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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.
What’s up with some meme communities and people not posting memes on them?
Never miss a chance to milk some of those anti-Elon upvotes
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.
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
Starlink is a very low orbit. Even if something like that happened, it would clean itself up in like five years
Not wrong, and yet small parts of that ‘orbit’ would kinetically increase, in a Kessler sort of way…
and isn’t that a nice thought, but no, it raises orbit fairly naturaly…
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.
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
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…
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.
Sending so many satellites also requires so many rocket launchers that Google passed on it because it was too polluting.
Starlink is the poster child of “fuck you, I got mine.”
Google is the second largest shareholder of Space X.
- get rid of “do no evil”
- invest in evil
- ???
- profit!
Starlink is ruining law enforcement here in South America already. Drug cartels and people on illegal activities acting in Amazon rainforest are getting increasingly creative at turning their starlink devices on, then off, then on again at different points. Also, such devices switch hands rather quickly - and international borders sometimes - in order to avoid tracking.
Is the majority of high detail astronomy done from earth or is it done with satellites? I’m struggling to understand the significance of this
Mostly from earth. You’ e probably heard of the big names in space astronomy. There’s like three.
Radio telescopes don’t need to be above the atmosphere. We’ll, at least they didn’t before…
Earth has natural interference, the moon, so yeah they should have always been above the natural interference, they’ve always just “accounted” for it, but who knows how accurate that is. Obviously avoiding the interference is the better option. Any satellite also provides interference, it’s not star link is the only ones here… you don’t think that do you?
They’ve avoided spending the money putting radio in space, for what reason who knows, but there’s always interference here on earth, it’s odd you claim otherwise.
We actually reserve frequency bands specifically for radioastronomy. No devices can get licensing to transmit on those bands, and anything passing regulations shouldn’t (usually) interfere with it. The bands are chose specifically because their use in detecting certain astrological features.
We don’t do a majority in space because of the absolutely massive size of the equipment needed… The VLA, for example, is 28 different dishes/antennas that are over 200 tons of metal a piece.
The signals that are being measured are absolutely tiny, so much so (and to your point about interference in the ground), that A microwave can cause issues.
The issue with the StarLink v2 is that; they are in LEO (Low Earth Orbit) and there are a shit-ton of them - which means it’s harder to schedule equipment time around the interference theyre causing. And the problem is only getting worse.
Your comment is very disjointed though, so I’m not entirely sure what your point is.
Huh, the same is done in space, you realize that… yeah?
My comment isn’t disjointed and it’s extremely easy to comprehend, put this shit in space like they always should have been doing and avoid the natural interference, as well as the other interference from the thousands of other satellites, starlink isn’t the only issue and it’s not fixed by getting rid of them…
The same is done in space, you realize that…
No, it isn’t. The radio astronomy done in space is for Gamma rays, x-rays, UV and IR. Things the atmosphere blocks.
What’s done on the ground is for much larger wavelengths (+1m) which, again, requires massive equipment that is currently is not feasible to send up.
The fix isn’t to eliminate StarLink, I agree. The fix in my opinion is to have stricter controls from the ITU about how much interference a device can produce.
Put that shit in space like they always should have
So which is it? It’s already done in space, or that’s the direction we should go?
Even your explanation about your original comment being “extremely easy to comprehend” has two opposing statements.
No, it isn’t. The radio astronomy done in space is for Gamma rays, x-rays, UV and IR. Things the atmosphere blocks.
yes they do [and another]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HALCA And another, want a couple more…?
What’s done on the ground is for much larger wavelengths (+1m) which, again, requires massive equipment that is currently is not feasible to sen
Than why is there already equipment up there doing that?
You don’t need large dishes, you use multiple in array like the ground based ones you linked….
Huh and would you look at that, the space based one is apparantly 4x the diameter of the largest one in your link on earth. How is that possible if it’s not “feasible” to launch stuff that large like you claimed…? They’ve launched larger apparently already?
