Charlie StrossFeb 1

Because a LOT of people are missing the point:

No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".

But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.

Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.

So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.

Show threadLucien
@cstross Starlink might be the only thing one of his companies got right. I've been using one for a while now and it's a game changer when living somewhere remote. I wish we had a suitable EU competitor and not have to contribute to this man's lunacy...
Feb 1 at 1:37pmWeb
Show threadOldGeekFeb 1
@lucien @cstross Nope its still BS. It would have been cheaper to put all that money into running more fiber. Especially the last mile in rural areas. But that is not as sexy as Starlink.
Show threadBornachFeb 1

@oldgeek @lucien @cstross
At 1:14:17 in the latest rant by @TechConnectify
https://youtu.be/KtQ9nt2ZeGM?t=1h14m17s

Imagine if government never built power lines to rural areas. They'd probably be singing praises to orbiting space lasers beaming them energy at huge expense or the delivery robot drones dropping off daily fuel shipments for their generators.

You are being misled about renewable energy technology.

YouTube
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 1
@oldgeek @lucien Tell me again how running more fibre is going to help internet bandwidth aboard ships at sea or airliners in the sky? (Please do, I'll wait.)
Show threadRay McCarthyFeb 1
@cstross @oldgeek @lucien
But you only need a tiny fraction of the size of Starlink for maritime & aeronautical mobile and it's garbage compared to fibre.
Fibre is far more sustainable.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 1

@raymaccarthy @oldgeek @lucien The point of starlink is low latency, which means low orbit. Which in turn requires lots of them to ensure there are no gaps in coverage. (And now they're working on satellite-to-satellite high bandwidth laser mesh networking to increase capacity.)

I think you underestimate the scale of aviation and shipping, not to mention railway transport.

Show threadRay McCarthyFeb 1

@cstross @oldgeek @lucien
No, I don't because I was RF R&D in an ISP with fibre, mobile, Fixed Wireless and Satellite. They also had datacentres.

Railway is better served by Cellular.

Obviously in LEO you need a load to have continuous coverage, but to do the equivalent of rural fibre or cellular for trains you need orders of magnitude more.

Even cellular is being done badly due to too big cells and regulatory capture. I've dealt with the Irish regulator, Comreg.