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I 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 an
by digitaltrees 3mo ago
I 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.
- whh 3mo agoEvery colleagues watch face.
- csallen 3mo agoA gigantic source of light in the sky that lights up a part of the Earth and is too bright to look at is... the sun. I think we're all used to the sun.
- pastel8739 3mo agoI personally am _not_ used to seeing the sun after sunset and before sunrise.
- dnel 3mo agoNeither is nature, this sounds like an environmental disaster waiting to happen
- jack_pp 3mo agoconsidering plants grow just fine with grow lights, they don't really care. same with co2, they LOVE CO2
- iamacyborg 3mo agoNature is more than just plants.
- jurgenburgen 3mo ago> they LOVE CO2 Plants can absorb some more CO2 and it improves their growth slightly but saying they LOVE CO2 is an exaggeration.
- KeplerBoy 3mo agoThey turn it into sugar, what's not to love?
- csallen 3mo agoSolar panels aren't nature. Shining lights on solar panels is not going to be an environmental disaster.
- zefr0g 3mo ago18x18 is 324m^2
- blooalien 3mo agoTo give an easy visualization for most people (average Americans, really, because most other people in the world already know what a meter looks like), imagine that the average doorknob is about 1m above the floor, so imagine basically the bottom part of a typical interior door is about 1m sq. Now, make a square out of 18 of those pieces wide by 18 pieces high.
- mzronek 3mo agoAmericans will measure with anything but the metric system.
- blooalien 3mo agoExcept for those few of us who grew up interested in science, because science pretty much world-wide (even in the USA) uses metric for pretty near everything. I've used metric for my entire life, and been ridiculed for it that entire time by all the same morons that think any interest in science makes you a "nerd" even if you also happen to play and enjoy sports (despite almost the entire rest of the world standardizing on metric long ago), and despite the fact that most folks in the USA are already using metric themselves every single day. Yet somehow metric is "too hard to learn, waaah!" (It's based on tens, just like our money. Too complicated? Gimme a break!) Hell, our sugary fizzy drinks even all come in 1 and 2 liter bottles, FFS!
- amelius 3mo agoAnd if they do, they will call it things like "square doorknob".
- NikolaNovak 3mo agoI feel "about a 8 floor building" would be a good ROM :)
- 3mo ago
- potamic 3mo agoWut? This has to be some sort of a scam. There's no way you're going to be reflecting enough light from hundreds of kilometers away.
- shafyy 3mo agoI really hope it's a scam, because if not, and this is allowed to exist, we're fucked.
- kulahan 3mo agooh dear, the stakes are so high
- selivanovp 3mo agoIt's not. USSR and Russia experimented with space mirrors and was able to light significant territory. It was a successful program, but in 1993 Russia had no money to continue the project, so it was wrapped up.
- Coffeewine 3mo ago[dead]
- nerdsniper 3mo agoIt works fantastically well for construction and military applications.
- verzali 3mo agoBased on what? You get the light of the moon for about 5 minutes.
- nerdsniper 3mo agoI’m pretty sure the plan is to have tens of thousands of them so that they can hand off from one satellite to the next. I know this tech would have been fantastic when I used to work on oil rigs in super remote locations.
- blackhaz 3mo agoI think this needs to be addressed with a crowd-funded projectile. This sort of stuff must be done on a planetary-scale consensus basis only.
- tticvs 3mo ago[flagged]
- theoreticalmal 3mo agoWhat a terrible tyranny of the majority problem that would be. I reject this idea completely
- rayiner 3mo ago[flagged]
- throw0101d 3mo ago> You'll be sad to know there's another mf trying to put a mirror to reflect sunlight near twilight This has been approved: * https://ca.pcmag.com/networking/16760/fcc-approves-reflect-orbitals-giant-mirror-satellite-that-astronomers-hate https://ca.pcmag.com/networking/16760/fcc-approves-reflect-o... * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866452
- moomoo11 3mo agobuddy our ancestors didn’t even have light at night nor heat/ac. life for our kin will only be better. we will have space stations where you can visit and see all the stars you want. there will be space tourism and that will be pretty cool. that’s what i wanted as a kid and its cool to see it play out irl. edit: dang didn't expect so many negative people
- nalekberov 3mo agoGranted “we” are billionaires. Not only you didn’t get the point, but you still hold on to your delusions: > life for our kin will only be better. Right? In this subscription economy? Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved? You can’t afford to rent the house you loved let alone buy it? (previous generations could afford) the list goes on and on. Maybe stop spreading lies and see things more objectively?
