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SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth
- spullara 3mo agoI think most of this thread is missing the part where this will also work for cellphones and give you truly global coverage.
- onemoresoop 3mo agoDo we really need that? Most of us are fine with relays. The coverage in remote parts could be handled by way fewer sattelites. 100k is a lot of sattelites. Seems that with 100k leo we’d have 24/7 live coverage of every inch on earth but do we really want that?
- nomel 3mo ago> we’d have 24/7 live coverage of every inch on earth but do we really want that? I think you misunderstand the maths a bit. If the goal is high bandwidth, which requires high density, for specific, randomly distributed, parts of the earth, then, by the fundamental laws of gravity and orbits, you'll also have coverage over the rest of it, whether you like it or not.
- connicpu 3mo agoJust coverage is already provided by the 600-something direct to cell satellites already in orbit yes, but you need more if you want it to be useful beyond loading text-only posts or sending SMS
- roysting 3mo agoIt also creates a private internet on which “private enterprise” does not have to abide by the Constitution or any subordinate laws. Sure, it’s just “fear mongering” now, just like digital ID, digital currency, mass surveillance, and speech police were 30 or so years ago, but what happens when terrestrial cable internet gets too expensive and everyone’s subject to Elon’s space internet? It’s basically the similar playbook as the cable/copper phone network giving way to the internet and wireless and … whoopsie … you also have a tracking and permanent surveillance device on you with no ability to keep thousands of corporations harvesting your body for data and information.
- kortilla 3mo agoIt doesn’t. The network is governed by the FCC and any other regulatory agency where they place RF on the ground.
- roysting 3mo agoYou have a very peasant perspective. And that's not meant as an insult, it's just the kind of perspective of a peasant about what is going on in the kingdom, let alone in the palace's inner chambers.
- tarpitt 3mo agoDo ISPs have to comply with the 1st ammendment? My understanding was that they have some sort of common carrier law but net neutrality did not hold up.
- kube-system 3mo agoThere are already zero private companies that have to follow the constitution, since it never applied to them, ever. As another person mentioned, radio crosses international boundaries, but it is regulated by regulating ground equipment and people and organizations on the ground. You'll see some countries on https://starlink.com/map https://starlink.com/map that are greyed out because of regulatory issues... for example, some countries such as India heavily control the use of satellite comms
- asdff 3mo agoThis would allow you to throw a flock camera up literally anywhere on earth. If we are being honest, we are probably only a couple years out from real Orwellian mass surveillance states, totally censored and mined communications, and general purpose compute restricted or made illegal I wouldn't even be surprised. All the incentives lead right to that and we are halfway there in many ways already.
- roysting 3mo agoI hate to break it to you, you are already in an "Orwellian mass surveillance state" and just don't realize it, just as the majority of people in the Orwellian mass surveillance state also were not aware of. Case in point, are you aware that the whole 2+2=5 line was a deliberate falsification of a perfectly sound and even healthy statement that Orwell stole and perverted, i.e., 2 + 2 + the people's enthusiasm = 5 ??? Then, when you start finding out that the CIA, at the same time that it was conducting its MKUltra "experiments", was aggressively buying up all the rights to 1984 and then pushed them into schools and made the movies in close collaboration with Propagandawood; you have to at least start asking yourself extremely uncomfortable questions about whether 1984 was actually a warning or preconditioning, aka grooming.
- dawnerd 3mo ago* only when you’re outdoors with good line of sight and only in geographic areas they allow.
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo agoThat's usually how satellites work.
- dawnerd 3mo agoThere’s some folks here that seem to think otherwise
- Scroll_Swe 3mo agoYou really want Starlink to be bad, huh?
- dawnerd 3mo agoDid I say that? I’m being realistic and not drinking the Elon koolaid. I think starlink is great and it’s hugely improved life for a lot of people and made remote work a lot nicer.
- probablynotai 3mo agoWifi indoors, starlink outdoors
- bilsbie 3mo agoI’m not sure if that’s true of these use cellular frequencies.
- dawnerd 3mo agoYou can already try it with T-Mobile and it’s pretty limited. Great if you need sms and there’s no other towers around. Still requires line of sight.
- dopa42365 3mo agoInternet works on phones? The more you know.
- downrightmike 3mo agoI explicitly do not want that
- formvoltron 3mo agosoooo good that they'll burn up one day and this nonsense can finally end. investors provide infinite capital to nonsense projects so that the showman can create an endless show that will attract new nonsense capital. sorry but already in rural morocco they have 200 mbit internet for 20 bucks a month. Yes there are some 6 wheeled vehicles roaming the planet that might really benefit from these 100k satellites. but for 99.9% of everyone else? we're good!
- 1234letshaveatw 3mo ago[flagged]
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo agoStarlink was funded internally by SpaceX. What investors are you talking about?
- wmf 3mo agoSpaceX's money came from outside investors.
- vessenes 3mo ago… and customers. It’s cashflow positive.
- thinkthatover 3mo agonot since X.AI got folded in
- cortesoft 3mo agoWhich is unrelated to Starlink?
- formvoltron 3mo agothose who buy & sell stocks & options & provide exit liquidity.
- ck2 3mo agono, just no make them pre-pay a multi-trillion cleanup and cancer fund for all the toxic waste, not just the launches but pollution burning up in the atmosphere * https://satellitemap.space/ https://satellitemap.space/ * https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellites-pollution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellit... * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787042
- usui 3mo agoYou want them to pay a multi-trillion dollar clean-up and cancer fund for car-sized multi-year-service-life satellites burning up in the atmosphere? How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay? EDT: I should have clarified I'm not only talking about incumbent satellite companies because people are replying about the launch volume. Think about pollution from oil companies and coal plants and consider how that compares to an aerospace company. How much have polluting companies been fined relative to multiple trillions of dollars?
