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Comment by botanical | Hacker News Reader

In South Africa we have the Square Kilometre Array in the Meerkat National Park; I sincerely hope it doesn't come here. We don't need it polluting our skies. Fibre should be rolled out for internet access, not another unsensible Musk dream

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That really isn't how orbits work... At any given time, there are as many starlink satellites overhead at Meerkat National Park as there are at any other point in the world around 30* north or south.

There's currently one in the vicinity. It would get worse as demand rises

Bad news, it’s already over “your sky” because it’s how LEO works.

> Fibre should be rolled out for internet access, not another unsensible Musk dream

You want to roll fiber through national forests and parks to serve a few rural people? How do you prefer the ocean faring population to get access?

Why does it have to go through the parks? And radio towers work just as well, it doesn't have to be a satellite hundreds of kilometres up in the sky. Ships already have access to internet through satellites already, there doesn't have to be even more

EDIT. I meant why does the fibre have to through parks as a reason for having starlink

The constallations are spread for coverage and are in low earth orbits for signal strength, like sharks they have to stay in motion .. and many of the orbits are "precessing" .. they go about the earth and that great circle "ring" itself is turning - physics dictates that they go over all the surface sooner or later.

The SKA proposal is that comms constellation satellites switch themselves off (stop transmitting) when over the S.African and W.Australian SKA exclusion zones.

Other satellites and ground-based radio towers do as much damage to the abilities of the Square Kilometre Array and other radio astronomy as Starlink.

People who claim the satellite internet on ships now is good enough are as ignorant as people who claim dial-up is good enough.

> How do you prefer the ocean faring population to get access?

Just get one of those big rolls of fiber they use to lay undersea cables and let it unwind as you sail. Mmm, terabits per second!

Yet starlink is available where broadband sometimes isn't, so the insensible dreams seem to be coming from those who expect broadband to be deployed even in the most remote parts of the world (not necessarily talking about the place you mentioned, but I certainly wouldn't expect broadband in places like a remote cabin in the woods here in Quebec, or in a lake hunting station).

Who cares if Elon is beyond this? I remember thinking how ridiculous it was that everything he did was overhyped and treated as the next revolution. But in a lot of ways discarding an amazing technology like starlink and being against it to own the musk is somehow even weirder to me. It's such a profoundly... online (terminally online perhaps?) outlook at things.

Like some people are unironically not buying Tesla's and openly saying that they went for a car they liked less just because the guy is a clown on twitter. Reminds me of conservatives who spite themselves just to own the libs in a weirdly self defeating way

Why are you framing it as a hate Musk endeavour? So weird. It's pollute the sky because some people are on the hype train. The answer is already radio towers, they can be installed anywhere.

We have cheap fibre rolled out throughout South Africa, but now the Square Kilometre Array (which previously had complete radio silence) must deal with this nonsense flying overhead.

But it does not pollute the sky. I don't think my issue about people hating Elon! That's more than fine. It's just that he is polarizing, so it seems like misconceptions and immaculate info about stuff he is involved in are believed very fast and spread very wide. In this case I don't think starlink satellites ever caused long term light/space population and even first gen sats (that didn't get any "cloaking" to avoid reflecting light) aren't visible after they reached their long term orbit.

Even for space debris, I've not seen any credible source that argues the satellites won't easily re enter the atmosphere when they reach their end lives. Leaving little space junk behind.

Fwiw for the most part, i don't really care about the cool stuff Elon gets to put his "brand name on" I just find starlink super neat! Especially since they actually managed to get the inter satellite laser "fabric" working well which which is a concept that I find extremely neat. That's probably the extent of my biais.

Radio towers are at much lower altitude, so you need way more of them than satellites to cover the whole planet. Also you need permission on land and you need a boat in addition to the tower on the sea. Plus always having line of sight to the tower is harder unless you make them extra tall. I assume that makes them much more expensive and is why cell phone coverage is not global.

Also here in Western Australia - as the SKA is a widely distributed radio array and sits here in the Murchison exclusion zone [1].

The hope is that all constellation satellite operators (not just Starlink) will adjust their reflective profile to reduce the visual spectrum noise pollution and honor an agreement to shut down all comms when passing over radio astronomy exclusion zones.

[1] https://www.industry.gov.au/science-technology-and-innovatio...

Starlink is already wreaking havoc on the night sky for every part of the planet inhabited by humans and it is only going to get worse. Unfortunately this is not getting much attention from anywhere besides the astronomy community and they are largely ignored because their funding is dwarfed by venture capital funds.

The main reason it's mostly astronomers who care and they're being ignored is that it's not even close to "havoc".

I grew up near Portsmouth in the UK. Most nights, the stars were hidden by the kind of orange glow that a political cartoonist would use for Donald Trump's face, thanks to all the sodium vapour street lamps.

Things are so much better than they used to be (also I've moved) but that childhood memory? Most don't even think of that as "havoc".

No, they're ignored because people who can't otherwise get decent Internet want it.

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