- csallen 3mo ago[flagged]
- _vertigo 3mo ago..you good bro? Anyway, things are improving but that doesn’t mean people can’t have a say in what tradeoffs they are willing to accept in return for progress. A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.
- csallen 3mo agoUhhh, I don't know what you're reading, but the comment I was replied to was complaining about the "subscription economy" and not having enough time to watch movies as evidence why life is getting worse. > A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed. The vast majority of humanity has benefited from progress, compared to most decades and certainly centuries in the past. So I don't really know what your point is here?
- tticvs 3mo ago[flagged]
- Natfan 3mo agountil the kessler effect traps is on this ever-heating rock
- mercutio2 3mo agoLEO is not the place to worry about Kessler syndrome. Mostly, Kessler syndrome isn’t something to worry about at all; there are just a lot of orbital planes available. But in LEO, the mechanics don’t even apply.
- newtonianrules 3mo agoWhy is that?
- Pomfers 3mo agoDepends on how you define LEO. I think the commenter was probably thinking of Very Low Earth Orbit, VLEO. First graph is a list of deorbit times: https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/deorbit-systems/ https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/deorbit-syst... As expected, higher altitudes, higher mass, and lower surface areas correlate to longer deorbit times. It looks like altitude has an extreme effect on deorbit times, as you can see the 100 KG satellite (solar min) deorbits in a little under 2 years at 400 KM, but over 15 years at 500 KM. So 1.25x the altitude results in 7.5x the deorbit time. Stuff at 800-1000 KM can take centuries to deorbit, and that's within both NASA's (under 2000 KM) and the ESA's (under 1000 KM) definitions of LEO. There is a definition for VLEO of under 450 KM, which would have fairly short deorbit times, and therefore a relatively mild Kessler Syndrome.
- ben_w 3mo agoIndeed. It's something investors should worry about for the data centres and if SpaceX will bankrupt itself instead of giving them a return on their investments, but it's not something where general space enthusiasts should worry about Starlink: the timescale for orbital decay is long enough to kill a company, but short compared to a lifetime.
- esikich 3mo agoI'm in northern Wisconsin right now and the sky looks fucking amazing. Stop being so dramatic.
- beachy 3mo agoWe live in a remote area with no surrounding lights, perfect for star watching. It disgusts me that now, at all times, I can see strings of man made objects polluting the skies.
- foxglacier 3mo ago[flagged]
- bayindirh 3mo agoThat’s a very reductionist and dismissive take. Also it’s rude. I’m an occasional astrophotographer, and the baseline of photos you can took are absolutely breathtaking now. Seeing this destroyed in real time is depressing. I used to see a rare flyby of a satellite in the complete dark, but now it’s much more, and besides my personal annoyance, many people much more serious about sky and space are rightfully angry. Maybe you can ask them to grow up, too. Not every progress is good progress. We should understand that by now. You should understand that better than all of us combined, since you’re apparently grown up, way more than us.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- mlindner 3mo agoThe post he was replying to is the reductionist and dismissive take. And yes progress is good progress.
- TimorousBestie 3mo ago> And yes progress is good progress. Many weapons designers thought they were making war “more humane” by creating weapons that killed faster and more decisively. Haber, on chemical warfare: “The gas weapons are not at all more cruel than the flying iron pieces; on the contrary, the fraction of fatal gas diseases is comparatively smaller, the mutilations are missing.”
- skor 3mo agoHere is another example https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z-less-cognitively-capable-parents-first-time-cellphone-bans-standardized-test-scores/ https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z...
- SirHackalot 3mo ago[flagged]
- shevy-java 3mo agoAgreed - I'd consider this public pollution caused by extremely greedy billionaires ruining the planet. They could only amass money because they did not care about social responsibilities prior to do so; any contrary statement made by them to this is only lies, lies and more lies. Unfortunately you need a government that cares for the whole; in the USA oligarchs rule, so the general public are treated as paying slaves.
- shusaku 3mo agoBlaming this on billionaires instead of “the whole” who are customers of space-x is asinine.
