LEO satellite internet service is life changing for people who live in underserviced, rural, and remote areas - but it’s a tragedy that it’s controlled by billionaires and the USA. Growth at all costs mindset cannot accept that they should exist only as an ISP of last resort, so they’re servicing urban areas and planning data centres.
A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Beep@lemmus.org to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
It would be better to support public fiber infrastructure (through PUDs) in almost every way. I know not all remote areas can be reached with fiber, but most rural areas can be. My county has done exactly that with the rural portions - they focused on rolling it out to underserved rural areas first (even though it was more expensive to do that up front). Now, those rural areas have gigabit fiber and they didn’t have to pay tens of thousands to wire it up to their homes.
zpiritual@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Try dragging fiber to a ship. Starlink is a game changer for the shipping industry and removing it now would be a mess.
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Geo could do the job at a fraction of the environmental cost.
Latency would be a bit higher but that doesn’t matter for download.
cole@lemdro.id 2 weeks ago
it’s such a game changer when you’re actually using it. night and day, completely different experience.
also, GEO is in many regards more at risk for Kessler syndrome because stuff up there doesn’t deorbit
grandma@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You know capitalism has reached peak efficiency when instead of laying some cables or even build a few more cell towers we decide to litter the atmosphere with satellites instead
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You realize to reach rural / ocean areas and have continuous service, they do typically at some point fly over urban areas.
There are lots of pockets of rural all over the place and if you want to get it all, you’ll end up with a global service where you have bandwidth to serve urban areas.
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
The issue with serving urban is that they need more satellites with narrower beams to handle the higher density and resulting load. Yes, they fly over, but they don’t have the capacity.
youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
LEO satellites decay very quickly every one of them will burn up in the atmosphere within 10 years. They need to be replaced constantly. As soon as spacex goes out of business these will all fall out of the sky.
teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Any way to help them do that?
youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No way that’s cheaper or easier than waiting
arcine@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
It starts with ass and ends with assinate.
Mihies@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Polluting atmosphere doing so.
youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s fair but unfortunately nothing compared to the pollution from launching them
Manjushri@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Don’t count on it. These things don’t just zip along in their orbits. LEO is crowded. They have to maneuver to avoid collisions… a lot.
Over the past six months, Starlink satellites have been increasingly performing collision avoidance maneuvers. According to a report filed by SpaceX with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX broadband satellites were forced to avoid more than 25 thousand times from December 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023. And since their launch in 2019, the total number of maneuvers has reached 50 thousand.
If Starlink or any other mega-constellation company loses control of their satellites for any reason, there could be collisions. A recent study (Note: PDF) suggests that a sufficiently powerful CME could cause a runaway Kessler Syndrome in as little as 2.8 days.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Eh, i’m not so sure. I just did a quick doodle.
My opinion is that when a collision happens, it’s probably very unlikely for a single fragment to actually stay on a stable orbit around Earth. Chances are high that it gains a lot of energy and the orbit is significantly distorted. Now, if an orbit is already very close to Earth, that means that any distortion will make it not fit tightly around Earth anymore, instead will make it go elliptic and therefore on trajectory of collision with Earth. The only way a fragment would not do that is if it’s accelerated perfectly sideways, in which case it would continue to circle around Earth for 10 years before deorbiting due to atmospheric friction. So, the cascading is a bit limited.
tempest@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I mean with proper regulation or would be slightly better. If they can maneuver to avoid collisions they can likes deorbit themselves at a quicker pace.
The main issue is if ever they went under someone would buy it, or try to buy it, at a discount. So they likely wouldn’t go away even if Star link went under.
youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And the orbits of that debris would still decay within a decade in LEO.
Einskjaldi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I expect that we will get in orbit refueling to extend their life once you get a good nuclear and solar panel power tug with an electric thruster that can deliver fuel, they’re in a similar orbit if you just do that.
youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Especially with the number of them it’s probably cheaper to just put up new satellites. LEO sats are designed to be temporary.
Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world [bot] 3 weeks ago
sooo then this isn’t a problem if they all burn out eventually? hehe i’m just being pedantic of course
youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There’s reasonable hope at least that this is a problem that will solve itself, and unfortunately we have bigger problems to worry about.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Elon Musk is such a goddamned literal supervillain that he managed to make the theme of Firefly wrong.
Apparently, they can take the sky from you.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Ads on the fucking moon are going to do it for me.
discocactus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If we get that we’ll also definitely get a Moon Banksy.
clif@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That’s where you draw the line?
(Also, say hi to your chickens for me)
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Well, at least we’ll always have Sinatra.
theoretically
DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The Moon is a few 1000s of times more distant than LEO.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I was a space kid, followed every space shot since 1965, was a super fan of Apollo 11, I had a subscription to Nat Geo growing up, just for the Space photos.
