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They may "unleash intercontinental lower-than-fiber latency", but they also unleash light pollution. Where do you live? In most of Europe and SE Asia you can g

by bjeds 6y ago

They may "unleash intercontinental lower-than-fiber latency", but they also unleash light pollution. Where do you live? In most of Europe and SE Asia you can get gigabit broadband. I think SpaceX is a cool company and I could see myself work there, but StarLink is, IMHO, a shitty project that ruins the night sky and space for everyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Criticism

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Would you feel the same way if observatories were lifted beyond Earth orbit where their view was never obstructed? There is so. much. space out there, and it seems silly to argue over the artificial scarcity of clear sky when we can solve this with technology. We’re even putting a global comms network in place that could support high speed science data store and forward from space observatories to science consumers on ground. What if we could churn out orbital science platforms as fast as SpaceX churns out Starship SNs and StarLink satellites?
- bjeds 6y ago
  If you look at the article I linked, you can clearly see that the satellites are visible from the ground (the photo from Germany). If you search for "starlink" on Flickr you can see more examples. This is light pollution.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    The reason you're getting downvoted is that your base argument is that we shouldn't have cars because then there won't be picturesque horse pastures to look at. The same has been said about offshore wind. Increasing global networking, and doing so in a ground-infrastructure-agnostic way, has the potential of connecting billions of people to the global internet in a cost-effective way. Sometimes, progress outweighs the cost. And parent comment presented a nice alternative approach for the specific astronomy case.
  - dukodk 6y ago
    That’s because they want photos of them. You don’t see them on images where they were removed by stacking. Try searching for ISS :wink::wink:
  - xoa 6y ago
    >you can clearly see that the satellites are visible from the ground (the photo from Germany) No, you've misunderstood (in numerous ways, but this is a specific one you've cited). That photo you linked is of a satellite "train", which is a temporary state of satellites after deployment as they take themselves the rest of the way to final deployment orbits. At that point they'll be both spread out and the albedo will be vastly lowered because SpaceX has already made design alterations to the sats so that in their operational alignment towards Earth they are far less reflective. They're not going to interfere with the sky from the naked eye, nor even for general photography, even from low light pollution rural areas vs typical urban ones. It doesn't help that you're almost a parody of "entitled, dismissive urbanite". Even in the developed world, tens to hundreds of millions of people have crappy DSL at best. Outside of the developed world that rises to billions. Marine and aircraft stand to make enormous gains as well. The demand for Starlink is clear and well founded, and you do your argument zero favors by trying to hand wave it away (unless you just mean to rant to no constructive end).
    - bjeds 6y ago
      Hacker News continue to disappoint lately. I naively thought that by using my real name people here would actually treat me like a real human, not some anonymous punch bag. I don't know who you are "xoa", but that was a very rude comment. I have provided a Criticism section of a Wikipedia article that points out light pollution criticism from many authoritative sources, including photographic evidence. You dismiss this photographic evidence, but why should I listen to you when I can listen to the IAU, for example? Or Nature? Or the astronomical community? Quote International Astronomical Union: "The scientific concerns are twofold. Firstly, the surfaces of these satellites are often made of highly reflective metal, and reflections from the Sun in the hours after sunset and before sunrise make them appear as slow-moving dots in the night sky." Here's an entire article in Nature Astronomy about the issue https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01238-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01238-3 Here's a quote from a Senior Advisor to the European Space Agency https://twitter.com/markmccaughrean/status/1132394346945421317 https://twitter.com/markmccaughrean/status/11323943469454213... Here's an entire discussion at the American Astronomical Society about the issue https://aas.org/posts/advocacy/2020/12/impacts-large-satellite-constellations-astronomy-live-updates https://aas.org/posts/advocacy/2020/12/impacts-large-satelli... Here's an article about how the problem will get workse https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-dark-satellites-are-still-too-bright-for-astronomers/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-dark-sate... But sure, you call me an "entitled and dismissive urbanite".
supa-osum 6y ago
Agreed, and LEO trend is just getting started, followed by more constellations by other companies. Light pollution and space junk are real problems.

