Do you have a link? Some people's estimates are way lower.
craignicol@AmyZenunim and also, he's known to withdraw service on a whim, in Crimea, in Africa. Doesn't seem like a good idea to give him more power on top of whatever he's doing with Twitter/X
Cykonot@AmyZenunim there's no way for it to be more profitable than maintaining existing infrastructure and laying down some new fiber. Or deploying terrestrial assets. Maybe even aerial (ie: not orbital) deployment lol.
It's just incredibly inefficient, materially speaking.
Simply being profitable isn't enough. You must promise higher rates of return on investment than other parts of the market to justify investing there, and that's difficult to imagine for starlink. People aren't that mobile lol
@AmyZenunim huh, maybe if they could increase the residency time for satellites beyond 100 years? But with that level of capital outlay, you could already have much much more resilient fiber, so it still doesn't work out
Maybe if they were also providing an satellite maintenance & refueling service? But that's a different company
https://spacenews.com/orbit-fab-and-clearspace-to-develop-in-space-refueling-service/
And still doesn't justify the Internet service part.
Space mining to feed into those other services would be cool, but isn't starlink
@AmyZenunim I guess you don't have to actually be efficient to be a billionaire.
That dude who keeps "inventing" trains-but-worse seems to be deeply irrational.
God, I hate people who think they're above it all and have a perfectly universal/rational perspective. Just like the dunning-kruger of context lol
Thorwegian (old account)@AmyZenunim why even care
living edge case
Mo Ⓐ☭🇵🇸@thor @AmyZenunim One guy owning half of all active communication satellites is probably a little suspect, no?
Weird Fish 🐠@thor @AmyZenunim makes space observation / astrophotography worse
imagine you finally could find a place away from light pollution, you are still having a lot of these satellites
imagine you finally could find a place away from light pollution, you are still having a lot of these satellites
Varyag
Flauschdompteur@Varyag @AmyZenunim No matter what, even in the event of a collision or China blowing up a bunch of them with anti satellite rockets, Starlink satellites are far too low orbit to cause a Kessler syndrome spiral, particularly one sustaining itself over a longer timeframe. Gravity will take any debris down in a matter of years.
The Steel Rat@diebarschlampe @Varyag @AmyZenunim
"years" is not as dismissive as you think it is. There is no way to track the hundreds of thousands of debris from a collision.
it is already a problem and we have not had a significant kessler issue since Nov of 2021
https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-conjunction-increase-threatens-space-sustainability
GunChleoc@diebarschlampe @Varyag @AmyZenunim A matter of years will be a long time for the people stuck on the ISS that cannot get back down safely.
toolbear#🌶️@AmyZenunim Peak white colonizer energy like Ma and Pa Musk. I regret my period of ignorance when I thought I was a fan of his.
Grodaeu@AmyZenunim shouldn't the anger be directed at the US government that hired him to do it
LambdaDuck@grodaeu they did? they hired him to do a bunch of other space related stuff, but afaik starlink is entirely spacex’s initiative? the main issue is that they allowed it
@grodaeu but yes, getting government funding for his private projects is probably one of his main areas of expertise
@LambdaDuck ok I was exaggerating but the US government is paying part of it and like you said approved it. Satellite communications is very closely entwined with government
karlggest@AmyZenunim
Who doesn't?
Who doesn't?