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Theoretically if you started lasering these down somehow from international waters… uh, what would happen? Hypothetically?
Depends on what flag the boat is flying and what port it left and returned too after.
Vatican. Sri Lanka. Hawaii.
It’s a ship flagged from the Holy Imperial Nation of Ocean-Sea. It’s a floating, autonomous nation-state in the middle of the ocean that harvest food from the sea and desalinates drinking water from the same. Their national history states they haven’t touched land in 2000 years. Also they have lasers and can launch predator satellites. It’s a very fascinating country.
The government of whatever country owns those satellites would have an issue with that, regardless of what the law says.
If you did it to satellites belonging to a US company, providing a service used by the US military…
Let’s just say they can deliver explosives to any point on the globe in 30 minutes.
So laser them from the moon. Got it, thanks!
Don’t forget all the fun chemicals they leave in the atmosphere when they deorbit.
We’re so fucked.
In fact, increasing Earth’s albedo by pumping certain types of chemicals into the higher layers of the atmosphere has been proposed as a possible geoengineering solution that could slow down global warming.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire project was architected as a way to completely sidestep regulatory approval and test geoengineering theories before climate change really starts to pop. Elon and his fellow plutocrats are undoubtedly sociopathic enough to do that.
I think that’s how we end up in a train perpetually circling the frozen earth.
I’m sure Musk is perfectly willing to turn certain constellations off at specific times… For a price, of course.
Exxcellent.
But… memes.
?
Expanded: ‘but, how will I receive memes if not for a satellite constellation beaming them to me’
Concern: Starlink will ruin science.
Rebuttal/joke : But… I want memes.
MEMES, BRO, LISTEN BETTER
Fuckin space garbage is what it is.
Yes it was impressive that they landed a rocket again once, but the quantity of launches and satellites is doing nothing good for anyone. It should’ve been a stepping stone for better technology, but instead they’re just mining money. Privately owned space engineering is a disgrace to humanity.
Space engineering used to unite even the worst opponents as with the international space station, but now those institutions are underfunded, while billionaire space-musk can shoot his loads into the atmosphere without any regard to the rest of the worlds population living inside said sphere.
Tax the asshole already.
agreed. it’s a technology we need but like everything meant to improve humanity, it should be publicly owned (no, not the stock market - truly public).
the quantity of launches and satellites is doing nothing good for anyone
Except for the millions of people accessing internet via Starlink to whom the alternative is either no internet, slow internet or extremely expensive internet.
This. I wish I had more than one up vote I could give for this comment.
Enshittification happens to all things, sadly.
It happens really early with that fuckin’ weasel in charge.
When people talk about taxing these horrible people I think of tax as being a euphamism
I was excited about starlink when it was announced, but already it’s way too expensive, already bows to actual totalitarians and isn’t affordable on the ocean and not available in remote places without a license.
And with more satellite constellations planned by amazon and others, it seems the kessler syndrome is just a question of time.
Wouldn’t it be nice if those sattelites would work together instead of against eachother. What if Amazon worked together with starlink, and the other companies offering internet so there would be less sattelites in the sky. Why does every sat internet company need their own fleet of sattelites
Well presumably to make more money lol. The good thing is that there will at least be some competition to bring prices down and keep service quality up. A monopoly would be bad. But of course that leads to more satellites. This really shows how our capitalist system can’t really make rational decisions that are for the benefit of humanity. Ideally we’d have a separate economic institution to regulate industry like this under direct democratic control.
already bows to actual totalitarians
Care to elaborate?
Turkey and Russia. It’s clear that profit seeking corporations would bow, but then Elon screams bloody murder when reactionary forces in Brazil manipulating social media get censored.
I feel like that explanation is missing a verb or something.
To bow, or bow down or kneel for. But I’m not going to google that for you haha. The basic problem is that starlink theoretically has immense power so it becomes a political tool. He bows to those ones but not to legitimate democratic interests.
Especially once starlink and others can make landline based internet connections obsolete by pricing them out - which they are not currently doing though, but it seems only a matter of time with competition. Basically we could get to a situation where there are only like 2 or 3 internet provider practically controlling internet globally.
When I searched “Elon bows to Turkey” I got this story about Twitter censoring some tweets during the Turkish election… Is that what you’re talking about?
They won’t be able to price landline based connections out as long as they have to replace their satellites every 5 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re running at a loss currently.
What about Turkey and Russia? Starlink doesn’t work in Russia.
Follow the news so we don’t have to catch you up.
Replies like this from people like you is why social media sucks. Thanks for your contribution on keeping it so.
It’s extremely affordable on the ocean. What are you talking about?
Just until recently satellite internet was really expensive. Like only large corporations could afford it. And the bandwidth was shit. Also it was barely available in the deep northern and southern hemisphere. Sure it’s considered expensive for the regular kayaking dude. But it’s insanely more available than ever before.
The dudes an asshole. But don’t invent arguments.
