Scientists, looking deep into space, have long voiced their concerns that satellites are encroaching on their ability to study the cosmos.
On Reddit I remember getting called a “space Karen” for pointing this out in a discussion about Starlink. Elon Musk fanboys are some of the worst. Second only to Q fanboys.
Well the issue is that not everything is black and white.
On one hand, these satellites can potentially absolutely wreak havok on astronomy, and our own view of the night sky. Nobody wants that.
On the other hand, in a few years, these satellites are able to provide cheap internet all over the planet, which would allow poor remote communities in South America, Africa, and Asia access to the internet, which is practically impossible through any other means. IMO, its worth the tradeoff. I think helping people is more important than astronomy, but I recognize that that’s just my opinion
poor remote communities in South America
Ironically, starlink was used by illegal miners on the Amazon to coordinate operations and avoid policing.
Yes the internet is indeed useful to have
Okay but you’re falling into Elon’s trap. You can’t weigh future potential against current harm naively. Particularly when it comes from somebody with a long history of over promising and under delivering. Since we pay the full price up front (loss of science, etc) but will never reap the full benefits promised.
For instance: it could help remote villages or third world countries. But Starlink costs a pretty penny in western money those places lack. Otherwise they would already have traditional infrastructure.
Do those remote villages even have the power to plug in a PC and starlink equipment?
In college I helped make solar phone chargers for some villages in wartorn areas. They would walk days to charge their phones and battery banks, then walk back. Somehow they had cellular service, but the power lines to their village were ripped down during a conflict.
There’s probably an exceedingly small population that is in a third world place with power, with devices that need internet, but are also without internet.
It’s not a distant future, the benefits are already here and increasing with each launch.
I’ve been tracking a sailboat crossing the Atlantic Ocean the past weeks which have been able to upload videos to YouTube everyday, something that would be impossible without Starlink.
Of course, this specific use case isn’t important, just used it to point out that Starlink is already working well.
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To my knowledge absolutely nothing critical to Ukranian defense uses Starlink.
And again, what is niave is to not heavily discount any claims Elon makes. Starlink provides neglible value currently, what potential might exist is imaginary.
The best thing for the world is to realize Elon was a sunk cost and move on
Elon already fucked with their starlink I believe, but I didn’t recheck to be fair. Also seriously, don’t trust that man with shit.
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I tried to separate the conversation from Elon to keep it more honest about the benefits of accessible internet for everyone anywhere on Earth.
So why do you think that launching thousands of satellites would be more cost-effective than other options?
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Satellites are expensive.
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Launching them into space is expensive.
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Cell phones, and cell phone towers are cheap.
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Elon Musk is launching them into an orbit where they’ll decay in 10 years anyway, meaning you’ll have to perpetually launch these thousands, or even 10s of thousands of satellites into space just to keep service.
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Traditional satellite companies launch fewer numbers of many satellites into the sky to cover large swaths of land instead. Since they aim at rural areas (ex: the Ocean with no one there), they are superior in a cost/efficacy perspective. Yes, there’s less bandwidth, but there’s less people, so its a fine tradeoff.
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If you need more density, building cell phone networks / cell phone towers is just superior.
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If you need even more density than what cell phones can give you, then there’s always fiber optic directly.
Lmao go run some fiop in the Amazon and let me know how that shakes out
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For the third time, you cannot separate the grifter from the grift. That’s not “Fuck Elon”, that’s “starlink is not, and never will be, what was promised”
Similarly, you can’t weigh an abstract possibility versus a real cost. You want the conversation to be some philosophical discourse about social vs societal value. But it’s not that, it’s a real situation right now.
And in this real life situation, we have to evaluate what starlink actually is - - a failed toy for wealthy early adopters - - and not what some abstract “could be”.
Especially when we know for a fact that any public promises of that potential are certainly intended to mislead and not inform.
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Most people value everything over astrology…
Ribbit
Isn’t Starlink still heavily limited by the geography you are in. As in there cannot be too many subscribers in any one place because it will use all the capacity? If that’s still the case seems doubtful it will ever bring anything cheap to the masses.
At least SpaceX restarted the cheap launch race and is giving us the option of heavy but affordable payloads for scientific instruments.
LEO junk will only get worse with time, so let’s start planning for it.
which would allow poor remote communities in South America, Africa, and Asia access to the internet, which is practically impossible through any other means.
