>Starlink is only a benefit for a small dwindling population of rural people in high income countries.

If this is true then you’ve nothing to worry about. Starlink will quickly fail, they’ll close up shop, and the satellites will de-orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.

We need not worry about one American ISP or a European or Chinese competitor. As you’ve said, this only serves a dwindling population of rural people in high income countries. No one else would be so stupid to try and enter this market. There is clearly no need, terrestrial cellular will win.

We don't all subscribe to the philosophy that the only valid limits to something are those imposed by market forces.

If something is slightly bad for a great many people we're allowed to just prevent it. We don't have to wait for the market to decide, there's no virtue in doing so it doesn't sanctify our decision.

I'm not convinced starlink is slightly bad for a great many people.

Should a child struggle to access online learning simply because their parents have chosen to live in a rural location? Should a family in a town struggle when several children need to attend classes online, because some inept bureaucrat agreed to a telco monopoly decades ago?

The fact starlink is an inconvenience to amateur stargazers doesn't seem very important in comparison.

>The fact starlink is an inconvenience to amateur stargazers doesn't seem very important in comparison.

Hm, I recall reading recently that Starlink satellites are hindering detection of near-Earth asteroids though. Can't remember where. It's probably not important.

Wouldn’t it be better to move the instruments for detection outside of earth’s atmosphere anyway? Same with most telescopes.

Sure.

And I'm sure Starlink will be ponying the money for that.

Or wait to deploy their satellites until that process is completed.

Why would they? It isn’t like asteroids are now impossible to detect, just harder, while we don’t actually have any counter for an asteroid that was going to crash into the Earth anyway.

What's the cost/benefit on the two options (and for all I know there may be more then two)

* get rid of starlink and any like minded projects

* create work around so you can have Starlink type projects and still detect asteroids.

It seems like the second option should be viable - if you know exactly where all the satellites are couldn't you create a filter?

The more sensible solution is in ground based towers. The US rural areas suffering from lack of coverage is due to monopolistic/cartel attitudes of US ISP and carriers. Other countries don't have this problem and true fee competition made even rural areas have good wired and wireless internet. This is a lack of political will problem (to enforce cartel laws), not a technical one.

Other countries with the population density of US rural areas? Which ones specifically, and what did it cost them?

If Africa can manage it, we probably can.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/08/in-much-...

That article is about telephony, not broadband internet. We have telephony everywhere too.

They're using mobile telephony to access broadband internet.

https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/blog/the-state-of-...

> Mobile broadband coverage has also increased substantially in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it is still the region with the largest coverage gap; one in five people live in an area without mobile broadband coverage – an estimated 210 million people.

If 80% of Africa can manage mobile broadband, it seems likely the USA can.

> Should a child struggle to access online learning simply because their parents have chosen to live in a rural location? Should a family in a town struggle when several children need to attend classes online,

Children who struggle to learn in rural areas and have parents who can afford a hundred dollars a month, plus equipment costs? Assuming that the cost to use Starlink doesn't rise (how many 35k Teslas actually shipped)? Seems like a vanishingly small population right there.

And the percentage of that population that is middle class (the part that cannot help themselves) seems even smaller. I'm not concerned about children hanging out at their parent's 70,000 acre vacation ranch.

Meanwhile, this article seems to be about professional astronomers

> Children who struggle to learn in rural areas and have parents who can afford a hundred dollars a month

If DSL is available in rural Wisconsin, it costs $50/month.

Pull up https://broadbandnow.com/national-broadband-map and look the max speed and go a bit outside of a city. The area my parents live in is (for that $50/month) shows "1 to 30Mbps".

This isn't children hanging out in their parents vacation ranch. This is the children of rural framers and families that have a house in the country rather than a small apartment in the city.

The cost difference for DSL at 1-30Mbps (my parents single DSL network topped out at about 6Mbps) and Starlink at $100/month at 70Mbps is night and day different.

For additional fun, unselect DSL and look at the provider counters for much of the nation. With Starlink, that number is one higher.

anecdotes don't really prove anything. while you can pay $100/mo, most people in rural America can't, and that's who they need for the most underserved users.

My point is that they're already paying $50/month for 6Mbps DSL if they have any network connection at all.

Paying $100/month instead for 100Mbps satellite link is $50/month increase in cost and a 12x increase in performance.

The anecdote that I'm addressing isn't the children on a 70,000 acre vacation ranch (that likely can afford $100/month) but rather rural America.

