we should probably invest in making sure people have affordable housing, food, and healthcare before worrying about militarising space.
Don’t buy into the grifts. Dismantle them.
Yeah I mean the tax payers have literally already paid for all of both SpaceX and Starlink. The public paid for it, the public should own it.
They’re just following in the footsteps of Comcast. The FCC gave SpaceX/Starlink $885.5 million to provide rural broadband after they gave Comcast over $1 billion less than 5 years ago to do the same thing. Starlink actually works out there from what I understand, so I guess that’s something.
The main problem is that starlink is not a viable ISP like Comcast. Relying on low earth orbit is extremely wasteful as you need to constantly launch more and more satellites. Starlink gives their satellites a 5 year lifespan where fiber can go on for 40 years or more. There are 7,500 starlink satellites, so we’re talking a constant replacement of satellites all falling into earth’s atmosphere, not being recycled.
Starlink is literal space trash waiting to happen.
I didn’t realize how temporary and disposable Starlink’s satellites were. They incinerate 4 or 5 a day by de-orbiting them into the ozone. Here’s a pretty good CNET article that talks about how they “dispose” of them. IDK, doesn’t seem sustainable. They also mention the bandwidth gains are being diminished with the influx of new users, so their solution is more temporary satellites.
Yeah, if they want to make satellites last longer, they could go a bit higher in their orbits. The option is there.
But they specifically don’t want to do that because ensuring a 5 year service life means you are required to continue buying more satellites from them every 5 years. Literally burning resources into nothingness just to pursue a predatory subscription model.
It also helps their case that LEO has much lower latency than mid or high orbit but I refuse to believe that that is their primary driving concern behind this and not the former.
Who’s buying satellites?
SpaceX is putting up satellites for SpaceX, they’re the manufacturer and operator…
It’s definitely in their best interest to keep them working as long as possible.
That said, they’re high end communications devices, very fancy routers essentially. And like all computer technology, these things become obsolete quickly. So even if they could last 20 years, you wouldn’t want them even 10 years from now. 100 GB/s speeds might be great now, but 10 years down the road 10 TB/s could be the norm, so at that point why are you still trying to provide service with ancient hardware 100x slower than it should be.
Isn’t that part of the grift?
At the time it looked like one of the main reasons to launch Starlink was to provide SpaceX with a new market, much larger than the usual space launching stuff. Also this meant Felon could get subsidies through 2 different companies.
LEO does offer legitimate advantages not just to latency but also for minimizing the abandoned space junk left in orbit. The satellites will deorbit fairly quickly after running out of fuel.
Though I’m sure you’re correct about the main reason for the choice.
That would also make latency worse and the signal weaker.
Would the small ground starlink dish be able to reach higher orbits? I guess if the satellite is going to stay up longer you could afford to make it’s antennas a bit bigger to mitigate that.
Well you wouldn’t want to put them much higher, but if you raised their orbit by say 40%, they’d be getting significantly less atmospheric drag. It could probably extend their life by 15 years. And yeah, they’ll be 40% further away, so slightly more latency. Perhaps going from 70 ms ping to 100 ms ping. Not awesome, but definitely not a huge problem.
You are right in how wasteful it is, especially since it turned out a lot of those satellites don’t even make it to 4 years.
However there is zero risk of space trash with Starlink. They orbit so low, it’s basically within the atmosphere still. They need to constantly boost themselves, otherwise they fall down and burn up. So these satellites are coming down within years all on their own, even without any controlled disposal.
It’s insanely wasteful, but it keeps SpaceX in business launching every week, which is kind of the point. But at least there isn’t a Kessler syndrome waiting to happen.
Even though it’s not a space trash problem, it is a regular upper atmosphere polluter of aluminum oxide ash. We don’t yet know the long term consequences.
It’s not enough, but I would bet it might have a cooling effect as it reflects more light in the upper atmosphere.
But we should really still make sure, and more importantly not trust Elon with any data flowing over those satellites.
Starlink provides service to areas where fiber is impossible. Like the middle of the ocean and actual rural areas where fiber runs could be tens of miles or more between homes. Those are area where no one will build out fiber unless the homeowner is paying for it themselves, the various government programs would never cover those actual rural areas despite what they claim. At best they might cover city outskirts for new infrastructure, where fiber nodes are already relatively close by. They’re never adding fiber to existing rural farms and ranches.
They are not a 1:1 service comparison. You would need to compare It to other satellite providers, and there isn’t a comparison because all of those are dogshit in comparison to Starlink.
There’s a reason it’s as popular as it is so quickly despite satellite internet in general not being new. The low earth satellite constellation means a massive difference in capability compared to conventional geostationary satellites. Multiple second latency, slow downloads nowhere near advertised double digit Mbps speeds, single digit Mbps upload speeds and often monthly data limits as low as 50GB per month are what the conventional satellite providers offer.
Those places can get internet from satellites outside of low earth orbit that is simply slower with higher latency.
i dont feel the cost and waste of all the rocket launches and debris justifies remote areas having satellite Internet
I think if you consider the cost to manufacture then bury a fibre optic cable for everyone who lives 10km from a town centre, I think it’s still a net positive. It’s not great for sure, but amortised over a huge population it’s probably the best option we have at this time.
Only short term, long term the repeated rocket launches can’t win out over a ditch digger.
I’m sure digging fiber out in the Amazon rainforest will turn out great
I doubt the Ukrainians would agree with you
This is a really weird “ends always justify the means” because I could also say it wouldn’t be necessary if Ukraine never gave up their nuclear weapons and how I doubt the Ukrainians would disagree. This is also further impacted by the protection of Starlink by the US military because if it wasn’t an act of war against the US to destroy them, Russia could take down low earth orbit satellites pretty easily.