“Practically impossible” is a horrible way to describe it. It’s not practically impossible; the solution and methods are eminently doable, they just aren’t done (yet) because of cost in poor areas with relatively weak governments. Most of those areas will get reliable non-satellite internet in the years to come.
We can talk up the good of systems like Starlink without hyping it up as delivering something that is otherwise impossible.
Sure, but you’re creating a false dichotomy to get to your conclusion. The way Starlink is creating its satellite network is not the only way to create one. Viasat doesn’t blanket the globe in satellites.
Very well out! I agree about the trade-off.
all these comments discussing ukraine wartime internet, or poorer communities in south america. meanwhile, i have zero interest in musk, but starlink has been a fantastic Internet option for me in rural US.
my other options are borderline unusable DSL, or a couple of line-of-sight wireless providers which would require cutting down who knows how many trees to even have a hope of connectivity.
there are a significant number of people living in this area, but no decent wired or cellular internet options and despite my state getting a large federal grant to improve internet speeds, I have zero expectation it will be improved for me.
Same here, we’re not rural enough to get grant money but not suburban enough to get cable. And everybody who says Hughesnet is fine has definitely never used it. I could never have worked from home through the pandemic if we hadn’t gotten starlink.
It sounds insane but you should look into building a rural ISP. This guy in Michigan did it and he can barely keep up with demand in his rural community.
I strongly dislike Elon Musk but Starlink is a net win, and science can and must evolve to overcome these sorts of challenges. Nearby space is only going to get more crowded
I have to agree here. I think a temporary compromise could be reducing the constellation size, spread out the dishes and reduce throughput. The accessibility Starlink offers is a 11/10 win for the world. But the bandwidth and size should come after we have better mitigation for Kessler Syndrome and inference with observing the universe. Alternatively, lets slap some big fuckin’ telescopes on the moon and call it a day!
Fanboys for anyone are the worst.
We as fucking adults should be able to criticize anything and anyone we believe in. Especially if you believe in them.
That’s called security in your beliefs, go figure that our chronically insecure populace would refuse to question their beliefs
so many people tie their self worth to something ridiculous, like a personality, or a sports team, or politician, and absolutely lose their mind over any criticism or wrong doing, because they take it as a personal assault on them.
I think it’s understandable to want to be a part of something bigger, and we want to defend our comfort zones so people get carried away.
To me, it’s just immature
Theres a difference between being part of something bigger, and tying your identity and self worth to a person or thing.
Funny, “Space Karen” is a really common name for Elon.
Look, anyone who can fit a laser beam and a grappling hook inside a wrist-watch deserves your respect.
That is a Q worthy of a fandom.
“Q fanboys”?
I think they mean QAnon fanboys.
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No, they’re just big fans of the guy who makes all the gadgets in James Bond.
Or maybe they’re really into omnipotent beings with a mean sense of humor…
yeah i’ve just never heard the term fanboy for that group
Yeah, and if we did not abandon our traditional networks then there would not be such a strong market for STARMLINK.
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If New Zealand can manage damn near 100% cellular coverage, and we have some pretty reasonable mountains, why can’t others?
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Centurylink/Quest/Whatever it was before received something like a billion dollars from the Obama administration to “connect the entire nation” with modern phone service. They didn’t do that.
You could receive normal satellite internet the same way, the advantage starlink brings is that it’s much lower latency than geosynchronous satellites and they’re selling it for much less and more bandwith.
Normal sattelite internet is terrible
Sounds to me like it’s about time we build an observatory on the moon.
I hear you, but let me propose: prison on the moon, and we send Elon there.
And then we have an Australia situation
I’m okay with the Moon eventually becoming a good place to visit maybe after several several generations – hopefully this time with less of a chance to displace native populations. It’s only slightly more hostile to human life than Australia after all.
That raises an interesting question. What would we do if the moon declared independence and was self sustaining?
And interfere with the whalers on the moon? For there ain’t no whales, so they tell tales and sing their whaling tune.
I hear you, but let me propose: prison on the moon, and we send Elon there.
I do wonder how much the average people commenting would care if musk had nothing to do with this.
It’s an issue, but it’s an issue scientists knew was coming for decades now. Starlink isn’t the only company putting satellites into low earth orbit. They aren’t the first and the amount of them will just keep coming.
