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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

#171

Post by lxgr »

shizcakes wrote: post #153
ogig wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear 10% increase on a global constant and that doesn't sound like peanuts. If we increase 10% each few years that might be a problem? I don't know anything about whatever field studies this but given that LEO constellations born yesterday even that 2% increase in stuff coming from the skyes sounds significant to me.

edit: okay I misunderstood what everyone meant

> please recall that the mass of de-orbiting man-made satellites came from the earth in the first place.

Then again, so are CFCs, CO2, radioactive materials...

Just because some elements naturally occur on Earth doesn't mean we're completely insensitive to where they end up. (That said, I have no idea if atmospheric Aluminium is actually a problem or not.)

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

#172

Post by Fischgericht »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #160
Fischgericht wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I believe that YOU are a bot I don't believe you were a bot, but there were one or two phrasings that gave me pause. (If I believed you had written that with AI, I'd have just asked that and not bothered engaging.) > 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 Fair en…

Well, on purpose I have given Starlink very optimistic numbers, yes. :)

And yes, 22% yield sounds nice, but if someone would hand me their pitch deck and give me a SWAT analysis I would just laugh them away: The risks are far too high.

(See for example the article that this very thread is about.)

Of course you can only guess based on that, but it looks that in real life things are worse:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/starlink-profit-growin...

These data points might be interpreted as "Starlink is getting 40% of their revenue from tax money".

And while "7 million subscribers" might sound impressive on first sight: This is the number of DSL connections subscribed to in the tiny country of Belgium. But for magical reasons Starlink is valuated at a price higher than if you would buy all of Belgium ;)

Your point in regards of laying physical infrastructure is valid for a lot of western countries. But not all of them. Some countries in the EU for example years ago created laws that say that whoever opens the street for any reasons has to put in empty tubes for someone to later put in fiber before closing the street again.

So: This is a regulatory subject really, not physical cost. Fiber is dirt cheap if you are allowed to use existing power poles for example (which is unlike with copper obviously not a problem in regards of signal integrity), or existing underground pipes, or just throw it from house roof to house roof.

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

#173

Post by dylan604 »

shizcakes wrote: post #153
ogig wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear 10% increase on a global constant and that doesn't sound like peanuts. If we increase 10% each few years that might be a problem? I don't know anything about whatever field studies this but given that LEO constellations born yesterday even that 2% increase in stuff coming from the skyes sounds significant to me.

edit: okay I misunderstood what everyone meant

Is that really what people are concerned about though?

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

#174

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #166
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, and Elon companies are well known for leaking reliable information.

> Elon companies are well known for leaking reliable information

SpaceX isn't leaking their own financials.

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

#175

Post by niwtsol »

Fischgericht wrote: post #147
hughes wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[Due to the part of the spectrum I am on, I do not have believes or opinions.] The laser based inter-links still not working has been subject on various conferences like AngaCOM etc. But in my case: I have simply tried it *). And every Starlink user can do it, too: Use traceroute. And if you think "they might be hiding the hop-to-hops between Sats!", you can dig deeper using MTR behind the modem or simply rooting the…

Do you have a link to a blog or writeup regarding the inter-links not working? Hard to find it without getting lost in "Troubleshoot your starlink device" SEO hell.

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

#176

Post by lxgr »

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…

> The "Oops, the Sat-to-Sat links are not working, so we now have to build base stations everywhere and can not do load distribution" might have cost Starlink something like $10 BILLION? I guess I would have tested my stuff first before launching it. With now two generations of Starlink sats already being outdated and/or falling from the sky

You don't seem to understand their strategy: Constant replacement is a feature, not a bug, to them.

And in that paradigm, why wait any longer than absolutely necessary with any given launch? The problem is already fixed – at least inter-satellite links seem to be working well enough now (as evidenced by global coverage on the oceans).

> Starlink will never ever be profitable, just as no Sat ISP in history ever has been.

How do you explain the non-zero stock price of e.g. Iridium and Viasat?

> You have to be EXTREMELY remote for Sat internet to make sense. No, not rural USA. Fiber will be cheaper.

Are you sure laying fiber to every last home is really more capital efficient in the long term? Have you done the math on that side too?

And what about mobile coverage? Even solar-powered low maintenance cell stations need to be installed, repaired after storms, have their solar cells dusted off etc.

> No, not Africa. Fiber through the desert will be cheaper. Sat Internet may make sense if you live in the artic or on mount Everest or something like that.

Mount Everest has pretty good cell signal, as far as I know. It's a tiny area, compared to actually remote but still (sparsely) populated regions.

