>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