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Amazon Seeks Permission to Launch 3k Internet Satellites
- reaperducer 7y agoWelcome to the dystopian future where no human anywhere on Earth can look up and see an authentic sky, as their ancestors did. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-astronomers.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-a... And thanks to SpaceX (and now Amazon), astronomers will now have to do their observations from space. If only there was a way to get telescopes up there. Oh, wait... SpaceX just happens to have a way to solve the problem it created!
- the8472 7y agoWhat's particulary dystopic about it? Preserving nature is valuable because we rely on the ecosystem, you can't really make that argument for the dead emptiness that is space. Ubiquitous space access even is a common theme in scifi utopias!
- Waterluvian 7y agoI think it's close but missing one really key point. Imagine if this was being done by some non profit international consortium funded by many nations.
- sigstoat 7y agothen it would go over budget by 100x, and if it ever did finish, users would be subjected to the intersection of all of those countries moralizing content bans?
- friedman23 7y ago> non profit international consortium funded by many nations that sounds horrible
- mfatica 7y agoIf you've ever looked up at the sky at night in a dark area I don't think you could honestly say it's "dead emptiness". It's fascinating to gaze up at the stars and taking that away would be a tragedy
- the8472 7y agoIt is very dead and very empty. Sure, it looks pretty and is useful for astrophysics. But compare that to the utility of global, low-latency internet.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y agoA world where two billionaires can take the stars from humanity. It's like a fairytale, and yet it can happen.
- perl4ever 7y agoNext, one of them will sell the moon!
- UnFleshedOne 7y agoWhen humanity consistently votes for people who do nothing with space unless there is pork involved, humanity kinda deserves it.
- cronix 7y agoThankfully (/s), due to the light pollution given off by the city I live near, I can't see them anyway.
- krapp 7y agoI don't think 3000 satellites are nearly enough to completely blot out the sky across the entire planet.
- onion2k 7y agoThat depends on how big they are. :)
- krapp 7y agoYou're technically correct, which is of course the best kind of correct. But assuming they're not the size of small moons, the surface area of any orbital plane is still bigger than that of the entire planet. That's a lot of space to fill with objects that have to fit into a single spacecraft.
- reaperducer 7y ago3,000 from Amazon, 10,000 already approved from SpaceX, who knows how many will go up from various companies in Europe, China, India, etc... This is the beginning, not the end.
- krapp 7y agoYeah... still not enough. Millions probably wouldn't be enough. It's a really big sky.
- reaperducer 7y agoSounds like that plastics industry talking about disposal in the 1970's. Now look where we are.
- krapp 7y agoAgain... we're talking about an area bigger by orders of magnitude than that of the Earth itself, where plastic is still not covering the entire surface of the earth or the oceans. This is simple math. I know people here are emotionally fixated on their dystopian fantasies, particularly where Amazon is concerned, but no one is launching so many satellites that they will blot the sun and stars from the sky. Aside from probably being physically impossible, there's no practical reason for even launching that many satellites. "Welcome to the dystopian future where no human anywhere on Earth can look up and see an authentic sky, as their ancestors did?" No... that's just silliness.
- october_sky 7y ago> where no human anywhere on Earth can look up and see an authentic sky, as their ancestors did. The past ~80 years of light pollution has already prevented this from happening.
- reaperducer 7y agoThe past ~80 years of light pollution has already prevented this from happening. Only if you never leave a city. Dark skies are so important and desirable to people that there's an entire tourism industry that revolves around giving people the ability to look at the night sky. https://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/travel-trends-for-2019-dark-skies/ https://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-tips-and-articles/travel... https://www.visitarizona.com/dark-skies https://www.visitarizona.com/dark-skies https://www.visitcountydurham.org/opportunities/darkskies https://www.visitcountydurham.org/opportunities/darkskies https://www.travelandleisure.com/trip-ideas/space-astronomy/dark-skies-skyglow https://www.travelandleisure.com/trip-ideas/space-astronomy/... https://cpdarkskies.org/2018/12/13/destination-dark-skies/ https://cpdarkskies.org/2018/12/13/destination-dark-skies/ https://thepointsguy.com/news/dark-skies-how-light-pollution-spurred-a-new-tourism-industry/ https://thepointsguy.com/news/dark-skies-how-light-pollution... Clearly there are lots of people who value the sky, even if a few billionaires and people on HN who believe in "tech at all costs" don't.