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay? https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/launch-monster-spacex-has-lofted-more-satellites-than-everyone-else-in-history-combined https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/... "Elon Musk's company has now lofted more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined — and its lead is likely to grow over the coming months and years." (And most of the other providers don't plan for theirs to burn up within a few years. Giant disposable LEO constellations are new.)
- ck2 3mo agowe cannot have private trillionaires milking "privatize the profits and social the costs" no more, it has to end immediately they aren't just silo-ing their wealth, they are leveraging against societies, funding far-right violent politics against society even the evil Koch-brothers have cancer wings in hospitals around the country, Musk doesn't give a dime to charity, just his own foundation which he controls to only do what he wants to manipulate pre-pay costs to society before damaging society
- consumer451 3mo agoWhen Starlink first became available here in poor-ish Central-EU, I was excited. Then, only months later, but after years of planning: EU funding brought fiber to my farm area, at ~$25/900mbps 10ms. While my story is just n=1, I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things. However, I am dumb, and very open to be convinced.
- CrankyBear 3mo agoThere are many places, even in the US, where your only alternative is--believe it or not--dial-up modems. Others had painfully slow--1 Mbps up, 5 Mbps down--Internet.
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo agoPeople in rural parts of America where ISPs don't want to expand into.
- adventured 3mo agoThey seem to be expanding even across rural America. These days it's fairly common for small and medium size towns to have access to 500mbps-1gbps for $50-$90 per month, and essentially all small cities and above. Reddit is overflowing with threads where people are getting AT&T to give them 1gbps for $30-$35 per month. Comcast has repeatedly offered me 1gbps for ~$50/m for five years locked-in. I have no practical use for it. The US has more broadband than it knows what to do with at this point. Somebody needs to figure out a mass public use for home 1gbps+.
- jonah 3mo agoFastest option I can get where I am is 260 Mbps for $250 from a local wireless ISP... This makes starlink tempting but for that I'd have to run cabling 50 plus. M to get the this where it has a clear view of the sky... (Edit) A nearby small town is installing municipal fiber right now, which is great, but that's half an hour away.
- 3mo ago
- 1234letshaveatw 3mo agoMusk is nothing if not ambitious
- ryandvm 3mo agoEh, his promises are ambitious. And the gullibility of his investors is bottomless. I too plan on increasing my revenue 100-fold by 2030.
- JumpCrisscross 3mo ago> his promises are ambitious First scalable launch system and scaled LEO constellation are more than promises.
- cortesoft 3mo ago> And the gullibility of his investors is bottomless You can certainly have a problem with Elon Musk, but the people who have invested money with him over the years have done quite well for themselves.
- ggoo 3mo agoSoon enough these will start showing ads - I pray for our night sky.
- lousken 3mo ago[dead]
- prescriptivist 3mo agoI spent last weekend under some of the darkest sky you'll find in the eastern US. Miles from cell service. I had a starlink portable with me and it was nice to get some service and stay in touch, but to watch the sky is to see satellites everywhere. I've spent a dozen or so weeklong stretches in the last few years completely off grid, only connection being bringing up the inReach once a day. At this point I actually get anxiety at the end of such a trip, knowing that I'm going to be wading through a morass of notifications and slack/email/texts. Doing a once or twice a day sync via starlink didn't really bother me so much when I'm out in the backcountry this last trip. I'd love to be rid of all of it, but that's not how the world works today.
- rishikeshs 3mo agoYour comment was interesting. i just read somewhere about spacex slowly destroying our dark night skies due to their satellite constellations. Thoughts?
- porphyra 3mo agoStarlink satellites are intentionally designed to be very dark, but they become more visible when the sun is about to come up or if there are super bright light sources on the ground nearby to reflect off of them.
- MarkusQ 3mo agoIf there are super bright light sources on the ground nearby that are bright enough to produce a visible reflection off a satellite, you are about to be dead.
- garbagewoman 3mo agoThats a nice intent i guess but doesn’t seem to work well in practice
- prescriptivist 3mo agoYeah, I meant to point out there that there is a tension between the technology that I don't mind, but the infrastructure for it that I do mind. I don't really know what the answer is. I do know that we're probably not going to put this toothpaste back in the tube.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- seydor 3mo agoIs that because China applied to launch 200000 satellites?
- askvictor 3mo agoApplied to who?
- seydor 3mo agothe International Telecommunications Union
- throw1234567891 3mo agoYou mean they followed some international process and didn't go cowboy by assuming the planet belongs to them?
- inemesitaffia 3mo agoYou think SpaceX didn't apply to the ITU?
- porphyra 3mo agoOne cool thing about Starlink is that it can potentially improve latency across the world. In optical fibers the light travels only two thirds as fast due to the index of refraction. But in space you can use a laser to send the data in a straight line in a vacuum.
- wolvoleo 3mo agoUm yeah but the transmission path is longer and the equipment and signal processing on each hop also adds latency. I really doubt it'll make much of a difference.
- cortesoft 3mo agoI doubt the transmission path is longer, fiber optic cables aren't laid in perfectly straight lines between all points.
- wolvoleo 3mo agoI mean with satellite it's longer. You have to go up and down, and starlink sats prefer sending data streams back to the ground as soon as they can (because the laser interconnect capacity is limited). And variable, no less due to the high differential speed of the satellites. And the signal conditioning is much more involved than on the ground.
- porphyra 3mo agoRegarding the going "up and down", Starlink satellites orbit at about 500 km above the Earth's surface compared to the Earth's radius of 6400 km. For longer distances it will still be worthwhile. Right now, you're right that we are limited by satellite laser interconnect capacity though.
- downrightmike 3mo agobasic math says light travels faster across the surface shorter distances than orbit.
- arjie 3mo agoBoy it's going to be exciting when we can get Internet access literally everywhere. Excited for humanity's return to space infrastructure!
