Starlink now over 1M user terminals manufactured
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[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/spacex-starlink-ipo-elon-mus...
(Edited my comment from initially having a more polarizing tone.)
And, any theorized environmental impact has to be compared to the existing natural process of space dust falling into the atmosphere, and measured against the saved costs worldwide of wires and cell towers and travel not needed, especially as capacity increases in the future. Which is practically impossible to measure, but failing to account for difficult-to-measure costs is a classic error people make when evaluating things like this. And of course there's the extra benefits of coverage over oceans and poles and to ships and planes that you can't get any other way.
Just like 5G could potentially reduce the overall consumption, before we realize that actually we use it to the point where it increases them.
Or just like any other technology, after all.
If you aren't launching every week, then the costs of those staff start to dominate, and the staff aren't paid less if you launch fewer rockets.
I'm absolutely, completely, utterly sure someone said this about the first fossil fuel technologies. "Oh, I'm sure this 'pollution' thing will be solved."
Most riches we experience in this modern life... depended utterly on the energy credits we spent by burning the eons-old reservoirs of solar energy, of dead plants and animals.
Honestly not sure it's a win. Maybe they had less, but they had not destroyed most trees, mammals and insects (which we have already), and all that for what? For a future where we will most likely have much, much less energy, and therefore where most our modern system... will collapse.
With Starlink - offering cheap and high-speed internet access to currently underserved places is absolutely good and important, maybe even critical for long-term success and stability of some regions. It's not clear that this is the best way to do that. Kessler syndrome, light pollution, potential upper-atmosphere effects (ozone depletion), should not just be waved away. It's just more externalities piling up. Rich countries should be subsidizing these underserved areas around the world so they can put in infrastructure - cell stations, fiber lines, etc. - rather than filling up the sky.
"Black carbon": starship uses methane, very little black carbon produced.
5000 tons of aluminum in the atmosphere is trivial compared to meteorite dust.
Yet here we are
If it needs explaining I meant this guy is worried about a few 1000 tons of space debris versus the certain eventual end of the species if we don’t become spacefaring.
What about we start by not destructing our planet? "No no but look: we destroyed most life on a whole planet, but it will be different in a spaceship: there we will live happily in peace forever, without any problem we can't handle (because we destroyed them with our habitat)"
No one wants the bad thing to happen, but instead they are saying "wouldn't it be smart to have redundancy". They're also not saying "ignore trying to save the environment because we have mars". It is very likely any effort to make mars into a habitable planet would dwarf fixing problems here on earth.
They're also not suggesting spending a significant amount of our resources on Mars, to the detriment of life here on earth.
I am of those who believe that if technology is a big part of the problem, then more of it won't make it better. But it's not like I have a choice, so instead of waiting for a potential asteroid that will kill me while some (rich US citizen, maybe?) survive on Mars, I am here waiting for the catastrophes we are creating.
The mental image this is meant to evoke is that if one crab attempts to escape the bucket by climbing the side, then others will grab it, and their weight will pull it back down. So no crab escapes the bucket.
A metaphor for unconstructive criticism or obstruction that squashes attempts at betterment.
And he makes it quite clear with 'Not interest in discussion'. His mind is made up from when he was at google and that's it.
The industry isn't the same as it was then and it was mostly economical that google didn't do the project.
The ecological isn't really bad, its mostly that rocket launches produce CO2, but for a global infrastructure project it isn't actually that much. Everything else isn't really that relevant.
* Rocket launches are a rounding error on co2 emissions when compared to passenger aircraft
* the worries about Kessler syndrome whilst simultaneously worrying about tonnes of aluminum and rare earth minerals (gasp) due to the short orbital lifetime of the satellites are contradictory.
* Presumably astronomers are more worried about light pollution rather than ecological concerns
On a side note, what is it about people hyping up rare earth materials? The twitter thread tries to make them sound scary. Others try to make them sound harder to find than gold.
https://www.economist.com/international/2021/11/25/vast-sate...
https://www.economist.com/img/b/640/356/90/sites/default/fil...
> co2 emissions
Good thing rockets only release co2 and not a long list of very nasty things
Also good thing they stay at low altitude and don't go through every layers of the atmosphere while releasing said nasty things
I'm no rocket engineer but your comment is extremely naive
Since we're specifically talking about SpaceX and Starlink, let's talk about Falcon and StarShip rockets. Let's look at the "long list of very nasty things".
