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Mastodon MigrationSo in addition to cluttering up low earth orbit, wrecking terrestrial astronomy, creating the potential for a Kessler Syndrome cascade which could close access to space, and creating a national security nightmare, Starlink internet access is a climate catastrophe using up to 30 times more carbon footprint per internet subscriber than land based internet.
Edit Feb 4 2024: Here is post from Philippe Smet @pfsmet with a video of Starlinks corrupting the night sky: https://mastodon.social/@pfsmet/111857802639493157
For more information on Starlink's devastating impact on terrestrial astronomy, monopolizing LEO (low earth orbit) and the catastrophic potential of the Kessler Syndrome...
https://interestingengineering.com/science/kessler-syndrome-spacex-starlink-orbital-chaos
https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/111026325694931776
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220614.html
https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/111033681573345249
https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/111027982339250580
โฆ ๐ Gus Posey@mastodonmigration A unique category of environmental crisis that is almost wholly ignored.
SmashedRatOnPress@mastodonmigration The first thing that popped into my head when I heard about the "thousands" of Starlink satellites is that they are a cloud of shrapnel just waiting to be born as they wear out. What moron approved a short-sighted project like that?
Urban Hermit@smashedratonpress @mastodonmigration
Capitalism. Pretty standard ploy in how the rich get richer. Take a common resources that is clearly everybody's, so much so that current regulations don't even expect abuse, then Mr Rich Guy figures out how to scratch a profit out but does it to extreme excess before regulations can catch up. As everyone says, "you did what?" (polluting the air, oceans, strip mining a forest, buying up all the small farms) then Mr Rich Guy claims you are against jobs.
Capitalism. Pretty standard ploy in how the rich get richer. Take a common resources that is clearly everybody's, so much so that current regulations don't even expect abuse, then Mr Rich Guy figures out how to scratch a profit out but does it to extreme excess before regulations can catch up. As everyone says, "you did what?" (polluting the air, oceans, strip mining a forest, buying up all the small farms) then Mr Rich Guy claims you are against jobs.
WhichOne'sPink ๐ซ๐ฎ@smashedratonpress @mastodonmigration Quite likely the moron who was paid a huge sum of money to approve such a short sighted scheme.
@martlund ๐ฒ๐ถ๐ธ๐ช๐จ๐ฑ๐@mastodonmigration Will Amazon joining the Satellite madness make it worse?
Oliver SchafeldDespite #methane being odorless "StarStink" might work as a label.
PR publishers, click-baiting short news outlets, and pro-Musk influencers seem to avoid the subject, so here's a bit of research on #SpaceX's ecological footprint you could also try yourself by using a search engine:
https://mastodon.online/@oliver_schafeld/111164113345879472
(The New Scientist article is paywalled for me.)
Oliver Schafeld (@[email protected])
...and how about looking into #StarLink's #carbon #footprint? "If each launch requires 717 tons of methane, then the total amount of methane emitted for the rocket launches required to deploy the full Starlink constellation would be approximately 502,900 tons of methane." (1/2) Source: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/If-SpaceX-were-ITGG78nOQn6Kd6KhIWK8Pw
Ken Ryan@oliver_schafeld
Falcon 9 uses kerosene, not methane. Starship is not yet operational.
Falcon 9 uses kerosene, not methane. Starship is not yet operational.
ฬถsฬถeฬถtฬถhฬถ ฬถ ฬถAre you going to be the one to tell people who live in the Solomons or Ethiopia or rural Oklahoma that they can't have internet because the "carbon footprint" is too big?
Starlink and services like it exist because for a lot of people there aren't other options. And when there are, they can be heavily censored.
So yeah, we should make our satellites less reflective, clean up light pollution, and cut COโ.
