291–300 of 395 posts
In unrelated news the cost of launching a space telescope (that doesn't suffer from atmospheric perturbations or cloud cover) has decreased by several orders of magnitude.
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Funny, Canada, even less dense, is doing exactly that. Maybe not 10, but at multiple levels of government there have been up to half the capital without many strings attached to get broadband out to rural areas. My understanding though, it's not work the time even with the fibre there for the larger companies in many cases. This is the latest program https://www.canada.ca/en/radio-television-telecommunications...
Sure, and the US had a similar program. Just because the government promised something doesn't count until the thing is actually delivered.
There is so much unwarranted alarmism about this. This is not the end of astronomy, nor is it even super serious. The "unavoidable impact" they're talking about is that astronomers will have to care about when and where satellites will appear, rather than not bothering and just throwing away the rare image with a satellite in it. A small percentage of their pixels will be affected by satellite trails and they will ne…
Seems like the perfect use case for Vantablack. Of course the satellites will still block ER as they pass across the sky, but at least if they aren't reflecting so much light it would surely be of some help?
SpaceX is adding visors, which solve the problem without heating the satellites.
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It seems to be around 1-2%, which I would say is trivial. This can be further reduced if you use multiple exposures because then only 1 contains the streak. Getting satellite data from SpaceX about satellite positions and turning off the receiver for a few seconds would also mitigate the issue. I don't understand how this is treated as a problem that's worth halting satellite launches over.
CCDs are not really receivers that can be turned off for a couple seconds. A physical shutter moves in front of the detector and covers it (for most instruments as they exist right now).
The article covers the mitigations already in place and how they only partially resolve the issue. These satellites are low, bright (at dawn/dusk) and very soon to be incredibly numerous. Yes, it is possible for data workflows to post-process these streaks away, but not all configurations allow this, and whereas previous intrusions were somewhat rare and could be ignored that simply won't be the case due to three com…
I’m afraid you will die on that hill and be replaced by a happy rural resident who was being abused by a local telco monopoly, but is now using competitively priced, fast, low latency satellite internet. Using keps and scrubbing exposures in post is something we could already do decades ago. It’ll just be a new part of the workflow and eventually the space NIMBYs will quiet down.
-- Rural Resident
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I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. However, this conversation has basically been skipped over. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong. The constellations are being launched, and there's zero chance of shutting them down once they're serving a commercial role. Considering the abundant red tape in the modern…
> I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. I've had faster Internet than the average Starlink speedtest says, in rural Romania, at the foot of a mountain, wild bears and all: https://twitter.com/q3k/status/1172621386977861632 . Internet access in rural areas is pretty much a solved problem, it just now hing…
I've gotten decent internet speeds in one place that looked pretty wild, therefore worldwide internet access is a solved problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. However, this conversation has basically been skipped over. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong. The constellations are being launched, and there's zero chance of shutting them down once they're serving a commercial role. Considering the abundant red tape in the modern…
> I personally believe that pervasive high speed internet even in remote locations will do more for humanity than the scientific cost of these satellites. I've had faster Internet than the average Starlink speedtest says, in rural Romania, at the foot of a mountain, wild bears and all: https://twitter.com/q3k/status/1172621386977861632 . Internet access in rural areas is pretty much a solved problem, it just now hing…
But I know people from rich countries like UK, US, Germany with download speeds under 5 mbps paying more than you would pay for the most expensive line on Romania.
The article covers the mitigations already in place and how they only partially resolve the issue. These satellites are low, bright (at dawn/dusk) and very soon to be incredibly numerous. Yes, it is possible for data workflows to post-process these streaks away, but not all configurations allow this, and whereas previous intrusions were somewhat rare and could be ignored that simply won't be the case due to three com…
I’m afraid you will die on that hill and be replaced by a happy rural resident who was being abused by a local telco monopoly, but is now using competitively priced, fast, low latency satellite internet. Using keps and scrubbing exposures in post is something we could already do decades ago. It’ll just be a new part of the workflow and eventually the space NIMBYs will quiet down.
Let’s not pretend this was the one true way to get around Comcast et al’s stranglehold though. That problem could have been solved politically with regulation plus (in the countryside) ground based radio, or (in cities) with regulation of cable infrastructure such that it was separated from packet-routing and customer-service.
If satellite ISPs genuinely are the solution to entrenched telcos then every streak of light in the sky is a testament to the failure to find a solution. We will look back and wish we had been able to achieve a system of sensible business regulation delivered by those elected to do so.