Spektr-R | Decommissioned, single array, 10 meter diameter
From your link: "The very high angular resolving power was achieved in conjunction with a ground-based system of radio-telescopes and interferometrical methods, "
HALCA | Decommissioned, single array, 8 meter diameter
From your link: This orbit allowed imaging of celestial radio sources by the satellite in conjunction with an array of ground-based radio telescopes" … “the project was eventually cancelled in 2011 due to increasing costs and the difficulties of achieving its science goals”
Orion | “It is believed that this refers to the diameter of the main antenna, which might be well in excess of 100 m”, potentially you’re correct! Oh. These are ground facing dishes that aren’t use for scientific purposes and are highly classified.
It’s the pivot Muskrats have been making since astronomers first started raising the alarm aboit Starlink. It’s our lazy scientists fault for not launching $4billion telescopes into space every year.
Well…yeah, but what about the “Fuck Elon Musk” initiative? YOU HAVEN’T THOUGHT OF THE “FUCK ELON MUSK” INITIATIVE YOU BITCH!!
This is the equivalent of the 5G panic, but it suits the perpetually online population better, so it’s totally not a conspiracy theory this time.
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.
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.
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
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…
starlink wouldn’t have a leg to stand on (in the US, can’t speak for elsewhere) if isps were held to installing/maintaining/upgrading infrastructure that was already paid for by the federal government decades ago and then the isps just didn’t do the work.
That’s a nice thought, but
- Starlink has no old infrastructure
- Rural and remote customers are difficult to wire up
Even in the best case where US was close to 100% wired up like we paid for, Starlink would have a market in remote areas world wide, RVs, aircraft, ships
We managed to wire up large swaths of rural area for electricity back in the 1930’s
In a lot of places, that only happened because people banded together and made it happen for their area - the existing suppliers weren’t interested, even with federal loans available. That’s where the “Electric Co-op” companies came from.
Somehow capitalism has become about more profiteering, self-serving, instant gratification
But also there were no choices. Starlink may be a valid choice and the infrastructure is already there
The US government asked the big ISPs how much it would take to wire everyone up to high-speed Internet, then passed a bill to give them a ludicrous lump sum to do so (IIRC it was hundreds of billions). The money was split between dividends, buying up other companies, and suing the federal government for attempting to ask for the thing they’d paid for, and in the end, the government gave up. That left loads of people with no high-speed Internet, and the ISPs able to afford to buy out anyone who attempted to provide a better or cheaper service. Years down the line, once someone with silly amounts of money for a pet project and a fleet of rockets appeared, there was an opportunity for them to provide a product to underserved customers who could subsidise the genuinely impossible-to-run-a-cable-to customers.
If the US had nearly-ubiquitous high-speed terrestrial Internet, there wouldn’t have been enough demand for high-speed satellite Internet to justify making Starlink. I think this is what the other commenter was alluding to.
this is exactly what I meant
This, I’m both very rural and in an RV at the same time. Starlink is literally my only means of playing games. The only other even remotely viable option is LTE internet from something like T-Mobile but out here the towers don’t really have much capacity so I might be able to play the game fine and I might just start disconnecting Midway through a match randomly as the internet struggles to even load a basic web page
Welp, I guess we’ll all have to suffer the consequences so that Lordkitsuna can game in the middle of nowhere. Truly first world problems.
https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere
I’m just saying blindly calling for it to go away entirely (which i see a lot of on stuff like this) isn’t helpful. Clearly they need to tone down emissions but it’s a useful service.
I work 10hr shifts at work and it’s 1hr 30 both to and from work, moving isn’t really an option for me atm. I don’t think it’s unreasonable I’d like to be able to stream my shows or play games with my friends to relax
Welp, I guess we all have to suffer with no internet in rural areas because of some astronomy nerds. I’ll take global, high-speed, expensive, but still affordable internet over some shots of distant nebulas any day. Not a Musk fan, but this sounds like a desperate attempt to find something to dunk on him for. There’s tons of reasons already, but this ain’t one.
Scientists doing science > tech bro nomads cosplaying as explorers but actually just playing fortnite in a van. You’re also ignoring the other downsides besides spectral emissions. Read the article I linked.
Scientists experiencing slight inconveniences while doing, let’s face it, not that important of a research < people being stranded off civilization by predatory ISP’s, if not lack of any.
