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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Okay but you're falling into Elon's trap. You can't weigh future potential against current harm naively. Particularly when it comes from somebody with a long history of over promising and under delivering. Since we pay the full price up front (loss of science, etc) but will never reap the full benefits promised.
For instance: it could help remote villages or third world countries. But Starlink costs a pretty penny in western money those places lack. Otherwise they would already have traditional infrastructure.
Do those remote villages even have the power to plug in a PC and starlink equipment?
In college I helped make solar phone chargers for some villages in wartorn areas. They would walk days to charge their phones and battery banks, then walk back. Somehow they had cellular service, but the power lines to their village were ripped down during a conflict.
There's probably an exceedingly small population that is in a third world place with power, with devices that need internet, but are also without internet.
It’s not a distant future, the benefits are already here and increasing with each launch.
I’ve been tracking a sailboat crossing the Atlantic Ocean the past weeks which have been able to upload videos to YouTube everyday, something that would be impossible without Starlink.
Of course, this specific use case isn’t important, just used it to point out that Starlink is already working well.
To my knowledge absolutely nothing critical to Ukranian defense uses Starlink.
And again, what is niave is to not heavily discount any claims Elon makes. Starlink provides neglible value currently, what potential might exist is imaginary.
The best thing for the world is to realize Elon was a sunk cost and move on
Elon already fucked with their starlink I believe, but I didn’t recheck to be fair. Also seriously, don’t trust that man with shit.
So why do you think that launching thousands of satellites would be more cost-effective than other options?
Satellites are expensive.
Launching them into space is expensive.
Cell phones, and cell phone towers are cheap.
Elon Musk is launching them into an orbit where they'll decay in 10 years anyway, meaning you'll have to perpetually launch these thousands, or even 10s of thousands of satellites into space just to keep service.
Traditional satellite companies launch fewer numbers of many satellites into the sky to cover large swaths of land instead. Since they aim at rural areas (ex: the Ocean with no one there), they are superior in a cost/efficacy perspective. Yes, there's less bandwidth, but there's less people, so its a fine tradeoff.
If you need more density, building cell phone networks / cell phone towers is just superior.
If you need even more density than what cell phones can give you, then there's always fiber optic directly.
Lmao go run some fiop in the Amazon and let me know how that shakes out
All the satellites in question burn up within 10ish years due to their placement in orbit. In fact, a large number of SpaceX satellites already exploded due to mistakes during their deployment.
Cell towers don't burn up like that just sitting around.
Cool. We already have Hughesnet and have had it for decades.
You don't understand then. The Starlink satellites are designed to fall out of the sky, explicitly. They're at an extremely low orbit. The entire constellation will fall out of the sky on a regular basis.
That's the explicit design of Starlink. Its collossally stupid. The lower your orbit, the sooner you crash into Earth. Starlink has chosen one of the lowest orbits.
Hughesnet's satellite is in contrast, in a 500+ year orbit. So they don't have to replace their satellite all the time. Also, there's only a few of them, its not like Starlink that has thousands of them.
By being lower in the sky, Starlink satellites have a limited range and only cover a small area. They need many, many,many satellites to even have hope, extending the costs and destroying the feasibility of the entire design.
For the third time, you cannot separate the grifter from the grift. That's not "Fuck Elon", that's "starlink is not, and never will be, what was promised"
Similarly, you can't weigh an abstract possibility versus a real cost. You want the conversation to be some philosophical discourse about social vs societal value. But it's not that, it's a real situation right now.
And in this real life situation, we have to evaluate what starlink actually is - - a failed toy for wealthy early adopters - - and not what some abstract "could be".
Especially when we know for a fact that any public promises of that potential are certainly intended to mislead and not inform.
It's definitely not an honest conversation when you've deliberately and repeatedly chosen to misunderstand what's being said.
It's time to grow up and stop believing hucksters and grifters.
Most people value everything over astrology....