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spullara 20 minutes ago [-]
I think most of this thread is missing the part where this will also work for cellphones and give you truly global coverage.
consumer451 6 hours ago [-]
When Starlink first became available here in poor-ish Central-EU, I was excited. Then, only months later, but after years of planning: EU funding brought fiber to my farm area, at ~$25/900mbps 10ms.
While my story is just n=1, I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
However, I am dumb, and very open to be convinced.
steve_adams_86 30 minutes ago [-]
Here along the BC Coast, the organization I work for has an expansive sensor network. Weather stations, CTDs, custom equipment in watersheds, research facilities with all kinds of equipment to monitor, and so on. There is no broadband or fiber on remote islands along the coast. We used to use satellite internet, and getting data off of our main hubs (everything is relayed to the hubs by radio) was very slow and precarious. Since starlink it's a breeze. We will finally be able to get video feeds off of some of the stations; a totally untenable concept before.
tyjen 58 minutes ago [-]
There's many isolated communities abroad that benefit from this coverage. Plus, when I begin my solo sailing adventure, I intend to use Starlink as my primary method to maintain contact, of course with traditional methods serving as backup.
tasty_freeze 55 minutes ago [-]
The sailing-around-the-world (and similar) market is obviously miniscule. The isolated communities probably tend to be on the less affluent part of the world, so it doesn't seem to justify a 100x expansion.
NetMageSCW 10 minutes ago [-]
How about the sea traffic and jet plane market?
halfmatthalfcat 8 minutes ago [-]
What about them?
bergie 36 minutes ago [-]
Starlink has worked great for us so far from Europe to Polynesia. Prices keep going up, so would be nice if the service had actual competition.
The backups are sadly becoming trickier, as fewer and fewer carry SSB radios or operate shore stations.
And yet we do have SSB, and also an Inreach as backups. You never know when Elon wakes up and decides he doesn't like sailors.
bastawhiz 32 minutes ago [-]
Same. I bought a cabin, which had the equivalent of pretty good DSL. I got starlink and immediately cancelled it when 2gbps fiber arrived 9mo later. Fiber is rolling out faster than a lot of people think.
brianwawok 27 minutes ago [-]
Would fiber have come so fast without starlink as a threat though
jampa 6 hours ago [-]
When COVID hit, I knew a lot of engineers who decided to move to rural areas / small farms because they could leverage Starlink to work remotely.
Last year, when I asked whether they still liked Starlink, all of them said it is amazing, but they had gotten fiber coverage in their area from a local provider, so they don't use it anymore, or just use it as a backup.
I think Starlink was a huge demand signal that there were people willing to pay a premium for faster-than-radio internet. So, unless they manage to be cheaper and faster than fiber, I don't think there is much of an endgame there.
But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.
tormeh 51 minutes ago [-]
There are areas where the bureaucratic hurdles to changing anything and the incentives for changing anything work out to nothing ever changing. I assume in 20 years most of Berlin is still going to have 50mbit/s max. I hear residents of New York have completely given up and are using 5G modems because putting up new cables just isn't practical. On the other hand, these cities do have a significant minority of flats with gigabit internet, so if you care you can pick a modern building with modern cabling. Maybe the segment who both live in old apartments and also are willing to pay for fast internet is too small to bother with.
0xffff2 5 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile, as one of those engineers, they ran fiber down the highway a mile from my house circa 2021, but they did not do any upgrades at all to the last mile infrastructure so I still only have a ~10Mbps DSL option for wired internet at that house, which is a big step up from literally no wired option before, but still vastly inferior to Starlink. (The terrain makes terrestrial wireless a nonstarter in the area). I've since moved back to civilization, but I still own the house. As far as I know, there are no plans at all to improve the last mile infrastructure.
Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.
consumer451 5 hours ago [-]
I was only trying to talk about Starlink here, as that is what TFA is about. Starlink is AMAZING in-flight, out at sea, etc.. But since you brought it up:
> Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.
So, where does the rest of the valuation come from?