- throwthrowuknow 3mo ago[dead]
- inglor_cz 3mo ago"I'd consider this public pollution caused by extremely greedy billionaires ruining the planet." This is such a weird framing, as if Starlink was a frivolous project for some rich person's fun. There is genuine demand for orbital ISP from people, including people in poorer countries whom a better connectivity may help improve their incomes and lives, where an alternative is basically impossible (you won't get optic fibre in the Himalayas or Papua or the Andes anytime soon, if ever). 20 million people are now using Starlink and that number will almost certainly grow to maybe ten times as many, eventually. Ukraine uses Starlink to defend itself from being devoured by an aggressor. Sailors and other people in far away places use Starlink to keep in touch with their families. Did you know that before Starlink, the South Pole Base had just 2x256 kB connection for everyone? I get the "pollution" angle, but not the "hey, one guy is ruining the planet" angle. At the very least, all the customers are complicit, and I would add all the governments that don't seem to be able to build terrestrial connections for their own population.
- k12sosse 3mo agoAh yes, won't someone think of the penguins
- Oarch 3mo agoI wonder if (this part specifically) is a solvable problem? Is it their altitude that causes them to shine? Perhaps finally a commercial use for Vantablack?
- ben_w 3mo agoTheir brightness is a mixture of a lot of things, including the huge PV arrays and the angle they have with the sun when they cross the terminator between night and day. Starlink have already put a lot of effort into their satellites being much less bright than most satellites, including tilting their PV away from earth during the terminator crossing, so from what I've read you'll mainly see them while they're being deployed and while de-orbiting. (Part of my still-expanding draft blog post about space data centres is to work out how bright a million much larger objects would look. If they were in the orbit with the most sun, that's a terminator-following sun-synchronous orbit, which is maximum brightness).
- throwthrowuknow 3mo agoWould the “datacenter” satellites be much larger? I thought each of them was only going to carry a rack or a cabinet worth of GPUs?
- ben_w 3mo agoMuch larger. The compute part may be a rack or a cabinet worth of GPUs (though TBH the public designs are currently vague to the point of being artistic impressions), but they also need to come with a PV array big enough to power that, plus a cooling array that's going to be close to 25% as big as the PV array regardless of what unit size they go for in the end. If they settle on making e.g. 120 kW satellites, that would be about 400 m^2 for the PV and another 100 m^2 for the radiator.
- smallerfish 3mo agoHave you seen Real Engineering's analysis? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpdUNMt2yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qpdUNMt2yg
- small_model 3mo ago[flagged]
- ben_w 3mo ago> 'My kids had to see a power line going through the country side' A lot of people get upset about such things, even those are rather more important than just adding to the world's existing widespread internet access.
- dzhiurgis 3mo agoWind turbines and solar farms is another one. It’s same people who whinge about crying babies on plane.
- ben_w 3mo agoAll of those three examples are also rather more important than Starlink. Starlink is cool, and has some niches, but this is a fairly limited argument in its favour.
- dzhiurgis 3mo agoAll three are greener variant of what was already available. Alternatives to starlink weren’t really available.
- andrepd 3mo ago> you should be celebrating what Elon and his companies have achieved The level of servility of some people never ceases to amaze me. This sentence is viscerally repulsive to me.
- holoduke 3mo agoRussia and China are coming as well. Expect all big countries have hundreds of thousands of low orbit sats. It required in order to be a powerful military nation. Without it a country is doomed.
- ozim 3mo agoUndersea fiber is cool until someone sends a submarine to snip it or sends „not associated ship” to drag anchor over the coordinates of fiber cable. It is harder to break satellite constellation in a concealed way.
- Razengan 3mo agoWhy didn't governments try making it? The US has tons of spy satellites, why not make some for the folks paying taxes? Why do we have to sell our firstborns (data) to Google for maps etc?