- outworlder 7y agoThat is true. People go as far as dial 911 the first time they see the Milky Way. https://timeline.com/los-angeles-light-pollution-ebd60d5acd43?gi=9e96bbb80071 https://timeline.com/los-angeles-light-pollution-ebd60d5acd4...
- regnerba 7y agoThe video in the article you linked is not a good example of the long term impacts. The satellites were at a lower orbit than their final orbit and not oriented the same way they will be once in their operational orbit. Once they reach their final orbit, which most of them have now, they will be far more spread out, higher, and all around much harder to identify. That and SpaceX is actively working with astronomy groups to try and lower their impact. Even if they are easily visible, so what. Should we not build roads because then our children wont be able to see things the same as we saw them? It's progress, and really good progress in this case. All of that aside, I fail to see how it makes a dystopian future. A quick Google says the definition of dystopian is "relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice." I fail to see how internet providing satellites are making people suffer or feel injustice. If they work out they will bring internet to a substantial number of people who cannot get reliable and cheap access to resources you and I take for granted every day. SpaceX's whole goal is lowering the cost of access to space. Again assuming they achieve that goal to the degree they want to, and Starship is sure looking to be a giant step in that direction, then deploying a space based telescope very well might just be the better option. You can basically make it as big as you want and shipping it to space could be cheaper than shipping it to some random place on this planet to be built.
- shaklee3 7y agoThere were plenty of studies done by astronomers that showed the effect of the satellites can be detrimental to astrology. No, we shouldn't just build them; that's a red herring. There are plenty of other competitors that have comparable bandwidth and don't light up the sky. Of course, the musk effect makes people ignore those.
- gamegoblin 7y agoI wonder if it would ever make sense to set up some "IXP satellites" so that Amazon and SpaceX's (and whoever else enters this space) various LEO networks could switch in space.
- portyllo 7y agoDeveloping compatible systems would be very expensive. There are very few standards in Space Comms., specially for satellite-to-satellite Comms.
- ianai 7y agoShould anybody be putting satellites up without some credible plan for decommissioning them from the atmosphere?
- gamegoblin 7y agoIf this is anything like SpaceX's constellation, the plan is that the orbits will naturally decay in < 10 years and they will burn up in the atmosphere upon re-entry.
- HillaryBriss 7y agoIMHO, it would be nice if the decay orbit for each satellite were tracked accurately by Amazon and published beforehand. If these satellites truly do burn up completely -- great. But if they don't it would be great to hold Amazon accountable for any problems and for waste cleanup.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago> accountable for any problems and for waste cleanup These are companies, not people... $10 buck says if one of these things hits your roof, Amazon will just give you a $100 gift card to Amazon.com
- HillaryBriss 7y ago+1 lol. yeah. I guess that's better than nothing.
- jacquesm 7y agoDecommissioning plans are part and parcel of any satellite launch. These small ones will deorbit pretty rapidly if they are told to do so and a bit slower if it happens uncommanded once they are unable to maintain altitude.
- tyldum 7y agoNo FCC license unless you do, so yeah - it's accounted for. Unless they want to operate entirely without US downlinks. I do ground stations for a living.
- nixarian 7y agoSure. "Internet." That's ALL they'll be doing up there.
- tectonic 7y agoIt seems like no coincidence that Amazon is also building a ground station network as part of AWS. https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/ https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/
- strikelaserclaw 7y agoAnyone wanna offer me their hypothesis on what Amazon and other tech companies gain from offering internet to people who probably aren't valuable consumers?
- buboard 7y agoIt s a ruse. The US will win the landgrab for controlling the communication networks of up and coming regions like Africa before the Chinese do
- mtgx 7y agoNot a bad point at all, especially with Amazon joining at the hip with the U.S. government lately.
- ForHackernews 7y agoBetter the US than China, honestly. For all its faults, the US is still a (flawed) democracy with a free press. Its capacity for abuse is at least moderated.
- jandrewrogers 7y agoSatellites are outside the regulatory authority of countries they operate over. They can do far more of value than merely provide Internet access to poor people.
