Do we know if SpaceX has taken any steps to address the issue with Starlink satellites affecting astronomers' view of the night sky? https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/02/spacex-s...
Or you can view that as private, for profit corporation trying to make money in a way that’s impacting our ability to do a scientific research.
That’s great because apparently nobody but SpaceX has any say in what happens.
Edit: This is a sincere question. Several comments on this story indicate people don't believe there's any regulation as to what happens in space.
Edit 2: While I'm editing things, here's the FCC Record for the original Starlink proposal in case you're curious what some of the objections brought up during the original comment period were. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-18-38A1.pdf Mostly it looks like other satellite operators worried about interference, orbital debris concerns, and there was a note about potential impacts on radio astronomy.
Astronomers are in other countries besides the US... and these satellites are going to span the globe impacting everyone everywhere.
Certainly people can complain that current international treaties, federal regulations and so on aren't sufficient, that the decisions reached by regulatory bodies were incorrect, or ill informed, etc. But first they should be aware those decisions existed and did take into account input from a variety of sources, and it's not just 'if you can get it to space, do whatever you want'.
Secondly, the problem is not just in federal air space.
The optical astronomers weren’t in the habit of commenting on satellite launch licensing and got caught on the back foot. Now the media campaign is basically optical astronomers complaining that “there is no process” because they didn’t get involved in the process in time.
https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/repor...
In which part of the earth are you missing the internet coverage so horribly?
Best available internet is a 3mbit down, 1-if-you're-lucky-mbit up DSL connection from CenturyLink with latency that jumps into the 2.5+ second range when it rains hard. Which, fortunately it never does in the pacific northwest. :-D
And no, traditional satellite is a no-go, even if it was an affordable option. We have these things called "mountains" you see, and the satellites are only at certain spots in the sky, sadly occluded by a couple billion tons of rock and tree.
To reiterate, this is within commuting distance of "big tech" HQs.
Starlink can't come fast enough. Existing ISPs need to feel the pain of screwing their customers so bad for so long.
Countries like Finland and Iceland can bring decent speed internet to rural populations where it rains as much (or even more) then in the pacific north west. So I don’t know what makes America so exceptional that they can’t bring good internet to their population.
Politics and corruption. Existing entrenched ISPs are massively profitable. Competition kills profits.
What policy do you want to change?
That seems like a pretty obvious policy change that a mere layperson can come up with in their couch. I’m sure a civil engineer can do better though.
I don't know that monopolies and rent-seeking wouldn't show up anyway with laxer regulation, but it's something to be taken into account.
Just throwing more money at utterly gridlocked system is not the solution.
Nothing stops the US except incompetence.
I make it a point to not sound snarky or sarcastic on HN, we have a pretty good standard of discourse here - but that just seems a ludicrous statement to make, and I'm frankly curious what consideration went into it, as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction?
I don't think technology will solve all the world's ills; I agree that regulation of markets is a useful measure to undertake in certain situations; I don't find "Socialist" a swear word; but if ever there was a problem with a technical solution, then accessibility of internet in remote solution is almost the canonical use-case. Regulation of markets will not bring the Interwebs to remote or underdeveloped parts of the world.
Now... if we want to discuss whether bringing the Intertubes to all the world is a worthy goal or not; whether it is worth the compromises and risks a massive constellation of satellites will impose; sure, that's a productive tops to examine. But if we accept for sake of argument that internet in remote or underdeveloped parts of the world is a goal, I'm curious to see how market regulation will make that happen better and faster than a giant freakin' laser... I mean, giant freakin' constellation of satellites :).
There are literally regulation that are preventing markets from even existing. But your solution is more regulation?
The quality of internet service falls off precipitously as you leave urban city limits.
It's better than it could be - when we decided to move "to the country", we almost bought a property where the only internet option was HughesNet. From all reports, HughesNet is incredibly expensive and barely usable. A big plus for the place we landed is that we can get "rural wireless broadband" - basically a point-to-point wifi signal bounced off of a solar-powered relay on a hill, to a set of towers on a faraway ridge, run by a folksy two-man ISP. It's expensive, unreliable, and slow compared to what I left in SF. But it's better than HughesNet and there's no data cap.
I don't know what to expect from Starlink, but I'm hopeful. Even if it's just a reliable 10Mbit connection I'll be ecstatic.
If we ever need more, I'll probaby do just like the folksy two-man ISP you describe...
More supply drives down prices. Don't even mention current satelite Internet. Those operate via GSO satelites with seconds of ping and a way higher pricing considering SpaceX wants to be competitive with broadband pricing.
You also often have the option of lowering the bandwidth requirements (e.g. switch of the video call for a voice call at a lower quality). I find fast internet a luxury rather then anything while traveling.
What kind of logic is that? Sure, humanity has existed before global internet. But now that we can have it, there are 100s of reason to do so.
You see it as a luxury, but so is the ability to buy clean water or even get it of the tab. Things that are luxury in the beginning get cheap enough so many can use it and that whats called progresses.
1: Maybe it could be handy to transmit large amount of science data I suppose, but they seemed to be able to cope with this limitation while photographing the black holes
is there a reason you need fast internet at home? now imagine being some place that isn't home.
> Is there a reason why much of Africa or Asia can’t invest in similar infrastructure as Europe has done to provide internet to where people live?
crushing poverty? come on, just tell them to eat cake while you're at it.
My internet needs away from home are vastly different then at home, so I don’t understand how this is an answer.
> crushing poverty?