- advael 3mo agoCan't speak to the world as a whole but the US has we spent 50 years gutting most government functions that aren't part of the police/military/surveillance apparatus (and many of those as well). SpaceX itself is an example of the primary mechanism of this: Diverting funding to private, no-bid contracts that remove both market forces and democratic oversight from those services while also ballooning their costs
- redsocksfan45 3mo ago[dead]
- thegreatpeter 3mo agoMedicare, social security and the interest on the debt are the 3 top federal spending categories Social welfare is the top local spending category in many local/state governments
- advael 3mo agoYea, and medical costs - including those paid for by medicare, often for people who aged into the program with worse health, which in turn is partially attributable to a tendency to avoid preventative care earlier in life due to higher costs - in the US are drastically more expensive than elsewhere, primarily because of this exact pump: Providers, insurance, equipment manufacturers, and various middleman orgs have arisen to deal with a system that is riddled with cost-inflating private-public partnerships and regulatory band-aids to mitigate small parts of the mess that end up having second-order effects that mostly also raise costs. I believe some functions are simply best performed by non-profit-motivated government agencies. However, I would usually prefer an actual unregulated or black market over the corrupt frankenstein of private-public partnerships
- andrepd 3mo agoYou're not the only one: "Beyond the limit: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787042
- londons_explore 3mo agoThere are various satellite finder apps. I suspect you'll find starlink satellites are mostly too dim to see - with most of what's visible being other older satellites
- guepe 3mo agoYou can see them very easily at dusk. It’s dark enough but they are still in sunlight making them very clearly visible. There is always one or more easily visible (by design).
- londons_explore 3mo agoThere's more like 30 always visible... The 1 I suspect is some other satellite
- sandworm101 3mo agoVisible in RF. That doesn't mean literally visible. They few that are seen are those still in sunlight when the observer is not.
- IMTDb 3mo agoWhich government ? And based on the past few month, if your are thinking of the US governemnt; I can assure you that it is actively being harmful to me. I have no love for SpaceX but at least I can take a subscription or invest and the stock and pretend that those satellites are beneficial to me. There isn’t a single US government owned satellite that is not actively harmful to me at the moment.
- the_gastropod 3mo agoYou use GPS?
- cramer4next 3mo agoIts working for me. Have you ever thought of moving to a territory where your properly represented? If your in the u.s. i think you can still walk across the Canadian border.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3mo agoChange is inevitable. I love seeing artificial objects in space, because it shows that we, humanity, are finally getting there. Elon doesn't own space, he just happens to be the one who is currently best at making it reachable. There is plenty of space for everyone else, and others will get there, eventually. I could eat myself up with envy over the money he's making from it... or be glad that it's at least someone getting rewarded for moving humanity forward (while also being an asshole), rather than someone who is starting wars to profit from insider trading...
- sevenzero 3mo agoYea but it introduces a lot of issues for space travel and other satellites. The useful space in space we have is extremely limited. A single company shouldn't be able to just clutter space at will.
- tticvs 3mo ago1. That's not true. 2. It's not "at will" if you actually read the article you're commenting under you'd see it is about them _applying for a license_ to do something.
- taotau 3mo agoTaken literally you are technically correct, but... 1. Space is big, but LEO is not that big and if a single company clutters it enough, other organisations might start bumping into issues like 'if i don't get sign off from starlink corp, i might hit one of their satelites on the way up and my insurance wont cover that so I cant afford to launch given the risks of being sued by elon'. 2. Applying for a licence in this context, mostly means greasing the right palms (preferably the pudgy bruised ones).
- tticvs 3mo agoIt introduces no issues for space travel. And what exactly do you want to happen here? LEO to stay empty because no one else is able to fill it and for spacex to not to try to expand because the regulatory process isn't perfect according to your standards?
- PowerElectronix 3mo agoThink that the sky is one nuke away from being 100% clean at any given time.
- ornornor 3mo agoHow?
- PowerElectronix 3mo agoA nuke in LEO would make the environment so radioactive for some time to fry every single satellite that crosses the lower van allen belt. After some time (months, may be a few years) radiation goes back to normal levels and you can launch satellites again. Fun fact, the first nuke in space had a lot of people very nervous as it was thought that making satellites impossible forever was a possibility, and quite a few did fail due to the nuke.
- thegreatpeter 3mo agoOne person?
- digitaltrees 3mo agoLook at elons comp package and voting share and tell me he isn’t the singular person driving the process and capturing the gains.
- franciscop 3mo agoI feel that way about street advertising, beautiful European cities with historical buildings all around and suddenly a big screen/panel asking you to buy whatever.
- derrasterpunkt 3mo agoThat is an interesting take. Now I probably can‘t unsee it.
- franciscop 3mo agoI'm sorry I brought this upon you...