- tarpitt 3mo agoI feel like I already have internet access pretty much everywhere with cell towers, and even then if I went to the middle of alaska or montana I could already get sattelite internet before starlink with hugesnet which is fine as long as you're not gaming or something. But at the same time I think the low-earth-orbit is pretty nice in terms of latentcy, it's a pretty innovative approach. I just don't get the idea behind AI datacenter sattelites and moving all this non-comms equipment up in space.
- singingtoday 3mo agoThen you live in a developed country and do go off grid. Your experience doesn't match most of the world.
- croes 3mo agoSo SpaceX is just an overvalued internet provider?
- tarpitt 3mo agoSay what you will, but it's staying above cloud providers.
- croes 3mo agoNot for long because it needs replacement constantly. Must be the most unsustainable way to provide internet
- small_model 3mo agoThey launch them all the time, similar to telcos digging up copper to replace fibre or upgrading infra as new tech improves.
- croes 3mo agoThey have to, otherwise the internet is gone. My provider took 3 years from the signing for fibre to the actual delivery. But I still had internet before. Worse but internet. If SpaceX stops, internet is pretty quickly gone. And it seems SpaceX is its own best customer when they need to put up and replace so many satellites.
- small_model 3mo agoThey last 7-10 years so they would need to stop launching for a decade, not going to happen.
- croes 3mo agoThey have a average lifespan of 5 years and need constant maintenance
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- SubiculumCode 3mo agoSo, at some point, will our devices connect to their corporate offices in any environment, even without providing access to your network, short of putting it inside a Faraday Cage?
- 0x59 3mo agoHow could this not end poorly? I cant think of one realistic scenario where there world benefits.
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoYou can’t imagine the number of lives saved with cellular access everywhere and Internet broadband where it has never been?
- tarpitt 3mo agoProbably not that many lives, maybe like a handful of hikers every year I would guess? I think what attracts hikers in the first place is the danger, and the idea that they're exploring an area that is "outside of civilization"
- wpm 3mo agosatcoms have been accessible for decades. I have a satellite phone. It's an iPhone 14 Pro. None of this is actually necessary.
- ychompinator 3mo ago[dead]
- 0x59 3mo agoArguing that broadband internet saves lives reminds me of the argument that Jesus saves lives and the love of Jesus must be spread around the world.
- tim-tday 3mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome I wonder what spacex will be worth when launching satellites is impossible for a couple hundred years.
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoStop trying to make Kessler syndrome a thing - it was never a thing, it isn’t a thing, it will never be a thing. It is just pearl clutching by those too afraid of modern life. Gravity wasn’t a documentary.
- micromacrofoot 3mo agoI mean it might be a thing in 100 years but we're not even close now
- WillAdams 3mo agoWhich means that we need to act responsibly and plan ahead now so that it is not a thing 100 years hence.
- micromacrofoot 3mo agoif we knew with certainty a doomsday meteor was heading towards earth 100 years from now we still couldn't plan for it, this is not how our species works
- serf 3mo agoa new hot take spotted : newtonian physics isn't a thing. let's see how well the freeways work once we stop cleaning up after the accidents.
- NetMageSCW 3mo agoI see you haven’t read the paper. How long do you think Kessler syndrome is projected to take? How long do you think natural clearing of debris at Starlink’s altitudes is?
- dhfbshfbu4u3 3mo agoThey’ll need this for their orbital data centers (aka Starmind) https://www.spacex.com/spacexai/starmind https://www.spacex.com/spacexai/starmind Elon really needs to drop some cash on Iain Bank’s family, if he’s going to keep stealing ideas/names for his empire.
- walrus01 3mo agoI've read the entire series of Culture novels and don't recall seeing "starmind" as a term anywhere. Mind, yes, but used in a somewhat different context, as the minds are both sentient conversational AI entities with equal or greater intellect to a meat-based human or alien, and also semi-godlike AI powers (a single Mind has the capacity to have a 1:1 conversation with all of the residents of an Orbital if it wants to).
- dhfbshfbu4u3 3mo agoOk, Walrus.
- zakki 3mo agoWill it make our sky "cloudy" most of the time?
- drnick1 3mo agoLast time I checked, you couldn't get a public IPv4 through Starlink, let alone a fixed one. This makes it a non-starter as a backup link for self-hosters, a use case it is well suited for.
- alexnewman 3mo agoi have one
- lewi 3mo agoI'm using it for this purpose. You can just run a tunnel/tailscale net/dyndns.
- Salgat 3mo agoYou do get a public IPv6 IP, which is fine for most people (and with a simple script on a cron can keep a AAAA up to date, not that it changes often). And like someone else said, if you insist, you can use something like tailscale to punch a hole in Starlink's global NAT.
- mlindner 3mo agoThey do supply public IPv4 but only to the more expensive plans. https://starlink.com/support/article/1192f3ef-2a17-31d9-261a-a59d215629f4 https://starlink.com/support/article/1192f3ef-2a17-31d9-261a...
- daniel_iversen 3mo agoSurely it’ll be an issue some day for other space activities with all the SpaceX kit up there? I know space is very large :) but surely it’d be hard to scan, calculate and control trajectories of millions of orbiting tiny things when you’re launching rockets and things? A spacex satellite almost crashed into the Chinese space station some years ago and the Chinese had to perform an evasive manoeuvre I believe
- onemoresoop 3mo agoSpace could become so full of junk that it may actually harm operations.
- arkensaw 3mo agospace is very large but low earth orbit is not.
- connicpu 3mo agoSatellites flying at 360km (the target altitude for starlink V3) deorbit very quickly without regular burns. Dead starlink satellites are guaranteed to come down within 5 years.
- drak0n1c 3mo agoWith modern automation and AI, tracking and adjusting paths is better every year. Also, anything with malfunctioning movement will quickly descend and burn up in the atmosphere at that very low orbit.