But none of this is relevant to how Starlink is not an ISP, it is not infrastructure it is a fleeting wasteful service.
From what I understand the Ukrainians never had control of the nukes, they didn’t actually have the launch codes to use them.
Regardless, having global access to the internet is great. Ask the people living in remote areas of the Amazon, no chance for them to get fiber, or Africa, or remote islands, or ships/airplanes.
If youre speaking of rural America not needing starlink because fiber is a thing, then you should broaden your horizons
If only we could adjust the plot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes to where it’s mostly just cleaning up dead starlink satellites.
In any case, highly recommended as a fantastic anime. And for those that haven’t seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZESIHA0qK3U
That’s a dubbed trailer, but those of you looking for a Japanese language trailer know where to find it or probably have already watched it lol
The FCC revoked that award before the money was handed over because starlink wasn’t meeting the speeds they needed to meet for the deadline 3 years in the future and they didn’t think they would make it. The speeds that money was supposed to help them achieve launching the satellites required to meet it.
No one else had that made up requirement put on them in advance.
The goal that was 3 years in the future, which would have been around now or early 2026, required them to meet their speed (100d + 20u) and latency (<100ms) goals for 40% of the 650k rural users.
They had 1.5 million US customers at the start of 2025, not sure how many are part of this rural 650k but id imagine the majority are, and only 260k of the rural ones have to meet the requirements.
Ookla did a post about starlink in Maine where it shows many of the users are meeting those requirements
https://www.ookla.com/articles/above-maine-starlink-twinkles
Median DL: 116.77 (over the required 100)
Media UL: 18.17 (just shy of the required 20)
90th Percentile DL: 250.96
90th Percentile UL 27.17
If Maine is a representative example, then they are probably meeting their 40% target of 260k rural users despite not getting the money which would have accelerated things and made launches more focused on meeting the goals.
Edit: extra details.
Works is a strong word. It’s a better choice than dialup or Hughesnet, but that’s damning with extremely faint praise. If you need to rely on it you might be in trouble. There are still gaps in the coverage where you will be dropped for a while.
Fold it in into nasa.
See what we should do…is look to the french for inspiration on guillotine designs. Why would anyone not want to get rid of this asshole? Why would anyone like him?
Man, that was worth the wait!
They think he’s a tech god because he has money to burn, knows how to make himself look smart, knows how to slave drive, and knows how to cut corners without pissing off the wrong people.
At least, there was a time when that appeared to be the case
Starlink should be globalized. A planet only needs one low-altitude orbiting communications network. Better to standardize the technology and platform and let them contribute to one system than to have a dozen identical competing systems crashing into each other and fucking things up for everyone.
You have NASA FFS. Just fund it.
NASA is too beholden to politics… You can’t do 7 year builds and missions when the Senate flips every 4 years and has to kill everything the other side did on principle that it has a D or R attached to it. Everything is political.
<.< Legitimate question, what was the last thing each party killed that was put in place by the other party?
It is usually due to “budget cuts” as the easiest way to kill a project is to defend it.
Juno Jupiter flyby
Maven mission to mars
New horizons kbo flyby
Terra mission-earth science satellite
Aqua mission -earth science satellite
DSCOVR
SLS-which may actually be a bad program but is a good example of the political issues with NASA vs senate.
Juno Jupiter flyby
But Juno went to Jupiter?
These programs require continuous funding. The probe went to Jupiter. The scientist and listening stations back on earth still have to run to receive the data.
Oh my god, please. Just to see the temper tantrum from Musk.
Don’t give bail-outs to billionaires.
Then don’t reimburse him.
I disagree.
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You already have a government space agency. Maybe give them more funding so they don’t have to rely on space-x to get their stuff into orbit?
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There’s a national telecom network already in place. It at least has the potential to be faster and more reliable, if it isn’t already… At least compared to low earth orbit satellite coverage.
There’s no good reason to continue providing Elon or his companies with any government handouts. Pull that funding and give it to… I dunno, students who have more debt than homeowners with a mortgage… NASA… Literally anything that helps people?
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seize it via eminent domain.
No, we should regain control of our nation from fascists (this does not mean just replace the President), then nationalize SpaceX and Starlink, and make telecoms public utilities.
literally nasa
Nasa with less risk aversion. If a Nasa rocket blows up that’s big news. If a Space X rocket blows up, that’s a Tuesday.
yeah but if SpaceX becomes NASA then what
Which is the advantage of SpaceX. As it is people are looking to cut money for NASA. Still, NASA has always subcontracted out, so absorbing SpaceX does not seem like it might change much (outside of public opinion)
Learn from SpaceX progress. Return to NASA risk aversion. Trial new designs in 20 years, repeat.
Arrest Musk on violation of controlled substances acts, file immigration violation charges, invalidate his ownership shares due to securities fraud, as he falsified education and naturalization forms.
Or just emminent domain the shit. The Law is just made up right now.
Such an effort would be likely to fail AND take longer than the current administration is likely to exist.
If not Musk should be forced from his roles in these companies. You cannot be a defense contractor and do ketamine.
Exactly. SpaceX was sunder scrutiny when he smoked doobie on a podcast. Now he is on drugs and nothing happens.
how can you trust a board that trusts such incompetence, for DOD projects no less?
failure up and down.
DOD is also responsible for what they accept.