- penagwin 7y agoSatellites also have to be specialty built for their purpose. You can't just take a small communications satellite, attach a small camera, and have a spy satellite. Well you "could" but it would be so crappy that it'd be useless. Also LEO satellites lose their altitude rather quickly, not a great investment for spy satellites. > Satellites are outside the regulatory authority of countries they operate over. Except the United States (Assuming the satellite was made/operated by a US entity such as a citizen or business), so they still have PLENTY of regulations to follow.
- throw0101a 7y agoAt what point should we start worrying about Kessler Syndrome? > The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect,[1][2] collisional cascading or ablation cascade), proposed by the NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debris that increases the likelihood of further collisions.[3] One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.[3] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
- usbseeker 7y agoI'm more worried about the future sudden need to stop supporting the existing internet once a few companies decide we should just use their new space internet, that seemsnlike the more profitable longterm play.
- the8472 7y agoThose dense internet satellite constellations will be in low earth orbit, which have relatively fast decay times. So even in the worst case it would only set us back by a few decades while either cleanup solutions are developed or we wait for them to decay naturally. You can still launch through the debris field into higher orbits because the collision probability will be quite low at any given moment, it just adds up over time for things that want to stay there.
- DiseasedBadger 7y agoThe Gilded Age had nothing on this. Two billionaires are battling over ownership of communication in the sky. Is the winner "Prince of The Air"?
- aalleavitch 7y agoThe various national governments of the world better wise up pretty soon to the fact that they are losing all of their leashes on these beasts they've been riding. Sooner than we think pure profit-seeking entities will be on even footing with organizations that are (or at least are supposed to be) deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. This is a deeply sobering thought.
- jonplackett 7y agoAre there any international agreements covering this stuff? What if China decide they want to launch another 3000 and Russia want to launch another 3000 and India and Japan and whoever else?
- chisleu 7y agonot a problem if they are maintained in the way the SpaceX sats are going to be.
- penagwin 7y ago> not a problem if they are maintained in the way the SpaceX sats are going to be. Aka - Not a problem if they are well thought out, well planned, and maintained. Are there international agreements that specify this is the case? Just curious, real question.
- jonplackett 7y agoYeah ditto. And are there agreements to stop them interfering with each other? I get that space is really really big but surely there needs to be a way to coordinate so much stuff up there.
- syedkarim 7y agoThe ITU is the international body that assists with coordination among nations and their satellite systems.
- 6d6b73 7y agoIt's a problem for astronomy for example.
- chisleu 7y agoIsn't this a solved problem already by putting cameras in space?
- badrabbit 7y agoMaybe it's time to talk about tech-free preserves established by international treaties. E.g.: sections of each continent and ocean can be declared tech free where modern technology is forbidden on earth,sea or land. This is so we don't lose and forget the nature that forged the present.
- aalleavitch 7y agoMy knee jerk reaction to this was negative, but I really do think having some sense of preservation of the ways we lived in the past, for educational reasons if nothing else, is valuable. A living museum if you will.
- badrabbit 7y agoThe first thing I thought of is how microplastics are everywhere now. A preserve like the one I suggested would somewow ideally be protected even from things like that. Future researchers will have a good natural frame of reference to study various unnatural phenomena.
- mruts 7y agoMaybe we should each decide what we want to forget or not forget.
- badrabbit 7y agoHow so? It isn't for individuals but for future generations. Ever heard of UNHCR?
- luizfzs 7y agoThey're just copying SpaceX. That's disappointing.
- new_realist 7y agoOneWeb launched before SpaceX, but they’re all copying Teledesic/Iridium.
- sneak 7y agoJust as disappointing as that time they copied K-mart and Wal-Mart.
- sneak 7y agoThe amazing thing to me is that this article does not include the words “spacex” or “starlink” once in the webpage. Do you have to pay extra for that sort of press hit?
- 6nf 7y agoIt's a press release
- davidlumley 7y agoPrivate corporations owning more and more utility infrastructure really concerns me. Is there a world where nations band together and launch this as public infrastructure rather than private corporations lobbying a USA government agency for permission?