But let's keep the internet on for everyone while we do that, ok?
mmby@seth @mastodonmigration starlink is not available yet in the solomon islands or ethiopia
next year, according to the map but who knows
the Solomon islands have built their own cable though in the meantime
@mmby @mastodonmigration Internet access in the Solomon islands is tough. Even with that cable they have, coverage out there is very poor. Good (and cheap) satellite internet would be an equalizer for a lot of the world.
Sibachian@seth @mastodonmigration there are options. the very same person who pushed through starlink could very well have paid to setup fibre in these places. but it isn't a profitable thing to do, obviously. so it didn't happen.
Michael Busch@seth @mastodonmigration Starlink cannot and is not designed to provide many people with internet access - it can't handle the bandwidth. It is designed to provide a small number of users slightly lower latency at a steep financial premium, along with the environmental harm it does.
Don't believe the hype.
And to actually get people internet access; advocate for rolling out fiber optics and local wireless.
Barry Parr@seth @mastodonmigration Some numbers:
Each current Starlink Generation 2 satellite can only provide 5G-equivalent internet connections to ~1000 people (80 Gbps total bandwidth per satellite). The earlier versions handled a factor of 4 less bandwidth.
And that's why Starlink only has about 1 million users and why users in higher-density areas have had their connection speeds drop in the last year.
All while making a mess of the sky.
I am done.
Karl Auerbach@michael_w_busch @seth @mastodonmigration We dealt with the remote access issue at Sun around 1990 - we found LEO satellites quite useful (we piggybacked onto a leftover USSR LEO Constellation). The world is too big to drag copper wires or glass fiber to every possible end point.
We experimented with inter-satellite relaying, something that Starlink is going to do (if not already). It's hard to do - lots of surprise problems, like a receiver being blinded by the sun or moon behind a transmitter, and the routing metrics are opposite what we use on the ground (i.e. a big issue is to conserve power.)
On the other hand, I am very aware of the environmental costs of having to replace satellites every year or two. And I know many astronomers who loudly complain of the damage that these constellations are doing to scientific observations.
Globaltom@michael_w_busch @seth @mastodonmigration It also doesn't work above 60N, such as in Alaska, Canada's northern territories, Iceland, most of Scandinavia, and all of Finland.
kauer@Globaltom @michael_w_busch @seth @mastodonmigration Expensive, dangerous, orbit-polluting, environmentally insane, no public ipv4 (but public ipv6) except at great cost, CGNAT everywhere. BUT it can work almost anywhere, and it is here, now. For a great many people, no other access is. So people will use it. It's basically evidence, at least in Australia, of a major public infrastructure failure.
dlaroe@michael_w_busch @seth @mastodonmigration
I live about 20 miles from two cities. The only communication infrastructure is copper phone lines/ADSL and there is no cell service.
Starlink received Federal grant dollars to provide me (and only me at the time since I represented one large grid section on a map) with the opportunity to pay full price for "beta" service.
This means State dollars that are putting fiber in the ground past my neighborhood cannot be used to provide us service.
@dlaroe @michael_w_busch @seth
That's interesting. Do you have any more information on the various federal and state programs. Elon Musk has been awfully good at getting the US government to pay for his speculative enterprises.
@mastodonmigration @michael_w_busch @seth
This is all public record.
Federal = RDOF
State, NC = GREAT Grant
Didzis ๐@michael_w_busch @mastodonmigration @seth I would add another and potentially even more important argument โ using starlink leaves one vulnerable to the decisions of one person we all know too wellโฆ he would never switch it off on a whim. Or, waitโฆ
@dzedus @mastodonmigration Starlink got a lot of publicity when the Hoh Tribe purchased a service contract.
But more quietly, the Hoh Tribe has been building out community-owned fiber optic internet connections that they control.
Explicitly so they do not need to keep relying on Starlink.