It feels like it comes from the alien simulation-theory overlords.
0xffff2 5 hours ago [-]
According to SpaceX itself 93% of the company's value is in AI IIRC.
5 hours ago [-]
palmotea 5 hours ago [-]
> But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.
There's also drones and front-line trenches, but your point still stands.
luke5441 5 hours ago [-]
And for that reason the EU, India, China and Russia will build their own Starlink alternatives.
To offset costs they'll then provide it for civilian use, competing with Starlink in the above areas.
ianm218 5 hours ago [-]
India is super super poor still I cannot imagine they would build out domestic Starlink for hypothetical wars before other actual critical infrastructure.
wolvoleo 1 hours ago [-]
They have nukes and are always on the verge of war with Pakistan (who also have nukes). I'm sure they have money for war, everyone always does.
luke5441 2 hours ago [-]
Same as Russia, yeah. But Reliance Jio seems to have announced something. Don't know if it'll actually happen.
ianm218 55 minutes ago [-]
Yeah who knows poor infrastructure might let India skip fiber in some areas entirely. Maybe it’s not that hard to launch a domestic Starlink if Blue Origin/ SpaceX will bring your satellites up cheaply .
dmix 45 minutes ago [-]
I have a friend who lives 1.5hrs outside Toronto and needs Starlink because ISPs don’t offer anything useful. Same with a family member with a house even closer to Toronto. These aren’t far off North Ontario rural houses and there’s tons of people living up there.
486sx33 39 minutes ago [-]
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onlypassingthru 20 minutes ago [-]
Elon turning off Russian access to Starlink by whitelisting only authorized terminals in the region was a turning point for Ukraine's success. The conflict has proven that modern warfare depends on Starlink and its mimics.
rush86999 12 minutes ago [-]
China has a huge microwave to destroy any kind of Starlink over its head.
xutopia 6 hours ago [-]
I have a really good friend who used Starlink for his cottage in Canada and as soon as there was broadband he switched away. Starlink was unreliable and slow compared to what he has now.
In my country today the people who use it the most are in northern cities that don't even have roads going to them.
brianwawok 23 minutes ago [-]
Unreliable usually means not a clear signal? May have needed to adjust the install.
qup 5 hours ago [-]
I have it, I live in a very rural place.
I've had to reset the router 3 or 4 times in two years. I don't suffer outages even in thunderstorms.
It may be slow compared to fiber or something, but it's the fastest steam game downloads I've ever had personally (no big city life).
But reliability has been almost 100%
lowkey_ 6 hours ago [-]
Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.
Having lived in Central America, imagine all the workers that are laying the internet cables going back at night and digging them up to sell. A government that, 50% of the time, won't actually build anything when given the funding, and usually can't get the funding anyways. Plus, in some parts, weather can result in internet going out and, given the government, staying out for quite a while.
It's a fair point that those in poorer places will have less money, but for instance, Mexico's Starlink pricing is pretty standard, it's like 50-100 EUR per month. They pay it anyways because they need it, and because it's the best option.
Starlink is a great decentralization for anyone living under corrupt dysfunctional governments, where they can't rely on that centralized system.
arpinum 41 minutes ago [-]
Starlink is popular in rural England. Trenching fibre to farmland isn't economical and poor DSL is often the only other option.
wolvoleo 58 minutes ago [-]
Who digs up fibres to sell? It's worthless material. Copper yes but nobody lays that anymore. If it even has to be metal it's usually mostly aluminium.
dylan604 48 minutes ago [-]
You'd be amazed at how unintelligent about things tweakers are. They don't know it is fibre when they are taking it. It doesn't keep all of the users on the other end of those lines from losing signal.
rjsw 37 minutes ago [-]
They dig up the fibre to check that it isn't copper.
joe_mamba 9 minutes ago [-]
>Europe is too well-run (even the poorer parts) for Starlink to be as relevant.