- derrasterpunkt 3mo agoIt only adds to the others.
- LtWorf 3mo agoI had read that some municipalities in switzerland were banning them. Me, I just do what I can and at least trash the ones covering the windows on public transport here.
- goodcanadian 3mo agoI lived for a few years in Hawaii, where they have banned most outdoor advertising. Having seen the difference, I strongly support such initiatives.
- bilsbie 3mo agoIt’s adorable you think the government represents the people.
- int3trap 3mo agoComments like this always make me lol. It's a pointless comment. Do something about it if you think the government doesn't represent you. Or shut the fuck up.
- tonyhart7 3mo agoit is represent people, but its not which people think actually is
- digitaltrees 3mo agoThere is a lot to criticize about governments. And there are many bad ones. But structurally a corporation has no obligation to represent society, government does.
- bilsbie 3mo ago[flagged]
- bumby 3mo agoMaybe somewhat ironically, I think this is an overly cynical take. People can acknowledge a difference of values and recognize what they consider a destruction of the commons without their stance being distilled to simply being a hater. Would you also considering people who bemoan the degradation of Lake Erie by industrialists of the last century as “crab mentality”? Similarly, people at the time took what may be closer to the opposite stance: “Fundamentally this level of environmental degradation was accepted as a sign of success.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught...
- alansaber 3mo agoOh I agree it's an aberration but it seems unavoidable
- fragmede 3mo agoIt's not one person though. If zero people were using Starlink, then it would be that one person's vanity up there, but since it seems people do find it useful, those satellite lines represent humans being able to connect with modern technology out in the Sahara or in the ocean. For sailors to keep in touch with loved ones and to have a less dreary existence on long ocean voyages. And not to fret, China's managed to land a reusable rocket, so soon they'll have their own constellation up there so it's not just that one particular person making a mess of things. What we're seeing is humanity managing to become a space faring civilization. I look up and yearn to be up there as well. I'll never make it to space, but it would give me such joy if my children's children had the opportunity to.
- koe123 3mo agoIt is one person who controls it, at his discretion who gets to share in the utility. What your saying can also be true without such an ownership model, right?
- natch 3mo agoNo. We’ve tried that for decades now and it hasn’t worked out very well for getting the world connected. The entire rural earth has been neglected. Even in silicon valley my neighborhood only got fiber this year and its saddled with crappy TV bundle deals, bad mobile apps built with wrapped web pages, poor service, and we-will-sell-your-data anti privacy provisions. Starlink has none of that.
- scarecrowbob 3mo agoYeah, I don't know how this whole ARPANET thing is really going to play out...
- natch 3mo agoLooks like you stopped reading after the first sentence. Or if not, what am I missing?
- 3mo ago
- freedomben 3mo agoThis strikes me as NIMBYism at a global scale. At least you've got yours right!
- rr808 3mo agoIts more the other way around. Its mostly used by the wealthiest few percent, the majority of the world has to pay for the damage it causes.
- lern_too_spel 3mo agoAs long as the externalities are paid for, I don't see the problem. Musk has made the world a worse place in many ways, but I don't see how this is one of them.
- rr808 3mo agothis thread is about satellites cluttering the night sky. Is SpaceX paying for this? Not the mention the CO2 emissions of all the rockets.
- lern_too_spel 3mo agoYou're right. Private launches are undertaxed. Launch cost used to be so prohibitive that it didn't matter, but regulation hasn't kept up.
- sucrosesucrose 3mo agoI price the externalities at infinite price. They cannot be paid.
- lern_too_spel 3mo agoYou're saying if someone offered you a billion dollars to launch a satellite no different from most other satellites already in space, you would say, "No, thank you, madam!" I'm skeptical, but if you insist, I'll take you at your word.
- gus_massa 3mo agoIt's hard to find hard numbers, but IIUC even ignoring Elon's Space Program: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/gx04-who-owns-the-most-satellites/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/gx04-who-owns-the-most-s... * Most satellites were private owned, for communications or resource. * Most government owned satellites have military use, the people that is trying to spy or nuke you or your neighbor. * A small part is used for science and altruistic activities.