Yes, ISPs and telecommunications needs to improve the network resources when you get more than 20 miles away from a city and suburbia. It will likely cost in the range of $100/month to get that when it is available.

Starlink meets that need now.

that's my point, though. they're nowhere near capacity and you're comparing it to solutions that are at capacity (DSL). just wait until they need to make more money and the system is capacity constrained.

Prior to Starlink, the residence of some of my family was rather poor DSL. The network performance for rural midwest hadn't gotten any faster in 20 years. There is no cell phone coverage because of the hilly terrain (the closest reliable cell phone location is 4 miles away). Barely acceptable video (which was necessary for tele-learning for my niece and nephew (different simultaneous zoom calls) in the past two years was accomplished by using a Firewalla two load balance two DSL connections (the "what do I need to do to make it better" isn't something that most neighbors have familiarity with nor the understanding to manage).

Starlink drastically improved the network performance. Quite frankly, without Starlink, I would have had most of my family spending their daylight hours in my house (while I did remote work too)... which again, isn't an option for most people.

As much as I'll grumble about Starlink for my night time long exposures getting less impressive and its CEO, using the 550km orbit to provide fairly reliable network connections at an acceptable speed to my family is probably worth it.

If you are that cocnerned for a small group of people to get decent internet, then vote for breaking the monopoly of xfinity instead of creating a new one

We not need wait long. Launching satellites is comically expensive. This endeavor will surely fail just as fast as it started.

Why? If the market deems that there’s an actual need beyond “a dwindling rural population in high income countries”, Starlink will survive. If there isn’t a need, then it won’t survive. The problem will take care of itself. Legislation has a cost when there are other more pressing issues. A politician’s time is finite.

A huge early investor in Starlink is very not market constrained and will always have politician backing - the military.

How exactly is a “huge early investor not market constrained”? For every Starlink, there is likely a Webvan. Investors do not have infinite resources.

Military and political backing are also not guaranteed. SpaceX’s origins are a good example of that.

The military isn't constrained by market forces - they are constrained by budgets and capabilities. That is, I'm not sure what "market forces" justify being able to cause a city to disappear in nuclear explosions across the world in 20 minutes, but it definitely is a capability the (US, Russian, Chinese, maybe more) military pays for.

Meanwhile, GP is saying the military is a huge early investor for Starlink, and they are doing it primarily because they want to consume it.

Space X was at a severe political disadvantage vs aerospace incumbents. It did not have full government support. It still doesn’t compared to the incumbents. Could be wrong, but the military is not a major factor for Space X especially at the beginning. Why? Elon is not a fan of bribes.

Military literally paid for SpaceX to be a thing, and USAF is IIRC something in the range of 25% if not more initial funder for Starlink, and by virtue of very specific requirements, the only stable client who couldn't be easily served by few geostationary or Molniya satellites (operating an ISP in various countries can be... interesting. Elon is also very, very fond of government handout, that's how SpaceX and Tesla got funded pretty much, even if Elon provided certain capital to get things moving at times.

For example, how is Starlink going to provide local Ministry of Defense access to the network in time of emergency, which was at least in 2008 a requirement for any ISP in Poland spanning more than one commune (smallest administrative region)? Requirements like that mean that ISPs need to seek waivers or just avoid having customers in specific countries (or break the law - we're talking Elon here after all, just look at latest FSD brouhaha). And they greatly dimnish the value proposal of building a constellation.

OTOH, DoD had been shopping around for global satellite provider for last 15-20 years, as bandwidth and availability were often issues just in running bases, but also making it harder to drone strike an usually innocent group.

> but the military is not a major factor for Space X especially at the beginning

The US military funded the first two launches of the Falcon 1. Far from "not being a major factor", without that money, Musk and Space X (and likely Tesla) would have gone bankrupt in 200X.

You're forgetting the "backed by the richest man in the world" benefit that Starlink will enjoy before any significant market correction happens.

If you don’t care for Elon what more could you ask for than he wastes tens of billions on such a fruitless endeavor? Do you think he’ll just keep launching satellites for fun and pleasure?

> If you don’t care for Elon what more could you ask for than he wastes tens of billions on such a fruitless endeavor?