- jraby3 3mo agoYes and I'll become another space industry. Cleanup. Sort of like how (coal/ocean/etc) pollution is both a problem and multi billion dollar a year industry.
- kome 3mo agoi want to see a dark sky at night
- buzzerbetrayed 3mo agoIf you truly gave a shit, it wouldn’t be this you’re complaining about
- duskdozer 3mo agoHow do you know what the parent complains about other than this?
- chasd00 3mo agoStarlink is going to become a phone carrier that doesn’t have to pay for pole or tower access. This is the real story, so long att, verizon, and T-Mobile. Starlink is going to beat them on price and availability. Just think, no international calling fees or hassle and cheaper mobile rates.
- gsquaredxc 3mo agoStarlink is going to be a cellular company, except instead of maintaining cheap metal frames, they have to physically launch the antennas to space every 5 years.
- vanshg 3mo agoHow would it work indoors?
- prescriptivist 3mo agoA more accurate description would be that starlink will become the trunk, and possibly the service. Local cell services will own the poles but will essentially provide access for starlink customers. It's not a bad business idea, actually. People pay $30-40 a line for starlink cell service, starlink provides the big pipes so to speak and splits the bill with the local companies that put up the last mile towers. In rural areas you can put up isolated 5G towers that have their own dish connection to starlink, no need to string a line to the towers anymore...
- Alpha3031 3mo agoIt was never necessary to run fibre to any specific individual tower. Microwave backhaul works fine of you have good coveragef the area. Less well if you don't. If cell providers wanted to put up enough towers that's a self solving problem.
- prescriptivist 3mo agoI live in the land of trees (Maine) and cell service sucks, line of sight between microwave towers is a non-starter AFAICT, but line of sight to the sky is do-able everywhere.
- diddid 3mo agoI think the end game is convenience. Nobody really needs anything more than 200mb/s. If the average person can have their entire family stream their favorite Netflix show at the same time then that’s good enough. “Now lil Jimmy can watch it in the minivan too!”
- mparramon 3mo ago>Nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM
- tarpitt 3mo agoEh, I've got 200mb/s fiber for cheap. It's pretty good and definitely bottlenecked by crowded wifi and upstream sources moreso than the ISP. Ethernet helps somewhat. At the same time, I do kind of want more bandwidth just so I can download massive files like model weights quickly, host a web service out of my own house, seed torrents, etc. What might cryptocurrency look like if typical residential internet speeds were measured in gb/s? Perhaps bitcoin might be capable of more than 7 tps! But to be fair, I am a nobody.
- esperent 3mo agoI remember ~20 years ago upgrading my house line to get something crazy like 0.5mbs and the sales guy telling me that I didn't really need it and was wasting money upgrading from my current ~0.2mbs. Those numbers are fudged of course, I don't remember exactly how long ago or from what to what I was upgrading. My point is that we've always been having people say you don't need faster internet. And yet, I still want, and use, faster internet. 200mbs I would consider fine. But I'd still feel the difference at 500mbs or 1gbs.
- andriy_koval 3mo agowhat you do to fill difference between 200, 500 and 1gb?..
- singingtoday 3mo agoUploading large files is probably the biggest thing, 4k video streaming (out) while others in my house are streaming in or playing games with no slowdown. I remember watching hours pass uploading files on my 200 mbit. Still take time but much faster with gigabit (measured at 940 bmit, so not the full 1gbit)
- senderista 3mo agoWill this be the last generation to remember the night sky?
- spongebobstoes 3mo agolight pollution already means the night sky is largely invisible outside of remote areas
- ofjcihen 3mo ago“You can’t see it most places so who cares if it goes away” is my most charitable interpretation of this.
- morkalork 3mo agoI've never seen a glacier before, have you?
- browski 3mo agoYeah. Hiked on and around them in PNW mountains. And?
- defrost 3mo agoGood for you getting that in before they disappear, probably got to see the night sky also, you can tell your grandchildren about that. * https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-mountain-glaciers https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
- browski 3mo ago[flagged]
- Bolwin 3mo agoGlaciers have never been accessible to most people. The night sky has, until recently.
- oxqbldpxo 3mo agoEM is an ignorant.
- khazhoux 3mo agoThe sky gets visually and physically polluted. Some parts of the world that haven’t mastered cables get faster internet. Elon gets richer. Win-win-win?
- horns4lyfe 3mo agoI’m shocked by the number of people here thinking you won’t be able to see the night sky because of 100k satellites. Is this site getting dumber?
- maipen 3mo agoThe mistake was thinking the majority was smart. There’s a lot of Elon haters here; Anything related to Elon will always have the dumbest comment section. You know it’s dumb when they say things like “it’s not needed. We already have this. i don’t see the point in this new tech” .
- Fraterkes 3mo agoPeople are complaining about their views getting polluted, they’re not saying they literally can’t see the night sky. If you’d like hn comments to be smarter, consider starting with your own.
- redsocksfan45 3mo ago[dead]
- elteto 3mo agoYou can’t get nuanced, well thought out takes here on anything AI and Elon related unfortunately. It’s frustrating because I often come to HN for the smart contrarian takes. But now I have to search really hard to find the opposite.
- linzhangrun 3mo agoCommercially speaking, does Starlink really need 100x bandwidth? Starlink's target market is limited. It is very good for ships, remote area, but not necessary in cities where most people live. I am not sure whether the launch and maintenance cost of another 100k satellites is necessary for such a limited market, unless the cost of launch (Starship) and the satellites themselves drops greatly.
- artisinal 3mo agoEurope alone has millions of potential customers: https://www.esa.int/Applications/Connectivity_and_Secure_Communications/Analysis_shows_benefits_for_broadband_connectivity_in_Europe https://www.esa.int/Applications/Connectivity_and_Secure_Com...
- downrightmike 3mo agoBut they get internet on their phones for like 15 euros a month because they have competition.