- delecti 3mo agoMore than 2/3 of all active satellites are part of the SpaceX/Starlink constellation, and it's a full 3/4 of those in LEO, which are the biggest contributor to the glints we can see in the night sky. They're such an enormous part of the problem that it does a disservice to the problem to not metaphorically shine a spotlight on them. I had trouble finding another source that summed up the data so nicely, but other sources did corroborate these figures: https://satfleetlive.com/blogs/how-many-satellites-in-orbit/ https://satfleetlive.com/blogs/how-many-satellites-in-orbit/
- RetpolineDrama 3mo ago>which are the biggest contributor to the glints we can see in the night sky. >They're such an enormous part of the problem What an incredible life of privilege you must live to perceive a few glints in the sky as a huge problem.
- delecti 3mo agoI didn't say whether I thought it was a huge problem. I just said it was a problem, and identified the largest contributor to that problem. But really, what point are you trying to make? I don't need to think that satellites glinting in the night sky are the literal worst problem facing humanity for that to be a valid topic of discussion.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- rayiner 3mo ago> It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing. I worked on technology for years that the FCC effectively killed for stupid reasons. So it’s heartening to me that someone can still just do stuff and build things. It’s amazing. If you asked me 10 years ago I would have thought that getting something like Starlink off the ground would’ve been impossible due to red tape.
- AlecSchueler 3mo agoPeople can still "do stuff and build things" while having consideration for environmental impacts.
- rayiner 3mo agoEmpirically, we can't. We can barely even build EV chargers.
- trimbo 3mo agoThe thing is, everyone's interpretation of "environmental impact" is different. To one person it can mean, "don't put the construction garbage in the river." To another it can mean "not one single Delta Smelt can be scared because of this construction." And because it's so flexible, in states like California where we have aggressive environmental laws, it's leveraged as the NIMBY trump card. When it can't block a project, the process is used to make it inordinately expensive and take decades. One example would be the environmental studies for the CA High Speed Rail.[1] [1] - https://ifp.org/fast-track-democratically-approved-transit-projects/ https://ifp.org/fast-track-democratically-approved-transit-p...
- omgwtfbyobbq 3mo agoTo be fair, part of the inordinate expense is just because it takes longer for the environmental reviews (costs are in expected year of construction, so pushing a project a decade into the future can increase costs by 30-40+% (inflation + interest) depending on the specifics, even if everything else costs the same). That's why the cost estimates for CA HSR jump a bunch every time an administration hostile to it enters the white house.
- largbae 3mo agoIf you believe the hype, just wait until 2029 when it's not a person at all!
- inemesitaffia 3mo agoYou can't launch or transmit without the government's permission. Come off this nonsense. The alternative is some company charging the government for the same exact thing.
- poszlem 3mo agoYou can say what you want about Musk (I personally think that he is an appaling human being), but Starlink represents everybody who pays for starlink to get access to the internet, not just Elon.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoYes. But by allowing a monopoly to exist each of those customers has the risk of being forced off the service by a terms of service change, price gouging, or other predictable monopolistic behavior with no alternative. And this is avoidable by ensuring a competitive market or regulated utility.
- BurningFrog 3mo ago"I saw something I didn't like, so I assumed it was the fault of a billionaire I don't like" didn't use to be the top voted comment on HN. Starlink satellites have low orbits and only reflect sunlight around sunrise and sunset.
- RadiozRadioz 3mo agoVery untrue. Go somewhere with low light pollution and you'll see them in the dead of night. I was out in rural Australia and used a satellite tracker app to confirm what I was seeing - they are very distinctive and definitely visible. They are not overwhelming, mind you, but I did notice them immediately. They stood out enough that I wondered what they were and started researching, that alone says something about the prevalence. Edit: An LLM tells me that this is partly unique to how far South Australia is and the positioning of the sun in Australia's Summer. But I lack the physics knowledge to confirm that.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoWhat percentage of satellites are launched and controlled by spaceX? When is a market considered a monopoly? When does a monopoly cause harm. Those are the questions you should be asking because if you want to participate in the innovation process there has to be a market where you can participate and not be squashed by a monopoly.
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo ago>what I think Did you actually check with a satellite tracker, maybe show your kids and inspire them with what humanity can accomplish?
- digitaltrees 3mo agoYou are missing the point. It’s not that I don’t find technological progress inspiring, it’s that it is an emerging monopoly that will capture a common good with no accountability and permanently deprive people of a precious opportunity.