What we need is regulations and requirements for how many, what purpose, how they’ll be dealt with if something goes wrong and when they’re no longer needed, etc. Getting people to share satellites that are already there (when possible) and not putting up satellites that are redundant or don’t provide that much benefit versus non-satellite options or further orbit options will be important.
But all these mindless circlejerkers only talking about musk and wanting starlink “taken down” are really polluting the topic with meaningless bullshit. It’s unfortunate people are bringing these mindless circlejerks over from reddit.
LEO shouldn’t be some billionaire playground to make even more money. The Kessler syndrome is a very real threat to our future
So we just shouldn’t have high speed sattelite internet for people in rural areas or disaster areas because some people make money from it?
Or they should only be there if a government runs the sattelite? Because that wouldn’t change the effect they have on telescopes.
This is the kind of comment I was talking about.
I agree, if it wasn’t Musk there wouldn’t be so much hate most probably, starlink is objectively good for all the people living in rural zones (in some cases just outside of big cities) where internet doesn’t arrive because other companies don’t want to spend the money for it.
There’s plenty of companies that do rural internet. They’re called WISPs (wireless ISPs). Usually small business owners willing to get more customers.
We would give free internet to more than a few farmers willing to let us mount on a silo or elevator. We put up a backhaul, access point, and give them a connection. Free internet for the land owner, we expand our territory, win/win. Then the neighbors just point a link at the AP and we charge them.
Only real requirement is line-of-sight. Towers can reach far. Existing structures usually work, otherwise they can sometimes erect a small tower.
I’ll do ya one better than that.
Because of existing telecom networks its nearly impossible for new fiber companies to do any work in large to medium cities in the US. Even Google couldn’t do it because Comcast/Spectrum/TW wouldn’t allow them to lay cable. In areas not already served by the big ISPs though there’s nearly no red tape. Sandy, Oregon (pop 12,000) laid a municipal fiber network for $30/month. This guy in Michigan said fuck it after he couldn’t get anything laid to his house and built his own ISP.
The actual sane take. I swear musk is constantly living rent free in way too many peoples minds.
Honestly, what I took from this is we should have more telescopes that operate outside of the orbits of commercial satellites.
That’s what scientists have wanted anyway, even without the occasional satellite there is a lot of interference. I wouldn’t be surprised if they leveraged this to try to get more funding for more of them they wouldn’t get otherwise.
I wouldn’t mind if my taxes got increased if it meant we had a proper fleet of James Webb-esque telescopes out there.
Based on the article the satellites are not staying 100% on their intended spectrum spec and are bleeding some unintended interfere noise. I hope the starlink cloud doesn’t interfere so much that it excludes possibility of some research. On earth, if you transmit even slightly out-of-spec radio signals, the government agencies will get mad and really really fast.
ELI5: Low earth orbit is becoming over crowed “FM radio station”, with regulation lacking who can broadcast and at what frequency.
I am biased here because I am benefiting heavily from each space-x satellite launch.
Without starlink I would not have been able to afford to buy a house. A weird statement I know, but in spite of being a dual-income, tertiary-educated household we were completely priced out of the city I grew up in including even the most far-flung suburbs.
We were also priced out of every other nearby city and their suburbs, and to be frank - never once in my life have I dreamed of holding a mortgage for almost 1 million dollars. That is indentured servitude for the remainder of my working life in my book and I just can’t do it.
With starlink, I am connected to the world. I rely on it to make phone calls, to carry out my work and to socialize. It is the sole pipeline through which we receive all media and entertainment and without it we would have nothing. I am happy living in the middle of nowhere, and I could easily afford a house here.
With that said, starlink already have 12,000 sats in low earth orbit, and plan to bring that number to over 40,000.
The technology works. In two years, I have had one major outage (for which I was financially compensated) but otherwise, not even so much as a slowdown.
If 12K satellites are interfering with the work of science towards common goals of humanity though - 40K will make this much worse. At some point, Space-x must atone for their sins here and do something to help the affected communities. Eg. Launch radio telescopes far above the reach of their low-earth-orbit satellite array and gift its use to the communities whom they have affected.
I don’t think it’s so easy to walk back what space-x have achieved here. Already they have partnered with several telecommunications companies around the world to bring genuine global cell coverage without the need for any towers. This is a massive leap forward for emergency communications, and continues to open possibilities where before there were none.