- bell-cot 3mo ago[dead]
- tootie 3mo agoOn twitter yesterday, someone posted a question about SpaceX/xAI making a poor financial decision and Musk answered saying SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of the Earth. His megalomania is really running wild so I would not put much stock in this. They are asking the FCC for permission to launch 100k satellites which puts this very much in the "aspirational" category. They neither have plans nor approval to do it. This is a combination of ego and signalling to SPCX investors because it's down nearly 10% from IPO. https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:57vlzz2egy6eqr4nksacmbht/bafkreigz7o7622lixi5v2tlyerdi4p7jcbuisixn3ht47iphlji4hduhoy https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:57vlzz2...
- throw1234567891 3mo agoMaybe he literally means that Space X is wort to him more than the rest of Earth.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- TheAdamist 3mo agoHe really does want to speed run everything sci fi, Kessler syndrome here we come!
- palisade 3mo agoright panic, wrong fear starlink are too low to cause kessler syndrome... but his starmind might
- sidcool 3mo agoI understand no one here likes Elon. But does it mean we find justifications for our collective bias in everything his companies do?
- kaliqt 3mo agoYes, it would seem so.
- mparramon 3mo agoI like him! :D
- sidcool 3mo agoI don't like him. I don't hate him either. He's not a thing in my life. But the companies are, SpaceX etc. do impact me. Basically I would hate to see HN become Reddit.
- singingtoday 3mo agoIt's definitely happening
- esperent 3mo agoIt's an American company polluting the night sky for the entire world, for a service that will ultimately be access gated by the US government/private industry. That's where the negative sentiment is coming from. Who cares which of the many equally shitty US billionaires/oligarchs is funding it?
- gordonhart 3mo agoDo you feel the same way about Guowang and Qianfan, two very real very large constellations notably not funded by US billionaires?
- throwaway132448 3mo ago
- N_Lens 3mo agoFiber is just getting cheaper and cheaper, more resilient, and is faster too. Plus it has no value like copper so thieves dont steal it. I don’t think it’s wise to pollute all of low earth orbit with Musk’s satellites, that area belongs to all of us collectively.
- Rohansi 3mo agoI think the main goal is direct to phones rather than being an alternative to fiber. But it's also a very good option for people living in rural areas with poor service (shoddy DSL).
- downrightmike 3mo agopopulation crashing will have people concentrate around cities like what is happening in Tokyo because that is where all other services will be. Rural is economic poverty.
- atomicthumbs 3mo agois it cheaper to build a cellular tower or a satellite
- small_model 3mo ago[flagged]
- eleventen 3mo agoCasual, totally unnecessary prejudice against rural people to make your point.
- dtagames 3mo agoI just finished a long RV trip and I can tell you it's hard to underestimate the importance of internet access (which also means Wi-Fi calling and access to maps and weather) across our entire, enormous nation. It's important not only for individuals but even more for businesses. Despite cell phone company ads with handsome celebrities in the desert, cell phones actually do not work in many places. But people do need to live and work in those places.
- mplewis 3mo agowe should lay fiber about it, not do this wasteful atmosphere polluting bullshit
- nazcan 3mo agoJust a choice of polluting the ground or the air.
- croes 3mo agoHow often do you need to replace the cable in the ground compared to the satellites in the air?
- fy20 3mo agoI can give an example. My parents live in the UK, and their house was built in 1985. A couple of years ago the copper phone line had to be replaced as it had degraded somebow. The operator had to dig up and reinstall their driveway, brick pathway and garden. Now the operator is installing fibre to replace copper phone lines, so again they need to dig it up. One days work for one house. Multiply that across an entire nation, and work out how much diesel is burned for that. Where they live you can't get cable (not very common in the UK), but if it was available I guess there would have been another digging day in the 90s.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- oatmeal1 3mo agoIf they pay an appropriate tax for light pollution affecting telescopes on earth, I'm all for it.
- danny_codes 3mo agoLVT works just as well in space.
- baranul 3mo agoAt what point are people going to have a conversation about all the pollution and the consequences of so many satellites burning up (metals and other toxic stuff) in the atmosphere and fragments falling wherever. 100k... how much can we keep putting up and let keep falling around the world? Multiple other companies and countries want to do the same as SpaceX.
- maipen 3mo ago[flagged]
- downrightmike 3mo agoPopulations are far below replacement. Degrowth is assured.
- ACCount37 3mo agoPopulations may drop, but why would you want quality of life to remain constant?
- shiandow 3mo agoYou'd rather lower quality of land life to enable growth? Or were you not responding to the argument that avoiding pollution is typical degrowth talk?
- ACCount37 3mo agoNo. I'm saying that if the population is set to fall, we can crank resource spend per person all the way up, and enable growth that way. With a little side benefit of QoL improvements. Which requires a massive jump in labor productivity, mind. But if the optimistic takes on AI are right, such a thing is not impossible.
- downrightmike 3mo ago
- gagabity 3mo agoAnd Amazon going to add their own 100k, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about
- cubefox 3mo agoThere are also several Chinese satellite constellations which will expand more quickly once several Chinese partially reusable rockets are online.
- singingtoday 3mo agoI haven't been helping up with the development, are they getting close? Competition is going to be grand!
- slicendice 3mo ago[flagged]
- digitaltrees 3mo agoI have started to see what I think are star link satellites at night on walks with my kids. It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky and is changing the literal stars my kids will grow up with. It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.
- prasadjoglekar 3mo agoAlso, get off my lawn.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoNo. It’s more don’t buy all the lawns in the entire country and then dye the grass purple and then rent it back to me at 50% of my wages. Thats what happens in a monopoly.
- dietr1ch 3mo agoYou'll be sad to know there's another mf trying to put a mirror to reflect sunlight near twilight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflect_Orbital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflect_Orbital
- dietr1ch 3mo agoTo anyone thinking that 18m² isn't that big for how large the space is, please recall how bright reflective things shine during the day when you hit the right angle.
