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 2 months ago by Beep@lemmus.org to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 months 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 months 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 months 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 2 months 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 2 months ago
Any way to help them do that?
youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
No way that’s cheaper or easier than waiting
arcine@jlai.lu 1 month ago
It starts with ass and ends with assinate.
Mihies@programming.dev 2 months ago
Polluting atmosphere doing so.
youCanCallMeDragon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s fair but unfortunately nothing compared to the pollution from launching them
Manjushri@piefed.social 2 months 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 months 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 2 months 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 1 month ago
And the orbits of that debris would still decay within a decade in LEO.
Einskjaldi@lemmy.world 2 months 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 2 months 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] 2 months 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 2 months 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 months 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 months ago
Ads on the fucking moon are going to do it for me.
discocactus@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If we get that we’ll also definitely get a Moon Banksy.
clif@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That’s where you draw the line?
(Also, say hi to your chickens for me)
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Well, at least we’ll always have Sinatra.
theoretically
DMCMNFIBFFF@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The Moon is a few 1000s of times more distant than LEO.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago
I was thinking more like Climate Change and Infrastructure and suchlike.
Trilogy3452@lemmy.world 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago
True, that is how we got unit 731.
cole@lemdro.id 1 month 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 1 month ago
Not gonna happen. Not with the effective altruist cult running things.
Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
I don’t think you are using altruist right, or I am missing some sarcasm here.
LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world 1 month 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 1 month ago
Believe it or not, you can do two things at once.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago
maybe just for this one guy you know
MuteDog@lemmy.world 2 months 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 1 month 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 1 month ago
Starlink satellites carry antennae. That’s all they are. Not serious computational equipment.
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months 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 1 month 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 months 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 1 month ago
We’re just a few millimeters away from revoking that agreement though. There’s not that many of them.
matlag@sh.itjust.works 1 month 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 1 month ago
i cannot describe how angry i would be at this shit.
1984@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Every day, these guys make our life worse and destroy what we love.
mirshafie@europe.pub 1 month ago
Why watch the night sky when you can watch these new exciting ads on your phone?
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 month ago
i am angry at the idea. want to share angers?
umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
meet me at the square with some molotovs. we got some anger to share alright.
ZMoney@lemmy.world 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month ago
It’s still infuriating that he could theoretically make the WALL-E earth a reality
vane@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Night as a Service
TransNeko@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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Tim_Bisley@piefed.social 2 months 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 2 months ago
Well that wannabe nazi took everything else, so why not the sky?
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
I thought they couldn’t take the sky from me!
merdaverse@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
7101334@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You know what they aren’t beyond?
redsand@infosec.pub 2 months ago
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Just need the Kessler syndrome to put a stop to it all.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Doesn’t make visibility better!
Didntdoit71@feddit.online 1 month 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.
KneeTitts@lemmy.world 2 months ago
everything the tech bros touch, dies
kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
Literally the plot of Horizon
fossilesque@mander.xyz 2 months ago
He never respected his fellow man, why start now?
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com 2 months ago
There are roughly 15,000 total at the moment ? I wonder what that will do to animals and insects lives.
Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Now we just need to invent the Wall-E bot… We’re getting so close!
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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 2 months ago
Maybe it’s time to crowdsource a satellite killing satellite.
Bieren@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Don’t get mad. Think of the shareholders.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 months 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 2 months ago
Down with the space clankers
Gates9@sh.itjust.works 1 month 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 1 month 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 2 months ago
Who needs to track asteroids when everyone can have NzI-Link internet?
Asafum@lemmy.world 2 months 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 2 months 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 2 months 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 2 months ago
For the uneducated, what do these look like and can you see them in areas with light pollution?