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One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

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Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#131

Post by Fischgericht »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #101
Fischgericht wrote: post #66

[Disclaimer: Not a hater, just a Nerd looking at data.] And just as Tesla's stock goes up whenever there are reports about them no longer selling cars, or being years behind on self-driving tech and robotics... if Starlink would be publicly traded, their stock would now shoot way up. On a more serious note: If analysts would do their job, they could have found out years ago that Starlink will never ever be profitable…

> "But why are you only assuming a usage time of 3 years?" Your entire analysis rests on this point, which you fail to demonstrate. (You also cite zero sources, which isn't encouraging.) (EDIT: This assumption is conservative, but reasonable.) Was this AI generated? > The cable itself costs virtually nothing Did you attempt to look up the cost of laying new fibre trunk? > due to their Satellites now being massively o…

Wow. Well, I believe that YOU are a bot, not me. Are you Grok?

Anyway, yes, I am a human.

And it is not that hard to find the sources for this point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshiel...

v1 constellation was completed in 2021, and decommissioned from 2024. v2 deployed from 2023, but the sat-to-sat communication is not working, so all of them, will need to be replaced by v3, too.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#132

Post by runarberg »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #126
ggoo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response is not in good faith - this is very easy to google.

> this is very easy to google Then it should be easy to cite. Astronomers have complained. But I haven't seen anyone link that to output, including the complaining astronomers.

Search term: "low earth orbit satellite effects on astronomy" first result:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01904-2

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#133

Post by tehjoker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #75
schiffern wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>0.01% of anthropogenic ozone depletion The sheer percentage increase in stratospheric AlO is still alarming.[0] Satellite reentries in 2022 (ie mostly pre-megaconstellation) were already raising stratospheric AlO levels by 29.5% above normal levels (with satellites adding 'only' 17 t/year), but megaconstellations could raise that to ~480% above natural levels (360 t/year). This isn't a rounding error, it's a non-tri…

> Satellite reentries in 2022 (mostly pre-megaconstellation) were already raising stratospheric AlO levels by 29.5% above normal levels Those findings are simulated, not observed. Hence "potential." > it's a non-trivial change in chemical composition over the entire globe, and effecting a complex and poorly-understood part of the climate system. What could go wrong? Perhaps a lot. Perhaps not much. It's a good questi…

i still don’t understand why we need huge constellations of satellites at all

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#134

Post by dimal »

ggreer wrote: post #42
trenbologna wrote: post #3

Does this create pollution? I don't think I want to inhale satellite dust.

Current Starlink satellites are 800-970kg[1] and 100% of their mass is vaporized on reentry, so 1-2 satellites a day would be approximately 1.5 tons per day added to the atmosphere. The atmosphere's mass is 5.15 quadrillion tons. Even if satellite vapor stayed in the atmosphere forever, it would take approximately 10,000 years before it reached 1 part per billion. So basically it's not worth worrying about. 1. https:…

Yet?

My point is, Starlink is doing this now, but they are continuing to scale up. Other companies are going to follow. Is there a point that this does become something to worry about because the scale has increased?

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#135

Post by chermi »

dweinus wrote: post #67
chermi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd wager many of those connections are serving much more than one person, considering they're often hubs in rural areas. But screw them. It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to complain about how the poor are causing the privileged some difficulties.

If we wanted to subsidize internet for rural and low-income communities responsibly, we could invest in fiber and other solutions, and control the externalities (this is exactly the ReConnect program is). Starlink is not that, it is a classic case of privatizing profits by socializing hidden externalities, in this case to the entire world. Externalities in the form of pollution that will cost us all more than fiber i…

The last mile problem is difficult and expensive. I think satellites are a good solution to it. As for SpaceX fucking up that contract, that sucks and is no good.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#136

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nicce wrote: post #102
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is that threshold? Way beyond anything we can currently achieve with current and planned launch capacity or radio technology. > that object can get destroyed; which means it will start deorbiting and with a chance to hit some other object below Got it, altitude. Yes, in theory. In practice, the odds of that happening are vanishingly low. If it did happen, the volumes we're talking about are still so big that y…

> Way beyond anything we can currently achieve with current and planned launch capacity or radio technology. How are you so sure, when scientist have been debating this for decades? > Got it, altitude. Quibbling isn't an argument.

> when scientist have been debating this for decades?

They have been. That's what I'm basing my arguments on.

