5 ms·

As an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer, I'm biased against the massive cost of the StarLink pollution fleet to our ability to gaze at the wonders above.

by clon 6y ago

As an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer, I'm biased against the massive cost of the StarLink pollution fleet to our ability to gaze at the wonders above. I think the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a much higher priority project for humanity, than StarLink. That said, I think Elon needs to travel the world a little more. Several of his attempts to solve purported world-relevant issues may be founded in limitations present in the US. 1) I have been to the jungles of Cambodia, trekked across Myanmar, stayed in villages of central Iran, driven across the deserts North Africa. Never have I felt deprived on good connectivity, even in the deserts of Iran. Everyone glued to their smartphones like everywhere else. And I had a pretty strong case of FB-itis myself back then. Where there is a human settlement, there seemed to be a connection. As an anecdote, I recall having Skype calls with my folks from the Shwedagon Pagoda - it had excellent wifi ~7 years ago. Walking across a salt lake one can and should expect to drop our for a while. The only exception I recall is some village in Tunisian Sahara where locals made a point of not being connected (mostly expats). Ksar Ghilane, perhaps? How is it that in rural US there is no alternative to satellite internet? There seems to be some local systemic failure. The rest of the world will be left holding the bag, so that people do not have to dig down some cables in Arkansas. 2) Building the self-driving car. It already exists everywhere. It is called the metro, tram, bus, tuk-tuk, rickshaw, whatever. It exists, and works great, servicing billions and if you exclude the latter options, safe. But not in N.America, where you cannot even cross a street without a vehicle. Thankfully, this seems to only use up VC money, without any externalities for the rest of the world.

