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SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

zdnet.com

431–440 of 1001 posts

Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#431

When Starlink first became available here in poor-ish Central-EU, I was excited. Then, only months later, but after years of planning: EU funding brought fiber to my farm area, at ~$25/900mbps 10ms. While my story is just n=1, I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have However, I am dumb, and very open to be convinced.

How much did EU taxpayers spend to make that possible?

Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have India is rapidly expanding fiber internet connectivity, even in rural areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Broadband_Network In addition, 4G/5G coverage is extensive: https://www.ookla.com/articles/india-mobile-connectivity-1h2... See India in this 5G global coverage map: https://www.ookla.com/articles/5g-map-2026 The…

> The number of people who are not covered by above-mentioned fiber/cell network, and can afford Starlink as it is priced now, will be extremely small People vastly overestimate the purchasing power in places like India. Most of the purchasing power is concentrated in the top 1% of the population and most of that 1% lives in urban areas with fiber connectivity. The bottom 90% don’t even make $1K/person/year. Even a $…

When I was a teenager in early post-Communist Czechia, Internet connection was also expensive. So what we did was that we pooled resources. Five or ten households had a common connection and shared it.

I don't doubt that similar schemes will be used in Africa or India.

BTW Median income in India is about $3K a year.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#433

I have started to see what I think are star link satellites at night on walks with my kids. It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky and is changing the literal stars my kids will grow up with. It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.

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Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#434

I have started to see what I think are star link satellites at night on walks with my kids. It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky and is changing the literal stars my kids will grow up with. It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.

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Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#435
post #59

When Starlink first became available here in poor-ish Central-EU, I was excited. Then, only months later, but after years of planning: EU funding brought fiber to my farm area, at ~$25/900mbps 10ms. While my story is just n=1, I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have However, I am dumb, and very open to be convinced.

It's very popular in rural US where running wired broadband is cost prohibitive. There are many parts of the US that are very spread out, and thus running wires to every home is expensive without subsidies.

Exactly. Central Europe is one of the most densely populated regions on the planet outside of Asia. High population density makes fiber more economical, and low population density, the inverse. As other la have pointed out, India actually has very deep fiber penetration exactly for this reason. The Americas, by contrast, are largely devoid of people which makes the economics of any networking infrastructure harder

Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#436

I have started to see what I think are star link satellites at night on walks with my kids. It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky and is changing the literal stars my kids will grow up with. It feels different when it’s the government that theoretically represents people but when it’s one person that feels truly depressing.

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That’s a very reductionist and dismissive take. Also it’s rude.

I’m an occasional astrophotographer, and the baseline of photos you can took are absolutely breathtaking now. Seeing this destroyed in real time is depressing.

I used to see a rare flyby of a satellite in the complete dark, but now it’s much more, and besides my personal annoyance, many people much more serious about sky and space are rightfully angry. Maybe you can ask them to grow up, too.

Not every progress is good progress. We should understand that by now. You should understand that better than all of us combined, since you’re apparently grown up, way more than us.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#437
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Family lives in Rio/Brazil. With the efforts from our government every year that passes, public safety becomes worse and suburban areas get more marginalized, it got to a point where the drug traffickers from my area start cutting the fibers and leaving letters on mailboxes saying that from now on, anyone who wanted internet had to get their illegal internet. Which meant shitty speeds and if you have a problem with b…

So the drug traffickers that cut the fiber have no problem with your Starlink dish outside your home, and don't break it and/or threaten you? If they care, that seems like an oversight they will soon correct once enough people start using it.

They clearly don't want to threaten all the people directly for protection money. That limits what they are willing to do for the scheme. So they cut the cable at places where people are not. This is both efficient in employee time as well as in risk. Starlink antennas can be installed on roofs or in places that aren't easily visible.

Also you could install it in things that don't look like it since it only needs an mostly unobstructed view in a cone to the sky. For example I could se an installation in a fake rain barrel, old bathtub inside a stack of firewood. some cloth coverings also would work so it doesn't have to be open either.

The only way to find the actual installations would be survey flights that take pictures and compare the data. Then send out inspectors to see if changes on buildings hide starlink antennas.

I think the only effect will be that the scheme will go away. Alternatively they could just improve their service so it competes on performance and price with starlink.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#438
post #394
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a choice of polluting the ground or the air.

How often do you need to replace the cable in the ground compared to the satellites in the air?

I can give an example. My parents live in the UK, and their house was built in 1985. A couple of years ago the copper phone line had to be replaced as it had degraded somebow. The operator had to dig up and reinstall their driveway, brick pathway and garden. Now the operator is installing fibre to replace copper phone lines, so again they need to dig it up.

One days work for one house. Multiply that across an entire nation, and work out how much diesel is burned for that. Where they live you can't get cable (not very common in the UK), but if it was available I guess there would have been another digging day in the 90s.

Re: SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth

#439

I can't wait until this junk starts to collide and blocks us from making any space flights. This has to happen and probability grows with the square of the number of orbiting satellites.

People seem to have a poor understanding of just how much space there is up there. It's just very empty up there. And these things are in precisely controlled orbits that are well documented, etc. Even if you simplify your thinking of orbits to a 2D (square area), it's a lot of space.

But that would be a mistake of course. Low earth orbit is three dimensional. Star Link uses several altitude bands of about 20-30km each. It's 330-360km for the v3 satellites. The volume of that is about 17 billion cubic kilometers. About 13x the volume of all the water in the oceans. Accidental collisions are not going to be a frequent thing. These things are going to be many kilometers apart.

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