Starlink Satellites Tracker | Hacker News Reader

Starlink Satellites Tracker

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229 pointsdanielsht142 comments

For the record, these satellites are inserted in groups of 60 at half their orbital height. They have onboard thrusters to boost up to the final operational orbit. There is high atmospheric drag at lower altitudes, so they deploy their solar panels horizontally during this boost period, which usually lasts less than a month. These horizontal panels reflect the sun just after sunset and just before dawn. Once they are at their final height they rotate the panels so they are much less reflective. Basically, the constellation's effect on the night sky is proportional to the number of launches in the last month, not the total number in orbit.

Thanks for the info!

Absolutely! Things will be really interesting when they can use Starships to launch batches. I've seen estimates that they could launch 600 starlink satellites at a time. They could theatrically also launch fewer, but put them all the way into their final orbit, skipping the few weeks of light pollution.

> They could theatrically also launch fewer, but put them all the way into their final orbit

I wonder if they might choose to do this so the sats keep more of their onboard fuel, and will be able to keep themselves in orbit a bit longer before the inevitable re-entry burn up.

I'd guess it is more efficient to have them boost themselves, so that they act as an additional rocket stage. (and so not need the delta V to elevate and then de-elevate starship's orbit.)

There is certainly someone doing the optimization problem for the orbit insertion and fuel loads and picking the right set of tradeoffs.

The optimization problem also includes drag losses at the lower altitudes.

And those drag losses are a lot lower keeping all the satellites inside the rocket rather than having each experience its own drag.

Might be worth putting an ion drive on the f9 2nd stage for that reason...

That's a tradeoff that could be made, but the onboard ion thrusters are about 5x as efficient as the rocket. They'd probably be much better off making the onboard tanks a bit larger and launching to the same low orbit.

Re-entry is a bit of a feature, though - should a satellite be DOA, it will be in a low orbit and burn up faster.

I wonder if they could use another satellite to sweep a DOA satellite. They all start in almost identical orbits, so unlike most orbital degree cleanup plans there aren't huge relative velocities to deal with or anything...

It would mean that 1 DOA satellite means bringing down 2, but that might be worth it if the DOA rate is low.

Absolutely, but for the ones that are not DOA, having more fuel on board means they can re-boot themselves for a longer time, thus staying up for longer and getting a longer service life per sat...

Or they could do it theatrically and once in a while make the most sats possible as bright as possible for a pre announced one orbital period with good ground visibility in inhabitted areas. Would be quite a sight! :)

They are getting a bit too good at reducing Starlink visibility lately so I could definitely welcome an event like that. :)

They could start doing shapes and messages. Throw in some colors. Maybe provide a service where you can get them to show a message of your choice.

> They could theatrically also launch fewer

I'd love to see a theatrical launch. :)

> Basically, the constellation's effect on the night sky is proportional to the number of launches in the last month, not the total number in orbit.

For the major brightness issues sure, but they are not invisible or undetectable while in operation. Surely the effects are proportional to both the recent launches and the whole size.

I think it's a bit early to dismiss the whole sky effect of multiple Starlink-style constellations in operation.

Also isn't Starlink intending to do launches for the rest of time? There is always a value for the last month of launches- they'll never stop launching right?

Just thinking out loud.

There is also the (no help at the moment) fact that the more money that Starlink's parent company makes, the more likely we are to get the world's cheapest heavy lift orbital booster soon, and the more likely we are to soon have multiple large orbital telescopes that far exceed ground-based capabilities.

Basically, if SpaceX makes it, we'll probably have a Starship-launched lunar observatory quite soon, in the grand scheme of things.

This doesn't help the situation now, although there is so much screaming from the anti-Musk people as well as the pro-Musk people that it's hard to tell what the actual impact of the now-somewhat-albedo-mitigated starlink v.whatever satellites are. All of the coverage is breathless sky-is-falling stuff.

In any case, the situation is temporary. Either SpaceX makes it and we get a far side of Luna observatory and LEO/MEO telescopes besides, or they don't and in a few years Starlink all falls down and burns.

Would cheaper/larger launch vehicles significantly change the economics of deploying space based observatories? The James Webb space telescope has cost about $10 billion, and you can afford even today's largest/most expensive launch vehicle (Delta Heavy) for a relatively small fraction of that ($350M).