Rick@michael_w_busch @seth @mastodonmigration @JamesGleick We need a much stronger effort regarding fiber (to the home). Weโve been paying into a fund for decades, and thereโs no better solution. Anywhere thereโs electricity or phone lines, there should be fiber.
martin lentink ๐ช๐บ ๐บ๐ฆ๐
Jonathan HendryLol. The Solomons and Ethiopia wonโt be inhabitable but in the mean time they can watch Blippi if theyโre rich.
What a fucking bargain for them.
Art - US Expat in Spain@mastodonmigration I would prefer to live in a world without a Starlink system but what is the current solution to people like myself that live in rural areas with very spotty coverage? There seems to be no real incentive for internet providers to run high speed cables out to densely populated areas. Traditional satellite coverage has terrible latency. Radio is generally no better than cell coverage.
Joe Vinegar@azphilosopher @mastodonmigration one of the roles of states is to subsidize services where and when the market doesn't work for the citizens (I'd argue, almost always if not by chance). but in our democracies politics is a market of votes, so I'm sorry for you, being a minority. You could join/found a political party that cares for the needs of minorities, based on human solidarity instead of the individualistic crap we see everywhere on the rise. If you already do, thanks and keep the fight.
@joe_vinegar @mastodonmigration Joe, I live in Spain and have almost no input into the local politics but overall the laws are very socialist in nature. In the US I vote for the party that cares about people.
Dave Mc@mastodonmigration paywall, so I can't see the article. I wonder how that's calculated? It takes a lot of resources to dig up streets to lay fibre. Is it just on the 30w that it costs to run the Starlink terminals compared to significantly less for a fibre modern?
Dave T-W@guigsy @mastodonmigration I have this question too. Fibre modem itself taps into a provider's network and powered infrastructure before a user hits "the internet".
@guigsy @mastodonmigration Can't find any papers by that author, but an actual published article last year suggested 4x more emissions per user than terrestrial networks.
Haven't looked through in detail but it's here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4178732
Haven't looked through in detail but it's here:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4178732
@davoloid @mastodonmigration I guess the other question is how significant is that footprint per user? Is it a significant amount, like flying, or the same as charging a single light bulb to led?
mathew@guigsy @mastodonmigration Itโs more to do with Starlink requiring 160 satellites to be launched every week forever because they only last for 5 years and the company says it needs 42,000 of them in orbit.
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html
https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html
Karl Baron@guigsy @mastodonmigration A lot of people who use starlink are also far beyond โstreetsโ. My parents have to ford a river to go anywhere
Starry Starry Knight@mastodonmigration Couldn't read it... I don't want to be a subscriber... but when it's all said and done and the aliens come and try to figure out what caused the end of human civilization they will most probably conclude it was #TheInternet. Considered generally and likely empirically too, the #Internet hasn't been worth its cost to humanity... ๐คฉ
kรฆt@mastodonmigration Starlink does seem to be the Project West Ford of our generation.
AGTMADCAT ๐ฌ๐ง๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ฆ๐น๐ผ๐ต๐ธ@mastodonmigration Hey you're making good points but the altitude is far too low to be any kind of Kessler risk, you should take that off your list.
@AGTMADCAT @mastodonmigration SpaceX is already having to make thousands of collision avoidance moves every month. Even assuming that their prediction for their satellitesโ deorbit and burn up is accurate and assuming that the debris would fall and burn up as quickly as the satellites deorbit, 5 years is a long time for us to be blocked from space launches by a low orbit debris cloud. It might not be catastrophic, but itโd still be Kessler Syndrome.
@mathew @mastodonmigration I guess we're defining it differently then - I've always seen Kessler Syndrome used to describe a situation where the sky is closed for hundreds or thousands of years. It's a multi-generational calamity.
@AGTMADCAT Not true. Starlink orbits at 550 km. Should there be a Kessler cascade natural deorbit is up to 25 years depending on debris size and mass.
