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Comment by gordon_freeman | Hacker News Reader

Starlink is definitely filling the niche market of providing internet connectivity in rural and sparsely populated areas where firms with traditional business models with fiber-optics based network are not incentivized to provide. The real question is: will Starlink become profitable by in turn finding a big enough market itself to be able to cover the Billions of dollars of cost of manufacturing, launching and maintaining these satellites? Elon Musk seems to be open to separate Starlink business from SpaceX and list it publicly in future (he tweeted something in that regard previously [1]) so it seems like he definitely thinks Starlink can become a profitable business in near future.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/07/spacex-starlink-ipo-elon-mus...

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On the "big enough market" question, passenger aircraft, and commercial shipping, and US military make for a compelling business case in of themselves. Each of these use cases have customers that will pay over the odds for a reliable connection to remote areas.

I hope those dreaming of this consider theres knowledgeable engineers and astronomers that think their growth plans are an ecological disaster: https://twitter.com/mxshift/status/1563561387649298432

(Edited my comment from initially having a more polarizing tone.)

This guys thread will almost certainly be wrong and look stupid in the long term. Pessimistic predictions sound smart in the present because with anything new it's hard to know how it will play out. Long term though any early issues with new technology tend to be optimized or solved as things evolve.

I didn't see much of it (I don't have a twitter account), but what I did see already had distortions.

"Black carbon": starship uses methane, very little black carbon produced.

5000 tons of aluminum in the atmosphere is trivial compared to meteorite dust.

5000 cars is trivial compared to 100 millions cows farting methane

Yet here we are

I don't understand your point. The global light passenger vehicle fleet is in the high hundreds of millions.

>>Long term though any early issues with new technology tend to be optimized or solved as things evolve.

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."

are you implying that it would have been better if we delayed or never used fossil fuels?

I think it's too early to tell, and it depends (a lot) on how the next ~25 years go. Probably not though, but that's mostly because both a) the world is so much better than it was pre-industrial revolution and b) I don't think that leap was possible without fossil fuels. It's not because pollution/CO2 turned out to not be a problem, quite the opposite.

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.

Can we debate the "the world is so much better than it was pre-industrial revolution" statement? That's IMO the most interesting part here.

#candlesforall

Why not?

Take a quick look at the economic situations of the world pre-Industrialization.

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.

And the biggest catastrophes we will experience in this modern life... are almost exclusively due to 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.

And the jury is still out on whether he will be right or wrong.

Others have pointed out things wrong with that doomsday predicting Twitter thread. I wanted to add a couple of things

* 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.

On the light pollution point, twilight is the worst time for satellite brightness, but as the satellites enter the Earth's shadow their brightness rapidly diminishes. Some estimates are 10%-30% data loss during twilight for Vera Rubin observatory and 2% for vlt. A problem for Vera Rubin, but not so much for other observatories.

https://www.economist.com/international/2021/11/25/vast-sate...

https://www.economist.com/img/b/640/356/90/sites/default/fil...

> Rocket launches

> 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

Naive eh? What "nasty things" do you think are released into "every layer of atmosphere"?

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...

They specifically talk about falcon engines here: https://www.space.com/rocket-exhaust-pollution-upper-atmosph...

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_...

From your links:

> 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?

I read an opinion piece somewhere that Starlink is just busy work to keep SpaceX launching rockets, but because gestures at Google I can’t find it. This Twitter thread nakes this theory plausible.

Starlink is absolutely a way to keep SpaceX launching rockets, but that doesn't make it busywork. It's revolutionary and immensely valuable.

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.

What about: "measured against the potential saved [...], before realizing that in the end, it probably won't change anything there"?

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.

Starlink directly competes with wired internet. It also competes directly with cell towers in the fixed wireless business and in mobile service for vehicles. Next year Starlink will be competing for mobile service direct to handsets too. Sure, people will use more bandwidth when they get Starlink, because Starlink provides more bandwidth. But that won't increase demand for Starlink's competitors, all it means is people get better service. I find the idea that Starlink doesn't reduce demand for its direct competitors extremely implausible.

It doesn't make sense to lose money on every rocket launch but make it up in volume. It's more accurate to say that reusable rockets and a LEO satellite constellation can form a mutually-reinforcing flywheel that will lower costs for the eventual Martian fleet.

Why can’t it be both? It absorbs excess capacity, allowing spacex to expand their capacity and achieve economies of scale that are unmatched in the modern world of rocketry while also setting up an exciting new revenue stream that will move them away from relying on government contracts. It also helps them win support from republicans as it serves rural communities and is an example of business innovation that the GOP can support which should help them win more govt contracts. Lots of win-win-win opportunities here

It's more that the launches can only be cheap if they are launched regularly.

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.

Wasn't that exactly the plan publicized by Musk?

This thread is mostly making large conclusions from limited study at google. Lots of it isn't really that true.

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.

Fully and rapidly reusable rockets, like Starship, if achievable, will change everything. I don’t think peopel comprehend how the economics of launch will change.

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.

Lobsters pulling each other back into the pot.

I have no idea what this is in reference to, but I love the cut of your internet commenting jib.

The usual form of the metaphor is "a crab bucket".

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.

Thanks.

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.

Wait, what?

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)"

This is not what the grandparent meant, and also not what anyone sane means when discussing establishing off world colonies. They are talking about an insurance policy if we happen to get hit by an asteroid, or world war III breaks out, or a devastating pandemic, or any number of other civilization (or life) ending events.

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.

That's the thing: not everyone agrees on all that. I personally don't give a damn about saving a subset of humanity by sending them on Mars. But by doing that, we pollute, and that's part of the problem here on Earth (which I care about). Worse: they're not just sending a couple rockets, they send as many as they can, and build services like Starlink, which are about producing and consuming more, which again is part of the problem.

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.

Sounds a bit daft when you realize that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of crap deposited by meteors .

The bigger question is will Starlink be able to retain the customers that they have now as more FTTH is deployed deeper into rural communities. My own company's FTTH service is: faster (1Gbps), better (lower latency, no congestion issues) and cheaper (costs from CAD$30-85 per month less than Starlink). Meanwhile, the incumbent here has just launched 8Gbps service. Starlink is better than what came before, but it's not better than fibre at present.

I thought the move to do midband mobile spectrum with t-mobile and offer line of site coverage across 100% of the country was a pretty big move. Existing phones can be enabled on this spectrum. I also see it being leveraged well for edge services where classical 5g towers are just too damn expensive to pout out that far

You do realize that in terms of speed it makes 2G look like a dream?

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.

"The public tends to respond to precedents and superlatives," is one of his main quotes. At some point I think he figured out it doesn't even need to be released first to get the precedent credit.

Or released at all. Elon does a lot of cool stuff but generates even more vaporware.

You do realize how valuable this is right? Spot trackers are much worse and cost much more and offer a fraction of the service.

Or a great way to get additional SpaceX funding througha Starlink spin-off.

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