kilroy123 6y ago
While I mostly agree with you, as I too have traveled a lot (I've been to all 7 continents). I've been to many places with very poor internet. Still, I think you're missing one very important point. The likely biggest user of this system will be the US military and Department of Defense. Just how they use the iridium constellation, only phone calls aren't enough in the 2020 and beyond. They need the same system but with broadband speed _internet_. They can not be dependent on some other nations infrastructure and there are a lot of boots out at a sea and places where there isn't a cell tower. The math just doesn't add up. Mark my words, the StarLink system will never work or be profitable without the US Gov being a major customer.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  One customer I weirdly haven't seen mentioned is high frequency traders. Shouldn't Starlink's latency be lower than that of cables?
  - mercora 6y ago
    would that help them though? i mean it appears to me they are already as close as possible to avoid latency and use microwave links and stuff so that is pretty hard to beat i guess. the only thing i can easily imagine being beneficial is getting information across the globe faster but then i lack the skills to see how one profits from that, ie. being closer would still be better, no?
    - virgilp 6y ago
      Arbitration. If you can see an asset being traded cheaper in Australia than in the US 10ms before everybody else does - you basically pocket the difference at 0 risk.
    - paranoidrobot 6y ago
      Mark Handley has done a bunch of videos analysing this on his channel[0]. The TLDR is that there is a lot of room for Starlink to beat existing terrestrial options IF they can get the laser links working on-orbit. This video[1] shows estimates using what was known about proposed configurations in 2018 [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-k1j7M2-hBfXeECd9YAQ_g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-k1j7M2-hBfXeECd9YAQ_g [1] https://youtu.be/QEIUdMiColU?t=237 https://youtu.be/QEIUdMiColU?t=237
  - rich_sasha 6y ago
    How would they be faster than microwave / laser terrestial towers, that already travel around the great arc?
    - AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
      Well, unless you can build a line-of-sight microwave/laser tower that can see over the oceans, Starlink's intercontinental links will be faster once the inter-satellite communications lasers are fully integrated. Also the speed of light in a vacuum is faster than the speed of light in air.
canadianfella 6y ago
Show me your self driving rickshaw.
tonyarkles 6y ago
> ...jungles of Cambodia, trekked across Myanmar, stayed in villages of central Iran, driven across the deserts North Africa. Never have I felt deprived on good connectivity, even in the deserts of Iran. That makes me even more grouchy about my current situation :D You don't have to get too far off a major highway in rural Saskatchewan to have miserable connectivity. You can generally connect to an LTE tower, but between the distance to the tower and how oversold they are, it's a total crapshoot as to whether you'll actually be able to use it. Because the towns are too far away from the switches, the only wireline connectivity you're going to get is 56K dial-up (maybe only 33.6K...). When they announced the "Better Than Nothing" Beta, I was very excited because "Better Than Nothing" is "Better Than What I've Got" at our rural spot most days. Edit: I missed your comment in the middle there: > How is it that in rural US there is no alternative to satellite internet? Well, the RM (~= county) we're in has a land area of 336 sq.mi. and a population of 275 people (0.8 people/sq.mi.) I have no idea what the population density is like in the Cambodian jungle, but looking at a table in Wikipedia suggests that the least-dense province has about 6 people/km^2 compared to our 0.3/km^2. It's just really really uneconomical to build out wireline service.
- hnarn 6y ago
  > It's just really really uneconomical to build out wireline service. Presumably these people are hooked up to the electrical grid, and if that is the case why isn't that equally uneconomical? Do they have phone lines? Having people hooked up to fiber or at least DSL is in my experience often mostly a political issue.
  - legolas2412 6y ago
    Yeah, I never understood this either. If electrical lines, or phone lines offering dial-ups can be laid down, and the major cost is digging, then why can ADSL or Fiber be laid down too?
    - mrkstu 6y ago
      DSL slows over distance. If you're far enough out, you're basically back to dial-up speeds unless they are willing to build cabinets closer, which no North American carrier I've heard of is still doing for DSL. BPL (Broadband over Powerline) also requires heavy investment [0]: - Only low and medium voltage power cables can be used for access BPL. - Signals need booster equipment to make them travel long distances. - Transformers, circuit breakers, and surge protectors can interfere with broadband signals. [0] https://www.explainthatstuff.com/broadbandoverpowerlines.html https://www.explainthatstuff.com/broadbandoverpowerlines.htm...
bryanlarsen 6y ago
As an amateur astronomer you should be cheering for Starlink. Yes, the first Starlink satellites were horrible for light pollution, especially during orbit raising. However Starlink has taken measures to mitigate this. They've added an shade to darken the satellites and they've modified their orbit raising path to avoid reflecting as much sunlight back to earth. Starlink's goal is to be invisible to the naked eye when in final orbit. They're not quite that dark during orbit raising, but they're a lot better than they were 6 months ago. Orbit raising takes a couple of months for 1/3rd of the satellites in each launch. Another advantage of Starlink is that they are in super low orbits. This means that they are shadowed by the Earth except for the half hour after sunset and the half hour before sunrise. There is so much refracted sunlight during these times that they aren't useful star gazing times for most. Starlink's competitors (OneWeb, Kuiper) have none of these advantages. Kuiper may add some, but none are announced yet. They have no sunshades, are cubical so orbit raising perturbations don't help much, and are in higher orbits so are visible during the darker periods of the night.
- ixfo 6y ago
  Your shadowing comment depends heavily on location. In large portions (and heavily populated bits at that) of the world they'll be visible all night for 1/3 to 1/2 of the year.
Tiktaalik 6y ago
The issue you describe is Elite Projection. Musk has it bad. Eg. He has a problem with traffic congestion when he drives his car, and he thinks solving that problem for him will address real, broad transportation problems. It won't. https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projection.html https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projec...

by clon 6y ago

kilroy123 6y ago

While I mostly agree with you, as I too have traveled a lot (I've been to all 7 continents). I've been to many places with very poor internet. Still, I think you're missing one very important point. The likely biggest user of this system will be the US military and Department of Defense. Just how they use the iridium constellation, only phone calls aren't enough in the 2020 and beyond. They need the same system but with broadband speed _internet_. They can not be dependent on some other nations infrastructure and there are a lot of boots out at a sea and places where there isn't a cell tower. The math just doesn't add up. Mark my words, the StarLink system will never work or be profitable without the US Gov being a major customer.

solarkraft 6y ago
One customer I weirdly haven't seen mentioned is high frequency traders. Shouldn't Starlink's latency be lower than that of cables?
- mercora 6y ago
  would that help them though? i mean it appears to me they are already as close as possible to avoid latency and use microwave links and stuff so that is pretty hard to beat i guess. the only thing i can easily imagine being beneficial is getting information across the globe faster but then i lack the skills to see how one profits from that, ie. being closer would still be better, no?
  - virgilp 6y ago
    Arbitration. If you can see an asset being traded cheaper in Australia than in the US 10ms before everybody else does - you basically pocket the difference at 0 risk.
  - paranoidrobot 6y ago
    Mark Handley has done a bunch of videos analysing this on his channel[0]. The TLDR is that there is a lot of room for Starlink to beat existing terrestrial options IF they can get the laser links working on-orbit. This video[1] shows estimates using what was known about proposed configurations in 2018 [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-k1j7M2-hBfXeECd9YAQ_g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-k1j7M2-hBfXeECd9YAQ_g [1] https://youtu.be/QEIUdMiColU?t=237 https://youtu.be/QEIUdMiColU?t=237
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  How would they be faster than microwave / laser terrestial towers, that already travel around the great arc?
  - AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
    Well, unless you can build a line-of-sight microwave/laser tower that can see over the oceans, Starlink's intercontinental links will be faster once the inter-satellite communications lasers are fully integrated. Also the speed of light in a vacuum is faster than the speed of light in air.

