MasimatutuStarlink
So I don’t really like the idea of defending anything related to Musk, but it’s kind of poor form to compare emissions between Starlink and land-based internet imo. Although they are the same product, they are targeted at completely different users, from what I understand.
Starlink should always be a more expensive and slower technology just because of communication distance, so it shouldnt really be able to compete with land-based solutions (except where telecom is reeeeeally fucking people on price). Starlink is really meant more for edge-cases where telecorps refuse to build infrastructure.
Starlink isn’t meant for the edge cases, the edge cases can not make it profitable. The edge cases are edge cases.
Also blotting out the sky with wasteful satalites isn’t a good solution to “the free market wont build infrastructure because its broken.” Its just another aspect of it being broken and the entire planet has to suffer from it.
“blotting out the sky” is hyperbole and not reality. Those pics of the trains of dots in the sky are temporary and only present in the handful of days after a launch.
ah yes, the “you used flowery language to make a point and thus I’ll decide that everything you said is wrong!” technique
www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06672-7.epdf?s…
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/…/acf40c
unfortunately Scientists have no power, so they are basically begging these companies to work with them to find solutions and the companies just aren’t doing that. The best they can do is twice the maximum brightness scientists have called for, www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01238-3 estimates there could be 100,000 of these objects in the sky in the 2030s, 30x the amount we have currently.
astronomy is massively impacted by all of this, just because America refuses to build infrastructure like everyone else does, thanks America. Thanks Musk.
