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.