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by chermi 1y ago
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- londons_explore 1y ago0.018% of the worlds population have starlink subscriptions. Yet 100% put up with the atmospheric pollution of a lot of mass being plasmified on the way back to earth, the light pollution, the lack of other services delivered with that spectrum, etc. One might ask how the 99.982% of us will be compensated.
- loeg 1y agoPersonally, I've never suffered from satellite plasma or light pollution from satellites, or spectrum allocation. I suspect most of the 100% are like me.
- hobs 1y ago[flagged]
- ggoo 1y agoScientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution and that advancement is a driving force behind your modern life. So you have (or will) suffer indirectly over time.
- loeg 1y agoI think your attempted connection between astronomy and modern technological conveniences is pretty thin.
- ggoo 1y agoDoes your phone have a camera on it?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution Has it? Destroying the Amazon destroys information. Light pollution simply raises the cost of our accessing it. I suppose one could model this out to some effect on deep-space astronomy's productivity. But if that effect is real--and I've seen zero evidence it is--the solution is a tax on satellite launches to fund more observatories.
- ggoo 1y agoYour response is not in good faith - this is very easy to google.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> this is very easy to google Then it should be easy to cite. Astronomers have complained. But I haven't seen anyone link that to output, including the complaining astronomers.
- runarberg 1y agoSearch term: "low earth orbit satellite effects on astronomy" first result: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01904-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01904-2
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoOP said "scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution," past tense. Your source explores a "potentially large rise in global sky brightness," and an "expected...rapid rise in night sky brightness." These are not risks to be ignored. But we haven't even observed or quantified them, which is the first step to weighing mitigation options. (Which could be physical, e.g. lowering satellite reflectivity. Or geographic, putting more observatories are higher latitudes. Or even statistical, by launching space-based calibration telescopes, or building more array-based observatories.)
- IAmBroom 1y agoUnless you don't breathe air, you can't make the first statement with absolute certainty. "Workin' in these coal mines ain't hurt me none no-how."
- oceanplexian 1y agoA single terminal could serve an entire African village. It's also serving use cases in the Ukraine war, ships at sea, Antarctic research stations, numerous aerospace and military use cases, and so on. DTC is provide texting and emergency services to countless people who might need it in an emergancy, like we saw in North Carolina. Last and most importantly, Starlink exists is to create revenue for SpaceX and to fund the Starship program. The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.
- tgv 1y ago> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high. I beg to disagree. I see no value at all. This must be one of those accelerationist or extropianist/utilitarian beliefs.
- xnx 1y ago> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high. Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless. If that's what rich people want to spend their money on, go nuts.
- thrance 1y agoYou're discounting the fact that building Starship, if successful, has a non-zero chance of taking Musk away from Earth forever. That's a huge potential positive.
- Ancapistani 1y ago> Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless. I strongly disagree. If "Starship to Mars" is a possibility, then so is "Starship to the asteroid belt". It's very close to "Starship to the asteroid belt, capture asteroid, return to Earth orbit" - and that's very close to orbital mining of metals that are rare and valuable on Earth.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> It's very close to "Starship to the asteroid belt, capture asteroid, return to Earth orbit" To put this into perspective, an Earth-Mars round trip costs about 15 km/s; Earth-main Belt about 13 km/s. You'd need to add Δv for returning the mass of the asteroid. But you get your reaction mass for "free." (To be clear, we are hundreds of billions of dollars of capex and decades away from asteroid mining. But the work to get there is decently in line with the work we would need to establish a logistical chain to Mars and back.)
- xnx 1y agoCould we say the same about flights to Hawaii? Small number of people take lavish vacations, everyone else gets the pollution. It's good to look at the costs vs. benefits of everything, but satellite networks are way far down on my list of concern (and I do some astrophotography).
- ggoo 1y agoAfter just coming back from a trip to Maui, yeah you can totally say the same about flights to Hawaii.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoWe should. A global pollution tax would shake out a lot of problems. A strong and trustworthy global democracy to enforce it, and to provide for the general welfare of everyone currently trapped in car-based cities... Is left as a simple exercise to the reader
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> A global pollution tax would shake out a lot of problems There is a reason these taxes are popular among rich countries and opposed by emerging ones.