It is highly likely that the same poverty is going to prevent locals from using Starlink. Besides lacking infrastructure in large parts of Africa and Asia has often been the result of bad policy, or wars, not poverty (or poverty as a result of war). A lot of African nations are catching up on their infrastructure projects, and I see no reason why they will skip internet connectivity as they build up their infrastructure (given that most African nations have infinitely better policy—and a lot fewer wars—now then say 30 years ago).
Regarding boredom, I know a lot of sailors bring with them physical media, i.e. books, DVDs, video games, etc. knowing the internet connection will be slow.
I know getting fast internet at sea would certainly make life better for people traveling across oceans a lot, but the question is: Is is worth sacrificing the night sky for astronomers over?
As you point out, it's largely a value judgement between worldwide fast internet and ground based optical astronomy and it's one I'm conflicted about. I comfort myself with the thought that because of the expense these constellations either will bring internet access to large numbers of people justifying continuing satellite replacement or they'll fail and the satellites will be gone sooner rather than later, but as I say, I'm conflicted.
Are you just acting dumb or trolling? Because its easy to come up with 100s of reasons why you would want internet in those places. You can't seriously claim you don't see the need for that.
You make it sound as if a cloud of eternal darkness will rise. Some parts of astronomers will have a somewhat higher rate of bad signals, that they are already having to work around anyway. And we can iteratively improve both sides to make it less of a problem.
At the same time this change will help drive 10x more science overall by the simple economics of scale the space industry will reach.
> @elonmusk: albedo will drop significantly on almost every successive launch
I don't recall any beforehand news of this being publicly discussed.
1) Future sats will continue to get progressively lower albedo
2) The sats brightness is much higher in their "orbit raising" phase then their "service" phase.
Not that these launches are launching trash, or launching very much in the grand scheme of things either.
Either way, a few thousand things spread out over the surface area of the earth is practically nothing.
and the surface of a sphere at the altitude they're orbiting at is even larger. and the satellites are all spread across a variety of altitudes, relative to their size.
it's up in geosynchronous where things are carefully planned, and the spacecraft can adjust their orbits, and do lots of long term station-keeping.
Second, I imagine outer space treaty covers this in much similar way that treaties governing international waters do.
Third, to a certain degree "satellite trash" is in the eye of beholder - I don't think there's any more or less legality in this, than in ISS, TV and comms satellites, GPS, etc all flying all around the world.
At the very least, there should be some kind of international treaties governing this. The night sky is a common good.
I know people living in remote and even not so remote areas for whom cheap and easy internet access would literally be a live changer, and who wouldn't care less about astronomers having their work more difficult as a consequence, because, again, it would be a literal life-changing event for them in terms of personal safety, agriculture, income or education.
Is it those rural users currently aren't profitable enough to supply otherwise?
As far as who will pay for it... SpaceX has lower launch costs than anyone else by a significant fraction as well as lower satellite costs (likely by a similar fraction). There are tens or perhaps (globally) hundreds of millions of rural users who these constellations would help, as well as some fraction of more urban users.
Satellite internet already several billion in annual revenues from rural areas, in spite of the terrible service and high (expendable) launch costs. It doesn't take much for SpaceX to be profitable here; being a satellite service provider historically is much more lucrative than being a launch provider. The main unproven hurdle I see is user terminals, not the constellation itself.
Even if off by an order of magnitude, that's well within the price range of consumer terminals.
Oneweb is another story, and regardless of their antenna, it's not clear how they're going to monetize.
Whether or not SpaceX "couldn't solve" the low price point is unknown. I'd be skeptical of anyone who claims they can't do it. Don't be too willing to buy OneWeb's PR. "Special sauce" is marketing speak. Execution is what matters. (This works both ways... OneWeb will eventually be using reusable rockets--i.e. from Blue Origin and others--like SpaceX.)
Please cite a source on that one. If they're putting a motor on just for installation to point to roughly the right spot, that's a ton of money spent on a motor for a single-use item. That will again point to it not being a consumer product. What's more likely is the motor is making up for the poor scan loss of the cheaper phased array.
Musk is trying to get rid of the $100 cost of professional installation by substituting with a $10 motor. I'm not sure it'll be successful (I wouldn't be surprised if professional installation still ends up happening and they eventually delete the motors), but that is the plan. It's just to get a good view of the sky, not to scan. A reliable scanning motor would cost a lot more. (And they need to track multiple satellites at once... can't do that with a single array steered by a motor, has to be beam-steered.)
Source is here: "Looks like a thin, flat, round UFO on a stick. Starlink Terminal has motors to self-adjust optimal angle to view sky. Instructions are simply: - Plug in socket - Point at sky These instructions work in either order. No training required." https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12145487640542167...
indeed, even if you have a ground link, something radio based makes a spectacular backup. even if you've got one good high speed link available, it's unlikely you've got two whose failures are even slightly decorrlated.
And it's not a problem of profitability for some, it's a problem of availability. Some could afford what their urban compatriots pay for internet, but that's simply not possible.
There are
Astronomers are not very happy about it http://astronomersappeal.wordpress.com/2020/01/09/astronomer... but so far there is mostly resignation that big tech will indeed destroy the sky.
Sure maybe it can be fun for a third grader to look into images made for them by a cheep satellite telescope, but professional astronomers will continue to need the larger telescopes that remain technologically impossible to lunch into space for the next decade, or few.
How many compilers were there back in the 60s? By codebase or by install count, your choice. Hundreds of codebases and tens of thousands of installs?
How about now? Tens of thousands of codebases and billions of installs?
Do you think this could have happened without lowering the cost of transistors pretty hugely? (circa 3e7-fold price decrease in 50 years)
Seems to me that lowering the cost of transistors DOES increase the number of compilers, whether by counting the number of distinct codebases, or by counting number of users, or counting number of installed copies, or number of times executed, or whatever.