So I can’t believe I’m saying this: Maybe we’ve gone far enough for now, and we should have a moratorium on space for the next 50 years.
We should concentrate on Earth for awhile, dontcha think?
pennomi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I dunno, every engineer not working on space almost certainly ends up optimizing some sort of ad delivery system. The tech industry is almost completely enshittified.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
I was thinking more like Climate Change and Infrastructure and suchlike.
Trilogy3452@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This isn’t really space science related, just commercialization. And about focusing on Earth: we should let scientists work on what they’re passionate about, IMO they’ll be more motivated to research their field of choice
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
we should let scientists work on what they’re passionate about
*fund them
Why is it always 100x more on useless destruction and military?
Sp00kyB00k@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
True, that is how we got unit 731.
cole@lemdro.id 2 weeks ago
SpaceX has developed laundry list of new technology to enable Starlink and other endeavors. It’s silly to discount that as worthless.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not gonna happen. Not with the effective altruist cult running things.
Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I don’t think you are using altruist right, or I am missing some sarcasm here.
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’ve been really passionate about space. My bday is on the anniversary of the moon landing, and my one aunt has always reminded me of the fact. My great grandfather worked for NASA and my aunt gave me his stargazing binoculars that his brother gave him when he got hired at NASA. That part of my family instilled a huge love of science in me, esp space stuff. I wanna go to space more than anything, but I don’t have the brains or constitution to be an astronaut. So I just daydream, stargaze, and write poems about the cosmos.
dev_null@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Believe it or not, you can do two things at once.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
i just tried to chew gum and walk and my personal injury attorney would like to know your address (they think you’re cute)
betanumerus@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Right. Elon hires people on the basis they’ll be making Mars travel possible, but that Starship is really for dumping metal all over the night sky.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
maybe just for this one guy you know
MuteDog@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
They might put a million satellites into orbit, but they’re certainly not going to be orbital data centers. At least not as we currently understand data centers. The idea that space is cold and therefore a great place to put data centers that get hot is the idea of a stoned moron talking out of their ass. Space is a vacuum, you know what else is a vacuum, the part of your portable coffee mug that keeps your beverage warm or cold for ages, because vacuum is a crazy good insulator. Just because space is cold doesn’t mean the heat from an orbital data center can dissipate into it. This dumb idea is never going to happen unless data canter technology improves to the point where they aren’t environmental disasters anymore.
how_we_burned@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
They already have orbital, distributed, data centres.
It’s called Starlink. It’s already got the equivalent of entire cabinet worth of hardware.
Scott Manley has been doing the maths and shown how it’s already incredibly viable with current tech, especially with how they can already cool 20kw of Starlink sat just fine.
The biggest constraints on earth are town planning costs and delays/time, and of course power. (most DC cooling systems are closed looped)
Wigners_friend@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Starlink satellites carry antennae. That’s all they are. Not serious computational equipment.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
It’s either data centres in space or giant mirrors to reflect sunlight.
Presumably his engineers have explained this to him but he didn’t listen
fishy@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
To cool the iss they’re exchanging heat into water pumping to ammonia exchangers then radiated through infrared. The radiators for a space data center would need to be prohibitively massive as I understand it.
DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Billionaires don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves, not even their kids. And, we’ve all agreed to let billionaires run the world, it seems.
discocactus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We’re just a few millimeters away from revoking that agreement though. There’s not that many of them.
matlag@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I don’t see the beginning of anything to rein in the power they get from just being overrich assholes.
Ironically, the only countries on Earth that control tightly (some of) their billionaires are Russia and China. I rememer Vietnam also executed one for tax fraud. Something for which they are barely slapped on their hand in western countries.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
i cannot describe how angry i would be at this shit.
1984@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Every day, these guys make our life worse and destroy what we love.
mirshafie@europe.pub 2 weeks ago
Why watch the night sky when you can watch these new exciting ads on your phone?
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
i am angry at the idea. want to share angers?
umbrella@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
meet me at the square with some molotovs. we got some anger to share alright.
ZMoney@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Don’t fall for the clickbait reporting here. Musk has a history of making comically exaggerated claims. There won’t be a million satellites just like there wasn’t a 4000 km/h train, self-driving tunnel network, intercontinental rocket transport or Mars colony.
matlag@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
But there will be more satellites, and not just from SpaceX. They are already disturbing astronomers work, and it will only get worse.
There was no real debate about whether the world population is ok with it. Big corp has money, big corp acts for its interest and nothing else.
And I’m not denying the benefits of low-orbit satellites and having vast but lowly populated areas at last getting access to a fast Internet. I’m jùst pointing out that this whole thing is happening mostly out of control (or very very few control).
