3 ms·

The people won't have any understanding at all if they can't access Wikipedia. At this point radio astronomy has got to be hitting the long tail of scientific a

by jart 2y ago

The people won't have any understanding at all if they can't access Wikipedia. At this point radio astronomy has got to be hitting the long tail of scientific achievement. Unless someone can demonstrate otherwise, I'd be more concerned about the careers of the people still doing it rather than humanity's ability to understand the universe. The stars ain't going to change. Maybe you'll miss a few supernovas. If I were a radio astronomer I'd actually be rejoicing now, because this gives me a legitimate need for the budget required to build my own Hubble-like telescope, far away from Starlink.

piva00 2y ago
That's the thing, the vast majority of people paying for Starlink's service could already access Wikipedia, Starlink is not democratising internet access in places where people never had access before, as much as that is their PR selling point. The amount of people actually getting to access Wikipedia reliably for the first time because of Starlink is a tiny, tiny fraction of all users. The pure hubris of not even communicating with the scientific community to tackle potential obstacles that could hinder their exploration is what's absolutely wrong, just a one-sided decision to fuck it up because they can. > The stars ain't going to change. Maybe you'll miss a few supernovas. If I were a radio astronomer I'd actually be rejoicing now, because this gives me a legitimate need for the budget required to build my own Hubble-like telescope, far away from Starlink. Oh, that's great, go tell that to the PhDs in radio astronomy right now that might be getting fucked in their observations while on a time crunch to get their doctorate because someone decided to turn on GHz radios in space that mess with their instruments developed through the research of thousands before them. Also tell us the taxpayers that investment in our expensive radio astronomy equipment on Earth is getting less useful because one company decided they can fuck with the spectrum they've been developed to listen to, I'm sure that the observatories on this list [0] don't really care and now are tingling with joy because they can spend even more public money to build radio telescopes but in space™. Have you ever tried to get grants to build instruments that cost 9 figures dollars, and a decade or more to be finished? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radio_telescopes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radio_telescopes

by jart 2y ago

piva00 2y ago

That's the thing, the vast majority of people paying for Starlink's service could already access Wikipedia, Starlink is not democratising internet access in places where people never had access before, as much as that is their PR selling point. The amount of people actually getting to access Wikipedia reliably for the first time because of Starlink is a tiny, tiny fraction of all users. The pure hubris of not even communicating with the scientific community to tackle potential obstacles that could hinder their exploration is what's absolutely wrong, just a one-sided decision to fuck it up because they can. > The stars ain't going to change. Maybe you'll miss a few supernovas. If I were a radio astronomer I'd actually be rejoicing now, because this gives me a legitimate need for the budget required to build my own Hubble-like telescope, far away from Starlink. Oh, that's great, go tell that to the PhDs in radio astronomy right now that might be getting fucked in their observations while on a time crunch to get their doctorate because someone decided to turn on GHz radios in space that mess with their instruments developed through the research of thousands before them. Also tell us the taxpayers that investment in our expensive radio astronomy equipment on Earth is getting less useful because one company decided they can fuck with the spectrum they've been developed to listen to, I'm sure that the observatories on this list [0] don't really care and now are tingling with joy because they can spend even more public money to build radio telescopes but in space™. Have you ever tried to get grants to build instruments that cost 9 figures dollars, and a decade or more to be finished? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radio_telescopes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radio_telescopes