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Send 40k satellites to pollute low-earth orbit (and provide internet)
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Develop rockets that would more affordably send payload above LEO
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Push scientists to get funding and launch more telescopes above LEO
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Profit.
Talk about demand generation…
LEO isn’t a marketing ploy, it reduces the latency inherent to traditional satellite technology which is in a much higher orbit. Starlink has taken off because it provides a much better user experience compared to the old school satellite options.
It sucks for astronomers but given governments and other companies are following their example, nobody is putting this genie back in the bottle.
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Interesting. I remember there was a brightness concern with the satellites reflecting too much light, but assumed it was all ok because IIRC they hit their reflectivity reduction targets.
However, this seems to be about transmissions from the satellites interfering with non-visible observations.
In a study, published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, scientists used a powerful telescope in the Netherlands to observe 68 of SpaceX’s satellites and detected emissions from satellites are drifting out of their allocated band, up in space.
… “Why this matters is because of the number,” Dr Di Vruno said. “Suppose that there is a satellite in space that radiates this kind of signal, there is a very, very small chance that this satellite will be in the beam, in the main site, of your telescope.”
drifting out of their allocated band
That sounds like a violation of regulatory authorization. Tell his ass to fix it or shut it down. If he can’t, revoke StarLink’s status as a US corporation.
Imagine you are working your entire life in science. To find were we are coming from - were we are going to - spending millions of dollars for the most sophisticated Instruments.
And then some random moron with too much money appears and moons you every few minutes.
It’ll be interesting when some untouchable actor decides enough is enough and starts deorbiting them.
This has been going on for much longer than Starlink.
There were a number of observatories built in or near cities. They became mostly useless once we figured out electric lights but we still use them for education sometimes.
SpaceX has been working with the NSF so they can continue to dim Starlink https://spacenews.com/nsf-and-spacex-reach-agreement-to-reduce-starlink-effects-on-astronomy/
Now we’re putting more and more observation capabilities deep into space. JWT is already getting images better than anything you could get on earth, even if you eliminated Starlink and turned off every light on the planet. Ground based astronomical observation is still relevant but we keep coming up with better alternatives.
Muskrat furiously making alts to downvote.
I heard he’ll be done in just 2 years!
“No, it’s not.” - Elon, probably
ELI5 - why do satellites need to be bright? Do they have some kind of lights? Can’t they just be dark and beam internet around?
They’re metal things sitting up there where the sunlight hits them. What you’re seeing is the sun reflecting off them. Its like how you can look up and see a plane all bright and in the sun even at dusk when its starting to get dark on the ground.
I read the original question as “why can’t they make them black/nonreflective”
They don’t have lights, but they reflect light from the sun at certain times of day. Another way to think about it: these satellite can be experiencing broad daylight hours after the sun has set at the surface. Similarly, when you’re seeing the Moon at night what you’re actually seeing is daytime on the Moon and it’s often enough to light up the landscape around you because you’re looking at an object that is experiencing daytime while you aren’t.
The question then becomes: can’t the satellite be made darker? And the answer is they are already pretty dark. The moon, for example, has an Albedo (measure of reflectiveness) of 0.15, which is similar to asphalt and it can still dominate a night sky. SpaceX satellites have an Albedo of about 0.11, so astronomers are essentially having to deal with thousands of tiny and unpredictable Moons drifting across the sky. I can’t find the article now, but I recall reading that the albedo would need to get down to 0.002 to become negligible; I just don’t see that happening.
Thermal management is a huge issue for spacecraft. In atmosphere, the bulk of cooling for things like electronics would be convective, from transferring the heat into a fluid (air/water/etc) which then moves away with the heat. In space, you don’t have a fluid for convective cooling, so your cooling is all radiative - essentially just emitting infrared energy. This is far, far less efficient - you need much more material and surface area to get the same cooling.
Dark objects are better at radiative cooling… unfortunately, they’re also far better at absorbing radiative energy. Like the oodles of it coming out of the sun. That’s why dark objects are dark - they’re absorbing the energy. However, it also means that your thermal management is far more difficult because you’re absorbing a lot more heat. It can be worked around, but it makes the spacecraft larger and heavier, which is the antithesis of space work. So spacecraft have traditionally tried to reject as much absorbed energy as possible, which by definition makes them reflective.
I think this was on my bingo card
Elon: scientific work is interfering with starlink