If you add that now international laws was shot and its body discarded in the toilet, also note that getting too much dependent on these satellites makes you very vulnerable to a military strike. I have no doubt that Russia, China and other countries (Iran?) are actively working on satellites destruction, with or without creating debris and giving us a Kessler syndrom. If you look at climate change, on-going life mass extinction, water scarcity, etc. there is little doubt that world leaders will make the worst possible decisions in the name of pragmatism (or religion, but it doesn’t really matter).
ZMoney@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The problem is that we offloaded “world leadership” to a bunch of ultra-rich sociopaths who only care about their own profit maximization. And they then made actual profit obsolete, since the only product they produce now is hype in the service of inflationary speculative assets. From a planetary perspective it looks like the human species is committing suicide.
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Of all the permanent and irreparable things big corporations are doing to our world, I struggle to really put this high up. Yeah it sucks, but it provides a useful service and they naturally degrade. If anything Im more worried about all the pollution from them burning up in the atmosphere. If they stop launching them, the sky will be clear within the deccade.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Literally nearly ever claim and promise from Elmo has been a lie so far, no idea why anyone believes this conman
He literally is a billionaire because he lies. Literally.
He is incompetent as fuck, he’s a drug junkie, yet still there are so many people who look up to this shit stain
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s still infuriating that he could theoretically make the WALL-E earth a reality
vane@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Night as a Service
TransNeko@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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Tim_Bisley@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
They did a previous study on what 65,000 satellites would look like and that was pretty bleak. Also this bit:
Latitudes near 50° Will Experience the Worst Light Pollution.
Thats a large chunk of Europe.
THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well that wannabe nazi took everything else, so why not the sky?
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I thought they couldn’t take the sky from me!
merdaverse@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
7101334@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You know what they aren’t beyond?
redsand@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
Didntdoit71@feddit.online 2 weeks ago
Elon Musk is a plague upon the human condition. Our best hope in the US, right now, is that a Starship launch goes horribly right and hits the White House during a cabinet meeting with Elmo as a a guest. Burn it black…pave over it and start over. Preferably after a mandatory prison-raping of all billionaires, especially those who loved Epstein. Fuck em all…let god sort em out.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Just need the Kessler syndrome to put a stop to it all.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Doesn’t make visibility better!
KneeTitts@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
everything the tech bros touch, dies
kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Literally the plot of Horizon
fossilesque@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
He never respected his fellow man, why start now?
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
There are roughly 15,000 total at the moment ? I wonder what that will do to animals and insects lives.
Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Now we just need to invent the Wall-E bot… We’re getting so close!
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
If this actually happens, I will dedicate my life to getting the funding to create a laser weapon that can shoot them out of the sky from Earth.
Then we’ll play Space Invaders for keeps.
andallthat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Now I’m curious. Can a satellite fly over a country without permission? I know that an aircraft can’t. How far up from the Earth’s surface does sovereignity end?
bcgm3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
List of Starlink and Starshield Launches - Wikipedia
Check out the list of launches under “Falcon 9 Launches > Starlink Launches.” It’s every other day now (sometimes consecutive days) that they launch another rocket, and each payload is carrying 20 to 60 satellites.
teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Maybe it’s time to crowdsource a satellite killing satellite.
Bieren@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Don’t get mad. Think of the shareholders.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
While this very well might fuck up land-based stuff looking at space, people are often overlooking what this would mean to stellar photography from space.
If they can truly launch these million data center sats profitably, that means starship works. That means payload to space is relatively cheap.
That means we could also send large quantities of large telescopes into space on the cheap, and avoid the crazy expensive cant fail telescopes because the cost to get them up there isnt prohibitive.
Things very well might change, but it will also open up possibilities in the same area.
green_goglin@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Down with the space clankers
Gates9@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
We’re creating our own “Mini Kuiper belt”. By the time we’re ready to make interplanetary space travel a practical thing (intriguing but doubtful given present circumstances and trajectory) there will be so much space shit that it’ll be as dangerous as trying to land a plane in the United States today!
uenticx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Their CIDR ranges are also fucking ripe with hacked devices and criminals. 98% of connections from their 153./8 are all fucking bots.
inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Who needs to track asteroids when everyone can have NzI-Link internet?
Asafum@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s so infuriating… I occasionally do astrophotography and it’s getting to the point where any long exposure just has satellite streaks everywhere… Fuck Musk.
yucandu@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I remember just 10 years ago using a special app on my phone to alert me of any potential satellite flares so I could run out and catch them.
Now I can’t look at the night sky for 2 minutes without seeing one.
errer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You can actually see some in broad daylight. I was shocked one day looking up and seeing one (white dot in the picture, verified with sat tracking app).
Image
Link@rentadrunk.org 3 weeks ago
For the uneducated, what do these look like and can you see them in areas with light pollution?