Falcon 9 is expecting to launch a record number of flights this year, recent reports suggesting 52. Falcon 9 burns RP1 (a refined kerosene, very similar to jet fuel), a hydrocarbon that mostly produces CO2 when burnt, but also Carbon monoxide, and plain old carbon. The Falcon 9 has about 200k litres of fuel when fully loaded. It sounds like a lot, but for perspective a fully loaded Airbus A380 has a fuel capacity of 380k litres. So, they output of a record breaking year will be the equivalent of around 25 long distance flights of a large passenger aircraft. I'm not going to find out how many long distance large plan flights are happening, but many estimates are over 100k a day. So a record breaking year outputs a fraction of a percentage that airline flights do each hour. And the "nasty" stuff is mostly CO2, CO, and C.
Starship will burn Methane, and will burn even cleaner than Falcon 9. It will also be fully reusable, resulting in less waste again. On the downside, methane is a potent greenhouse gas, so any unburt fuel would be not great. That said, rockets are designed to make the most efficient of fuel, and any unburt fuel is not going to be released in normal operation.
> I'm no rocket engineer
Colour me shocked!
As for going through "every layer" of the atmosphere, I wouldn't get too worried about that. A lot of a rocket's fuel is burnt at lower altitudes (the same level at which passenger and military Jets operate) and the various zone mix readily, and are really so massive that you would have trouble measuring the impact of hundreds to thousands of flights of Starship per year.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-fa...
https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-is-the-environmental... https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-is-the-environmental...
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/32002/what-percent...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220517112210.h...
Anyways, "just one more car", "just one more plane", "just one more coal plant", "just want more launch", "it's not that much worse, just a tiny bit"
https://sdup.esoc.esa.int/discosweb/statistics/static/PLtraf...
https://www.eesi.org/images/content/World_Passenger_Traffic_...
> When it comes to greenhouse gasses alone, the contribution of rocket launches is rather negligible, accounting for only 1% of aviation's carbon footprint — which in itself only amounts to 2.4% of annual global carbon emissions, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute
Apart from the fact they overinflated the impact to 1% (there is no way it is close to 1%) there is a reason they chose the adjective "negligible" to describe the impact.
> Eventually, the circulation of the atmosphere dissipates those greenhouse gases and brings the concentrations back to "standard" levels. It is, however, unknown how long the concentrations remain elevated and what their impact on the temperature of the mesosphere could be.
Reality is that these scientists did a simulation, got some results that can be made to sound alarming, but just don't know if these is any inpact. I'm all for studying this more to see if there is a real issue. My gut says it's not going to be a problem until we have at least a couplr of orders of magnitude increase in launches, but it's worth looking at it further.
And I'm not sure why you included the graph of objects in orbit? This looks exciting, but it really is just that companies are now launching clusters of smaller satellites. The good news is that these tend to deorbit in under ten years. Unlike practices of old, this new style of satellite will not result in long lasting space junk.
Finally, what is the point of including a graph of airline flights over time? What bearing does it have on rocket launches?
Satellite breaks down or runs out of propellant? Send up a repair/refuel/reentry vehicle.
Astronomers upset about light pollution? Launch a space telescope for them for free, and eliminate that pesky atmosphere for them too.
It’s only good for emergencies.
And anyway it was mostly just a publicity stunt, announcing non existing feature (no satellites in orbit are able to do it) to preempt Apple by few days, and them rolling out working product this year.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-speeds-drop-significantl...
I’m not saying there’s no market. But it’s very limited. Much more limited compared to all the hype it’s getting. I had literally people living in SF telling me how they’ll use it, to stop dealing with Comcast.
They literally already have far more then that and they have only just started. They don't even have full coverage yet and have only just launched their mobile products and only just started their shipping products.
Airplane and shipping industry isn't even really onboard yet, there is a huge costumer base there.
The military, NASA and many other government organizations, has lots of uses for it as well. And that goes for other nations equivalence of those organizations as well (except maybe military depending on US policy on that).
> “10k satellites that have to be replaced every few years” business
Every generation the sats will get vastly better thus increasing the capacity and/or decreasing the price. At the same time the rocket technology gets vastly better decreasing the price considerably. This first iteration is by far the most expensive one.
Those 100k customers are not like the others. Commercial, government, and military customers will pay FAR more per connection than an everyday customer.
The ludicrously high speeds that were praised during the limited beta really seem like they were designed to be a bait and switch to get people on board with completely unrealistic expectations for a full fledged satellite internet service.
https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1002-69942-69?r...
That's Musk's MO, isn't it? "Full self driving", Mars by 2022...
They certainly do some genuinely cool stuff, but meeting promises like this isn't one of them.
> Stated speeds and uninterrupted use of Services are not guaranteed. Actual speeds will likely be lower than the maximum speeds during times of high usage. Starlink may temporarily reduce speeds if our network is congested.
Of all the numbers the most fictitious is the 20-40ms latency. I've averaged 55ms for the last month and it's basically been that way since February 2022. The variance is wild too, 25-150ms is common.
