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Starlink is definitely filling the niche market of providing internet connectivity in rural and sparsely populated areas where firms with traditional business m

• seltzered_ 4y ago
  I hope those dreaming of this consider theres knowledgeable engineers and astronomers that think their growth plans are an ecological disaster: https://twitter.com/mxshift/status/1563561387649298432 https://twitter.com/mxshift/status/1563561387649298432 (Edited my comment from initially having a more polarizing tone.)
  • brtkdotse 4y ago
    I read an opinion piece somewhere that Starlink is just busy work to keep SpaceX launching rockets, but because gestures at Google I can’t find it. This Twitter thread nakes this theory plausible.
    • WHATDOESIT 4y ago
      Wasn't that exactly the plan publicized by Musk?
    • wmf 4y ago
      It doesn't make sense to lose money on every rocket launch but make it up in volume. It's more accurate to say that reusable rockets and a LEO satellite constellation can form a mutually-reinforcing flywheel that will lower costs for the eventual Martian fleet.
    • aardvarkr 4y ago
      Why can’t it be both? It absorbs excess capacity, allowing spacex to expand their capacity and achieve economies of scale that are unmatched in the modern world of rocketry while also setting up an exciting new revenue stream that will move them away from relying on government contracts. It also helps them win support from republicans as it serves rural communities and is an example of business innovation that the GOP can support which should help them win more govt contracts. Lots of win-win-win opportunities here
    • modeless 4y ago
      Starlink is absolutely a way to keep SpaceX launching rockets, but that doesn't make it busywork. It's revolutionary and immensely valuable. And, any theorized environmental impact has to be compared to the existing natural process of space dust falling into the atmosphere, and measured against the saved costs worldwide of wires and cell towers and travel not needed, especially as capacity increases in the future. Which is practically impossible to measure, but failing to account for difficult-to-measure costs is a classic error people make when evaluating things like this. And of course there's the extra benefits of coverage over oceans and poles and to ships and planes that you can't get any other way.
      • palata 4y ago
        What about: "measured against the potential saved [...], before realizing that in the end, it probably won't change anything there"? Just like 5G could potentially reduce the overall consumption, before we realize that actually we use it to the point where it increases them. Or just like any other technology, after all.
        • modeless 4y ago
          Starlink directly competes with wired internet. It also competes directly with cell towers in the fixed wireless business and in mobile service for vehicles. Next year Starlink will be competing for mobile service direct to handsets too. Sure, people will use more bandwidth when they get Starlink, because Starlink provides more bandwidth. But that won't increase demand for Starlink's competitors, all it means is people get better service. I find the idea that Starlink doesn't reduce demand for its direct competitors extremely implausible.
    • londons_explore 4y ago
      It's more that the launches can only be cheap if they are launched regularly. If you aren't launching every week, then the costs of those staff start to dominate, and the staff aren't paid less if you launch fewer rockets.
  • pmorici 4y ago
    This guys thread will almost certainly be wrong and look stupid in the long term. Pessimistic predictions sound smart in the present because with anything new it's hard to know how it will play out. Long term though any early issues with new technology tend to be optimized or solved as things evolve.
    • patmcc 4y ago
      >>Long term though any early issues with new technology tend to be optimized or solved as things evolve. I'm absolutely, completely, utterly sure someone said this about the first fossil fuel technologies. "Oh, I'm sure this 'pollution' thing will be solved."
      • throwaway787544 4y ago
      • throwaway98797 4y ago
        are you implying that it would have been better if we delayed or never used fossil fuels?
        • cavisne 4y ago
          #candlesforall
        • palata 4y ago
          Why not?
          • inawarminister 4y ago
            Take a quick look at the economic situations of the world pre-Industrialization. Most riches we experience in this modern life... depended utterly on the energy credits we spent by burning the eons-old reservoirs of solar energy, of dead plants and animals.
  • bilsbie 4y ago
    Lobsters pulling each other back into the pot.
    • retrocryptid 4y ago
      I have no idea what this is in reference to, but I love the cut of your internet commenting jib.
      • bilsbie 4y ago
        Thanks. If it needs explaining I meant this guy is worried about a few 1000 tons of space debris versus the certain eventual end of the species if we don’t become spacefaring.
        • palata 4y ago
          Wait, what? What about we start by not destructing our planet? "No no but look: we destroyed most life on a whole planet, but it will be different in a spaceship: there we will live happily in peace forever, without any problem we can't handle (because we destroyed them with our habitat)"
          • zizee 4y ago
            This is not what the grandparent meant, and also not what anyone sane means when discussing establishing off world colonies. They are talking about an insurance policy if we happen to get hit by an asteroid, or world war III breaks out, or a devastating pandemic, or any number of other civilization (or life) ending events. No one wants the bad thing to happen, but instead they are saying "wouldn't it be smart to have redundancy". They're also not saying "ignore trying to save the environment because we have mars". It is very likely any effort to make mars into a habitable planet would dwarf fixing problems here on earth. They're also not suggesting spending a significant amount of our resources on Mars, to the detriment of life here on earth.
            • palata 4y ago
  • kortilla 4y ago
    Sounds a bit daft when you realize that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of crap deposited by meteors .
  • panick21_ 4y ago
    This thread is mostly making large conclusions from limited study at google. Lots of it isn't really that true. And he makes it quite clear with 'Not interest in discussion'. His mind is made up from when he was at google and that's it. The industry isn't the same as it was then and it was mostly economical that google didn't do the project. The ecological isn't really bad, its mostly that rocket launches produce CO2, but for a global infrastructure project it isn't actually that much. Everything else isn't really that relevant.