For the article, the way I read it, there isn’t a problem currently, and it’s not clear whether it will pose a problem in the future, but the alarm bells have already been rung and even if it proves to be true, it doesn’t sound like something that more tech couldn’t solve - just use different materials and coating or whatever. And I don’t see how it’s specific to starlink - nobody seems to bat an eye about ozone layer when NASA does ISS resupply missions or when China is blowing up satellites on orbit.
The point of this thread is that Starlink only exists to solve this problem because the ISPs were paid to do it the old fashioned way and decided to fuck off with the cash instead. It wouldn’t have solved the RV issue, but if nost rural areas had the cable internet the government bought, then Starlink likely never gets off the ground, pun intended.
Starlink only exists to solve this problem because the ISPs were paid to do it the old fashioned way
This only applies to the US. My point is that by it’s nature it is global, and it competes with all the shitty local monopolistic ISP’s around the world. Like, I intend to do a cross-country tour around mediterranean next year, and from experience, local cell providers there can be quite a lot of hit and miss. If starlink is activated there by the time I’m all set, I’m dropping the cash, no question about it. And yeah, like @spidermanchild said, I’m just a tech bro nomad cosplaying an explorer, but there are also people actually living in those regions that have to deal with this bullshit. I know it’s unpopular opinion but I’d say a push against those local ISP’s and getting those rural people a decent internet connection is ultimately doing more good than whatever inconvenience scientists have to deal with scrubbing trails off telescope imagery and filtering out the radio interferences.
You certainly act like a Musk fan.
This thing helps my fun but hurts lot of other people’s fun, fuck em! Who cares about Kessler syndrome and pollution, I gotta game!!
I also live in a rural RV. I’ve been stuck in one and using copper wiring since 2004. I don’t have the money for Starlink, never have, never will. The upfront cost is insane. I also game on copper wires. Solo and multiplayer games, with my friends over discord.
lordkitsuna is the answer, dude. more people getting away from the grind of the big machine to live remote lives far from society is the answer. i don’t like starlink either but these networks are crucial for the modern nomad to exist.
The answer to what? If everyone does this, there won’t be a single remote place on earth that isn’t crawling with sprinter vans. It can’t scale, and it doesn’t need to be specifically catered to. You want the wilderness, you get the wilderness. You want low latency Internet, then get to a fiber connection. We don’t need every first world amenity everywhere.
nah. you can live in the city if that’s what you like. i’ll do what i like. do you really want to alienate non-urban liberals?
depopulation is a possible alternative to preventing swarms of sprinter vans too. you really don’t want to put everyone in a city.
I’m not trying to alienate anyone, I’m trying to understand why low latency gaming needs for digital nomads is worth the real downsides of providing such a service (scientific, GHG, atmospheric tinkering, etc). I also believe that we should leave a lot more of the earth alone and that nature matters. I’m not trying to put people anywhere, just recognizing there are pros and cons to different living schemes, humans are social creatures, and population of 2 areas don’t warrant large societal investments. I’m similarly against a hypothetical drone sushi delivery service for rural Canadadian boreal forests if that happens to have real downsides too.
Does the modern nomad need to exist in the first place? Taking your money into an RV so you can guzzle gas on it, and just stream videos while you pretend to enjoy nature?
My rv doesn’t move, i drive a smart fortwo and get 40+MPG
I have solar on my RV and don’t use utility electrical. No propane appliances, heatpump hot water, and heat/cooling. Top rated efficiency washer and a heatpump dryer to go with it. Just because i want to be rural doesn’t mean I’m wasteful.
I’m out here because it’s the only place land is remotely affordable and I’m tired of renting. I saved up what i could, managed to get a great deal on 5 acres. And built up a sustainable rv to live in till i can build a house.
Supposedly there are plans for fiber to deploy in this area within the next 5 years. When that happens I’m all over it, i regularly go on hikes the trails out here in the mountains from old logging roads are amazing.
That doesn’t mean i shouldn’t be allowed some modern entertainment as well
you can just exist in a remote place and not make videos too my friend. sorry that your understanding of what life outside a city looks like has been shaped by the internet instead of reality.