- ThrowawayTestr 3mo agoThe opportunity to see the night sky they couldn't see anyway?
- newsoftheday 3mo agoI'm the opposite, I feel more depressed when the government controls our lives instead of hard working people who've proven themselves in the marketplace.
- estearum 3mo agoYou know the point of democracy is that the government is also run by people who've proven themselves in a marketplace, right? It's just one where having more money doesn't entitle you to vastly more power, which is, you know... one well-established failure mode even of private marketplaces...
- parineum 3mo agoThat chat control vote in the EU sure was sometime, wasn't it?
- estearum 3mo agoAre you attempting to make an argument? Because just off-handedly referencing topic-du-jour doesn't exactly achieve that.
- parineum 3mo agoWell, you seem to be giving blanket support to the government and conflating it with democracy. I thought a good example of the pinnacle of government bureaucracy in action acting undemocratically both undermines your position and, secondly, might have you alter your opinion a bit. You've, essentially, just appealed to authority to justify your position.
- estearum 3mo agoUhhh no. I was pointing out the fallacy of GP portraying “government” outcomes (they’re the only ones that made a blanket statement) as somehow characteristically not generated by marketplace victories. Actually many forms of government mandate and authority are generated by marketplace mechanisms, many of which are actually more true to desirable marketplace dynamics than those we see in private marketplaces, due to concentration of power, which is a known failure mode of marketplaces in general. The idea that “government” is some mysterious mythical entity that just exists outside of people’s input and outside of marketplace forces is juvenile. Neither government nor private market outcomes are intrinsically more legitimate than the other.
- burnt-resistor 3mo agoThey'll also find a way to use LEO as a sky-based advertising platform.
- throwaway87543 3mo agoChina's Falcon 9 clone (long march 10b) is ready to go. Will you feel better when most of those sky dots are Chinese?
- Scroll_Swe 3mo agoIf a different person made them you would say "wow so cool I can see sattelies" now you are soyposting about muh kids. Grow up.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoTake the trolling elsewhere. I don’t like monopoly. I don’t like monarchy. They lead to human suffering and stifling of innovation. Your playground insults about soy anything are unbecoming of HN.
- amunozo 3mo agoEven if it's a government, you pollute the whole sky instead of one country's. This should be done only as a joint world effort, something that is not going to happen. It is very sad.
- haakon 3mo ago> It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky SpaceX has many owners, especially post-IPO. You, too, can buy the sky and sell the sky.
- 7e 3mo agoOwnership means nothing without control.
- csb6 3mo agoLaughable to imply that an individual retail investor will have any say or influence on a corporation as large as SpaceX in which Musk has a controlling stake.
- sam1r 3mo agoThe parent comment of your reply is intending to create more laughs than less.
- randyrand 3mo agoElon owns 80% of voting shares, and 42% overall.
- sam1r 3mo ago>> SpaceX has many owners, especially post-IPO. You, too, can buy the sky and sell the sky. Perfect, how can this not be a win win for anyone not involved? An opportunity for everyone to become wealthy and scale our riches together. Without Elon, how would so many of us .. “ever have made it”?
- ben_w 3mo agohttps://lunarregistry.com https://lunarregistry.com Given the difference between Musk's optimistic timelines (and share price) and what he actually delivers… would've been fun, perhaps, to be one of the first Martians. But even though I'm younger than Musk, I no longer expect him to deliver in my lifetime let alone his.
- 3mo ago
- bmitc 3mo agoI feel the exact same way after I saw a Starlink line flying over. It made me feel like any sci-fi movie where your entire environment has been purchased and is controlled by corporations. It was a sad feeling knowing even the sky has been claimed by someone now with zero repercussions.
- scotty79 3mo agoMoney is also a voting system. He can decide those things only because people voted for him with their money. The issue is, not everybody has same voting power in this system. But then again people who have more power were voted for previously by others. So it's kind of representative democracy.
- bluegatty 3mo agoGood, god, no, money represents the balance of power in a system, there's not thing 'representative' about it from a civic perspective, completely the opposite.
- scotty79 3mo agoIf you give your money to someone else you are giving them power. And people in power are going to represent you in context of decision making. Regardless of how well they do it.