by bjeds 6y ago

toomuchtodo 6y ago

Would you feel the same way if observatories were lifted beyond Earth orbit where their view was never obstructed? There is so. much. space out there, and it seems silly to argue over the artificial scarcity of clear sky when we can solve this with technology. We’re even putting a global comms network in place that could support high speed science data store and forward from space observatories to science consumers on ground. What if we could churn out orbital science platforms as fast as SpaceX churns out Starship SNs and StarLink satellites?

bjeds 6y ago
If you look at the article I linked, you can clearly see that the satellites are visible from the ground (the photo from Germany). If you search for "starlink" on Flickr you can see more examples. This is light pollution.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  The reason you're getting downvoted is that your base argument is that we shouldn't have cars because then there won't be picturesque horse pastures to look at. The same has been said about offshore wind. Increasing global networking, and doing so in a ground-infrastructure-agnostic way, has the potential of connecting billions of people to the global internet in a cost-effective way. Sometimes, progress outweighs the cost. And parent comment presented a nice alternative approach for the specific astronomy case.
- dukodk 6y ago
  That’s because they want photos of them. You don’t see them on images where they were removed by stacking. Try searching for ISS :wink::wink:
- xoa 6y ago
  >you can clearly see that the satellites are visible from the ground (the photo from Germany) No, you've misunderstood (in numerous ways, but this is a specific one you've cited). That photo you linked is of a satellite "train", which is a temporary state of satellites after deployment as they take themselves the rest of the way to final deployment orbits. At that point they'll be both spread out and the albedo will be vastly lowered because SpaceX has already made design alterations to the sats so that in their operational alignment towards Earth they are far less reflective. They're not going to interfere with the sky from the naked eye, nor even for general photography, even from low light pollution rural areas vs typical urban ones. It doesn't help that you're almost a parody of "entitled, dismissive urbanite". Even in the developed world, tens to hundreds of millions of people have crappy DSL at best. Outside of the developed world that rises to billions. Marine and aircraft stand to make enormous gains as well. The demand for Starlink is clear and well founded, and you do your argument zero favors by trying to hand wave it away (unless you just mean to rant to no constructive end).
  - bjeds 6y ago
    Hacker News continue to disappoint lately. I naively thought that by using my real name people here would actually treat me like a real human, not some anonymous punch bag. I don't know who you are "xoa", but that was a very rude comment. I have provided a Criticism section of a Wikipedia article that points out light pollution criticism from many authoritative sources, including photographic evidence. You dismiss this photographic evidence, but why should I listen to you when I can listen to the IAU, for example? Or Nature? Or the astronomical community? Quote International Astronomical Union: "The scientific concerns are twofold. Firstly, the surfaces of these satellites are often made of highly reflective metal, and reflections from the Sun in the hours after sunset and before sunrise make them appear as slow-moving dots in the night sky." Here's an entire article in Nature Astronomy about the issue https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01238-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-020-01238-3 Here's a quote from a Senior Advisor to the European Space Agency https://twitter.com/markmccaughrean/status/1132394346945421317 https://twitter.com/markmccaughrean/status/11323943469454213... Here's an entire discussion at the American Astronomical Society about the issue https://aas.org/posts/advocacy/2020/12/impacts-large-satellite-constellations-astronomy-live-updates https://aas.org/posts/advocacy/2020/12/impacts-large-satelli... Here's an article about how the problem will get workse https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-dark-satellites-are-still-too-bright-for-astronomers/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spacexs-dark-sate... But sure, you call me an "entitled and dismissive urbanite".

supa-osum 6y ago

Agreed, and LEO trend is just getting started, followed by more constellations by other companies. Light pollution and space junk are real problems.