- kodz4 7y agoGet specific about the concern, otherwise it's easy to get afraid about everything. Govt's hardly own telecom infra, it's all in private hands. And when orgs get too big for their boots, things like this happen- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
- davidlumley 7y ago> Get specific about the concern, otherwise it's easy to get afraid about everything. There are many reasons to be afraid about a private corporation from a country with little regulation providing a utility to areas with no other choice. If Amazon was sponsoring this, that's one thing, but them owning the network raises red flags for me surrounding: 1) Privacy 2) The potential for anti competitive practices 3) Quality of service / expected lifetime of service I simply don't trust Amazon (or any other large private company) to do anything else than look out for their bottom line when push comes to shove. > Govt's hardly own telecom infra, it's all in private hands I'm old enough to remember when Australia did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra#Privatisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra#Privatisation Since Telstra was privatised, any impetus to upgrade Australia's struggling networks has gone out the window and when they do end up upgrading capacity, it is usually as part of a Government project. All in all, tax payers still foot the bill to improve utilities while a private company furthers their monopoly.
- noir_lord 7y agoSame thing happened in the UK with BT. Usual privatise the profits, socialise the costs.
- jammygit 7y agoAmazon ring and echo captures a lot of data, but imagine how much more they get as an isp?
- megous 7y agoSo what it's gonna be like - latency and bandwidth?
- ehsankia 7y agoFor latency at LEO, we're looking at below 50ms, going as low as 20ms. For bandwidth, it obviously depends on load and usage. SpaceX's satellites each can handle 1 Tbps, so it comes down to how they distribute and price it. At 100Mbps and 3000 satellites, that's roughly 10 million users. Obviously not all users will be using that much data simultaneously.
- unnouinceput 7y agoYou underestimate the hunger. It's a new toy to play with for billions of people. Pretty much 3k satellites at 1TB/s each is equivalent of a bucket of water for a stadium full of people. And they plan to give this access for free. It will overload their network and realize they will need 3 million satellites instead, at least.
- portyllo 7y agoSpaceX satellites cannot handle 1 Tbps each, they can handle 23 Gbps each according to their FCC filling.
- shaklee3 7y agoSpaceX satellites cannot do 1Tbps, and it's irresponsible to keep saying this. See the MIT study. They estimate ~20Tbps of total capacity for 4000 satellites.
- thefourthchime 7y agoWho else thinks these systems deliver wireless high speed Internet faster than 5G?
- H8crilA 7y agoMaybe, but it will probably have lower total througput due to the large size of the cells. One of the reasons why 5G is faster is due to smaller cells. In any case there's no official data from Starlink, on costs, on speeds, total througput or almost anything (if I'm wrong on this please post links!).
- ehsankia 7y agoIt's not really about speed in my opinion, it's about worldwide availability. 5G requires a node at every few hundred meters, so it will probably never go beyond very dense city centers. These LEO constellations on the other end can provide connectivity in the most rural and remote places. It would be a game changer for planes and cruises for example. Tesla could include a receiver in every car giving you connection anywhere you drive, etc.
- ancientworldnow 7y agoThese satellite networks require dishes (with starlink for example they're trying to get down to something pizza box sized). It's a different market than 5G and wireless carrier options. You're not going to have satellite data smartphones with these systems as they're currently planned out. They could, however, be used as backbones for cell stations, but then you're back to square one.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chiph 7y agoIridium has global coverage (you can make phone calls from the South Pole) but isn't LEO so there's a latency issue. Starlink is LEO and will have faster rates & lower latency, but won't have global coverage since the orbits don't go over the poles (sorry, Amundsen-Scott!). What about the proposed Amazon (Blue Origin?) system?
- greglindahl 7y agoThe FCC requires that Starlink cover Alaska, and it will with a later set of satellites in polar orbit. Ditto for every constellation approved by the FCC.
- syedkarim 7y agoIridium is definitely LEO.
- __d 7y agoIridium orbits are ~780km (485 mi). Starlink lower tier orbits are ~340km (210 mi).
- robocat 7y agoI am looking forward to when Huawei put up their global network... Charge zero for the uplink devices if you buy the first 6 months up front using bitcoin. With free Huaflix and sports channels (unlicenced, use at consumers own risk).
- AFascistWorld 7y agoAnd be perma-banned for accessing harmful content.
- stefan_ 7y agoNo, it's just negative social score, so you'll lose your rented place and can't take public transport anymore.