Xfinity provides "800-1200 Mbps service" in many areas and they don't even mention upload speeds. You can expect less than 50 Mbps for areas, though their official press will advertise "eligible xFi Complete customers can receive up to 5–10x faster upload speeds" [2].
[1] https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1002-69942-69
[2] https://www.xfinity.com/hub/internet/faster-upload-speeds
But damn, Bait and Switch? Harsh words for extremely usable high speed Internet from Space that’s fast enough for remote working, online games, zoom, and 4K streaming that works extremely well from a good portion of the Earth. Compared to “satellite internet” of the past it’s a similar technological leap as dial up was to cable internet. I don’t know how people can complain.
I found some interesting behaviour on start link.. Using the starlink in built speed test app I would easily get 150mbps using the ookla [1] speed test on a desktop machine I'd get no more than 55mbps and on a mobile phone I'd consistently get 20mbps slower than the desktop. ookla tells you where you're getting your speed test sent to but the starlink one doesn't... is it a speed test just to the satellite in LEO?
Running the Starlink app, it's clocking 108 Mbps (within same range reported by Netflix).
Just tried speedtest.net and clocked 152 Mbps.
Sometimes speed can drop temporarily when satellites fall out of range, so I would try multiple times over a 2-3 minute window to get a more accurate average.
1 million terminals shipped means roughly $1 billion a year in revenue. Some customers are paying substantially more than $100 a month depending on the tier of service.
So far there have been 62 Starlink launches - assuming an average price of 67m usd[2] that gives a total launch cost of 4.15 billion(real launch cost is lower as SpaceX does it at cost.
Life expectancy of the satellites are between 5 - 7 years so excluding R&D cost I'd say Starlink is already cashflow positive and will generate huge returns in the future. I'm sure there are some commercial / military contracts in the mix which alone will add a couple of B's to the income number.
1 & 2- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/23/spacex-raises-prices-for-lau...
> some commercial / military contracts in the mix
T-Mobile is a massive $$$ for them.
I would assume the availability of worldwide, omnipresent, inexpensive low speed broadband is going to open new use-cases (and thus revenue streams), that we're not even aware of. It's going to be exciting.
Wait, why is this? Do you mean that 50% have been produced and not yet sold, or 50% have been sold to people who aren't paying for service? I'd assume a much smaller percentage in either case.
The real number is actually way lower, probably.
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2022/09/12/internet-...
Once the satellites are up there orbiting, they might as well be earning income for as much of each orbit as they can. Zero marginal cost to do so. So SpaceX's prices in each market will be low enough to be competitive in each market.
The caveat to that is that they're still taking a large loss on each user terminal, so they have to make that back over the expected life of a contract.
Three years ago we both signed up for a terminal, paid the $100 deposit and got on the list. Eighteen months ago I got an email saying I should log in, pay the additional $500 to have the terminal shipped to me. After three months of waiting nothing had shown up. There's no way to contact customer support so I had to ask a friend who works at SpaceX who I should talk to. Two weeks later I got an email from someone I'm guessing is part of their support group saying i was in the queue for delivery in late 2021. Late 2021 comes and goes and no terminal. I ping that same person. Now I'm in the queue for a late 2023 delivery. I ask if I can get a refund, they say yes. They credit my card for the second $500 charge but not the original $100 which they claim is unrefundable.
My brother, the true believer, is still waiting for his terminal and his cybertruck.
I know that Elon is a minor deity on hacker news and peeps are going to downvote the heck out of this comment, but from my perspective, dude's a ripoff artist who survives only because the government is paying for his rockets and ev subsidies.
But if for some reason one of the cogs in the big machine fails you - you are screwed. There is no real recovery beyond tweeting @ElonMusk on the day once a year has his heart reinserted to legally be considered alive.
I’m sorry to hear your situation - mine was different, more positive.
The line that separates us is one broken cog. Musk customer support is the worst and I’m sorry you can’t enjoy what has been a life changing product for me.
Hang in there, it (Musk venture customer service) sometimes gets better.
Computers got infinitely more powerful, but websites are not faster to load because they are much bigger. QUIC won't change that, it would just allow for more crap.
But, if all cell phones can access starlink in cell phone dead zones, that might make it economically viable, as the market expands to 5 billion plus users.
However, it's safe to presume some don't want to be completely isolated. There's the safety aspect. There's also, as you noted, the social aspect.
Truly ubiquitous internet is not what we have now. And because of that fact we can't presume the future will simply be more of the past.
“Everyone on earth breathes, so our market for oxygen bars is 8 billion plus users”.
Profitability of dead zones (especially with speeds lower than 2G) is not exactly high. There’s reason why they’re dead zones in the first place.
Starlink now over. 1M user terminals manufunctioned.