It'd be a lot cheaper if they iterated and could service the machine if needed. Waterfall is the most expensive way of doing something.

I'm reminded of Earth orbit from the film Wall-E for some reason.

That's distinctly completely impossible in this case.

The current satellite version (VisorSat) has a magnitude of about 6, which is generally considered to be the limit of what is visible with the naked eye in a light-pollution free area.

Once you start using any optics they will be visible.

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2101/2101.00374.pdf#:~:te....

https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/what-is-stellar-ma...

I might sit down and do the math to see how 1500 satellites at mag 6 compares to 60 at mag 2.

> I think it's a bit early to dismiss the whole sky effect of multiple Starlink-style constellations in operation.

I wasn't trying to dismiss their effect, just address the people who say "you think those 60 are bad, imagine when there are 20,000", or "there go the Americans, ruining the night sky for the whole world".

I have no idea how oneweb or blue origin will handle this issue.

> Also isn't Starlink intending to do launches for the rest of time?

Their satellites are designed for a 5 year lifespan. Without constant boosts, they will deorbit and burn up fully in the atmosphere. This is great, because they will not become space junk, and they can't cause the dreaded kessler syndrome. The downside is that they will need to be constantly replenished. Hopefully this will be streamlined when they can launch 600 at a time, reducing the number of launches by a factor of 10.

>I might sit down and do the math to see how 1500 satellites at mag 6 compares to 60 at mag 2.

Every 5 astronomical magnitudes corresponds to a factor of 100 difference in brightness, so magnitude 2 is (100^0.2)^4 or about 40 times brighter than magnitude 6. So they're pretty similar, 1500 satellites at magnitude 6 are about 2/3 as bright as 60 satellites at magnitude 2.

>Basically, the constellation's effect on the night sky is proportional to the number of launches in the last month, not the total number in orbit.

For what it's worth, in order for the constellation to reach steady state the number of launches in the last month will need to be proportional to the total # of orbit. So if the constellation has 42,000 satellites and the satellites last 10 years on average (IMO that's an optimistic lifespan), you need to launch around 350/month just to maintain the size of the constellation.

By that time they'll also have a launch vehicle capable of launching around 300 satellites in a single launch.

Additionally, 42,000 was a worst case for the number needed and only if things go exceedingly well with the service. I think people quote that number too much when in reality there's likely to be under 5000 (from SpaceX at least).

I think number of launches was used as a proxy for number of satellites launched in the last month - more satellites/launch shouldn't impact it that much.

I think it would as the satellites would be closer together with fewer launches so as a percentage of sky the issue would be reduced.

What about when competing services launch, as they will if this is successful? What are the total numbers going to look like if EU, Russia, China, Japan, and India all launch starlink services?

> I think people quote that number too much when in reality there's likely to be under 5000 (from SpaceX at least).

Why? I think it's much more likely that they either fail, or (eventually) launch every single satellite that their licenses allow. More satellites increases the proportion of the market they can address, and if they can profitably launch a satellite, they can profitably launch a second.

This is my favorite Starlink tracker - also has a nice integration with Google Street View and shows you exactly where to look. https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink

EDIT: Removed "past times" parameter as suggested in comments. Also note you can remove also see loads of other satellites with an unadorned URL : https://james.darpinian.com/satellites

Thanks! I suggest removing the showPastTimes parameter from the link: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink

I wondered about that but I wasn't able to see the Street View integration without it - I think you're right though - better without the past ones. Thank you.

We also have a coverage map for Starlink: https://orbitalindex.com/feature/starlink-coverage/

I like this map, I just wish it didn't start with auto-rotate on. Auto-rotate just makes it hard to see as the satellites travel around the world.

Original author here, my fault.

I think it made more sense when there were less satellites, but this was a pretty common opinion from the start.

Decided to change this on my copy: http://droid.cafe/starlink

Perhaps you can also give filters for "on station" satellites from all. Satellites not yet in station are not really giving coverage yet ?

Original author here

When I originally created this it was so sparse that it was really easy to distinguish, now that would probably be a useful feature.

It's also just not that simple to implement. I threw this together really quickly, and the only data I am using is the orbit tracks, it doesn't include whether or not a satellite is on station yet.