On the Kessler point, Starlink birds fly at an altitude where they will deorbit in 4-8 years if they go dead, so that particular orbit will always be fairly clean, and if a Kessler event does happen, the debris will deorbit in a reasonable length of time.
A portion of the debris from collisions would enter elliptical orbits though so might need more time to de-orbit. But loosing all LEO satellites and even just 4-8 years without use of LEO would be an absolute catastrophe. You could still launch satellites to medium or geosynchronous orbit though.
Where will they go after they deorbit? Do we get em back?
They burn up on re-entry, at least they’re supposed to.
Thanks, atmosphere 🙂❤️ that’s interesting design! Will any of the debris reach the planet or is it designed to break apart in a particular fashion?
My understanding is they’re designed to completely disintegrate.
Will any of the debris reach the planet
Not in a solid form. There may be some undesirable effects though at greater numbers, we don’t really have good data. Here’s a blog post by the European Space Agency talking about a couple studies on the effects of satellite reentry. Note that the satellites they simulated were significantly larger than the Starlink satellites.
If we had the money, there’s no legal repercussions to going up there and deorbiting the satellites right? Maybe install a defense platform to shoot down any more from spacex, oneweb or whoever else tries putting them up.
This is one of the dumbest takes I’ve ever seen here.
They’re a US company, and the US military uses Starlink for some applications. They’d fuck you up very quickly.
You are very smart.
(I just realised this is lemmy world, the reddit part of the fediverse. Oops)
If we had the money
If you had that kind of money, you could just build extensive ground-based fiber and radio networks that invalidate Starlink.
there’s no legal repercussions to going up there and deorbiting the satellites right?
Lmao, what would ever make you think deliberately destroying communication infrastructure would be legal?
Maybe install a defense platform to shoot down any more from spacex, oneweb or whoever else tries putting them up.
If you’re talking about shooting satellites out of orbit from the ground, you don’t understand how orbital spaceflight works. If you’re talking about putting weapons in space, that’s a violation of the Outer Space Treaty.
Also, blowing up satellites just creates clusters of space junk we can’t get rid of, so it’s a non-starter.
It’s obviously a joke lol.
And we could easily deploy land based connectivity solutions with the money being spent on satellite internet.
I mean maybe this is the push they need to actually spend the cash and get one up in space that is away from natural interferences as well?
Sucks for the home radio Astro guy, but they have the solution, have had for a long time.
The best solution is probably to not have starlink satellites up in space tbh
Any satellite would provide interference, and the earth naturally has its own, so that’s a non-factor, when the best results can only be had in space.
Radio astronomy isn’t exactly a home hobbies thing if you didn’t know….
There is also the fact that the starlink satellites are depleting the ozone layer, in case you haven’t decided we should remove these things yet.
And? What’s that got to do with radio interfernce?
And radio telescopes aren’t exactly compact enough to build in space. Radio telescope arrays tend to be fields withs dozens-hundreds of dishes several meters across.
You can do the same in space…
And also how does space law work? If you launched a predator satellite that starts taking these out, again, launched from international waters, is that, like, illegal? Considering they’re a private company?
It would be way more risky, space debris is no joke
What if the predator satellite just ties little rockets to them that are aimed at deep space?
Then you’d be defeating the careful planning which went into making sure the satellites don’t become a long term problem, by raising them out of the orbits which decay in just a few years and into orbits which never decay.
Perfect!
4mm paint fleck traveling at 23000 mph/10 kms has entered the chat
Given that someone owns those satellites, yes.
Outer space is under maritime law, oddly enough.
Isn’t Starlink also too expensive because you have to replace the satellites every 5 years? As in you’d have to sell to basically everybody on earth to be profitable. And they charge 50Euros a month, almost twice as much as I currently pay, and I’m satisfied with my current provider.
Their target market is people who don’t have a better option, not people who already have fibre to the door.
And those people are famously wealthy.
Starlink is expensive, but it’s not that expensive.
And they’re running at a loss.
it is looking like that flipped this year to over 200 million in profit off over 2 billion in revenue
Yes, RV travelers, cruise lines, multiple militaries.
not exactly my friend.
not exactly. many starlink users are not your grandpa in his $500k RV. it’s the digital nomad in their $5k RV held together by duct tape. some of us would do anything to get away from all the bullshit of modern society, and quite frankly i think the world needs more of us.
I was being sarcastic. I simply don’t believe that there’s enough money to be made selling satellite internet to support replacing a large constellation of satellites every 5 years. Especially since Starlink’s competitors use higher up satellites, meaning they don’t have to replace their satellites as often.
Its their data thats worth money. Now its collectable.
50Euros a month, almost twice as much as I current pay
Wow Canada sucks in in our ISP choices
Cries in long island
I have one option that isn’t 4g wireless crap… It’s $110/month for 500mbps… It was $80/month but they felt the need to make more money by eliminating their lower tiers and “forcing” you to upgrade… I just suddenly had a 500mbps plan and $110 bill without asking them to change anything…
Thats the plan - and nothing will be done because there is no law, no faith, only money.