Privatized networks are a crime and it should be treated legally as such.
Public network for the public.
I’m sure Musk is perfectly willing to turn certain constellations off at specific times… For a price, of course.
Exxcellent.
Fuck Leon Skum
Is it weird I agree these are terrible and yet also hope this spurs the end of ground based observation in favor of a larger orbital presence?
exactly what i was thinking.
The scale at which we build radio telescopes on the ground simply isn’t possible in space.
Just to add, radio telescopes easily have diameters of several 10 to several 100 meters, you won’t put that easily in space. And even if you do, maybe one, not tens of them. And these are often used in network as well for interferometry to have higher spatial resolution, so that would be gone as well.
A couple of satellites can make a larger telescope than we could ever build on earth, and you avoid the natural interference as well as the the interference from other satellites (star link isn’t the only source of interference…).
Yes, and we are already doing that, VLBI uses dozens of telescopes, each of them larger that we could sensibly launch to space
The vlbi has dozens of 20m dishes, they have satellites with 10m diameters and Orion is thought to have 100m diameter. We’ve launched larger into space already, and the VLBI has used space telescopes to increase its size already as well.
So to claim we can’t sensibly launch any, when we have them up there already is plain wrong.
Yes, I just wrote about that above. It’s just the difference in cost between the two. How many large space observatories were there altogether? In the order of dozens maybe?
Why can’t we use the satellites for interferometry, too?
Not easily, perhaps. But it’s certainly possibly. We already have space technology for unfolding small packages into large sheets. Not to mention, you don’t need a single 100m collection surface when you can accomplish similar things with many smaller surfaces spaced apart. See the Very Large Array.
Not with that attitude.
Or altitude.
No it’s utterly pragmatic.
The future of space exploration is in space.
We could and should be doing both ground and orbital radio telescope observations. One really interesting idea I’ve seen floated is to put one on the far-side of the moon; it’d be shielded from all our radio emissions but, of course, it would be somewhat suspectable to interference from the sun for weeks at a time.
What I’ve never understood about Starlink is how it’s better than existing satellite internet beamed from geosynchronous craft… like, geosync is crowded (especially over North America and Europe), but it’s not so crowded we couldn’t put a couple more transponders up there. Objects in geosync rarely have the astronomical side effects that Starlink is apparently causing. It would even solve the Starlink issue of having to have an expense af receiver with active tracking… just nail up a stationary ku-band dish that doesn’t need to move ever. This is already solved technology.
The problem with geosynchronous orbit is that you need to be at a high altitude to maintain it. That increases the packet round trip time to a receiver on the ground. Starlink satellites orbit low enough to give a theoretical 20ms ping. A geostationary satellite would be at best 500ms. It’s fine for some tasks but lousy for applications that need low latency, like video calling.
Is there any way to improve that? Or is it a hard limit due to physics?
The geosynchronous satellites are about 650 times higher than Starlink satellites, so the speed of light is a significant limiting factor.
Geosynchronous orbit is 35,700 km (3.57 x 10^7 m) above sea level. At that distance, signals moving at the speed of light (3.0 x 10^8 m/s) take about .12 seconds to go that far. So a round trip is about .240 seconds or 240 milliseconds added to the ping.
Starlink orbits at an altitude of 550 km (5.5 x 10^5 m), where the signal can travel between ground and satellite in about 0.0018 seconds, for 3.6 millisecond round trip. Actual routing and processing of signals, especially relaying between satellites, adds time to the processing.
But no matter how much better the signal processing can get, the speed of light accounts for about a 200-230 millisecond difference at the difference in altitudes.
Thanks! That’s the shit for which I come to Lemmy. Genuinely, thank you.
I work in broadcast communications and we use geosync link ups all the time for various shit. I’m pretty sure I know more about satellite communications than a normie, but I’m blind to the intricacies of use case when it comes to stuff like this.
Unfortunately it’s a hard limit due to the speed of light. Theoretically you could use quantum entanglement to get around it, but then of course you wouldn’t need the satellites anymore.
no, you couldn’t. You can’t use quantum entanglement to send information. Only random noise.
