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On Reddit I remember getting called a "space Karen" for pointing this out in a discussion about Starlink. Elon Musk fanboys are some of the worst. Second only to Q fanboys.
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Well the issue is that not everything is black and white.
On one hand, these satellites can potentially absolutely wreak havok on astronomy, and our own view of the night sky. Nobody wants that.
On the other hand, in a few years, these satellites are able to provide cheap internet all over the planet, which would allow poor remote communities in South America, Africa, and Asia access to the internet, which is practically impossible through any other means. IMO, its worth the tradeoff. I think helping people is more important than astronomy, but I recognize that that's just my opinion
poor remote communities in South America
Ironically, starlink was used by illegal miners on the Amazon to coordinate operations and avoid policing.
Yes the internet is indeed useful to have
Okay but you're falling into Elon's trap. You can't weigh future potential against current harm naively. Particularly when it comes from somebody with a long history of over promising and under delivering. Since we pay the full price up front (loss of science, etc) but will never reap the full benefits promised.
For instance: it could help remote villages or third world countries. But Starlink costs a pretty penny in western money those places lack. Otherwise they would already have traditional infrastructure.
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Isn't Starlink still heavily limited by the geography you are in. As in there cannot be too many subscribers in any one place because it will use all the capacity? If that's still the case seems doubtful it will ever bring anything cheap to the masses.
Ribbit
At least SpaceX restarted the cheap launch race and is giving us the option of heavy but affordable payloads for scientific instruments.
LEO junk will only get worse with time, so let's start planning for it.
which would allow poor remote communities in South America, Africa, and Asia access to the internet, which is practically impossible through any other means.
"Practically impossible" is a horrible way to describe it. It's not practically impossible; the solution and methods are eminently doable, they just aren't done (yet) because of cost in poor areas with relatively weak governments. Most of those areas will get reliable non-satellite internet in the years to come.
We can talk up the good of systems like Starlink without hyping it up as delivering something that is otherwise impossible.
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Funny, “Space Karen” is a really common name for Elon.
all these comments discussing ukraine wartime internet, or poorer communities in south america. meanwhile, i have zero interest in musk, but starlink has been a fantastic Internet option for me in rural US.
my other options are borderline unusable DSL, or a couple of line-of-sight wireless providers which would require cutting down who knows how many trees to even have a hope of connectivity.
there are a significant number of people living in this area, but no decent wired or cellular internet options and despite my state getting a large federal grant to improve internet speeds, I have zero expectation it will be improved for me.
Same here, we're not rural enough to get grant money but not suburban enough to get cable. And everybody who says Hughesnet is fine has definitely never used it. I could never have worked from home through the pandemic if we hadn't gotten starlink.
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I strongly dislike Elon Musk but Starlink is a net win, and science can and must evolve to overcome these sorts of challenges. Nearby space is only going to get more crowded
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Fanboys for anyone are the worst.
We as fucking adults should be able to criticize anything and anyone we believe in. Especially if you believe in them.
That’s called security in your beliefs, go figure that our chronically insecure populace would refuse to question their beliefs
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Yeah, and if we did not abandon our traditional networks then there would not be such a strong market for STARMLINK.
A couple weeks ago I was way away from civilization deep in the mountains, and my buddy set up his Starlink for a project. I have a hard time believing traditional networks would have made that possible? We are about to use it for the ocean in a few weeks as well..
But I also would take deep space study over the convenience of internet anywhere. I'm just not sure traditional networks would have covered those areas?
If New Zealand can manage damn near 100% cellular coverage, and we have some pretty reasonable mountains, why can't others?
I mean New Zeeland is pretty wealthy and relatively small.
If that's true though, I'm impressed that New Zeeland has coverage through all those mountains. Definitely not the same situation in the American West
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You could receive normal satellite internet the same way, the advantage starlink brings is that it's much lower latency than geosynchronous satellites and they're selling it for much less and more bandwith.
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Sounds to me like it's about time we build an observatory on the moon.
I hear you, but let me propose: prison on the moon, and we send Elon there.
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I do wonder how much the average people commenting would care if musk had nothing to do with this.
It's an issue, but it's an issue scientists knew was coming for decades now. Starlink isn't the only company putting satellites into low earth orbit. They aren't the first and the amount of them will just keep coming.
What we need is regulations and requirements for how many, what purpose, how they'll be dealt with if something goes wrong and when they're no longer needed, etc. Getting people to share satellites that are already there (when possible) and not putting up satellites that are redundant or don't provide that much benefit versus non-satellite options or further orbit options will be important.