- Ferret7446 3mo agoMoney represents a social IOU. The more money you have, the more value you have provided to society and thus you hold IOUs for which society will pay you back in the future. That's why it's silly to hold a lot of cash, it means you've been suckered by society. That's also why holding (certain kinds of) debt is smart; you want a net positive relationship with society, in terms of pure personal gain.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoCompounding interest means, left unchecked, the natural progression is the “voting” power concentrated until there is only a monarch. A trillion dollars will accumulate $100 billion in passive wealth simply by existing
- scotty79 3mo agoCompounding interest just skewes the balance so that being voted for earlier is worth more than being voted for later. I'm not saying it's a good system, but it's "aiming" for realtively good things. Just needs a bit of rebalancing regarding what activities help people get voted for. Basically harm shouldn't pay, squatting on limited resources shouldn't pay.
- Dig1t 3mo agoThis is incredibly regressive thinking. Any technology or human progress changes the world around us. Do you lament the construction of new buildings or roads because they change the natural landscape? Would you prefer we never explore space or build anything new? IMO it’s a marvel to look up at the sky and see man made objects flying through the sky, it’s incredibly inspiring to see the great feats of engineering that humans are capable of. Also if you look up at the night sky you can still see ALL the stars, it’s just that you can now see a few extra tiny dots flying by, it subtracts nothing from the average stargazer’s view. Your children will get much more amazing and inspiring sights from space telescopes and spacecraft that this new space industry will enable. They will benefit from new science and manufacturing techniques that are enabled by cheap access to space. >when it’s the government The government had a monopoly on space access for the past half century and barely managed to put a handful of extremely expensive objects in space. They were never capable of creating reusable rockets or lowering the cost of access to space in a meaningful way. Maybe it feels nicer when governments do it, but cheap access to space will never happen if they are the ones running the show.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoI am a progressive. But ownership of the commons is something that requires careful policy decisions. The same applies to utilities, the open ocean, wireless spectrum. We shouldn’t allow monopolies in the name of progress or the monopolistic rent seeking will stifle progress. The government could have absolutely done all of this and more if there was any commitment to the investment. Instead nasa had its budget gutted. My kids won’t have a future with any opportunity if resources are so concentrated that their bargaining power can’t have any effect in the world.
- Dig1t 3mo ago>The government could have absolutely done all of this Yeah they totally could have, so why didn’t they? World governments have had massive budgets for space agencies for like 70 years, yet they were never able to build reusable rockets or do anything other than send a handful of extremely overpriced novelty science projects into space. You say they could do it, but there’s no evidence to support that they ever actually would.
- noahbp 3mo agoI have a hard time blaming anyone other than the internet monopolists and the FCC for this. If we had similar regulations as the UK (you lay infrastructure that serves Internet users, you must also rent this infrastructure out at regulated rates to other ISPs), we could have had a much quicker buildout of high speed internet service, instead of regional monopolies which defeated even the great Google. Starlink’s total addressable market is only so large because of these monopolies. As sad as it is that astronomy will never be the same, it is a strong net positive for the world that fast internet be available at an affordable price.
- mlsu 3mo agoI went on a backcountry camping trip last year and was stargazing as one does. Kept seeing satellites. Was cool at first (used to be a rarity) but it got more and more annoying. And for what? So that we can have more internet? Oh that’s just what we need. To spend even more time online. I’m sure Elon is quite excited for all of us, no matter where we are, we can be plugged into X just like him!
- archagon 3mo agoIt's inevitable that at some point, a hostile nation will, ah, "disagree" with this laissez faire approach and start launching junk satellites at the Starlink constellation. That should be fun.
- notfish 3mo agoyou can’t see the majority of starlinks with the naked eye, what you’re seeing is either some other constellation or freshly launches starlinks that are still orbit raising. once starlinks are at altitude they actively manage their reflection angles to avoid bouncing light back at earth
- rlt 3mo agoYou’d probably feel differently if you were one of the 10 million (and growing) Starlink subscribers who previously had worse (or no) high speed internet access.
- digitaltrees 3mo agoMost people missed my point. I am most concerned about a single person having a monopoly on satellite networks. Vertical integration of launch capabilities and use of the satellites is an old monopolistic strategy. Doubling prices over night is kind of an indicator of a monopoly. https://www.corporatejetinvestor.com/news/starlink-price-rise-reckless-says-correnti/ https://www.corporatejetinvestor.com/news/starlink-price-ris...