That makes sense,

I guess you can look at the orbit parameters ? I am assuming if the satellites are not yet on station they won't share the exact same plane as those that are in station. They are elevated over few months as they are spread to the right position I believe

Yes... or maybe better would be to monitor whether or not the orbital parameters for any particular object are changing over time. If they're still using the ion thruster they're not on station...

It would take a fair bit of work on making the heuristic robust, so I don't plan to do it. If you're interested in doing so feel free to download the source (just scrape it from the website) and go at it.

You have 1337 karma. Sorry this is off topic.

I was just outside randomly when I saw the train of lights. It was honestly one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.

Same here! Randomly got out of the car last night at saw a string of them cruising through the sky. It’s really impressive to see, I’ll encourage my friends to use this site to find out when they can see them

I couldn't sleep two nights ago, and went outside at around 5 am. I looked up, and was astonished. It was a full moon I think, and the satellights looked magnificent. Those satellites will steer a lot of young kids into science. I was to young to fully appreciate us going to the moon, but seeing a perfectly spaced row of "stars" above my home while the neighborhood was dead silent was something I will always remember.

This was in the Bay Area. I'm living in Fairfax now.

I have been following Starlink since. I haven't had much luck. I thought their telemetry could be configured within seconds, but I guess their are other variables according to Startlink? Oh yea---there is part of me hoping man doesn't overdo it though. This was great, but thousands would be another story.

Wow, I just saw a cluster of satellites go overhead earlier tonight. It must have been starlink. It was really really cool, and quite serendipitous for me to be camping, in a dark place, seated at the perfect angle to see them between the trees. Definitely a memorable experience.

Here’s my bitter Luddite take on the whole debacle:

https://wyclif.substack.com/p/li-bai-and-the-abominable-prag...

Wow those are few and far between. Isn't the idea of starlink that you'd have internet all the time?

Edit: Aahhh I see now, it's meant for stargazers (well, starlinkgazers) and it only shows the visible passes. Got it. I'm used to using sat trackers for ham radio purposes and they show all passes, that's why I was confused.

It also shows a single "pass event" for a launch of 60 satellites, the pass alone takes minutes as a long visible chain of sats goes overhead. Really damn cool to see.

Indeed those are super cool! I might go out to see one of those once the curfew is lifted here.

It's quite interesting how frequently Starlink satellites de-orbit (and how short a time some of them are up for)

https://aerospace.org/reentries?field_reentry_type_target_id...

Looks like some de-orbit in months! There must be a quite a lot of calibration/testing going on and I can’t imagine how expensive this endeavor must be. I am curious about the failure rate of these satellites at that orbit.

Just tonight I was in the backyard with the kids when one one them yelled, “what’s that?”, pointing up. I immediately knew what it was, but just seeing that long string of satellites going by and going by and going by (it felt like it took 5 minutes for all of them to pass) was one of the most shocking things I’ve seen in the night sky (and I’ve seen some crazy stuff in my nearly 50 years). One thing I was a bit surprised about was how they weren’t as evenly spaced as I would have to expected. Most were in a straight line, but a few were a bit off from the others. Some were close together, leaving large gaps. Overall, I can see why the astronomers are worried.

I guess you don't live on a flight path?

Flight path of an airport? No, we live about 20 miles west from the nearest airport. But any flights from there would go north, south, or east.

I personally like https://www.heavens-above.com/

Give it a location and it will tell you all the bright objects that should be visible

http://stuffin.space/ is neat too. It actually shows all of the satellites around the Earth in 3D.

More detailed info about the satellite constellations, ground stations, and a map: https://starlink.sx/

Here's also live map with all Starlinks: https://aviamaps.com/starlink/

One of the coolest starlink specific trackers is starlink.sx.

If they want to cover the entire Earth with internet access, how is it that I see them come and go in bunches rather than just a steady stream all night such that there is always at least one overhead? Having a bunch show up and disappear doesn't sound like very continuous internet access

Only newly deployed sats are (briefly) visible after launch. Most of the constellation is invisible to human eye at any given time, basically once the sats are on the operational altitude. Also while I would actually find sky full of bright sats all nigh long super cool, unfortunately not everybody does, so SpaceX is making the sats as dark as possible.

It's easy for those who are well versed in the technicalities of starlink (on both sides of the argument) to forget how most people don't understand the system. Good question, certainly shouldn't have been downvoted.