For more on this >>> https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/111033681573345249
Mastodon Migration (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] This is not true. They orbit at 550 km which is low earth orbit, but relatively high. The ISS for instance is at 420 km. The 5 year deorbit claim comes from a powered deorbit of the space craft. Unpowered spacecraft take 8 to 10 years if intact. However, once the Kessler collision cascade begins the spacecraft will be smashed apart and the bits will take between 5 and 25 years for their orbits to naturally decay. 1/3 #Musk #ISS #KesslerSyndrome #Starlink
@mastodonmigration Okay so I went and looked it up and holy shit the new Starlink satellites weigh a literal metric ton. That's a massive increase over the initial ones, and will definitely keep them up much longer than the old designs, unless they've deployed some very aggressive drag chutes. I didn't realize they'd grown so much, that definitely changes things.
fedops ๐๐@AGTMADCAT "much longer" being 5 years: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/01/spacex-launch-first-starlink-mission-2021/
What a gigantic waste of resources.
@mastodonmigration
@fedops @mastodonmigration That's the operational life, which is shorter than what we're discussing, which is how long it takes them to fall out of the sky. With these increased masses it'll likely be closer to 15 years.
But yes, they're very wasteful in several ways.
Natural deorbit is a function of the ballistic coefficient, which is a function of mass and surface area. An intact spacecraft will naturally deorbit in 5 to 10 years (maybe more for the new ones). If they suffer collisions and break apart, some pieces could take 25 years or longer.
See these links for a more thorough discussion of this topic:
https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/111033681573345249
https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/111027480200838269
https://mastodon.online/@mastodonmigration/111027859293703187
Mastodon Migration (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] This is not true. They orbit at 550 km which is low earth orbit, but relatively high. The ISS for instance is at 420 km. The 5 year deorbit claim comes from a powered deorbit of the space craft. Unpowered spacecraft take 8 to 10 years if intact. However, once the Kessler collision cascade begins the spacecraft will be smashed apart and the bits will take between 5 and 25 years for their orbits to naturally decay. 1/3 #Musk #ISS #KesslerSyndrome #Starlink
@AGTMADCAT that was already for the new ones which have a mass of 800kg.
As far as I understand they will be deorbited after the service life expires. Otherwise they wouldn't have 40,000 but 120,000 up there, or 3 satellites for each service spot. That will not be possible.
@mastodonmigration
@fedops @mastodonmigration Assuming they don't fail or get hit by something, which again, is what we're discussing.
There are no "service spots" though - the shell doesn't work like a traditional higher GEO satellite.
Kevin Karhan 
@mastodonmigration OFC.
There's a reason #SATCOM is only considered a #fallback for every serious user...
And compared to #Iridium's constellation, #Starlink is fucking wasteful and obnoxiously expensive...
But just like the #Hyperloop & #BoringCompany's #Loop|s were done to undermine #CSHR (#California #HighSpeedRail) funding, so is Starlink done to undermine #FTTB & #FTTH #installations' funding and #ROI...
But don't take my word for it cuz #ApartheidEmeraldBoy admitted the former already.
alcinnz@mastodonmigration This makes perfect sense. On top of the short lifetime of those near-earth satellites not covering their production energy-costs, we have to get them up there...
Mark Hurst@mastodonmigration yes yes but **other than that**... ;)
gemma lynn โ ello@void@mastodonmigration wait, "kessler syndrome cascade", hang on, you mean there's a name for the #seveneves thing?! ๐คฏ
Eric LawtonBut it was approved by the US FCC, which somehow thinks it has jurisdiction over space.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/01/fcc-authorizes-spacex-gen2-starlink-up-to-7500-satellites.html
Comrade Weez@EricLawton FCC does have jurisdiction over US companies using space-based communications assets to run their businesses. @mastodonmigration
Other countries are not very happy about this assumption of dominion over LEO. Further putting the FCC in charge of something with such clear national security implications is a very bad arrangement.
@mastodonmigration FCC are not asserting dominion of LEO satellites. They are asserting authority over US firms operating LEO satellites. Not the same thing. @EricLawton