Hacker News Reader

Comment by keyme | Hacker News Reader

Air dropping starlink terminals onto protesters is the solution.

In fact, if you live anywhere outside of the US, owning one "just in case" is good for future proofing your freedom, IMHO. Kind of like being armed.

Edit: in fact, starlink v2 global LTE-from-space coverage will be a true game changer for world freedom. We can only hope this comes to be sooner rather than later.

View on HN

Until having a starlink terminal on your roof becomes punishable by death. You can try to hide them visually, but Iran could always detect them electronically if they want to put in the effort.

Half the households in Iran have an illegal satellite dish on the roof to receive disallowed TV from abroad.

This is punishable and does get punished (rarely, I hear). Doesn't deter anyone.

Edit: it will also be quite difficult to detect electronically, judging by the fact that even Russia fails to jam these signals on the battlefield.

Satellite TV dishes don't transmit. Jamming and detection are very different.

TV dishes transmit very clearly in the visible light spectrum :)

As for TX detection, you'd be surprised. Directional signals like starlink uplink are fairly hard to detect.

As a submarine comms expert, this is more true than you might realize.

One needs to only google "iran satellite dish confiscation" to see the low tech methods used. They occasionally go on binges of confiscating and destroying receive-only tv satellite dishes.

Random satellite imagery of Tehran. Count the dishes.

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.738824,51.5285095,19z/data=!...

There's a pretty long history of dropping radio transmitters for people to use in violently authoritarian environments. Not without specialized uses but declaring it 'the solution' seems like overpromising things a bit.

Why not airdrop AKM assault rifles and lots of ammo then? The protesters could use the weapons to overthrow the government. Much more effective than Starlink when your government has a monopoly on violence.

ever heard of antisatellite missiles?

Unfeasible against SpaceX who have a higher mass to orbit capability than the rest of the world combined, soon many times over.

Why only outside of the US?

Presumably if there's a problem within the US, Starlink would be compromised.

Indeed. You would need a starlink competitor from another jurisdiction to fight US censorship if that comes to be.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com