Just because I don't care for Elon (nor think he should have that much money), doesn't mean I don't care what he does with his money. If he buys and shreds the Mona Lisa, I care. If he pollutes LEO because a math error keeps the satellites from deorbiting and causes Kessler Syndrome, I care. If his Boring Company in Vegas has a disaster and a hundred people die in his tunnel, I care.

I care about a lot of other things he could do too, but I'm not going to list them.

Meanwhile, while I don't care for him, that doesn't mean I want him to become poor. I don't care if he has a megayacht or something.

Starlink is too low to cause Kessler Syndrome. The orbits all decay within a few years naturally.

It could cascade for five years or so. That's a long time.

Well, he launched a car out of spite, so, why not?

They had a rocket they needed to test (Falcon Heavy) and that requires a test payload. Usually test payloads are boring mass analogs. Instead they decided to use something different and get a bunch of marketing out of it. Everything had to be approved by the appropriate government agencies well ahead of time. So where does the "spite" come from?

I can't find the reference now, so perhaps I hallucinated it. But as I recall, the car was intended to go to another investor, and the early-Tesla investor/CEO shenanigans put it into limbo, and so Musk launched it.

Interesting story if true. Why would Elons personal roadster have been promised to an investor?

The alternative was literally a lump of concrete.

That was the Falcon Heavy test launch and he wasn’t able to even give away the flight for free to anyone when he offered.

It only happened once, which was an obvious marketing stunt that presumably served its purpose. There's not much benefit to doing it over and over again.

If he was really doing it "for the lulz" then there would be many more such launches. Cars, a painting of some artist that offended him, etc. We haven't seen that though.

Quite a lot of his wealth is predicated on this actually succeeding, and is otherwise paper money.

His net worth is in SpaceX and Tesla, namely the companies doing the actual work. It's circular reasoning.

Unless the government takes them over, like with Iridium.

For the same reason we can't do anything about people doing things in international waters: it's outside the jurisdiction of most countries. E.g. China might not like satellites flying over their territory but there's not much they can do about it legally. It's not part of their airspace. SpaceX doesn't need permission; just for operating radios on the ground that communicate with those satellites. Which of course a few countries won't be willing to do because they'd instead prefer to use their own satellites.

Because SpaceX is of course hardly the only one with plans like this. Like it or not, there will likely be tens or hundreds of thousands satellites in orbit in a few decades. Millions even long term. They are too cheap and useful for that to not happen. It's more a question of when than if other rocket companies get their act together. Lots of them have been inspired by the success SpaceX has had in recent years.

The downsides are extremely minor. Nobody ever complains about jets polluting our night skies (as opposed to our atmosphere, which they do of course do bad things to). There are thousands flying at any moment. And they are much bigger than the puny SpaceX satellites. And much closer too. And they are very easy to see because they actually have blinking lights on them that are designed to make the planes more visible. It's a complete non issue.

> The downsides are extremely minor. Nobody ever complains about jets polluting our night skies (as opposed to our atmosphere, which they do of course do bad things to).

Starlink's constellation will have 12000 satellites when fully deployed. There are between 8000 and 20000 jets in the air at any given time, so you might expect jets and satellites to be roughly equally present in any given person's sky.

But wait...satellites generally are higher up than jets, so a given satellite will be visible to a larger area than a jet will.

If the Starlink satellites were in orbits that covered all of the Earth equally then when the full constellation is deployed there would be about 360 visible from any give point on the surface at any given time. I believe they aren't using any orbits that cover the far north and south, so the actual number visible for most places should be a bit higher, but lets stick with 360 as a lower bound.

That's way more than the number of jets visible at any one place.

> And they are very easy to see because they actually have blinking lights on them that are designed to make the planes more visible. It's a complete non issue.

Interesting point. They'd also be harder to remove from your data because they'd be less predictable. Presumably someone could track/monitor all the satelite's so you could adjust for them (as best you can) in your data.

How would the world react if there was a Chinese company that was launching an equivalent number of satellites as Starlink?

I except the discussions would be very different, and there would be many more calls to stop SpaceX/Starlink.

If we expected Starlink internet to censor any negative opinions of Elon Musk or Tesla, there might be similar calls to stop it.

I can see the benefits of more competition for politically entrenched ISPs, but I’m afraid of a potential Kessler Effect happening

At Starlink's low attitude all orbits decay eventually without active station keeping

This is assuming that the satellites all remain in one piece, the idea behind Kessler Syndrome is that one impact will generate loads of fragments in unpredictable orbits and cause a chain reaction.