While I won't subscribe (I have fiber), I am excited about what this might mean for the future. It would amazing to improve the technology enough to replace 4G/5G dongles. It sounds like the technology relies on being in a somewhat fixed position though.

Starlink will never replace 4G/5G in relatively-populated areas, because any RF wizardry they can do from orbit will work even better for talking to a tower at short range.

Though I have to admit, 4G/5G is never going to draw lines in the sky.

But it does not have the costs associated with building a tower in that area.

If you're in an area where it's not worth building cell towers, then Starlink will have plenty of bandwidth... but that's not where most people live.

When you look at a city from orbit, you see millions of radios all stacked on top of each other, screaming. That can never scale as well as a distributed array of towers.

Maybe. Or maybe in these areas it’s even more expensive to waste space on towers.

Land use by towers is ~0%, and the ones we need have mostly been built already.

Next should we eliminate WiFi because it's wasting expensive real estate?

One obvious synergy that comes to mind (if the base stations won't have to be geographically fixed) is to stream raw video from all cameras from all Teslas.

Both for sentry mode (antitheft) and autonomy training.

Of course it would be regulatory nightmare.

And the end of privacy.

Unless they manage to shrink the satellite dish or mount it on the roof of the car (which would affect drag and make the cars look worse), it's so big that this it would seemingly only be possible on the Cybertruck (using bed space) or RVs.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1369051431903268865

The latest Starship SN15 launch (and landing!!) apparently had a Starlink antenna mounted on the side so it might not be that static in the future. At the same time the video feed was pretty choppy so if it was due to going via Starlink they still migh have to work on in a bit. :)

SpaceX Launches 60 Starlink Satellites on Falcon 9: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPMqJki82KQ

Every now and then I need to compile lists of locations for this or that application. The drop-down of locations in this tracker is very interesting. Does anyone know how the list was compiled?

For a 3d view of the satellites in orbit check out: https://space-search.io/?search=starlink

Why is there a need for a starlink-specific tracker when there are plenty of general satellite trackers that also include all the starlink satellites?

Some friends said they saw it go over my town last night but I missed it. I’m stoked there’s a tool to track it.

There are over a thousand up there. You can see individual satellites now just by looking at the clear sky at night for a while, you'll find some. I see a couple of them almost every night.

Someone told me there was a line of them last night, probably from the most recent launch, but I couldn't find them.

Awesome. I was going to get my son a telescope for this sort of thing.

The coolest satellite sighting I’ve had was when I was up on Mt. Hood a few summers ago and could see it really well. There was a meteor shower going on too.

Large mountains and infinite space are humbling in a good way.

That night was quite a journey. :-)

Heat sinks are holding steady!

text output? where's the AR viewer of starlink overlayed on the sky!?

Not Google Glass level AR, but this is posted upthread:

https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink

Soon only the super rich will have sunlight, with satellite networks blocking out the sky in other areas.

Come on, why the down votes? This was legitimately amusing.

Rich people getting upset lol

It's an extreme tangent and exaggerated by a million million times. That means it has no connection to the story at all.

Maybe I'm wrong to not find it funny, but I'm not a buzzkill in general, I just think this joke doesn't work and needs to be workshopped.

And if we did get up to the ridiculous scale to block even half a percent of sunlight I'm pretty sure that would actually be a good thing.

Simpsons already did it. Musk had better watch out for marauding babies.

Hmm, maybe that's why he moved to Texas...

("no jury in the world will convict a baby — except maybe Texas")

I’m just leaving this link here again: https://www.darksky.org/new-satellite-study/

It's interesting to see so many of these satellites are listed as "Bright" in my area.

Before the launches, the HN crowd promised repeatedly that nobody would be able to see these satellites and they would not change the night sky at all, and that that looking up in wonder is only something that old people and luddites do, because nothing is more important than global always-on sacred holy internet access.

They are only bright for an initial period after launch.

While that's true, it's likely there's always going to be at least some trains that are visible even after full deployment as new satelites are launched to replace old ones

Starship will launch say 400 to LEO (rather than 60 as now), could it launch 100 to a higher orbit to reduce the impact? More starship launches (good for proving), and as the satelites deploy at a higher altitude they'll be darker

We are polluting our night skies and dark places.

Go outside this evening if the sky is clear. If you're anywhere between 30 degrees and 60 degrees, there are multiple starlink satellites in your line of sight all the time.

