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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

#261
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 With now two generations of Starlink sats already being outdated and/or falling from the sky You don't seem to understand their strategy: Constant replacement is a featu…

Due to the nature of the business I am in I very well know Viasats customer base. They are too important to fail for multiple european military organizations. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the intra-links still do not seem to be enabled. Can not verify myself due not having a yacht and/or time, but I am constantly flying between Asia and Europe with various airlines, and so far none of them have switched to…

United, Zipair, Hawaiian, Qatar.

The lasers work and I really don't know where you got the idea they don't.

They've worked since at least late 2022.

We're in 2025

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

#262
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Due to the nature of the business I am in I very well know Viasats customer base. They are too important to fail for multiple european military organizations. So there is demand :) > As discussed elsewhere in this thread, the intra-links still do not seem to be enabled. Can not verify myself due not having a yacht and/or time Are you arguing that everybody reporting successfully using it far away from land is part…

No conspiracy, but let's say that it is rather hard to get proper benchmarks done by actual users, and one has to rely on a lot of anecdotical data. Have you seen any real-life benchmark reports with traceroutes, measure downtime, handover time etc that impressed you in a positive way? If so, please share. Hawaiian Airlines - very interesting. Sadly wrong side of the planet for me to test it myself :) It very well mi…

please talk to "panuvic".

pan &a@t& uvic.ca

I believe he's a University professor in Canada. Working on this data wrt OneWeb and Starlink.

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

#263
post #67
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…

Starlink is delivering the set that was said to be impossible by 2026 today in 2025.

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

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About a million pounds of kerosene per launch Quarter of a million pounds kerosene per Falcon 9. Zero for Starship, which burns methane. (And thus emits pure methane, CO2 and water vapor.) > the eventual need to clean up LOE to avoid Kessler Syndrome Not a thing. (Search this comment thread for the term. There are good answers on the current state of research.)

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2024/09/12/spacex-launches-... ...but sure, for the sake of argument, maybe it's only a quarter million lbs of kerosene 50 times a year, upper atmospheric pollution, and LEO crowding that gets solved by HN comments. ...instead of a dumb cable that doesn't come with a side of funding a billionaire neo-nazi. My bad.

You'd have no problem with Kuiper if SpaceX owned Corning, Ciena and Nokia and was running Fiber.

To the left with your nonsense.

The big very visible clue is SpaceX launched over 100 times in 2024 and 2025.

Why estimate when you can count?

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

#265
post #135
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

SpaceX didn't fuck up the contract.

You can tell because SpaceX delivers those requirements in 2025 ahead of the 2026 deadline.

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll refrain my usual snark and just link the same link from the linked article you apparently read. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024JD04...

So you're doing the same thing? Either make a meaningful argument or stop insinuating through omission that there's a real problem here. You're not only insulting the intelligence of your readers but also, thereby, undermining your cause. The article you linked is garbage. Its authors find (of course not controlling for multiple comparisons) an effect that looks statistically significant if you p-hack it just right,…

[flagged]

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have a link to a blog or writeup regarding the inter-links not working? The simpler answer is intra-constellation communication is a bleeding-edge technology. It's an extraordinary challenge for which extraordinary proof is needed to show success, not the other way around. SpaceX has solved most of the gating technical problems. But getting it to work reliably enough that it becomes more economic than ground…

An even simpler answer is Starlink is available in locations too far from ground stations. Ergo they are served via laser. Cook Island Ascension Island Iran Venezuela Cuba Galapagos/Easter Islands Vanuatu Eastern Ukraine Syria Lebanon Iraq Iqaluit Antarctica, as South as the South Pole Tristan de Cunha The range of the ground stations are under 1500 miles and I really don't know where people are getting the idea that…

"The range of the ground stations are under 1500 miles and I really don't know where people are getting the idea that the lasers don't work."

Maybe because v1 and v2 did not even have working lasers on the hardware level...?

The idea is coming from "reality", Starlinks own reporting, industry talks, tech press etc.

Anyway, to shorten this we can agree that we have different definitions of what one expects from having a dedicate backbone. I would expect seamless handover amongst other things, which I have never ever seen, and unless you show me a video recording of a 24h Starlink session with MTR running I simply will trust the data I have over a random claim.

As said elsewhere in this thread: It is extremely hard to find detailed benchmarks from happy Starlink users. Next to all positive content is paid content. And a quick look at trustpilot & co clearly hint that there a huge chunk of Starlink customers might be unhappy. And even if it's just because their online gaming sessions getting interrupted on every Sat hand-over, which exists in reality, but not in your mind :)

Seriously, if you have access to any benchmark data sources, please gimme. I'm not here for "winning" an argument. Data, Data, Data.

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

#268
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You made the statement: > It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to complain about how the poor are causing the privileged some difficulties. Now it is up to you to show that this has outsized influence on impoverished communities. According to ITU[1] the number one factor for lack of internet access is economical. The price of internet access can be reduced with traditional infrastructure, but governments a…

If the community can't afford Starlink, surely they can run Fiber and buy equipment from Ciena and Nokia (Huawei outside the US) to light it up themselves since it's more affordable than Starlink in your view.

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single terminal could serve an entire African village. It's also serving use cases in the Ukraine war, ships at sea, Antarctic research stations, numerous aerospace and military use cases, and so on. DTC is provide texting and emergency services to countless people who might need it in an emergancy, like we saw in North Carolina. Last and most importantly, Starlink exists is to create revenue for SpaceX and to fund…

> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high. If humanity agreed with this statement, humanity would fund the program directly through investment, donations or taxes, the same way we fund roads and schools which we also value highly.

Like SLS?

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0.018% of the worlds population have starlink subscriptions. Yet 100% put up with the atmospheric pollution of a lot of mass being plasmified on the way back to earth, the light pollution, the lack of other services delivered with that spectrum, etc. One might ask how the 99.982% of us will be compensated.

Also worth considering is the Uber effect of public infrastructure. Meaning that politicians may use the existence of StarLink as an excuse to delay or cancel public projects which would otherwise have delivered broadband internet to under-served areas via traditional infrastructure. This is similar to how the existence of Uber has caused delays or cancellation of public transit projects because politicians were able…

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