That being said I don't know what the probability of such an event is, I assume it's fairly small. I could look it up but I've got to fix an omelette.

I'm not an expert in orbital dynamics, but (logically) if the point of impact is low enough that it's within a high-drag area of space, then any orbits generated by the impact must have that point as part of their orbits, therefore all pieces after the collision should decay eventually as well.

This doesn't happen. The energy is not close enough to shoot things far enough up that they will not decay. On this altitude Kessler Syndrome is so close to impossible as to be a non issue.

Oneweb is 1000x more dangerous compared to Starlink but that not by Musk so nobody cares.

How was the omelette? There's one on my horizon after this all hands is over :)

Ended up falling back on my old standby of instant mi goreng with bok choy and fried egg on top. Tastier than anything you can make in 15 minutes has any right to be.

This is why I wanted orbital space to be treated as Antarctica. But the US and China are in a new cold war and both sides have no stomach for accountability.

Musk just destroyed America's moral high-ground on the issue as well so 10 years from now when we look up we'll see corporations battling it out.

You can't use the (false) premise that "nobody ever complains about jets polluting our atmosphere" to justify hindering the detection of near-earth asteroids, which is guaranteed to eventually threaten the safety of people in this planet, possibly in a country that is not opting in to this situation. This is why legality cannot be the sole basis of right/wrong. Just because countries do not (yet!) have jurisdiction over space doesn't mean that you can just do anything with it--and especially if the said countries without jurisdiction may be the collateral damage of such actions.

I think it is your privilege to give such opinion, however, I can see the various advantage of Starlink. Many ISP in the US simply refuse to provide proper bandwidth and people have to live with ISP shenanigans, Starlink has helped those people. Sometimes submarine cables are destroyed. We saw that in a recent disaster where a volcanic eruption was responsible for an internet blackout, Starlink would have been helpful there.

And to counter your same example, in India around 41% of people have access to the internet. I think the internet is a basic right, at least in this century, so we shouldn't deprive people of the internet. I do acknowledge that Starlink might be costly but something is better than nothing.

I mean, I don't think that your argument justifies why we should trade off near-earth asteroid monitoring with faster internet connections just so we can consume more Instagram and TikTok videos better.

If scanning for near Earth asteroids was really a priority, there's nothing stopping us from building a detection network in space, above the altitude at which Starlink satellites fly.

Isn't it more the case that it is a priority precisely because we have our current methods for detecting near-earth asteroids, but we're letting capitalism get in the way and launch Starlink satellites in space to trade off the safety of our species for more profit that, honestly, isn't even necessary? I mean, of course you can argue that the survival of our species isn't necessary and is not more important than money, but if you believe that, you should state that plainly because that seems to be where we'll have an impasse.

I don’t think detecting near earth asteroids has become impossible. Developing space infrastructure is just as important to our survival as detection.

In my opinion... If we REALLY wanted to detect near Earth asteroids, we'd focus on space based telescopes. They are better in nearly every way, except for the raw size of the mirror. But we use ground based telescopes because they are cheaper. Capitalism has already prioritized lower science budgets for finding big rocky planet killers.

Okay so until such time as this higher-orbit asteroid detection network is in place, let's have a moratorium on these Starlink things.

To me, internet doesn't means "Instagram and TikTok videos". And, we should focus on how to solve this asteroid detection issue, that doesn't mean we should dismiss whole idea.

India is an extremely poor example since the other 59% can't afford $100/mo. and keep in mind the terminal cost for them is extremely high still.

> Starlink is only a benefit for a small dwindling population of rural people in high income countries.

By the FCC’s estimates[0], there are 26 million people in the US alone, mostly in rural areas, who lack access to adequate high speed internet. I believe that exceeds what most would consider a small dwindling population by quite a large margin.

This number could potentially increase too, with the recent advent of full remote work. A fair number of people who live in urban areas do so only because they have to for employment and if they had the option would move somewhere less densely populated.

[0]: https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progr...

A large market for Starlink are ships and aircraft. It's already been tested in these applications, but commercial usage is pending regulatory approval.

Plus there've been some discussions, and even a signed contact regarding Starlink usage as a backhaul on cell towers. Link: https://telecoms.com/511313/kddi-to-use-starlink-for-mobile-...

