I really wonder if anyone is going to be able to catch up to SpaceX anytime soon. Kuiper seems dead in the water, the legacy operators seem unwilling to expand into LEO constellations.
Starlink Direct to Cell
41–50 of 831 posts
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#42How can it be that a LTE smartphone, costing ~$100 and doing all the things a smart phone can do, and being designed to connect to a cell network via a tower a few miles away, can somehow also function as the pizza sized $500 Starlink dish?
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about, so from what did you derive these harsh feelings? Starlink satellites are in LEO, without active boosting they decay in mere years.
A decayed satellite doesn't just disappear though. There's particulate pollution from it burning up, not to mention the pollution from rocket launches. There's also the light pollution that the astronomy community has been complaining about for years.
Ah, "unsustainable" meaning it annoys earth-bound astronomers. Cell phones in general must be unsustainable then, since they annoy radio astronomers.
Actually, we can sustain this just fine. The public derives virtually zero measurable benifit from astronomy, particularly the sort done from Earth.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#44Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#45I feel so, so mixed about this. It’s going to be unambiguously good for wilderness rescue and disaster response. But I like camping and hiking in remote areas in order to remove myself from the world. And I think the lack of connectivity discourages unprepared people from taking on more than they can handle in the wilderness. If the wilderness becomes fully connected, will it spoil that feeling? Will it lead to the l…
There are virtually no unconnected places in most of Europe yet wilderness is still dangerous. It is good that rescue services can help you if accident happens (and it can happen even to the adequatly prepared).
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about, so from what did you derive these harsh feelings? Starlink satellites are in LEO, without active boosting they decay in mere years.
A decayed satellite doesn't just disappear though. There's particulate pollution from it burning up, not to mention the pollution from rocket launches. There's also the light pollution that the astronomy community has been complaining about for years.
For astronomy, sinking costs of space launches present an opportunity to move the actual telescopes into space, where the atmosphere doesn't stand in the way at all.
I read a long description of an astronomer's journey to a prestigious Chilean observatory deep in the desert. He wasn't particularly happy about either the isolation or the bloodsucking bugs that could not be entirely exterminated and carried diseases.
Compared to that, remote work on a space-based telescope might be preferable from the human perspective, too.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#47I wish I could pay Starlink directly and have global satellite based LTE instead of having to go through a specific carrier and be limited by other carriers’ reciprocity to specific countries and bands One space based cell plan for the whole world
>"One space based cell plan for the whole world"
And a single entity to decide who gets disconnected if they do not behave
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#48[deleted]
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#49What I wonder about the Starlink constellation is, how secure it is physically? There are people burning down 5G towers. How plausible would be for a conspiracy nut to create a rocket to take out the satellites? Maybe starting a cascading effect?
I doubt there is enough overlap between people able to build a rocket capable of taking out satellites and people who are afraid of 5G.
Could perhaps melt them with a powerful laser?
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#50[flagged]
There are about 6 thousand Starlink satellites out there and their total count may grow to some 40 thousand in the future. But even if we abstracted the LEO to just one sphere, it would be quite a bit BIGGER than the Earth alone. If 40 thousand, say, small cars were distributed across the entire globe including oceans, would you call the result "unsustainable pollution"? In fact, compared to what we live in today, su…
Just wait until they initiate Kessler syndrome, sending junk upward, polluting the entire orbit, up and down. It's just a matter of time.