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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

I write this with the upmost hope in the future success of private space sector, and with a desire to live to see Mercury turned into a Dyson swarm and to be part of the initial colonisation of Mars or Luna:

There are other ways to get cheap internet, and these satellites serve low-population rural areas much better than they serve cities where most people live.

(Also: Musk does seem to care about the effect on astronomy, presumably because his drive is “prevent human extinction” and astronomy can help with that).

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There are other ways to get cheap internet...but Musk et al are actually doing this. No one else is working on some earth-based plan for getting the last few billion people on the internet AFAICT. Google and facebook did some things with balloons and aircraft but that was more of a tech demo than an actual attempt to provide internet service.

Loon is not a tech demo: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/7/21315961/alphabet-loon-bal...

The fact that your disinterest for rural infrastructure projects in Ghana mean you don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist. It just tells the reader you haven't bothered to search for something like "Uganda rural internet project"; unsurprisingly for large infrastructure projects in a poor country, it's being done bit by bit and so there are in fact dozens of projects.

The ad hominem is unnecessary and misplaced. I was talking about one large project to give the final billions access, not piecemeal projects helping out a few million people here and there (and disregarding another few million people here and there).

I understand that rural infrastructure projects occur. So what's the realistic timeline for, say, 99% coverage? My question is: How long should rural people have to wait, and how much should they pay for internet access, so that astronomers can have 5% of their observations unaffected by satellites?

There are other good reasons for doing piecemeal projects. Paying SpaceX for internet, transfers money out of already economically backwards areas to a far away private company in another country. Some people will argue that these are neocolonist attempts by West into East.

I can’t find real pricing for Starlink, only guesses.

These are the targets to beat: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-of-mobile-data-worldwi...

> I write this with the upmost hope in the future success of private space sector, and with a desire to live to see Mercury turned into a Dyson swarm and to be part of the initial colonisation of Mars or Luna:

I agree with this sentiment!

> There are other ways to get cheap internet, and these satellites serve low-population rural areas much better than they serve cities where most people live.

Ironically, people who live in cities will be much less affected by impingement on their night sky because they already deal with light pollution, whereas people in low-population rural areas have a much nicer night sky.

Astronomy is done more in rural and remote areas than in cities, for the same reasons.

If the numbers about bandwidth per satellite and the size of the constellation are right, this type of service could be competitive in urban areas too where the only alternative is a sub-gigabit cable monopoly.

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