I'm confused because band pass filters exist. Can they not add a filter to eliminate the frequencies that starlink uses?
Also, the starlink satellites use phased array antennas, guess that wasn't a great idea either.
*Band cut filters
Shouldn't the FCC have a say in this?
Yes, that completely destroys the information in that band. That is the point, the satellites are using these bands, overpowering what was already naturally there.
"Don't worry, you can just build one on the moon. You can even pay me to use my rockets to get there." - Elon
Capitalism!
Great. Musk is building a Sophon.
Fuck Leon Skum
I'm sure Musk is perfectly willing to turn certain constellations off at specific times... For a price, of course.
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 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
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, 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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No it’s utterly pragmatic.
The future of space exploration is in space.
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).
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.
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
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.
To me Elon Musk is like the real-life, slightly less dramatic and slightly less evil Handsome Jack out of Borderlands
I don't know which has said wilder shit honestly.
Ugly Musk
Less evil than Handsome Jack?! Jack's at least a good guy in the Presequel. Was Elon ever good?
"Kirkland brand Dr evil" has been my go to.
That's not fair to Kirkland though, lol! They never treated us like that asshole 😛
Less?
If it can interfere with large aperture ground telescopes.. it would be a shame if those ground telescopes grew transmitters and started interfering back.
All worth it so lord Musk can push his shitty memes to remote tribes in the Amazon.
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
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...
Not wrong, and yet small parts of that 'orbit' would kinetically increase, in a Kessler sort of way...
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...
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.
Down em all then. We need a satellite with lasers to take out other satellites: whether it's Russia's, China's, or Elon's.
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, any other satellite…. 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. There is actually radio astronomy in space, they point it towards earth instead, so take from this what you will, but it’s better away from interference than passing through it.
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.
He literally came all over the planet and ruined it... More.
Pentagon: Link 16+++++v2 go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
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?
Given that someone owns those satellites, yes.
Outer space is under maritime law, oddly enough.
I would have assumed it's closer to bird law.
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.
Where's the FCC and ITU on this?
Theoretically if you started lasering these down somehow from international waters... uh, what would happen? Hypothetically?
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!
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.
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.
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
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.
But... memes.
?
Expanded: 'but, how will I receive memes if not for a satellite constellation beaming them to me'
MEMES, BRO, LISTEN BETTER
Concern: Starlink will ruin science.
Rebuttal/joke : But... I want memes.