Except there's rich parts like Germany or Austria where internet infra is poorly run due to monopolistic telco capture and regulations keeping infra upgrades costs high, and so have slower and more expensive internet than Starlink in some areas. Poorer nations of EU often have faster internet than the richer ones so poverty is not a reason.
So Starlink is definitely still relevant. I've seen several small/medium businesses here in Austria that have a starlink terminal as a backup.
mooktakim 49 minutes ago [-]
The obvious is the cost of deploying. You don't need to dig to add cable. Full country coverage. Worldwide customers.
consumer451 25 minutes ago [-]
I agree with that, but it's great for a greenfield project/area. Say, Mars or very high and low latitudes, or ships/airplanes.
However, once you are in an area of "civilization," there is not only an opportunity for fiber, but also maybe the locals don't want a foreign power controlling your citizens' data access. India + China = 35% of the global population, and Starlink is not legal in either place.
Meanwhile, the free speech absolutist is focused on breaking up the ~5.4% of the globe, (EU) where Starlink is legal.
mooktakim 22 minutes ago [-]
Yes, but those are different reasons. Eventually we'll have many different providers offering LEO internet. Competition is the best way to solve this. The benefits of LEO internet is obvious.
consumer451 5 minutes ago [-]
> The benefits of LEO internet is obvious.
No, I disagree. The terrestrial Internet was literally designed to route around a nuclear war. That was its initial purpose was it not?
Starlink needs ground stations, which are visible from orbit, and can be Shaheded... unless every Starlink terminal can also become a down-link.. which would be cool. However, then it all still relies on terrestrial fiber, right?
I don't want to call out a specific HN'er, but he is a hero. Years ago, in person, I tried to convince him to work in Starlink Redmond as what could be cooler than working on an entire new satellite laser-based Internet 2 backbone.
I failed at that. My entire point here is that this is all very complicated.
swingandamiss 6 hours ago [-]
I have fiber (I can get up to 300 Gbps at my home in the Seattle area, but I got opted for the 2Gbps) and I have Starlink as backup/failover. I previously used my mobile service for that but learned the hard way that when there's a large internet outage in the area, as it did when we had a bad storm, so does mobile service, either power loss or it can't support the influx of everyone using their phone internet. So now I have starlink as a backup. It's a very small portable unit that I can also take when camping. It's a great service. Also it's powering a lot of airlines now, it's fast and reliable to the point I can watch youtube and tiktok on my flights.
MostlyStable 37 minutes ago [-]
300Gbps? Is that typo? Unless you are connecting to some very particular infrastructure on the other one, nothing you could possibly connect to could use it, and you would need gear that would be somewhat high end even for server grade.
(I know you said you didn't select that option, but just the idea that it's even offered to residential units is mind blowing).
consumer451 5 hours ago [-]
That was my thinking as well here in EU farmland. I would use it as a backup. I really wanted to have an excuse to use the cool af Starlink tech. However, after half a decade the fiber has gone down 3 times, and I just shared my iPhone's LTE as a hotspot in 2 cases, and in the third I did yard work for 20 minutes.
wmf 6 hours ago [-]
Many places have incompetent government that can't/won't build proper infrastructure. For example, the US has allocated around $50B for rural broadband and almost nothing has been built.
ghoul2 5 hours ago [-]
India really has very deep penetration of 5g, and at very low cost. There might be a rare place that starlink might be needed but really I cannot image starlink having much consumer/retail uptake in india. Not needed, and too expensive. There might be commercial users - offshore rigs etc, but india is too densely populated for there to be many 'truly remote' locations.
India has still not permitted starlink to start ops.
khurs 6 hours ago [-]
> I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
Starlink has a Military arm called Starshield. If strategically important to US military and other militaries who are partners of the USA, that will be many millions/billions.
Recently I flew on a long-distance (so at least a dozen hours of flight time) low-budget airline that had 60 Mbps download/12 Mbps upload and it specifically called out SpaceX Starlink for being able to provide this for free. A video call went smoothly. There was connectivity from takeoff to landing with no interruption in between. This was the best airline experience I've had yet.
consumer451 6 hours ago [-]
OK, so for this, Starlink is AMAZING! In-flight Starlink is undeniable.
