7 ms·

You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." To provide internet service to ~250,000 p

You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." To provide internet service to ~250,000 people - about one quarter the population of a major east coast city. Also, these are consumable - much more so than cable plants. Starlink is horrifically bad for the environment compared to ground-based infrastructure. As witnessed by the very high cost of Starlink service, which is likely losing mountains of cash despite that. > For the sake of bringing internet to hundreds of thousands of people? By letting people shop online or stream entertainment they've probably paid for themselves in reduced car journeys already. That's not how that works.

colordrops 5y ago
Individual consumers aren't the only customers of Starlink. It also will bring high-bandwidth low-latency connectivity to the entire globe once enough laser-linked satellites are up. Industry and militaries will be using it. Whether this is a net positive for the environment or otherwise remains to be seen. Also, the point of Starlink is to fund SpaceX's goal of a methane rocket. Methane was chosen because it can be generated from atmospheric gases and solar power. The logistics around scaling it up remain to be solved, but once it is solved, rocket launches will be basically zero carbon.
- giomasce 5y ago
  If you can extract methane from the atmosphere at scale you don't need rockets to solve the carbon problem.
  - ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
    The idea would be to synthesize methane from the CO2 in the atmosphere of Mars, which isn't quite as hard as on Earth: CO2 falls as snow near the poles there.
sumedh 5y ago
> Starlink is horrifically bad for the environment compared to ground-based infrastructure. So what should people who dont have access to the ground-based infrastructure do?
lmm 5y ago
> You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." Well you opened up by talking about "just one launch". > To provide internet service to ~250,000 people - about one quarter the population of a major east coast city. But people who are currently very hard to supply internet to and extremely car-dependent. Building housing in cities would probably be a better solution, and I'm all for efforts to make that legal, but realistically it's going to be extremely difficult to overcome upper-middle-class opposition to that and so other ways to mitigate the impact of those people's lifestyles are very much worthwhile. > Starlink is horrifically bad for the environment compared to ground-based infrastructure. As witnessed by the very high cost of Starlink service, which is likely losing mountains of cash despite that. On the contrary, running cable to many of these places would be overwhelmingly environmentally damaging (in many cases you'd have to build a road through a forest or blast through a mountain), and that's reflected in the high (sometimes infinite) cost of internet services. People are buying Starlink because it's cheaper (in the places they live) than ground-based alternatives, and as you've observed, the environmental cost is generally closely correlated to the monetary cost. > That's not how that works. That's exactly how it works. You've got to look at the net impact. For people who don't travel internationally, reducing car usage is the most effective single lifestyle change they can make to reduce carbon impact; if Starlink reduces trips to the extent that e.g. people shift from a two-car to a one-car household, that's huge. (And note that if it's reducing travel into towns or cities then that's benefitting the rest of us as well, by reducing congestion and parking usage, which in turn lets us turn more land over to productive uses).
- simion314 5y ago
  >On the contrary, running cable to many of these places would be overwhelmingly environmentally damaging (in many cases you'd have to build a road through a forest or blast through a mountain) How so? How do this people landed in this place without a road and electricity? Rural homes must have roads to reach the city to buy fuel and food. There are also wireless terrestrial ways to transmit internet too.
  - lmm 5y ago
modeless 5y ago
> the very high cost of Starlink service It's $99/mo for 100+ megabit service. Sure, it's moderately expensive if you're comparing to cable service in cities. It's downright cheap compared to the cost of connecting the extremely rural customers Starlink targets with physical cables. You don't think running a new set of physical cables to every rural residence in the world (or even cell towers to cover the same) would be expensive or have any environmental impact? Starlink wins on both and not by a small margin. And then of course there's the prospect of bringing service to the remote mountains and jungles and deserts and polar regions and oceans where nobody lives and which will never (and should never) have ground-based infrastructure. And a bit of sorely needed competition to keep the ground-based monopoly service providers in check. And service for disaster areas or war zones where infrastructure is destroyed.
- laumars 5y ago
  Plus $500 sign up fee ;) This might all seem reasonable in rural America but it’s hugely expensive for internet in Europe.
  - modeless 5y ago
    That pays for the antenna. The antennas are expensive now because they are new technology, never manufactured on this scale before, but that is changing fast. The fee will get smaller soon enough. Ground-based infrastructure will not be experiencing any analogous rapid cost reduction. And in rural areas it costs a lot more than $500 per residence already. What infrastructure exists is heavily subsidized.
    - laumars 5y ago
      I know it pays for the antenna but the fact remains the cost of Starlink isn’t just $99/month like you’ve claimed.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      I think when I got my first cable broadband the modem cost ~$300, probably more than $500 now after inflation.
Aloha 5y ago
I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog. It does however possess two chief advantages - the appearance of being novel and speed of construction. To build a cellular network to cover the areas that starlink does would take a decade - where it can be done at all. The aforementioned novel appearance also gets it largely free spectrum, which I believe starlink didn't have to go thru auction for. To be clear - it's not novel, it's more or less a cellular network where the cell sites move about instead of the subscriber - which is something iridium did. I'm still not sure it can make money however.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  > I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog. Starlink is a miracle for people with shitty or no cellular infrastructure. There are places in Australia that have exactly one cell tower for signal and they get 3G speeds at best. And if that tower has a fault, they'll be out of access for days or weeks. $99 per month for Starlink is a no-brainer.
  - Aloha 5y ago
    I don't think it can be profitable at that price is the point.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      Current satellite broadband (in the US) is in that same pricing ballpark, I don't see why Starlink couldn't be profitable at that price-- or even lower-- once it scales up.
      - Aloha 5y ago
        Different Opex and technical requirements - The opex of keeping a constellation that large in orbit, has not been proven to be cheaper than operating a ground based wireless network (and Starlinks opex is certainly more than a convention geosynchronous satellite system). Starlink operates with an assumption, that has not yet been proven to be true - that the cost per kg to launch something into LEO will go down as time goes on. If this prediction does not prove to be true, then it has no hope of making money, much less being self-sustaining. Beyond this, the shorter lifetime of their sat fleet compared to a geosynchronous sat, means they must be replaced sooner, but its not obvious that the sats are significantly cheaper - this on top of the inherent launch costs, and the much much much larger fleet, implies that there may be a disconnect in pricing.