  • zizee 4y ago
    Others have pointed out things wrong with that doomsday predicting Twitter thread. I wanted to add a couple of things * Rocket launches are a rounding error on co2 emissions when compared to passenger aircraft * the worries about Kessler syndrome whilst simultaneously worrying about tonnes of aluminum and rare earth minerals (gasp) due to the short orbital lifetime of the satellites are contradictory. * Presumably astronomers are more worried about light pollution rather than ecological concerns On a side note, what is it about people hyping up rare earth materials? The twitter thread tries to make them sound scary. Others try to make them sound harder to find than gold.
    • viczsaszbo 4y ago
      On the light pollution point, twilight is the worst time for satellite brightness, but as the satellites enter the Earth's shadow their brightness rapidly diminishes. Some estimates are 10%-30% data loss during twilight for Vera Rubin observatory and 2% for vlt. A problem for Vera Rubin, but not so much for other observatories. https://www.economist.com/international/2021/11/25/vast-satellite-constellations-are-alarming-astronomers https://www.economist.com/international/2021/11/25/vast-sate... https://www.economist.com/img/b/640/356/90/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20211127_IRC301.png https://www.economist.com/img/b/640/356/90/sites/default/fil...
    • lm28469 4y ago
      > Rocket launches > co2 emissions Good thing rockets only release co2 and not a long list of very nasty things Also good thing they stay at low altitude and don't go through every layers of the atmosphere while releasing said nasty things I'm no rocket engineer but your comment is extremely naive
      • zizee 4y ago
        Naive eh? What "nasty things" do you think are released into "every layer of atmosphere"? Since we're specifically talking about SpaceX and Starlink, let's talk about Falcon and StarShip rockets. Let's look at the "long list of very nasty things". Falcon 9 is expecting to launch a record number of flights this year, recent reports suggesting 52. Falcon 9 burns RP1 (a refined kerosene, very similar to jet fuel), a hydrocarbon that mostly produces CO2 when burnt, but also Carbon monoxide, and plain old carbon. The Falcon 9 has about 200k litres of fuel when fully loaded. It sounds like a lot, but for perspective a fully loaded Airbus A380 has a fuel capacity of 380k litres. So, they output of a record breaking year will be the equivalent of around 25 long distance flights of a large passenger aircraft. I'm not going to find out how many long distance large plan flights are happening, but many estimates are over 100k a day. So a record breaking year outputs a fraction of a percentage that airline flights do each hour. And the "nasty" stuff is mostly CO2, CO, and C. Starship will burn Methane, and will burn even cleaner than Falcon 9. It will also be fully reusable, resulting in less waste again. On the downside, methane is a potent greenhouse gas, so any unburt fuel would be not great. That said, rockets are designed to make the most efficient of fuel, and any unburt fuel is not going to be released in normal operation. > I'm no rocket engineer Colour me shocked! As for going through "every layer" of the atmosphere, I wouldn't get too worried about that. A lot of a rocket's fuel is burnt at lower altitudes (the same level at which passenger and military Jets operate) and the various zone mix readily, and are really so massive that you would have trouble measuring the impact of hundreds to thousands of flights of Starship per year. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-falcon-9-co2-emissions https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-fa... https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-is-the-environmental-impact-of-the-spacex-falcon-heavy-launch/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-is-the-environmental... https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-is-the-environmental-impact-of-the-spacex-falcon-heavy-launch/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-is-the-environmental... https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/32002/what-percentage-of-overall-fuel-does-a-rocket-burn-up-to-get-to-max-q https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/32002/what-percent...
  • rlt 4y ago
    Fully and rapidly reusable rockets, like Starship, if achievable, will change everything. I don’t think peopel comprehend how the economics of launch will change. Satellite breaks down or runs out of propellant? Send up a repair/refuel/reentry vehicle. Astronomers upset about light pollution? Launch a space telescope for them for free, and eliminate that pesky atmosphere for them too.
• hef19898 4y ago
  Or a great way to get additional SpaceX funding througha Starlink spin-off.
• supernovae 4y ago
  I thought the move to do midband mobile spectrum with t-mobile and offer line of site coverage across 100% of the country was a pretty big move. Existing phones can be enabled on this spectrum. I also see it being leveraged well for edge services where classical 5g towers are just too damn expensive to pout out that far
  • justapassenger 4y ago
    You do realize that in terms of speed it makes 2G look like a dream? It’s only good for emergencies. And anyway it was mostly just a publicity stunt, announcing non existing feature (no satellites in orbit are able to do it) to preempt Apple by few days, and them rolling out working product this year.
    • cma 4y ago
      "The public tends to respond to precedents and superlatives," is one of his main quotes. At some point I think he figured out it doesn't even need to be released first to get the precedent credit.
      • justapassenger 4y ago
        Or released at all. Elon does a lot of cool stuff but generates even more vaporware.
    • supernovae 4y ago
      You do realize how valuable this is right? Spot trackers are much worse and cost much more and offer a fraction of the service.
• zizee 4y ago
  On the "big enough market" question, passenger aircraft, and commercial shipping, and US military make for a compelling business case in of themselves. Each of these use cases have customers that will pay over the odds for a reliable connection to remote areas.
• bcrl 4y ago
  The bigger question is will Starlink be able to retain the customers that they have now as more FTTH is deployed deeper into rural communities. My own company's FTTH service is: faster (1Gbps), better (lower latency, no congestion issues) and cheaper (costs from CAD$30-85 per month less than Starlink). Meanwhile, the incumbent here has just launched 8Gbps service. Starlink is better than what came before, but it's not better than fibre at present.