- ozgrakkurt 3mo agoIt is incredibly stupid that this is happening instead of doing regular cable which works better and is cheaper
- testing22321 3mo agoIf you think cable can be run to the places where starlink is changing to world, you need to get out more. I’ve seen it in the Canadian Arctic, remote Australia, right around Africa. Before starlink these places had dialup, or nothing.
- andriy_koval 3mo agoElon mentioned he is building army of robots. This likely could be a way to manage them.
- inemesitaffia 3mo agoWho's paying for this cable?
- sardine5 3mo ago[dead]
- xinayder 3mo agoCan't wait for Kessler syndrome to actually become a thing.
- jraby3 3mo ago[dead]
- cm2187 3mo agoAm I right to understand that it will do nothing to big cities, where you share the radio frequency with lots of users just like a wifi? What it the minimum radius where two satellites will not interfere with each others (chatgpt says 40-130km radius if not allocated more spectrum)? If that understanding is correct it means the addressable market is countryside and transportation (planes/ships/RV). Which necessarily makes starlink at most a fairly modest size ISP in terms of valuation?
- HackerThemAll 3mo agoI can't wait until this junk starts to collide and blocks us from making any space flights. This has to happen and probability grows with the square of the number of orbiting satellites.
- jillesvangurp 3mo agoPeople seem to have a poor understanding of just how much space there is up there. It's just very empty up there. And these things are in precisely controlled orbits that are well documented, etc. Even if you simplify your thinking of orbits to a 2D (square area), it's a lot of space. But that would be a mistake of course. Low earth orbit is three dimensional. Star Link uses several altitude bands of about 20-30km each. It's 330-360km for the v3 satellites. The volume of that is about 17 billion cubic kilometers. About 13x the volume of all the water in the oceans. Accidental collisions are not going to be a frequent thing. These things are going to be many kilometers apart.
- lukeify 3mo ago> Even if you simplify your thinking of orbits to a 2D (square area), it's a lot of space. This is not a spatial problem. It's an intersectionality problem.
- HackerThemAll 3mo agoWhile you're correct when it comes to calculations, you certainly underestimate the ability for humans to destroy everything around them.
- runako 3mo agoMy understanding is that Starlink can only service ~6-7 houses per square mile today. The US is ~95/sq. mile on average. 80% of Americans live in "cities." Anchorage metro is ~15/sq. mile; Yuma, AZ is ~36. The Nashville metro is ~250. Also, Starlink satellites spend ~70% of their time over the ocean. This will impact the utilization ratio of their gear and force them to launch still more satellites.
- AgentK20 3mo agoSimultaneously though, those 80% of Americans that live in cities/within the typical commuting distance of a metropolitan area are also the ones that are usually serviced by at least one broadband or fiber provider. Because of this: - Having slowly-increasing pressure on those often-monopoly broadband/fiber carriers because people have the option to swap to Starlink, adds competitive pressure for them to improve their service, reduce prices, etc - The remaining 20% of the population that lives on the 60-80%+ of the land who currently have terrible options, but fit well within the density restrictions of current-gen Starlink satelites, suddenly have options
- runako 3mo agoThose are solid points. They also describe Starlink as a niche service with a structurally low TAM.
- jraby3 3mo agoThe new satellites are like 100x better.
- runako 3mo agoThat's great, they still are bound by physics to spend ~70% of their time over the ocean. I would guess ~80%+ of their time is spent where there are effectively no people.
- downrightmike 3mo agoIn developed countries ISPs and telcos have to open their lines up to competition and homes pay less and have much more choice. We don't need satellites when the fiber already exists, its just hoarded.
- sdevonoes 3mo agoAlways surprises me how people feel identified with progress they didn’t participate with. These satellites have nothing to do with you. You didn’t build them nor researched about them. These are the toys of a far-right asshole. It sucks
- hulitu 3mo ago> 100k more – for 100x the bandwidth I guess some things do not scale. The only thing that humans are good producing, is garbage.
- defrost 3mo agoThink of it less as a comms system with a small increase in bandwidth, and more as a radar system with a larger increase in resolution. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbp3kdJZ1_A
- mparramon 3mo agoLoving this, not loving the negativeness in this thread. I wonder what the negativists will say about Reflect Orbital, which uses their Eärendil space mirror to light the world. * https://www.reflectorbital.com/ https://www.reflectorbital.com/
- bigyabai 3mo agoWhy do you see things as negativeism vs positivism? Do you not live in a world where good and evil are syncretic? That mindset is bizarre, to me. My personal experience with Starlink is that it's an expensive LTE alternative. It's not a broadband replacement, the entire thing is pretty clearly a coverup for dual-use technology in low earth orbit: Starshield was adapted from the global communications network Starlink but brings additional capabilities such as target tracking, optical and radio reconnaissance, and early missile warning. [0] Reality doesn't hinge around negativism and positivism. It's a mixture of both, it's unhealthy to pretend that technology only has positive uses and cannot ever have negative side effects. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield
- mparramon 3mo agoI choose positivity, because it allows me to live a happy life. Regarding Starlink, I like it because it gives people free internet in flights. It gives a friend the possibility to stay in a rural home while being able to work. It gives tens of thousands access to information when there are catastrophes like the Venezuela earthquake. It makes people being able to live a happy(er) life.
- bigyabai 3mo agoSatellite internet existed before Starlink. Those people had access to other options, I know that because I was one of them! Do you still choose positivity when Starlink is used to target and attack civilians and civil infrastructure? Are you still "positive" if Russia or China starts attacking Starlink with satellite weaponry? Are you positive about Starlink when Kessler Syndrome takes over, and leaves customers dependent on a logistics network that was never for them? There are positives and negatives. As a rural Starlink customer, I feel comfortable saying that the negatives far outweigh the positives.