But all these mindless circlejerkers only talking about musk and wanting starlink "taken down" are really polluting the topic with meaningless bullshit. It's unfortunate people are bringing these mindless circlejerks over from reddit.
LEO shouldn't be some billionaire playground to make even more money. The Kessler syndrome is a very real threat to our future
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I agree, if it wasn't Musk there wouldn't be so much hate most probably, starlink is objectively good for all the people living in rural zones (in some cases just outside of big cities) where internet doesn't arrive because other companies don't want to spend the money for it.
There's plenty of companies that do rural internet. They're called WISPs (wireless ISPs). Usually small business owners willing to get more customers.
We would give free internet to more than a few farmers willing to let us mount on a silo or elevator. We put up a backhaul, access point, and give them a connection. Free internet for the land owner, we expand our territory, win/win. Then the neighbors just point a link at the AP and we charge them.
Only real requirement is line-of-sight. Towers can reach far. Existing structures usually work, otherwise they can sometimes erect a small tower.
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The actual sane take. I swear musk is constantly living rent free in way too many peoples minds.
Honestly, what I took from this is we should have more telescopes that operate outside of the orbits of commercial satellites.
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Send 40k satellites to pollute low-earth orbit (and provide internet)
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Develop rockets that would more affordably send payload above LEO
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Push scientists to get funding and launch more telescopes above LEO
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Profit.
Talk about demand generation…
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Based on the article the satellites are not staying 100% on their intended spectrum spec and are bleeding some unintended interfere noise. I hope the starlink cloud doesn't interfere so much that it excludes possibility of some research. On earth, if you transmit even slightly out-of-spec radio signals, the government agencies will get mad and really really fast.
ELI5: Low earth orbit is becoming over crowed "FM radio station", with regulation lacking who can broadcast and at what frequency.
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Interesting. I remember there was a brightness concern with the satellites reflecting too much light, but assumed it was all ok because IIRC they hit their reflectivity reduction targets.
However, this seems to be about transmissions from the satellites interfering with non-visible observations.
In a study, published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, scientists used a powerful telescope in the Netherlands to observe 68 of SpaceX's satellites and detected emissions from satellites are drifting out of their allocated band, up in space.
... "Why this matters is because of the number," Dr Di Vruno said. "Suppose that there is a satellite in space that radiates this kind of signal, there is a very, very small chance that this satellite will be in the beam, in the main site, of your telescope."
drifting out of their allocated band
That sounds like a violation of regulatory authorization. Tell his ass to fix it or shut it down. If he can’t, revoke StarLink’s status as a US corporation.
It'll be interesting when some untouchable actor decides enough is enough and starts deorbiting them.
Imagine you are working your entire life in science. To find were we are coming from - were we are going to - spending millions of dollars for the most sophisticated Instruments.
And then some random moron with too much money appears and moons you every few minutes.
This has been going on for much longer than Starlink.
There were a number of observatories built in or near cities. They became mostly useless once we figured out electric lights but we still use them for education sometimes.
SpaceX has been working with the NSF so they can continue to dim Starlink https://spacenews.com/nsf-and-spacex-reach-agreement-to-reduce-starlink-effects-on-astronomy/
Now we're putting more and more observation capabilities deep into space. JWT is already getting images better than anything you could get on earth, even if you eliminated Starlink and turned off every light on the planet. Ground based astronomical observation is still relevant but we keep coming up with better alternatives.
"No, it's not." - Elon, probably
Muskrat furiously making alts to downvote.
I head he'll be done in just 2 years!
ELI5 - why do satellites need to be bright? Do they have some kind of lights? Can't they just be dark and beam internet around?
They're metal things sitting up there where the sunlight hits them. What you're seeing is the sun reflecting off them. Its like how you can look up and see a plane all bright and in the sun even at dusk when its starting to get dark on the ground.
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They don't have lights, but they reflect light from the sun at certain times of day. Another way to think about it: these satellite can be experiencing broad daylight hours after the sun has set at the surface. Similarly, when you're seeing the Moon at night what you're actually seeing is daytime on the Moon and it's often enough to light up the landscape around you because you're looking at an object that is experiencing daytime while you aren't.
The question then becomes: can't the satellite be made darker? And the answer is they are already pretty dark. The moon, for example, has an Albedo (measure of reflectiveness) of 0.15, which is similar to asphalt and it can still dominate a night sky. SpaceX satellites have an Albedo of about 0.11, so astronomers are essentially having to deal with thousands of tiny and unpredictable Moons drifting across the sky. I can't find the article now, but I recall reading that the albedo would need to get down to 0.002 to become negligible; I just don't see that happening.
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I think this was on my bingo card
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