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I don't like putting more junk into LEO than we absolutely have to because it disrupts our space telescopes (which the EU has also invested over 1 billion euro
by RedShift1 4y ago
I don't like putting more junk into LEO than we absolutely have to because it disrupts our space telescopes (which the EU has also invested over 1 billion euro in). I much rather have the funding go to improving land based internet infrastructure.
- 0xDEF 4y agoPutting more junk in LEO is a serious problem but SpaceX started this and now others will also enter the market. Why should Starlink have monopolistic control over the high bandwidth SATCOM market?
- RedShift1 4y ago> Why should Starlink have monopolistic control over the high bandwidth SATCOM market? I agree, but those satellites shouldn't have been there to begin with in my opinion. But it's too late now.
- baq 4y agoGenie is out of the bottle. DOD has seen Starlink in a real hot war and they love it. The constellation has become a national security asset. If it disappears, Pentagon will pay for another one.
- runlaszlorun 4y agoIs there serious talk about launching one? They honestly should.
- panick21_ 4y agoThere are many. Lots of other large constellations being planned. Some from former GEO companies. Amazon. DoD is doing its own as well.
- panick21_ 4y agoWhy should the not be there? They are in an orbit that has essentially 0 practical chance at causing long term harm. They provide a service that is clearly very useful.
- scotty79 4y ago> Why should Starlink have monopolistic control over the high bandwidth SATCOM market? They don't. There are other satellite internet providers they just don't use LEO constallations.
- jevgeni 4y agoLand based internet infrastructure doesn't solve the problem described in the article. Specifically: > It will secure the Union’s sovereignty and autonomy by guaranteeing fewer dependencies on third-country infrastructure, and the provision of secured telecommunications services for EU governments in critical scenarios where terrestrial networks are absent or disrupted, as observed, for instance, in the unfolding war in Ukraine.
- wcoenen 4y agoIn a large enough war, space infrastructure would actually be very vulnerable. Imagine a cloud of a few tons of shrapnel, spread around in an orbit that intersects all the 550km orbits of the Starlink constellation. This shrapnel cloud could be deployed with a single launch.
- frankreyes 4y agoIt's not that simple. Because enemy nation states also have their own satellites. They will just be damaging their own infrastructure, specially Russia with their huge land to cover they need their satellites.
- wcoenen 4y agoI think these things would happen as a result of a process of escalations, not as a result of rational decisions. Perhaps one side temporarily blinds a spy satellite with a laser[1], to prevent it from observing something sensitive. Then the other side reacts by blinding another satellite in the same way, but oops, the laser was a bit too powerful and it does permanent damage to the sensors. Then a single satellite is outright destroyed in retaliation. Etcetera. [1] https://theconversation.com/russians-reportedly-building-a-satellite-blinding-laser-an-expert-explains-the-technology-186890 https://theconversation.com/russians-reportedly-building-a-s...
- jevgeni 4y agoSo the solution is to either do nothing, or do something that the russians will have even less trouble destroying?
- RobotToaster 4y agoI agree, but in the capitalistic economy that we unfortunately live in, competition is the only thing that will lower prices.
- robertlagrant 4y agoCompetition is almost the only thing that has ever lowered prices, raised wages, raised quality and invented new things. It's weird to demonise competition.
- skinnymuch 4y agoYeah under capitalism that’s sometimes true. Otherwise, Cuba has great doctors and great medicine for example. A lot of America’s competition is BS. Companies behaving like cartels is more common.
- robertlagrant 4y ago> Companies behaving like cartels is more common. Companies can start to behave like a government and reduce or eliminate competition, it's true. I don't think it's proportionally a big effect, but happy to read sources.
- WithinReason 4y agoThe satellite orbits decay, they don't stay up indefinitely
- defrost 4y agoThere are 10s of thousands planned and other companies eager to put up their own constellations. Those that fall are planned to fall and to be replaced .. the issue is that are now thousands (and will be more) sats in LEO orbits polluting the night sky with both visible light and transmission spectra energy. Doesn't matter much to those that live in cities and can't see the stars in any case .. but it's a blight to those that formally had clear skys, and to both visible and radio spectrum astronomers.
- WithinReason 4y agoThey are not visible to people when the satellites are in the shadow of the Earth (at night)
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> are not visible to people when the satellites are in the shadow of the Earth (at night) Night is altitude dependent. Satellites can be in sunlight while the ground below is pitch black. (That said, I find the complaints about visual pollution silly.)