- shevy-java 3mo agoI don't think Musk needs any more money.
- ychompinator 3mo ago[dead]
- testaburger 3mo agoI read that by syncing up several space telescopes, astronomers can use something called interferometry to make them work together as one large telescope. I wonder it's possible for Starlink to attach small telescopes on each of these satellites, and if so, if this could lead to a massive PR win for them and a science win for humanity, while at the same time helping to combat any genuine concerns from the public about Starlink harming astronomy. Just an idea (again I don't know if it's possible).
- yourMadness 3mo agoIt's not physically impossible. But the engineering reality isn't promising. You'd need micro-meter alignment accuracy across the constellation for optical observation. For radio observation it might be possible - but I'm not sure if it would be useful. Launching complimentary ordinary space-telescopes would also be good PR.
- christkv 3mo agoI’m more worried about the geo synchronous ones as they don’t degrade and burn up in the atmosphere
- meindnoch 3mo agoHow much does this cost? Something tells me we could have covered the planet in fibre for the price of these Starlink satellites.
- Y-bar 3mo agoAnd: What are the externalities of this? The current 10700 satellites are expected to have a lifespan of about five years. So, averaging these burning up in the upper atmosphere there will be one deorbit ever four hour. If I were to ask my relevant government regulator if I were allowed to burn the equivalent of a few electric cars every day without capturing/scrubbing the pollution they would laugh me out of the room. But ”in space” nobody can hold you accountable, so burning an order of magnitude more like this is somehow on the table.
- MengerSponge 3mo agoIt's horrifying. I don't remember acid rain or CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer, but I'm good enough at pattern recognition to see it playing out again. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JD042442 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JD04...
- inemesitaffia 3mo agoSpaceX has spent under $30 billion for Starlink. That's less than maintenance opex for mobile networks operators in the US alone.
- meindnoch 3mo agoAnd how many people each serve?
- inemesitaffia 3mo agoWhat does it matter? >Something tells me we could have covered the planet in fibre for the price of these Starlink satellites. This isn't true. In fact, the subsidies spent on Fiber in the US, if providently used won't be enough.
- andyjohnson0 3mo agoI was surprised recently to read that the centre-point of the orbits of the starlink satellites doesn't actually correspond to the earth's physical centre. Instead, they orbit around the centre of Elon Musk's ego. As he moves over the surface of the planet, the constellation actually shifts its orbits in response.
- alkyon 3mo agoI wonder if it would be possible for Starlink to use less reflective materials for their satellites so that the sky is less polluted for the astronomers.
- ycosynot 3mo agoSounds like a job for Vantablack "University of Surrey is developing Vantablack as a coating for satellites in earth orbit, to reduce encroachment upon ground-based optical astronomy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack
- atomicthumbs 3mo agoThey claim to have done that already, with little result. They don't care very much about this.
- phs318u 3mo agoSo over 100K starlink sats and then another 50K mirror sats (see that other HN post). Leaving aside the very tragic destruction of the night sky for observers, I’m afraid for the day we have a cascade of satellite debris events that send us backwards an and pretty much destroy our spacefaring ability.
- bilsbie 3mo agoITT don’t build on earth. Also don’t build in space.
- Haven880 3mo agoHe promised a lot. Really a lot. I doubt it will happen. Still waiting the SolarCity, Gigabattery, 4680, and CyberTruck he promised. Instead I get solar burst. CATL, CATL, recalled and finger cutting. And let's not talk about AutoPilot FSD. Waymo is way ahead NOW. Mars? I double down my invest in Shanghai exchange now.
- nova22033 3mo agoDon't forget MacroHard
- westurner 3mo agoHopefully LEO constellations can be made redundant with terrestrial comms. Are there additional terrestrial signal propagation modes that could solve for the same needs as satellite data?
- fragmede 3mo agoNothing with that kind of reach on licensed bands for that kind of money with that sort of bandwidth.
- westurner 3mo agoMetrics for comparison? - dollars/gigabit/time - dollars/bits/distance/time
- westurner 3mo ago- channel efficiency metrics in signals - CapEx, OpEx, Effective Throughput (bits/time), Propagation Latency, - (Cost_carbon + (Cost_kerosene||Cost_methane||Cost_hydrogen) + Cost_debris_atmosphere + Cost_debris_orbital + Cost_atmospheric_drag + Cost_jetstream_breakdown + Cost_atmospheric_heat) - Total Cost per Exabyte-Kilometer ($/Exabyte-km) - Total Cost per bit km
- gsky 3mo agoMore trash in the space
- j-bos 3mo agoMy mom lived with overpriced, underdeveloped, unreliable, and slow internet for years. Now she pays less for fast, reliable, sometimes improving bandwidth that doesn't go down for weeks after a storm. Progress is often gross, but it can be a lifesaver.
- Waterluvian 3mo agoThat’s great and I’m happy for her. Progress should be for all, not just the developed elite hanging out in tech circles. Alas, Not In My Low Earth Orbit.
- inemesitaffia 3mo agoProgress isn't evenly distributed. That's why we don't deny some access because we can't give everyone. Especially if the dispute is about method
- j-bos 3mo agoDude, she pays for it herself on pension. And besides: > Progress should be for all, not just the developed elite hanging out in tech circles. That's... that's basically been the start of every generally available technology that exists today, to benefit of "all."
- rayiner 3mo agoA couple of billion people are doing to join the global middle class over the coming decades. They don’t have pre-existing cable and phone networks that have been in the ground for 50+ years they can incrementally upgrade to broadband. Rich countries spend trillions getting to the point where most people have some sort of wired broadband option. If newly middle income countries want to pursue the same route, it will take decades. Starlink short circuits that process. It means newly minted middle income people my dad’s village in Bangladesh can get broadband now instead of in 2050. Replicate that story all over South and South East Asia and Africa.