You've been mentioning a ca. 70,000-bird limit. I think that comes from Bongers & Torres [1]. Their paper runs LEGEND (LEO-to-GEO Environment Debris Model). It does not distinguish between LEO and GEO. That's material because the natural decay period for an object in LEO is on the order of months to years, for LEO, to decades to centuries, for GEO.

Kessler in GEO? Real problem. If you wanted to be a space terrorist, you could probably engineer a cascade today that would make large sections of GEO unusuable for decades if not centuries. The point is that isn't possible for LEO, where you may make a mess in a few orbits for a few years at best.

> Quibbling isn't an argument

Sorry, wasn't quibbling. I genuinely couldn't tell what you meant by "highest level." (I was picturing a food chain, where big clouds of debris "eat" smaller satellites in their way.)

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092...

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#137

Post by hughes »

Fischgericht wrote: post #131
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But why are you only assuming a usage time of 3 years?" Your entire analysis rests on this point, which you fail to demonstrate. (You also cite zero sources, which isn't encouraging.) (EDIT: This assumption is conservative, but reasonable.) Was this AI generated? > The cable itself costs virtually nothing Did you attempt to look up the cost of laying new fibre trunk? > due to their Satellites now being massively o…

Wow. Well, I believe that YOU are a bot, not me. Are you Grok? Anyway, yes, I am a human. And it is not that hard to find the sources for this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Starlink_and_Starshiel... v1 constellation was completed in 2021, and decommissioned from 2024. v2 deployed from 2023, but the sat-to-sat communication is not working, so all of them, will need to be replaced by v3, too.

Why do you believe the inter-satellite links are not working?

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#138

Post by Fischgericht »

wmf wrote: post #104
Fischgericht wrote: post #66

[Disclaimer: Not a hater, just a Nerd looking at data.] And just as Tesla's stock goes up whenever there are reports about them no longer selling cars, or being years behind on self-driving tech and robotics... if Starlink would be publicly traded, their stock would now shoot way up. On a more serious note: If analysts would do their job, they could have found out years ago that Starlink will never ever be profitable…

Analysts that I've seen estimate that Starlink is already profitable and will remain so. Unless you can explain the differences between your math and their math, this is yet another Elon-hating conspiracy theory.

Gimme your source URL, please.

As others have pointed out already in this thread: No serious analyst and not even Starlink themselves have claimed to be profitable. They have claimed to be operationally profitable. This means that the cost of operating the sats is lower than the revenue they make. It does leave out all other cost. Yes, if they could build and launch the Sats for free instead of ~$2 million per piece, that could be a profitable business.

Also, have you actually used Starlink? It's crap. Yes, in 2023 when they did not have customers you got decent speeds. Now it's completely overbooked. Yes, you can make a year of profits milking existing customers.

Google "Starlink benchmark" or "Starlink feedback" etc and you will see things like these:

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/starlink.com

At this point Starlink's active customer base is rating their service to be worse than... cancer, I guess?

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#139

Post by chermi »

runarberg wrote: post #74
londons_explore wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2024 global internet usage grew from 5.3 billion users to 5.5 Starlink grew by a similar absolute amount, from 2 million users to 4 million over the same time period, Is this some AI answer or did you foobar this math by a factor of 100?

Whoops, a standard off by a factor of 100 error. StarLink got 2 million new subscribers in 2024. Meanwhile the internet got 200 million new users. So even if every new StarLink subscriber would be a new internet user (which is obviously not true) they would still only account for 1% of new internet users. The real number is off course much much much lower.

This is definitely a small number. But I don't think it tells the whole story. Not every n+1 is the same. New satellite hookups in rural places, especially poor rural areas, combat zones, emergency situations etc. are more impactful than a new wired hookup in a city where there's already wifi in the library, for example.

Re: One to two Starlink satellites are falling back to Earth each day

#140

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #127
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once the bubble pops What's the bubble? It's cash-flow positive. All of SpaceX is cash-flow positive--they've been buying back their own shares. You can argue it's overrated, i.e. customers will drop it after trying it for a while. (Or when a recession forces their hand.) But bubble requires leverage and losses, neither of which SpaceX (or Starlink) have.

Sorry, I was referring to the general stock market (mostly AI) bubble. As for SpaceX, it's pretty much impossible to know their finances - they don't publish audited accounts. We can just trust what Elon is willing to share with us.

> for SpaceX, it's pretty much impossible to know their finances - they don't publish audited accounts

SpaceX has audited financials. They're not published, but they leak a lot.

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