Can you point them out? No, they're invisible at their operational altitude.

That depends on how dark the area is. I heard that in a Bortle 5 or lower area they are naked eye visible, which really sucks for stargazers. Especially since some of the more interesting naked eye observations have to be done using peripheral vision.

I've been unable to see them in class 2 areas.

I'm a pretty ardent stargazer.

It sounds like your visual acuity might not be that great. Sadly, enthusiasm can’t overcome physical limitations.

I know that these sats will affect many telescopic observations, but that's been happening a long time.

I understand that this interference will end up being several times more frequent. However, for many years, satellite streaks have been algorithmically removed from observations. It's possible that those algorithms will need to be upgraded.

That's a small price to pay in exchange for robust and high speed Internet becoming available to huge numbers of people all over the world.

I have a Starlink deposit down and I still have my doubts about the merits of that trade-off. My reasoning is amateur astronomy is ruined anyhow so I may as well be able to stream Netflix on more devices and as a side benefit tech monopolies will be able to further extend their influence.

Which, frankly, feels rather sordid.

And in any event Starlink is nothing compared to the assholes planning satellite billboards.

The real good that will come out of Starlink isn't from people like you and I, it'll be from people very poor countries and regions.

The money you and I put into it are bootstrapping bringing Internet access to hundreds of millions who would otherwise not get it.

Not to mention Starlink also indirectly funding Starship, the first realistic attempt on a full RLV. That in itself is HUGE and can bring immeasurable good in the future by opening acces to space for many.

In what location can you see naked eye visibility down to 6th magnitude? You must have really good eyes.

In the 19th century before light pollution naked eye observers managed well into the 7s.

Even if they weren't, we can't have everything. Do you know how crippled a huge chunk of the world's population is without robust internet access? I have two telescopes in my house and I would give up looking at the sky forever if it meant my cousin's kids got to attend Zoom class instead of having to work from take-home materials.

Exactly.

This is akin to people complaining about how wind mills ruin their views of things.

I know that these sats will affect many telescopic observations, but that's been happening a long time. In most cases, satellite streaks are algorithmically removed.

Your country doesn't seem to deploy infrastructure

You've likely got mains power and probably water (Sure I know some places are off the grid competely, but it's rare). Why don't those cables have fibre along side them to connect you.

Because, gasp, they might be paying for something that would benefit others more than themselves. The US is the world's richest 3rd world country.

The US is not the world. The US could have invested in their infrastructure, but they don't want to. Starship is a solution to an American problem.

Assuming you mean Starlink, what makes you think poor internet availability is a uniquely American problem? 13.4 percent of American households don't have internet access, compared to 10 percent of Europeans and 44.9 percent of households in Asia.

So what? What is the higher purpose of not "polluting" the night sky?

It's introducing a fuck ton of low orbit debris that is already interfering with astronomical research. Satellites that fail or break are stuck up there.

Defunct low orbit satellites are not a giant issue as they deorbit relatively quickly.

I'm far more concerned about atmospheric particles (as measured by PM2.5, etc) and air pollution than I am about satellites.

Go visit New Delhi or Lahore in mid winter and give us your subjective opinion of the air quality.

https://www.google.com/search?q=delhi+air+pollution&client=u...

Satellites (or rather low earth orbit) should be like a well kept house: "One thing in, two things out". But no, let's just not look at history and learn anything at all from things like pollution etc. and let the richest countries make a mess of everything until they see it's a problem and then they (we) will point fingers at poorer countries when they want to launch satellites en mass too.

Clean up the damn lawn!

I honestly can't believe Starlink is allowed to do this. It's an absolute travesty, polluting the view of the sky for ALL people on Earth to an absolutely unprecedented degree, for profit of an American corporation. Absolutely despise it, wish all countries of the world came together and demanded the deployments to stop.

Easy to say when you're probably sitting in a rich city somewhere with a perfectly good internet connection

Starlink is polluting the sky for people who cannot buy its services, and who don't appreciate yet another American corporation invading into their lives, this time taking the very view of the night sky.

Then tax SpaceX for the light-pollution externality until they fix it (which they say they're going to do). I don't think depriving rural communities and poor countries of access to the internet is really the best solution to such a non-problem.

What are you talking about?? Here in Poland(which isn't a poor country!) You can't even buy Starlink here, our astronomical organisations are already complaining about the pollution of the sky, but how can Poland tax an American corporation polluting our sky????