colordrops 5y ago

Individual consumers aren't the only customers of Starlink. It also will bring high-bandwidth low-latency connectivity to the entire globe once enough laser-linked satellites are up. Industry and militaries will be using it. Whether this is a net positive for the environment or otherwise remains to be seen. Also, the point of Starlink is to fund SpaceX's goal of a methane rocket. Methane was chosen because it can be generated from atmospheric gases and solar power. The logistics around scaling it up remain to be solved, but once it is solved, rocket launches will be basically zero carbon.

giomasce 5y ago
If you can extract methane from the atmosphere at scale you don't need rockets to solve the carbon problem.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
  The idea would be to synthesize methane from the CO2 in the atmosphere of Mars, which isn't quite as hard as on Earth: CO2 falls as snow near the poles there.

sumedh 5y ago

> Starlink is horrifically bad for the environment compared to ground-based infrastructure. So what should people who dont have access to the ground-based infrastructure do?

lmm 5y ago

> You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." Well you opened up by talking about "just one launch". > To provide internet service to ~250,000 people - about one quarter the population of a major east coast city. But people who are currently very hard to supply internet to and extremely car-dependent. Building housing in cities would probably be a better solution, and I'm all for efforts to make that legal, but realistically it's going to be extremely difficult to overcome upper-middle-class opposition to that and so other ways to mitigate the impact of those people's lifestyles are very much worthwhile. > Starlink is horrifically bad for the environment compared to ground-based infrastructure. As witnessed by the very high cost of Starlink service, which is likely losing mountains of cash despite that. On the contrary, running cable to many of these places would be overwhelmingly environmentally damaging (in many cases you'd have to build a road through a forest or blast through a mountain), and that's reflected in the high (sometimes infinite) cost of internet services. People are buying Starlink because it's cheaper (in the places they live) than ground-based alternatives, and as you've observed, the environmental cost is generally closely correlated to the monetary cost. > That's not how that works. That's exactly how it works. You've got to look at the net impact. For people who don't travel internationally, reducing car usage is the most effective single lifestyle change they can make to reduce carbon impact; if Starlink reduces trips to the extent that e.g. people shift from a two-car to a one-car household, that's huge. (And note that if it's reducing travel into towns or cities then that's benefitting the rest of us as well, by reducing congestion and parking usage, which in turn lets us turn more land over to productive uses).