- OrgNet 7y agoyou are going to need to order straight from china though
- ryanmarsh 7y agoUpon whose rockets?
- trungvmn 7y agoReferring to Hoi An, we cannot help but mention the shimmering old town nights in the brilliant lantern festival, especially on the night of Trung Thu full moon. This has become a feature that takes place monthly by the city and makes many tourists stay when having the opportunity to travel to Hoi An. https://privatecartransferhoian.com/hoi-an-lantern-festival/ https://privatecartransferhoian.com/hoi-an-lantern-festival/
- Proven 7y agoIt's incredible that even that needs permitting. No wonder only Amazon and few other companies can launch anything.
- unsungNovelty 7y agoThere goes my privacy! I can't even think about a horrible company like Amazon being an ISP too! Think about all the privacy issues that we are going to have! But if they do this, this is going to be good for the US broadband customers who don't have internet currently. Not to mention they are stuck with monopoly companies without any competition and options. This is going to wake Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and Charter! But Amazon is going to screw your net neutrality in the most crazy way once the initial period of cheap plans gets over and they have a strong monopoly of user base!
- aralia 7y agoIt’s not just the idea that Amazon is going to be an ISP that you should worry about when it comes to their effect on internet privacy. They also recently purchased Eero.
- knbrlo 7y agoYou’ll be able to summon Alexa from anywhere... without even owning an Amazon device! :)
- drewbt 7y agoSurely every country around the world needs to be involved in approving something like this. Amazon does not get my vote to put anything that could potentially become space junk in the air above South Africa. Not yet at least. What is the benefit to humanity as a whole?
- VvR-Ox 7y agoI am with you here but: 1. It's never about what benefits humanity, it's just about money most of the times 2. Every country and probably several companies of each country will do this as long as we are the divided world we have to live in 3. Just like the internet never became the awesome tool one might see in series like Star Trek (benefit of humanity & stuff like that) something like this will never be that awesome and useful. Until there'd be a market that forces people/companies to act like that. So I think our world is a place where incentives lead us to do the wrong things that actually hinder humanity in it's progress and positive development.
- znpy 7y ago> 2. Every country and probably several companies of each country will do this as long as we are the divided world we have to live in I really hope that a “world government” never happens, it is too much of a risk. Consider the US for example: once the land of the free, it has become a land of espionage, lack of personal privacy and persecution. This hasn’t begun with Trump, but it became a lot more evident with him as a president. What I want to say is that the risk of a global government going rogue is too high. I hope that we will always have a plurality of nations and ideas, living peacefully with one another.
- VvR-Ox 7y agoIn my opinion this is the only solution that will lead to success of the human race. For me that is not destroying our planet, evolving in the "right" direction (more education, more science and especially more ethics). At the moment we kind of burn our resources without need and our nations compete which creates more unnecessary costs and suffering than good outcomes. We live in a world where you wonder every day why things are solved in that particular stupid way instead of doing things the smartest possible way to really serve humanity as a whole. The fact that it's more important than anything else to "grow" money out of nothing speaks for itself. What is the situation like, right now? Several countries with atom bombs "go rogue". They do what they want and behave like little children who's toys have been stolen (USA, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Great Britain...). They screw their own people and take away the wealth and stability they enjoyed for some time now, they increase surveillance and take away the (human) rights the people have fought for many decades and they engage in wars and battles that serve no one on this planet but companies who produce weapons and political agendas of maniacs who shouldn't do this job in the first place. Of course the danger that this one govt could do something bad is also present but at least we'd have a single point of failure that we could get rid of in case of emergency. Now your only chance is to migrate to some other country in the hope that you'll be given a chance to start a new life there and that no one does something that will force you to leave, again. Wars, Nationalism, tax escaping, finance, poverty .... nearly everything could be solved in a better way when there'd be no seperate govt's who all believed they were the godsend rulers of earth. I hope some force some day is just strong enough to force everyone into such a system as I don't think nations will be willing to give up their sovereignty that easily. Let it be some aliens - as long as they are intelligent and act rationally it's far better for us than the current unbearable state we have to endure. Without that there will never be peace on earth. Plurality and ideas come from people and not from states. You can see that today e.g. in countries who are more open minded and welcome people with different believes.