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

#177

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Fischgericht wrote: post #172
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe that YOU are a bot I don't believe you were a bot, but there were one or two phrasings that gave me pause. (If I believed you had written that with AI, I'd have just asked that and not bothered engaging.) > 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 Fair en…

Well, on purpose I have given Starlink very optimistic numbers, yes. :) And yes, 22% yield sounds nice, but if someone would hand me their pitch deck and give me a SWAT analysis I would just laugh them away: The risks are far too high. (See for example the article that this very thread is about.) Of course you can only guess based on that, but it looks that in real life things are worse: https://arstechnica.com/space…

> I have given Starlink very optimistic numbers

Your revenue figures are consumer only. And while you're generous on utilization factor, we capitalised the TCO up front while amortising revenue, and then reduced asset tenure to worst case observed during development.

Flex up to 4 years, let $1mm TCO be paid up front and the rest amortised, and reduce utilisation to 80% ($80k/month revenue) and IRR shoots up to 73%. Take TCO to $3mm ($1mm up front, $2mm amortised), reduce utilisation to 75% and we're still over 20%.

> while "7 million subscribers" might sound impressive on first sight: This is the number of DSL connections subscribed to in the tiny country of Belgium. But for magical reasons Starlink is valuated at a price higher than if you would buy all of Belgium

Well, yes. Starlink connections are more profitable and you can't scale selling internet to Belgium into a Starshield defence contract. Or selling to airlines and cruise ships and yachts and mining operations, all of which pay more than a Belgian.

> some countries in the EU for example years ago created laws that say that whoever opens the street for any reasons has to put in empty tubes for someone to later put in fiber before closing the street again

Starlink doesn't sense in densely-populated areas of the EU or Asia. (And the equivalent for SpaceX would be ridesharing Starlink on someone else's flight.)

> Fiber is dirt cheap if you are allowed to use existing power poles for example

If you have the scale. You're underestimating the risk that comes from having to place infrastructure up front.

Your analysis is pretty solid. But I don't think it's taking into account the fact that you can build multibillion-dollar telecoms business on a few tens of millions of high-paying customers.

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

#178

Post by runarberg »

chermi wrote: post #168
runarberg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional infrastructure is a proven method of bringing both the availability to uderserved areas, as well as bringing the costs down for those already served. StarLink provides a great oportunity for politicians to delay or cancel projects which would otherwise have given broadband connection to underserved areas. In urban planning this is known as the Uber effect.

Take this argument to it's conclusion. Take any point in history and freeze infrastructure. The only option we give ourselves is building more of that same type and maintaining it? So, more riders and more horses to carry messages, but no telegraph? Or maybe more accurately, keeping the medium the same, never using planes or trucks to deliver mail?

I don‘t follow how that is the conclusion, nor do I understand your analogy.

Broadband internet via cables, fiber optics, and radio towers is state of the art in telecommunication infrastructure. Satellite is both slower, more limited, and more prone to various disruptions. The capabilities of the wires and the radio towers is also improving. 5 years ago we didn’t have 5G towers, and 20 years ago fiber optics seemed a distant dream. The only thing freezing traditional telecommunication infrastructure in place are dreams of low earth orbit satellites which will never materialize.

If I understand your analogy correctly (which I‘m not sure I do) this is like looking at the new technology of pneumatic tubes and stipulating that all postal delivery will be done using this new technology in the future, and we may as well stop funding the national postal service, remove mail-rooms from our ships and trains, because somebody will build a pneumatic tube that will deliver mail door to door between New York and Chicago.

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

#179

Post by HanClinto »

tehjoker wrote: post #133
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Because providing infrastructure to remote regions is incredibly difficult through other mechanisms. I don't believe it's hyperbole to say that -- for the goal of improving infrastructure access in some of the most remote and challenging places in the world -- Starlink in particular is one of the most successful pro-humanitarian engineering projects that I can think of in maybe the last 20 years.

Starlink is easily one of my favorite engineering projects. I don't believe anybody has done it cheaper, better, or at wider scale than Starlink has.

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

#180

Post by JumpCrisscross »

leptons wrote: post #157
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a bit of a re-branding No, it isn't. Starlink's entire commercial value is in being able to perform high-mass / low-latency launch to LEO. There is some fun stuff on the Moon. And a long-term pitch on Mars. But the commercial branding has always been about LEO. > How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now? Better Earth observation. Better space observation. Communicat…

Bullshit. Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony. I've never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites. They even made movies about it: https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spacex+... Google tells me exactly this: > "Yes, SpaceX's Starship is being developed with the explicit goal of transport…

> Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony

Could this reflect your media diet?

> never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites

That's kind of wild. I understand getting the PR stuff first, but every newspaper I read mentions Starlink whenever SpaceX comes up, unless it's about a launch explosion or Artemis.

> pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments

V3 doesn't fit on smaller rockets. And Starship's launch costs promise to be much lower than the Falcons.

> why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why

Starship isn't an interstellar platform...

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