canadianfella 6y ago

Show me your self driving rickshaw.

tonyarkles 6y ago

> ...jungles of Cambodia, trekked across Myanmar, stayed in villages of central Iran, driven across the deserts North Africa. Never have I felt deprived on good connectivity, even in the deserts of Iran. That makes me even more grouchy about my current situation :D You don't have to get too far off a major highway in rural Saskatchewan to have miserable connectivity. You can generally connect to an LTE tower, but between the distance to the tower and how oversold they are, it's a total crapshoot as to whether you'll actually be able to use it. Because the towns are too far away from the switches, the only wireline connectivity you're going to get is 56K dial-up (maybe only 33.6K...). When they announced the "Better Than Nothing" Beta, I was very excited because "Better Than Nothing" is "Better Than What I've Got" at our rural spot most days. Edit: I missed your comment in the middle there: > How is it that in rural US there is no alternative to satellite internet? Well, the RM (~= county) we're in has a land area of 336 sq.mi. and a population of 275 people (0.8 people/sq.mi.) I have no idea what the population density is like in the Cambodian jungle, but looking at a table in Wikipedia suggests that the least-dense province has about 6 people/km^2 compared to our 0.3/km^2. It's just really really uneconomical to build out wireline service.

hnarn 6y ago
> It's just really really uneconomical to build out wireline service. Presumably these people are hooked up to the electrical grid, and if that is the case why isn't that equally uneconomical? Do they have phone lines? Having people hooked up to fiber or at least DSL is in my experience often mostly a political issue.
- legolas2412 6y ago
  Yeah, I never understood this either. If electrical lines, or phone lines offering dial-ups can be laid down, and the major cost is digging, then why can ADSL or Fiber be laid down too?
  - mrkstu 6y ago
    DSL slows over distance. If you're far enough out, you're basically back to dial-up speeds unless they are willing to build cabinets closer, which no North American carrier I've heard of is still doing for DSL. BPL (Broadband over Powerline) also requires heavy investment [0]: - Only low and medium voltage power cables can be used for access BPL. - Signals need booster equipment to make them travel long distances. - Transformers, circuit breakers, and surge protectors can interfere with broadband signals. [0] https://www.explainthatstuff.com/broadbandoverpowerlines.html https://www.explainthatstuff.com/broadbandoverpowerlines.htm...

bryanlarsen 6y ago

As an amateur astronomer you should be cheering for Starlink. Yes, the first Starlink satellites were horrible for light pollution, especially during orbit raising. However Starlink has taken measures to mitigate this. They've added an shade to darken the satellites and they've modified their orbit raising path to avoid reflecting as much sunlight back to earth. Starlink's goal is to be invisible to the naked eye when in final orbit. They're not quite that dark during orbit raising, but they're a lot better than they were 6 months ago. Orbit raising takes a couple of months for 1/3rd of the satellites in each launch. Another advantage of Starlink is that they are in super low orbits. This means that they are shadowed by the Earth except for the half hour after sunset and the half hour before sunrise. There is so much refracted sunlight during these times that they aren't useful star gazing times for most. Starlink's competitors (OneWeb, Kuiper) have none of these advantages. Kuiper may add some, but none are announced yet. They have no sunshades, are cubical so orbit raising perturbations don't help much, and are in higher orbits so are visible during the darker periods of the night.

ixfo 6y ago
Your shadowing comment depends heavily on location. In large portions (and heavily populated bits at that) of the world they'll be visible all night for 1/3 to 1/2 of the year.

Tiktaalik 6y ago

The issue you describe is Elite Projection. Musk has it bad. Eg. He has a problem with traffic congestion when he drives his car, and he thinks solving that problem for him will address real, broad transportation problems. It won't. https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projection.html https://humantransit.org/2017/07/the-dangers-of-elite-projec...