Sorry, I meant theoretically as in “at some distant point in the future where we’ve figured out how to make it work.” I probably read too much science fiction.
Science fiction quantum entanglement is not the same as real life quantum entanglement. Science fiction has spooky action at a distance, real life doesn’t.
The speed of light is the speed of causality, the speed of information. It is physically impossible to send information at speeds greater than the speed of light.
it physically cannot work. ever. That’s just how entanglement works. We know that much.
That’s not true either unfortunately
In the past 6 months, Starlink satellites made 50,000 collision avoidance maneuvers. They now maneuver 275 times a day to avoid crashing into other space objects.
They use an on board AI to calculate the positions, but each time they course-correct, it throws off forecasting accuracy for several days. So a collision isn’t an if, it’s a when, and suddenly we’re in Kessler Syndrome territory. Or maybe enough people will eventually wake up and realize Musk was an actual idiot all along.
But until then, great, low pings for video calls. Hurray.
This is completely factually inaccurate. 2 minutes on Google will help you learn but seeing as how you’ve been spewing crap all over this thread I don’t think it’s worth my time to even bother helping you understand.
Can you debunk it for the rest of us?
Shortest answer is that even if all Starlink satellites suddently exploded at the same time for no reason, they’d fall back to Earth in a matter of weeks. They’re waaaay lower than the other satellites you’re thinking of (see discussion on geo-stationary satellites for why), so they need to be actively pushed every few days just to stay up. They’re so low they’re still subject to atmospheric drag.
They would fall to earth in pieces? Is that an alright thing?
Search the web for “star link Kessler syndrome”. It’s well documented. It’s also discussed elsewhere in this thread.
Cite sources please?
Search the web for “starlink Kessler syndrome”. It’s very well documented. It’s also discussed elsewhere in this thread.
It’s never been cheaper or easier to launch, ironically enough thanks in part to Starlink.
How about we check back in on your comment in say, oh, 5 years, when we become forcibly earthbound, victims of Kessler’s Syndrome? Because by then, a starlink satellite will collide with another creating a chain reaction of collisions, birthing an ever-growing cascading field of Elon’ space debris bukkake all over the Earth’s face.
But hey, Pocket Rocket Boy has got to have an excuse to keep launching so he can continue collecting his government welfare checks. $15.3 billion since 2003 and climbing.
You don’t understand Kessler Syndrome. Starlink satellites are in an orbit that requires maintenance or it decays rapidly. These orbits are used on purpose as they are “self-cleaning”.
Kessler Syndrome doesn’t even mean that we can’t fly through an orbit, only not occupy it for fear of collision. Space is incredibly, ridiculously large, and the chance of a departing rocket being struck by debris is miniscule.
In any case, a catastrophic multi-sat collision would only result in a meteor shower. These things are designed to re-enter in 5 years even in normal service.
I live in rural Canada and Starlink is the only reason I’m able to post this. It’s been a tremendous asset to our lives, and as an aerospace enthusiast I’m all on board as well. As an astronomy enthusiast I’m less impressed but forsee a push into more, larger space telescopes.
I’ve never seen an intelligent comment talking about Kessler syndrome, it’s something idiots seem to latch on to and prattle on about in the comments, until someone who has at least watched a YouTube video about it corrects them.
You shouldnt use starlink because you can’t trust the company. Thats unfortunate you can’t get other service.
In any case, a catastrophic multi-sat collision would only result in a meteor shower
Previous collisions have resulted in debris that intersected with higher orbits. While those debris themselves will decay, if they collide with something in a higher orbit, a significant portion of the resulting debris will be there for a very long time.
Look at the apogees resulting from a major collision in 2009 in fig 3 on page 2
Science cannot get in the way of profits!
Alien 1: “I don’t get it, we’ve been trying to contact them for ages now. You don’t think they sacrificed their chance to join the interstellar community in order to have better phone reception or something, did they?”
Alien 2: “Well maybe if you didn’t keep sticking probes up their asses, they’d be more communicative!”
Starlink satellites are like vampires. If we cut off the head of the original vampire they’ll all die. I suggest launching Elon musk into the sun on one of his starships
I’d rather have less space junk, not more.