- defrost 4y agoOut of interest, where do you live on the light polltion map [1], Bortle scale [2]? Do you have any sense of what you're missing out on or how bright and distracting tens of thousands of LEO sats glinting in the sun are, or to what degree they mess up long exposure visible astronomy shots, or the noise they make for radio astronomy? I have no issue believing that you find "complaints about visual pollution silly" .. I'm guessing that would be because it has zero impact on you. [1] https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bortle_scale
- j_san 4y agoI'm european and dont like thousands of satelites swirrling around in the sky as well but I'd rather have government-founded satelites for the public benefit than from some way-too-rich sociopath's private company. Of course - this project would probably not exist without Starlink, so credit where credit is due. Personally I find it quite sad that we're destroying the night sky in the sense that before these projects people could look in the sky and know that all humans before them had more or less the same sight. Now there are just so many satellites swirling around in your sight. I find that quite sad.
- pxmpxm 4y ago> some way-too-rich sociopath's private company. I am certainly you've developed this view in November of 2022. Meanwhile any European stuck with DSL - which would be most of my family - would be ecstatic to get sensible bandwidth today.
- ohgodplsno 4y agoMusk has been proving he's a danger to society for the better part of the last ten years.
- sgc 4y agoAnd yet, it does not matter when anybody became aware, but when it became a real problem. Further, one can make use of a service or product today, and still be happy that there are better alternatives in the pipeline. I am certain that is how many Tesla owners view their vehicles, for example.
- dminik 4y agoThere's a few comments in this thread from self proclaimed Europeans, but this one is the weirdest. The internet infrastructure here is great. I haven't seen a sub 10mbps offering in years (with 100mbps being fairly common). The only spotty places are small villages (which is a rather common theme everywhere). Europeans aren't stuck with DSL.
- 4y ago
- frankreyes 4y agoThe whole point of Starlink is that it's economically unfeasible to reach everywhere. Specially in rural areas, neither cables, fiber optics or 5G will make it. Keep wasting money in Europe.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoIf there is a point to bring electricity into a village, then there is a point to bring there also a fiber.
- frankreyes 4y agoInfrastructure has to be self financed otherwise it's a waste of resources. That's why rural areas do not have internet. It fails every time
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoBy this logic they should not have electricity and water pipes as well.
- frankreyes 4y agoYou're moving the goalposts. First came the cities and then came the public infrastructure. 200 years ago none of that infrastructure existed yet cities were already there. That's because there was a need for it, which was self financed. Then someone had the idea to reverse the cause effect relationship in a way to promote moving people to smaller towns and away from big cities. To the point of Italy selling houses for €1 to motivate people to move back from big cities. It doesn't work.
- doubleg72 4y agoThis is a rather stupid comment.. so all public utilities are failed, wasted resources?
- justeleblanc 4y ago
- deeviant 4y agoI'm a very big fan of astronomy, but I can't seem to care at all about satellites blocking terrestrial telescopes. Ubiquitous connectivity is simply a larger concern than land based telescopes. Further, space based telescopes seem to be the future of the discipline. While land based radio telescopes are less effected by satellites. A bigger concern is Kepler syndrome, but that threat seems minimal in LEO.
- coder543 4y agoKessler syndome, not Kepler, just FYI
- deeviant 4y agoYes, thank you. Too late to edit =/
- rtkwe 4y agoLand based will have an important role to play for a long time simply because we can easily service, upgrade and design new experiments for them which for a long time isn't going to be easy for space telescopes.
- kstenerud 4y agoI'd much rather have available-everywhere internet whose use isn't subject to one rich man's whims and ideologies.
- scotty79 4y agoI don't like putting out huge amount of objects on any orbit because if they collide bits of them might spread to any orbit depending on the size of chunks and exact collision geometry.
- panick21_ 4y agoThis is vastly overestimated problem. Changing orbits takes a lot of energy and most of these crashes don't have enough to put significant materials in a significant different orbit. If something is already on an orbit that decades within a decade or so, it still will.
- scotty79 4y agoIf two things collide heads on there's decent probability of some chunks going twice as fast and twice as fast is 4 times the energy which means way higher orbit.
- PeterisP 4y agoA fragment of a low orbit collision can't end up in a higher circular orbit, because the old orbit and new orbit inevitably intersect at the point/height of the collision, so in the best/worst case the new (more energetic) orbit's perigee/low point (which is the one that matters for the drag and deorbiting - and small fragments deorbit faster than large satellites) happens to be exactly is at the height of the collision and only it's apogee is raised; and in every other case the new orbit has a much higher apogee but the perigee is even lower, which means that the fragment deorbits on its own even faster. So no, if satellite swarms are in orbits low enough to deorbit on their own within some years (e.g. 550km for Starlink), then a mass collision doesn't result in a Kessler syndrome as the resulting debris is effectively self-clearing. Doing the same at twice the height (e.g. 1100km original Starlink plan) would have that risk though.