- chermi 1y agoI'd wager many of those connections are serving much more than one person, considering they're often hubs in rural areas. But screw them. It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to complain about how the poor are causing the privileged some difficulties.
- runarberg 1y agoI would like to see stats how many people got new connections via traditional infrastructure. I bet that number is much higher, probably even an order of magnitude higher. This is HN, so I should probably look for the data my self... EDIT: In 2024 global internet usage grew from 5.3 billion users to 5.5 billion. Starlink grew by only a 1/100 of that in absolute terms, from 2 million users to 4 million over the same time period, majority of users in the USA already had access to the internet via traditional infrastructure. I tried to find how many StarLink users got internet access (or even high speed internet access) that didn’t have one before, but I couldn’t find the numbers. Somebody could correct me, but I very much doubt that number is high enough to consider StarLink to make even a blimp in providing internet to new users. EDIT EDIT: I was off by a factor of 100 in initial EDIT, see child post.
- londons_explore 1y ago> In 2024 global internet usage grew from 5.3 billion users to 5.5 Starlink grew by a similar absolute amount, from 2 million users to 4 million over the same time period, Is this some AI answer or did you foobar this math by a factor of 100?
- runarberg 1y agoWhoops, a standard off by a factor of 100 error. StarLink got 2 million new subscribers in 2024. Meanwhile the internet got 200 million new users. So even if every new StarLink subscriber would be a new internet user (which is obviously not true) they would still only account for 1% of new internet users. The real number is off course much much much lower.
- runarberg 1y agoAlso worth considering is the Uber effect of public infrastructure. Meaning that politicians may use the existence of StarLink as an excuse to delay or cancel public projects which would otherwise have delivered broadband internet to under-served areas via traditional infrastructure. This is similar to how the existence of Uber has caused delays or cancellation of public transit projects because politicians were able to say the people were better served with Uber than public transit.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- inemesitaffia 1y agoEconomics is the study of ...
- j45 1y agoIt's less about percentage. Economic opportunity is largely shifting towards not only having internet access, but performant internet access. Costs will come down. There will be alternatives. But they might have taken much longer to come to market without something like this. I'm not a fanboy, but there's obviously a lot of people who have worked hard to make Starlink a reality.
- runarberg 1y agoTraditional infrastructure is a proven method of bringing both the availability to uderserved areas, as well as bringing the costs down for those already served. StarLink provides a great oportunity for politicians to delay or cancel projects which would otherwise have given broadband connection to underserved areas. In urban planning this is known as the Uber effect.
- chermi 1y agoTake this argument to it's conclusion. Take any point in history and freeze infrastructure. The only option we give ourselves is building more of that same type and maintaining it? So, more riders and more horses to carry messages, but no telegraph? Or maybe more accurately, keeping the medium the same, never using planes or trucks to deliver mail?
- runarberg 1y agoI don‘t follow how that is the conclusion, nor do I understand your analogy. Broadband internet via cables, fiber optics, and radio towers is state of the art in telecommunication infrastructure. Satellite is both slower, more limited, and more prone to various disruptions. The capabilities of the wires and the radio towers is also improving. 5 years ago we didn’t have 5G towers, and 20 years ago fiber optics seemed a distant dream. The only thing freezing traditional telecommunication infrastructure in place are dreams of low earth orbit satellites which will never materialize. If I understand your analogy correctly (which I‘m not sure I do) this is like looking at the new technology of pneumatic tubes and stipulating that all postal delivery will be done using this new technology in the future, and we may as well stop funding the national postal service, remove mail-rooms from our ships and trains, because somebody will build a pneumatic tube that will deliver mail door to door between New York and Chicago.
- gtsop 1y agoOr you know, we could use wires..
- thrance 1y agoMusk and his right-wing propaganda platform plays a big part in the destruction of Western democracy. He deserves the hate he is receiving. Providing internet to an insignificant fraction of the global population does not even begin to offset that.
- Fairburn 1y agoNo, not because of Elon. But I can see how you think so.
- dang 1y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- chermi 1y agoThanks, you're right.