Democrats are no better. They’ll argue for women’s or trans rights (when convenient) but even most of their "progressive voters still worship at the altar of Money and think to limit greed in any meaningful way is inherently sinful.
Agree with the money worship thing, disagree with democrats not being better. Arguing for people’s rights IS better.
Starlink, isn’t that the planetwide wi-fi initiative? Do they need those emissions to function? Other than the fact that it’s from a corporation, it seems to me that internet connectivity across the whole planet would be more valuable to humanity as a whole than clearer views of space on one invisible part of the spectrum (which they can still watch from space if it’s that important.)
Though the competition between multiple corps trying to launch satellites doesn’t seem good, and it’d be nice if some FOSS initiative and/or intergovernment collaboration were to step in and make it one set of satellites free for everyone.
heheheheheheh.jpg
Free satellites.
Don’t worry, greed ensures that Kessler Syndrome will get them in the not too distant future. Sure hope you aren’t reliant on GPS or other satellite services, but at least, for a shining moment, shareholders got some value. /s
GPS/GLONASS/Galileo are at ~20,000km vs starlinks ~500km, all the LEO satellites would be fucked but global positioning would be fine. Sounds good to me.
Wouldn’t interference from all the junk in between be at least somewhat of a problem, particularly given that the average GPS receiver already isn’t super sensitive nor accurate?
Unlikely. There would be very little, if any, interference with signals unless they were extremely precise. The issue is physical stuff getting destroyed by debris.
Think of a very light sprinkling of rain, but imagine if every raindrop was solid and moving faster than a bullet. Walking out in it would be deadly, but likely wouldn’t affect your cell phone service. Well, besides the tower itself and every structure in the area getting absolutely shredded.
Yeah, I suppose I’m over-estimating the density/amount.
Starlink is a very low orbit. Even if something like that happened, it would clean itself up in like five years
When 2 satellites collide, the pieces don’t all stay on the same altitude. Even though none of them will be in a stable orbit, all it takes is for one piece to smack into a satellite that’s a bit higher up before it de-orbits, and boom, now you’ve got a debris field that won’t de-orbit.
Pieces don’t gain kinetic energy in a collision. Even if they collide and get sent off in an “upwards” direction, it’s not up very far relative to the orbit, and that’s just a less circular orbit at lower speed that will burn up even faster
For you scenario to work, there would have to be a chain reaction
- collision, sending a few pieces upwards
- during that small number of orbits they survive, collision, sending a few pieces upward
- repeat many times
Each chance is remote enough, and ricocheting pieces only go so far, and any higher satellites they could reach are also low orbit, that I can’t imagine how remote the chances of this happening are
Kessler syndrome is a real worry, but not in this low orbit
The satellites are constantly giving themselves small boosts to maintain orbit and then are deorbited in 5 years when they run out of fuel. It should be well less than 5 years to resolve a LEO Kessler type situation from starlink.
and isn’t that a nice thought, but no, it raises orbit fairly naturaly…
Not wrong, and yet small parts of that ‘orbit’ would kinetically increase, in a Kessler sort of way…
Sorry, you’re probably right. It’s a thing I expect to be problematic if the future. Of course all problems will burn up in the atmosphere…
Pentagon: Link 16+++++v2 go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
To me Elon Musk is like the real-life, slightly less dramatic and slightly less evil Handsome Jack out of Borderlands
“Kirkland brand Dr evil” has been my go to.
That’s not fair to Kirkland though, lol! They never treated us like that asshole 😛
Ugly Musk
Less evil than Handsome Jack?! Jack’s at least a good guy in the Presequel. Was Elon ever good?
Good point
He certainly seemed good a decade ago. Look up how we internet folk spoke about him when he was the fun guy who wanted to explore Mars and provide electric cars, not the neonazi who ruined the internet!
Funny how he had many of us fooled. I think it was more my naivete that led me to think he was legit. For some reason I’ve kept returning to the idea that an altruistic billionaire isn’t an oxymoron 😑 as many have said and i will dutifully repeat: nobody becomes a billionaire because they’ve worked that many hours or made that giant of a contribution to the human race–they only acquire that much by withholding a significant share of the profits they’ve received from the other people that did the actual work to make the money in the first place.
I’ll never get over Handsome Jack killing Bloodwing. Fuck him.
I don’t know which has said wilder shit honestly.
He’s Weyland.
I thought he was X.
What’s up with some meme communities and people not posting memes on them?
This is not a meme community.
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts
It’s called microblogmemes
And? See the description of the community and don’t create fuss out of nothing.
You realize a meme is an image or anything else that’s shared right…? The second you post any image here, it automatically becomes a meme whether you intended or not.
Never miss a chance to milk some of those anti-Elon upvotes