- stringfood 3mo agobut is providing access to internet for billions of people worth not being able to see the big dipper as clearly at night? I say yes, but only just barely
- rayiner 3mo agoThat's a ghoulish thing to say.
- sirshmooey 3mo agoCan you empirically say internet access improves wellbeing? Anecdotally, my answer is a resounding "no".
- singingtoday 3mo agoThis is unironically why I believe lights should be shut off at night. Entire cities. I'd love to see the sky. Actually see it. Even the most remote places have light pollution, so it's impossible and likely will be going forward. Maybe it's silly, but it makes me sad.
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo agoThis is a first world problem that has a first world solution: get in your car and drive to the woods.
- dom96 3mo agoWhat I don't understand is where are the Starlink competitors. Supposedly the UK government owns a stake of 10% in OneWeb and yet they are planning to use Starlink for trains. Is it really just too hard to put enough satellites in orbit to be competitive with Starlink?
- singingtoday 3mo agoStarlink has an unfair advantage and is flown on the economically unbeatable falcons.
- inemesitaffia 3mo agoThree issues; Launch costs Terminal costs Satellite costs As for the UK, it's the devolved governments that are going with Starlink IIRC
- SoftTalker 3mo agoLiterally building skynet.
- l0ng1nu5 3mo agoWe'll block all of the night sky, deal with it.
- josephernest 3mo agoPlease stop this. How did we collectively accept that it's ok that a private company can forever change how our sky looks like (especially at night) for the generations to come? This is so dystopian but it seems nobody cares. The most important thing is to have fast internet to watch cool AI-generated videos. So depressing.
- beanjuiceII 3mo agoi think you need help
- weezing 3mo agoThe death of astrophotography.
- petilon 3mo agoIt is very important for an unstable/eccentric person like Elon Musk to be the new AOL and "own the internet", which is what could happen if he launches 100k satellites. Elon Musk will use his power to make political decisions. Musk has acknowledged withholding Starlink Service to thwart Ukrainian attack on Russia. Musk had conversations with a Russian official that led him to worry that an attack on Crimea could spiral into a nuclear conflict, so he made the decision to thwart Ukraine. Right or not, such decisions should be made by elected representatives, not an eccentric trillionaire. I am rooting for Blue Origin's Terawave: https://www.blueorigin.com/terawave https://www.blueorigin.com/terawave
- johnsimer 3mo ago[dead]
- hunmernop 3mo agoSign me up! Love the global internet and the tech behind it
- guidoism 3mo agoI think this is cool and all, especially watching all of the launches, but I don't understand why we aren't all talking about the growing potential of a Kessler Syndrome and are inability to access spaces for a century or so. Maybe I'm completely out-of-touch but it seems like a massive downside for only a small upside.
- tw04 3mo agoSpaceX needs to claim there’s a need for 100k more satellites to prop up unreasonable valuations. This is no different than Elon claiming Tesla owners would be renting out their cars as FSD taxis while at work (next year, we swear guys!!!) In a functioning economy he’d have faced criminal charges for knowingly misleading investors and customers about a dozen times over by now. It’s one thing to set lofty goals internally to keep your workforce motivated and innovative. It’s something else entirely to state things publicly with a targeted date when you know there’s absolutely no chance it will ever happen.
- odie5533 3mo agoI believe he said Teslas are meant to appreciate in value too because you get income from renting them out when you're not using your car. They'll just drive around and work as a taxi while you're not using it. He's more sci-fi author than CEO at this point.
- pstuart 3mo ago> He's more sci-fi author than CEO at this point. L. Ron Hubbard comes to mind.
- torpid 3mo agoTuro (then Relayrides) partned with GM to allow you to rent your own vehicle out while you were at work or anywhere, so it's not science fiction, it was done back in 2012 and the concept was the same, your vehicle will help pay for itself. Every mile logged by autonomous driving, every accident caused by a human vs autonomous vehicle where the human is at fault, will make insurance companies price risks accordingly. So far, autonomous vehilces doing very well in the cities where they operate. It's inevitable these two concepts will merge, and it solves many problems with lack of access to affordable transportation especially for those who can't drive. Public transportation can't survive on fixed route, major infrastructure spends like rail and bus and meet the needs of the greatest number of people.
- culi 3mo agoIf you think that's concerning for the nightsky, wait till China's competitor, SpaceSail, tries to catch up. This is the problem with a private or single nation creating a system like this and then politicizing it or using it for war. It forces other nations to compete. The night sky shouldn't belong to any individual company or nation. We should all have a say on whether this is something we're willing to give up. Including the more-than-human world
- seanhunter 3mo agoThere is an accounting explanation for this (boring as it sounds). Stock analysts (who don’t want to use their brains too much) often use “EBITDA” (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) to compare companies. The reasoning is that those items can often be used in “creative” ways to make a company look better than it is so strip them out before comparing. Starlink sats are launched into a decaying orbit so after something like 5 years they burn up and need to be replaced. It is very flattering to SpaceX’s financials to launch lots of satellites if you look at it from an EBITDA point of view because it basically looks like they have a lot of recurring earnings even though 20% per year has to be amortized because it burns up in the atmosphere.
- taegee 3mo ago[dead]
- archagon 3mo agoJust as a reminder, Musk's actions lead directly to the deaths of (likely hundreds of) thousands of people in the third world: https://archive.ph/20250629012329/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/opinion/waste-musk-trump.html https://archive.ph/20250629012329/https://www.nytimes.com/20..., https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-food-program-starvation-children-deaths https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-f... Enjoy your marginally improved connectivity!
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- GenericDev 3mo ago[dead]
- saddat 3mo agoRelated : how many days to Desaster https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/ https://outerspaceinstitute.ca/crashclock/
- nektro 3mo agowe let companies in space way too soon. only NASA should have satellites in the US
- tim-tday 3mo agoThey should be required to take down one piece of space junk for every new satellite.