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Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

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Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#141

Post by caycep »

infinitewars wrote: post #123
caycep wrote: post #13

looking back at the history of starlink, when was it decided to pursue this project at SpaceX? Was it always the natural evolution, i.e. cheap launches = more communications sats? Or was there a specific communications engineer/person that brought it up to Elon or Gwynne?

Starlink is based on the strategic defense initiative (SDI). Both reusable rockets (DC-X) and large satellite constellations (Brilliant Pebbles) were SDI inventions. SpaceX was in fact founded with the architect of SDI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin who went from the CIA to become head of NASA and funded the early SpaceX (10x from what Musk himself put in!) Now in 2026, SpaceX is the frontrunner fo…

ah good to know....it seems this history is kinda scrubbed from at least a quick Google search of the company's history.

I do remember DC-X, mostly as when I was a kid, that program coincided with when the web became popular, and I remember (hopefully somewhat accurately) downloaded jpeg/gif files from NASA publicity releases of that rocket over my 2400 bps modem

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#142

Post by TulliusCicero »

scubbo wrote: post #133
iknowstuff wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the United States can choose to live in very rural and sparsely populated areas, far more remote than most OECD countries. It’s not clear to me that we should necessarily massively subsidize their choice to live in the sticks these days. Starlink and 5G are great for this, as is solar energy and batteries. We already subsidize sprawl’s expensive-per-person infrastructure with tax revenue from dense cities.…

People can't afford to live in cities? Well, they should simply choose to live elsewhere. People choose to live outside cities, but want access to basic utilities of modern life? Well, fuck 'em.

Small towns exist, and ones far away from major metro areas are usually quite affordable.

Small towns are or can be made to be efficient in terms of basic infrastructure/services, whereas truly rural areas where everyone is very spread out, it's somewhere between difficult and impossible to do that.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#144

Post by TulliusCicero »

kbar13 wrote: post #139
scubbo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can't afford to live in cities? Well, they should simply choose to live elsewhere. People choose to live outside cities, but want access to basic utilities of modern life? Well, fuck 'em.

that’s a bit pendantic, there exists such a thing as suburbs. even some rural communities are perfectly reasonable in terms of municipal infrastructure. but we are specifically talking about houses that are miles and miles from the next house that is then miles and miles away etc

Even in "rural regions", there are typically some small towns where infrastructure could be provided to them decently efficiently. It's when every single house is a good distance away from their neighbors that things like running fiber cabling become grossly inefficient.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#145

Post by sva_ »

adrithmetiqa wrote: post #8

Does anyone else appreciate the final space where we can be disconnected. I do, for one

I love disconnecting while hiking in the forest/mountaineering or such. But being stuck in an economy seat for 8 hours as an 188cm guy while being in a low air pressure environment just isn't the place for me. I'll gladly take the distraction.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#146

Post by devin »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #138
iknowstuff wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the United States can choose to live in very rural and sparsely populated areas, far more remote than most OECD countries. It’s not clear to me that we should necessarily massively subsidize their choice to live in the sticks these days. Starlink and 5G are great for this, as is solar energy and batteries. We already subsidize sprawl’s expensive-per-person infrastructure with tax revenue from dense cities.…

Some people will be really mad about this comment, but it's absolutely correct. Broadly speaking, very rural living is generally a lifestyle choice. Yes, not everyone can afford to live in big cities, but there are typically small towns in the general vicinity of rural areas that are quite affordable. Of course, there are exceptions where you truly need the space, like if you're a farmer, but that's not most people i…

Buddy, many of the people who are being served by Starlink are by no means "very" rural at all. If you get into "lives in a shack in the mountains", then sure I agree, but a HUGE number of people are barely outside of an immediate service area and have no access for one dumb reason or another. This is a demonstration of the failure of our country to do simple, pragmatic things that would benefit our citizens' lives. The "fix" was for some private company to launch things into orbit. It's an expensive fix to a simple problem.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#147

Post by AndroTux »

fdghrtbrt wrote: post #70
throwaway132448 wrote: post #66

No internet on flights is one of my favourite features.

Right. I don't know what I find more disturbing: that people are this addicted, or that they don't care. Either way, I'm with you.

So let’s get rid of internet on the highway and in trains, too. Because it’s pretty much exactly the same thing. One just happens to be airborne.

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#148

Post by aaron695 »

devin wrote: post #126

I've written it elsewhere, but: it is such a shame that the United States saw fit to run electricity _everywhere_, no matter how rural your location, but instead of do the same for rural internet we had to wait for... a private company to launch a global network of satellites. Yes, this post is about internet access while traveling 500mph, which is a different problem, but it is so messed up that people fall over the…

[dead]

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#149

Post by fy20 »

devin wrote: post #126

I've written it elsewhere, but: it is such a shame that the United States saw fit to run electricity _everywhere_, no matter how rural your location, but instead of do the same for rural internet we had to wait for... a private company to launch a global network of satellites. Yes, this post is about internet access while traveling 500mph, which is a different problem, but it is so messed up that people fall over the…

Are there any countries that have actually done an exhaustive job of this? I'm from the UK, and I'd say they are pretty good, my parents live in a 300 person village, and they can get 50ish mbit internet through wires. But "rural" in the UK is very different from "rural" in some parts of the US. And this was done by a private company (although it was based on infrastructure built by the government).

Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?

#150

Post by TulliusCicero »

devin wrote: post #146
TulliusCicero wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people will be really mad about this comment, but it's absolutely correct. Broadly speaking, very rural living is generally a lifestyle choice. Yes, not everyone can afford to live in big cities, but there are typically small towns in the general vicinity of rural areas that are quite affordable. Of course, there are exceptions where you truly need the space, like if you're a farmer, but that's not most people i…

Buddy, many of the people who are being served by Starlink are by no means "very" rural at all. If you get into "lives in a shack in the mountains", then sure I agree, but a HUGE number of people are barely outside of an immediate service area and have no access for one dumb reason or another. This is a demonstration of the failure of our country to do simple, pragmatic things that would benefit our citizens' lives.…

Generally speaking, private companies want to make money by getting customers. Obviously there can be edge cases, but if there's profit to be made by hooking people up, they'll want to do it, and if private companies don't want to get more customers, you have to ask yourself some hard questions about why.

I think we both know what's usually happening: people in an area who, as a whole, are rural enough and poor enough that the economics don't really pen out well. And I'm sure said corporations would be happy for the local government to pay the cost of running those lines out -- if that's not happening, ask yourself why those local governments don't want to pay for it either.

Now if you want to say, "well I don't care if it scales badly, the federal government should just subsidize it until it works", that's your prerogative. But another option would be to encourage zoning and similar rules that impact how people live to change towards better scaling of infrastructure and services, so that spending on these kinds of things is more sustainable and fair.

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