★ 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?
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