simion314 5y ago
>On the contrary, running cable to many of these places would be overwhelmingly environmentally damaging (in many cases you'd have to build a road through a forest or blast through a mountain) How so? How do this people landed in this place without a road and electricity? Rural homes must have roads to reach the city to buy fuel and food. There are also wireless terrestrial ways to transmit internet too.
- lmm 5y ago

modeless 5y ago

> the very high cost of Starlink service It's $99/mo for 100+ megabit service. Sure, it's moderately expensive if you're comparing to cable service in cities. It's downright cheap compared to the cost of connecting the extremely rural customers Starlink targets with physical cables. You don't think running a new set of physical cables to every rural residence in the world (or even cell towers to cover the same) would be expensive or have any environmental impact? Starlink wins on both and not by a small margin. And then of course there's the prospect of bringing service to the remote mountains and jungles and deserts and polar regions and oceans where nobody lives and which will never (and should never) have ground-based infrastructure. And a bit of sorely needed competition to keep the ground-based monopoly service providers in check. And service for disaster areas or war zones where infrastructure is destroyed.

laumars 5y ago
Plus $500 sign up fee ;) This might all seem reasonable in rural America but it’s hugely expensive for internet in Europe.
- modeless 5y ago
  That pays for the antenna. The antennas are expensive now because they are new technology, never manufactured on this scale before, but that is changing fast. The fee will get smaller soon enough. Ground-based infrastructure will not be experiencing any analogous rapid cost reduction. And in rural areas it costs a lot more than $500 per residence already. What infrastructure exists is heavily subsidized.
  - laumars 5y ago
    I know it pays for the antenna but the fact remains the cost of Starlink isn’t just $99/month like you’ve claimed.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    I think when I got my first cable broadband the modem cost ~$300, probably more than $500 now after inflation.

Aloha 5y ago

I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog. It does however possess two chief advantages - the appearance of being novel and speed of construction. To build a cellular network to cover the areas that starlink does would take a decade - where it can be done at all. The aforementioned novel appearance also gets it largely free spectrum, which I believe starlink didn't have to go thru auction for. To be clear - it's not novel, it's more or less a cellular network where the cell sites move about instead of the subscriber - which is something iridium did. I'm still not sure it can make money however.

theshrike79 5y ago
> I'm not convinced that starlink is cheaper or better for than ground based cellular infrastructure - its closest technical analog. Starlink is a miracle for people with shitty or no cellular infrastructure. There are places in Australia that have exactly one cell tower for signal and they get 3G speeds at best. And if that tower has a fault, they'll be out of access for days or weeks. $99 per month for Starlink is a no-brainer.
- Aloha 5y ago
  I don't think it can be profitable at that price is the point.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Current satellite broadband (in the US) is in that same pricing ballpark, I don't see why Starlink couldn't be profitable at that price-- or even lower-- once it scales up.
    - Aloha 5y ago
      Different Opex and technical requirements - The opex of keeping a constellation that large in orbit, has not been proven to be cheaper than operating a ground based wireless network (and Starlinks opex is certainly more than a convention geosynchronous satellite system). Starlink operates with an assumption, that has not yet been proven to be true - that the cost per kg to launch something into LEO will go down as time goes on. If this prediction does not prove to be true, then it has no hope of making money, much less being self-sustaining. Beyond this, the shorter lifetime of their sat fleet compared to a geosynchronous sat, means they must be replaced sooner, but its not obvious that the sats are significantly cheaper - this on top of the inherent launch costs, and the much much much larger fleet, implies that there may be a disconnect in pricing.