So the question should be - how can an American corporation deprive other countries of accessible view of the sky for profit and get away with it? Because it might be accessible by everyone eventually? That's frankly not good enough. Elon Musk isn't doing this as a charity, but even if it was it still wouldn't be acceptable.

It's the same argument as for a carbon tax. It's imperfect, because the benefit only flows to the local government (when the commons is globally shared, as you point out), but it's the best practical solution since it broadly aligns incentives with that of the commons.

Your solution to simply deprive rural communities/poor countries of internet access is a non-starter. What you're ignoring is that the positive externalities of the tech vastly, vastly outweigh the negative (and supposedly fixable) externalities. Not to mention it's a take that's rather selfish since you're not the one that pays the price of banning this tech.

But Starlink isn't, wasn't, and never will be "for providing internet to poorer countries". It's always going to be first and foremost about selling internet to people in wealthy countries in areas without good local internet options. Are we really pretending that people in "poor countries" can afford the cost of the equipment and the subscription? Or that Elon Musk is doing this as some kind of charity?

The main problem that I have here is that the uniformity of a full Starlink setup means the entire earth is covered in it, and literally no one else except for Americans has any say in it. That's what's absolutely not cool in my opinion.

> selling internet to people in wealthy countries in areas without good local internet options

Even if I grant you that it's not going to be about supplying internet to poorer countries, this reason alone is sufficient. Depriving rural communities of internet over such a small negative externality is a non-starter.

> literally no one else except for Americans has any say in it

Poland emits significant amounts of carbon pollution, which impacts me, and I have no say in it.

Some negative externalities in the global commons is inevitable. You, personally, are contributing to that. Your weather and GPS satellites are contributing to it.

The solution therefore can't be a puritanical "I will not allow any global externalities whatsoever.". It's an impractical non-starter and a rule that nobody anywhere follows nor should they try to follow it.

Well, you make some good points, but obviously there has to be a line somewhere, right? GPS and Weather sattelites are very different because of their positioning in space and there's far fewer of them. It's just the sheer scale of Starlink that's concerning - 42k satellites in maximum configuration!

So of course it isn't about not allowing any global externalities - but this one feels incredibly lopsided. GPS benefits everyone, at a very low externality cost. Starlink benefits the lucky wealthy few(and I am talking about the subscribers here, not just the owners), at an absolutely huge externality cost. Is it worth it? You say that it is, I don't - I don't know where the line is here, but I don't think it's where Elon Musk thinks it is.

Why do you say absolutely huge externalities? I like the theoretical idea of taxing for light pollution, and a huge majority of that tax would go to cities and suburbs using overkill lights. Starlink doesn't even stop you from observing the stars the way normal light pollution does.

Also it's not just the subscribers. The existence of starlink as a competitor will probably have a significant positive impact on millions of people.

>It's always going to be first and foremost about selling internet to people in wealthy countries in areas without good local internet options.

[citation needed]

What exactly do you need a citation for? The starlink antenna is a $499, and the subscription is $99 a month. That's extremely expensive for internet, I'd only consider this if there was literally nothing else available. So yes, it will be bought by wealthy people who live out in the sticks, because if you're not from a wealthy nation and quite comfortable financially yourself, then $99/month is crazy high. I guess communities in poorer countries might pool together and buy one antenna+subscription to share between themselves, but that cannot be the main market for this service.

> The starlink antenna is a $499, and the subscription is $99 a month.

So your whole argument on pricing is based on a beta product with limited availability currently. Because prices have never dropped significantly once the product has actually reached mass market adoption?

What are the factors that you think would cause prices to reduce?

To the contrary, as more subscribers join the service, satellite throughput capacities will eventually be saturated and will require more satellites or more advanced and powerful satellites.

Meanwhile, constant replenishment of the orbital network means that it's not a build-and-amortise asset. There's not a point at which revenue pays-off the asset and can sustain a reduction in subscription fees.

> What are the factors that you think would cause prices to reduce?

1) reductions in cost of launches 2) reductions in cost of satellites 3) bandwidth capacity improvements per satellite

I could keep going, but it’s obvious you’ve convinced yourself of a narrative and aren’t willing to think rationally about the topic, so I’m not going to waste my time.

