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Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

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Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#281

Post by simion314 »

lmm wrote: post #252
KennyBlanken wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." To provide internet service to ~250,000 people - about one quarter the population of a major east coast city. Also, these are consumable - much more so than cable plants. Starlink is horrifically bad for the environment compared to ground-based infrastructure. As witnessed by the very high cost of St…

> You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." Well you opened up by talking about "just one launch". > To provide internet service to ~250,000 people - about one quarter the population of a major east coast city. But people who are currently very hard to supply internet to and extremely car-dependent. Building housing in cities would probably…

>On the contrary, running cable to many of these places would be overwhelmingly environmentally damaging (in many cases you'd have to build a road through a forest or blast through a mountain)

How so? How do this people landed in this place without a road and electricity? Rural homes must have roads to reach the city to buy fuel and food. There are also wireless terrestrial ways to transmit internet too.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#282

Post by spuz »

jessriedel wrote: post #105
jay_kyburz wrote: post #81

I have a genuine question, are we handing SpaceX a monopoly by allowing them to launch these satellites, or will competing companies be able to launch similar services? Will space be too cluttered for competition? (I'm guessing space is really big and that we can have _a lot_ of small satellites up there.)

There is plenty of room for additional constellations. The fact that "near misses" are too frequent is largely a result of inaccurate tracking and poor communication. (Next gen space traffic control will allow vastly higher densities.) And the fact that actual collisions are occuring too frequently is due to old uncontrolled junk, not a literal lack of room or inability to maneuver by modern sats.

> Next gen space traffic control

Do you have more info on that? What can the people who track satellites do that they aren't already doing?

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#283

Post by nikolay »

mlindner wrote: post #278
nikolay wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's outside of our control - unlike Starlink's junk.

How are you (or anyone) harmed by this junk in ways that the universe doesn't already harm you?

Asteroids enrich our planet with elements and the satellites are already made from existing ones. I'm never gonna use Starlink and not only because it's super pricey, but because the idea is just stupid.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#284

Post by nneonneo »

nneonneo wrote: post #23

> SpaceX deploys its satellites into these lower obits Unintentional pun on "orbits", perhaps? It's incredible to me that launching satellites is so easy now that a failure of 40 satellites can be tolerated. On the bright side, I guess this gave SpaceX a chance to talk about their debris-limiting strategy!

This typo has now been fixed, of course, but if you want a teensy bit of amusement you can always see the archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20220209040744/https://www.space...

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#285

Post by erulabs »

mlindner wrote: post #263
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any time Musk comes up on twitter people are quick to hate him. He is a polarizing figure and while there are reasons to criticize him, there are also a lot of people who will happily misinterpret anything so they can perceive him as failing. So any negative story about Musk, correct or not, is emotionally satisfying to those people. Basically the stories come out because the crowd eats them up.

Which is sad because if you were to limit choices to picking individual people on the planet, I think Musk may be doing more to fix real existential problems in the world more than anyone else alive today. People are jealous creatures and like to hate on successful people.

I think it's a bit more complex than that.

If you genuinely believe that society is a zero-sum-game, where any winner comes at the expense of some loser somewhere, then ultra-successful people must make you sick.

You can hear a few whispers like "Tesla factories aren't the safest places to work at" or "An Amazon worker had to pee in a bottle" and it all lines up: these are horrible people who only got ahead because they abused others.

The absolute iron-jaw of that concept is that it explains ones shortcoming in life instantly. Any success you missed? Well that was just due to the lack of evil in your heart. If you were ruthless, surely you'd be just like "the rich".

It's a genuinely scary line of argument, and I have yet to be able to cure anyone of it, even a little. Taken to it's ultimate logical conclusions "Eat the Rich" can be taken literally. It's terrifying. Unfortunately, history is full of grey areas. Actual evil and wealthy people - and their possibly justified consumption by the mobs do exist.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#286

Post by pipe01 »

mlindner wrote: post #261
lostlogin wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my garage flooded during a storm, can I blame the storm?

> When my garage flooded during a storm, can I blame the storm? Not a very good analogy. It's more like trying lay the blame for killing a piece of electronics on lightning that hit a mile from your house when in fact it was flooded by the rain.

Not really, the lightning didn't cause the flood, whereas the storm did cause the atmosphere expansion

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#287

Post by lmm »

simion314 wrote: post #281
lmm wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." Well you opened up by talking about "just one launch". > To provide internet service to ~250,000 people - about one quarter the population of a major east coast city. But people who are currently very hard to supply internet to and extremely car-dependent. Building housing in cities would probably…

>On the contrary, running cable to many of these places would be overwhelmingly environmentally damaging (in many cases you'd have to build a road through a forest or blast through a mountain) How so? How do this people landed in this place without a road and electricity? Rural homes must have roads to reach the city to buy fuel and food. There are also wireless terrestrial ways to transmit internet too.

> How do this people landed in this place without a road and electricity? Rural homes must have roads to reach the city to buy fuel and food.

They might rely on generators for electricity, and access might involve a boat, or a quad bike trail that would need enlarging before you could bring construction equipment in and run a cable along it.

> There are also wireless terrestrial ways to transmit internet too.

I mean ultimately the proof is in the pudding; if it were practical to run internet some other way they would already get it that way.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#288

Post by spuz »

yabones wrote: post #18

What's crazy to me is that 50 years ago, losing 40 satellites would have been a significant portion of all satellites ever launched . Today, it's a temporary setback for a company that launched nearly one thousand satellites last year.

For reference, by 1972, 3449 satellites were launched to space. I'm sure many had deorbited by then but it still might be more than you thought.

https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/osoindex/search-ng.jspx?lf_id=

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#289

Post by laumars »

modeless wrote: post #257
KennyBlanken wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're citing the cost of 1% of the network against the entire network's function. It's more like 750 "flights worth." To provide internet service to ~250,000 people - about one quarter the population of a major east coast city. Also, these are consumable - much more so than cable plants. Starlink is horrifically bad for the environment compared to ground-based infrastructure. As witnessed by the very high cost of St…

> the very high cost of Starlink service It's $99/mo for 100+ megabit service. Sure, it's moderately expensive if you're comparing to cable service in cities . It's downright cheap compared to the cost of connecting the extremely rural customers Starlink targets with physical cables. You don't think running a new set of physical cables to every rural residence in the world (or even cell towers to cover the same) woul…

Plus $500 sign up fee ;)

This might all seem reasonable in rural America but it’s hugely expensive for internet in Europe.

Re: Starlink lost 40 satellites to a geomagnetic storm

#290

Post by rlt »

mlindner wrote: post #261
lostlogin wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my garage flooded during a storm, can I blame the storm?

> When my garage flooded during a storm, can I blame the storm? Not a very good analogy. It's more like trying lay the blame for killing a piece of electronics on lightning that hit a mile from your house when in fact it was flooded by the rain.

Your complaint would be as if someone didn’t know that “thunderstorms” caused rain in addition to lightning and thought someone was claiming lightning flooded their garage.
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