Let's say you put a 5G tower with battery+solar in the middle of nowhere to provide coverage for a small village. How is that tower going to connect to the rest of the world? You'd still need to invest in fiber or microwave links to hook it up. Starlink could be a cheaper and simpler alternative to connect the tower.

> What happens when an European or Chinese competitor launches another 42,000 satellites?

Then there are 84,000 satellites in orbit and room for literally millions more? Space is big. Each satellite is smaller than a car. What happens if a company produces 42,000 more cars? Will it blanket the Earth? Of course not! I think you might just be a bit confused when trying to conceptualize just how much room we're talking about here.

It fantastically benefits US military providing reliable communication channel and high speed networking everywhere. Not sure if Europeans will want this. Not sure if Russians will be able to afford this. Chinese might want the same very much and they can built all the satellites for sure.

I dont see why spacex has got to target the same niche (rural people in rich countries) everywhere in the world. They could provide low cost backhaul in developing countries for telcos. Offer more expensive access for airlines and ships. Have an offering aimed at organisations who want to run a WiFi network (like schools or offices). The advantage of satellite is that the same infrastructure can offer different services in different places.

SpaceX bringing internet to rural areas is just another of those Musk stories he tells. Like how SpaceX is “meant to make us a multi planet species” when in reality it’s just another government contractor at this point. Starlinks real business will come from the military, airlines and shipping fleets.

I agree that most revenue will come from military, shipping, airlines etc. But I don't see why that should preclude other uses at other price points. Particulaly as those users can be separated geographically. And the marginal cost of bandwidth could become very low. If the only customer in a footprint is a school in a remote area then you might as well sell to them at a price they can afford. It is more revenue than you would have got otherwise. It's like selling seats on an airline. Most revenue comes from expensive business class seats, but there are still cheap seats. Because most costs are fixed regardless of how many users.

No I’m not saying it will preclude the other clients. Just that Musk has a way of selling his companies as doing one thing to the masses while actually making money via the government.

> Starlink is only a benefit for a small dwindling population of rural people in high income countries.

I live in downtown Chicago and I can't get wired Internet for less than $70,000 installation. I would have gone with Starlink except they had backorders on the receivers, so I went with T-Mobile 5G Home Internet instead. So, it's not just people in the boondocks that need wire-free Internet.

if you have access to TMobile 5g there's absolutely no reason to get starlink.

You're absolutely right. It's saddening to see how little regulation there is, or even how little focus there is on regulating business in space. I don't want to sound naive, but it's frustrating that us citizens of any countries have no weight on such important matters. All for the Musks and Bezos' of this world I guess.

Regulations will come with time. Space is the new Wild West, once we have a decent amount of infrastructure (and people) in space governments and regulations will follow.

Starlink with laser links could be providing Internet access in Tonga right now. Sadly they're a year (or more) from having it working, they only just started yet.

(I'm posting this message via Starlink. Admittedly I'm a rural person in a rich country. Still grateful for it.)

Russians think there could be some hidden military use of Starlink and there could be some truth in that, as from a business point of view only Starlink somehow does not add up.

I've been on the edge of buying Starlink, but am currently waiting on a few other things to pan out:

* I often have to drive through rural roads with my family. Cell service is limited/spotty here. Starlink would allow me to work on the road (and have an emergency backup).

* My wife and I have been eyeing the possibility of purchasing a small plot of land to "get away to" occasionally. Starlink would enable me to work from that plot of land.

A plot of land to 'get away to' is a great thing to have if you are getting away to it frequently enough to stop it from turning into a jungle. Abandoned land turns into proto forest with amazing speed, and any dwelling on there will be eaten up in record time. If you are serious about this please budget for a local caretaker.

Some people are OK with with proto Forest or or natural environments. I have a getaway that has gone 40 years without meaningful caretaking.

Maybe once a decade a few hours are spent pruning trees which encroach on the view or clearing brush for fire safety.

Hell, there are miners cabins built in the 1800s that are still habitable without any dedicated caretaking

Devil's advocate here- the sky either belongs to everybody or it belongs to nobody. Why do astronomers think that they have sole ownership of the sky?

One is looking at it, another is polluting it and precluding others from looking at it. Surely you see the difference?

Somehow I prefer the timeline where the earth is blanketed in internet.

Big +1 on this. Elon Musk is not a philanthropist. The goal of Starlink is just to bring Internet to people that can afford an expensive system just for themselves by literally annoying everyone else.

It's the same thing with the Boring Company and public transports: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass-t...