I'm interested in what your opinion is of the exact same thing with poor countries burning lots of coal and polluting the oceans to lift their population out of poverty. Is it okay for China and India to have their time doing industrial era style pollution today or should we try to apply our modern anti-pollution rules on them?

Because when the rich western countries have launched lots and lots of satellits then poor countries do of course have the right to launch just as many, with no further caution than we use today at launch and positioning, when it's their turn to shine on the night shy.

I'm sure my opinion of Starlink is clear..

>Then tax SpaceX for the light-pollution externality until they fix it

Can Mongolia tax SpaceX? What about Chad?

Or is this just some American corporation doing whatever it wants, to hell with the consequences for the rest of the world?

Oh... but we're bringing internet to the world! Just buy this $2,000 USD base unit and subscribe for $100 USD monthly so that your Yurt in the middle of no-where-ville has high-speed internet... What? You have no shoes and only one pair of clothes? Just buy new ones on Amazon and get next day delivery!

Bringing internet to the world is a noble goal, particularly if it's not brought to the world by the likes of Facebook, Google or Amazon with their clear ulterior motives. Unlocking access to the world's knowledge is critical for the future of all people... but we shouldn't achieve that goal through force, which is what is happening now with these massive multi-thousand satellite constellations against the protest of nations and people alike. The whole "get over it" attitude is staggeringly in bad taste.

I also highly doubt these mega-constellations + launch costs are cheaper than putting up PTP and PTMP radio dishes in regions that desire the internet. We can push multiple gigabits through these dishes now for backhaul "lines" and there's been great organizations installing these systems throughout Africa and other places for more than two decades. These folks just need more funding... but radio dishes aren't sexy - instead we're putting these satellites up in space where they impact every human being on the planet, instead of just those who are using them.

It's pretty hard to be upset about a trivial amount of light pollution which WILL improve lives all over the world... when there are gigatons of literal actual pollution invading the water and skies of the same countries, and barely anyone is making a real effort to fix it.

It's really, really hard for me to believe that these attacks on Starlink are truly proportional to the perceived harm. I think that 95% of the upset is directed at SpaceX as a proxy vendetta against Musk, billionaires, or the overall tech industry.

I'm be more upset about light pollution than tiny satellites.

Exactly. Some friends of mine are taking of going out of town so they can see a starlink train in a nice dark(er) sky.

yet another comment without actually putting effort to understand spacex's reply to "polluting" night sky argument.

Oh, just wait a week or so, then they'll be higher and not visible like this. Just like every other launch.

Your 'absolute travesty' is only temporary.

I'm curious if you say the same thing about airplanes (which aren't exclusively American either). They are also quite noisy.

Think about it - when Starlink is fully operational there won't be a single place left on earth without several of their satellites always in view. The same definitely cannot be said about planes. Also countries retain full sovereignty to decide whether to allow planes flying above them - same cannot be said about satellites. Countries which cannot even use Starlink are having their night sky polluted by it.

Poland ceded that sovereignty when they signed the Outer Space Treaty. Poland CAN use Starlink, SpaceX just hasn't offered service there yet (they only recently translated their documentation into French and support is still only in English). The service is still in beta as things are still in development. Service is available in the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and Germany.

Edit: Apparently they just added service in France today as well.

You would have to convince UK that owns 42% equity of the OneWeb company that plans to launch initially 648-satellite constellation.

You will probably sooner see EU, Russia and China decide that it is their strategic interest to have their own constellations. As it was with GPS. Currently we have the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS), Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) and the European Union's Galileo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OneWeb_satellite_constellation

In my opinion they're improving the night sky. Seeing man-made objects out there is inspiring evidence of what man is capable of.

I'm 100% with you on this. People don't seem to get it though.

All of my comments on this topic are in massive negative numbers right now - I'm surprised HN is so protective of any criticism towards Starlink. Obviously I see the positive sides of it, for sure, but it's just weird to me that an American company does something that will affect every single person on the globe, in literally every corner of the Earth, and no one here goes "hang on, maybe.... don't?". Yeah internet is important but it's not like there aren't other solutions to this. And yes someone will reply immediately saying that they live 400 miles from the nearest town on top of a rock and they really can't get internet any other way. Like, ok, cool, but maybe putting 42k satellites into orbit to get you internet really isn't worth it to the 8 billion people on the planet.

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