The first time I experienced it, I could not believe what was happening. I messaged my nerd friends with screenshots of https://speed.cloudflare.com/
Also, their required zero-friction UX is the shiznit.
Then, I fell asleep as I finally had theoretical time off.
sixtyj 6 hours ago [-]
I’ve read so many posts from both CEOs and programmers about their higher in-flight productivity thanks to be offline.
brianwawok 20 minutes ago [-]
It used to be one of the best parts of a cruise, a week without internet! But it’s pretty decent these days
deaton 5 hours ago [-]
I flew Delta about 6 months ago and they had something similar, also for free, but they use Viasat. I think most of the big airlines were moving this way anyway to be honest, Starlink just has a good opportunity for advertising.
postingawayonhn 54 minutes ago [-]
Starlink speed and bandwidth is way ahead of any of the existing satellite internet providers.
usui 5 hours ago [-]
I believe Viasat internet satellites are placed in geostationary orbit, whereas SpaceX Starlink is not, so the service Viasat provides is already blown out.
basisword 6 hours ago [-]
And this is exactly why we don't need internet on planes.
ceejayoz 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah, planes are noisy enough without making them into a call center cubicle farm.
jordanb 37 minutes ago [-]
This was always the sour economics of satellite internet.
Satellite internet works for a low density of customers spread evenly across the globe. But customers are not spread evenly they mostly live in megalopolist regions that can be served more efficiently with land infrastructure.
Worse most of the people not in the megalopolists have less money to spend on internet services.
So your customer base are limited to people who aren't already served by better/cheaper terrestrial internet, but who can pay for better internet.
Those people exist but the history of satellite internet service hasn't been a massive money printer. Most providers have struggled to stay solvent let alone produce great returns for shareholders.
Paul Allen wanted to build a megaconstellation back in the 1990s but then Iridium went bankrupt twice.
Iridium ended up being rescued by the US military. I wonder if this is ultimately SpaceX's plan.
rzerowan 6 hours ago [-]
Eeh even ther its a stretch , when people talk about Africa - they should really specify where exactly. PLaces like SouthAfrica [1] already have a robust Fiber network with accelerated buildout of FTTH. Ditto for most of Eastern Africa countries which have FTTH to most of the major cities and subururbs with accelerated buildouts ongoing.
Unless its a conflict area most regions are getting wired up pretty fast to enhancce business connectivity - the speeds and bandwith for starlink make noe economic sense once a developing pop are factored in.The only major push for many countries approvals is basically strong armed and shaken down by the US admin on behalf of Musk[2].
I feel like no-earth orbit is always going to beat out low-earth orbit in the long-term. I live an area that the USDA classifies as rural and I now have multiple fiber options, including municipal. This isn't to say that Starlink doesn't have its place and I only see it becoming more niche over time and facing more competition in the LEO segment.
deaton 5 hours ago [-]
I live in what is probably the first place to get these things in the world, but it feels like fiber is being built at an extremely rapid pace. Just in the past couple of years it seems like Google and AT&T fiber went from being a relatively confined thing to being available everywhere in the city, and everywhere outside, and at my friend's ranch 100 miles in the middle of nowhere. Everywhere.
gwbas1c 5 hours ago [-]
It's very popular in rural US where running wired broadband is cost prohibitive.
There are many parts of the US that are very spread out, and thus running wires to every home is expensive without subsidies.
Freedumbs 5 hours ago [-]
Right the areas that companies took money to roll out high speed internet to, then just kept the money and called DSL high speed or just did nothing. The government should keep giving companies money and investing in them. It's brilliant.
out_of_protocol 5 hours ago [-]
There's a lot of places without fiber, e.g. all the ships/jets etc. there's a lot of low-density areas, there's islands with no internet or VERY expensive internet
kibwen 55 minutes ago [-]
Ships and jets are different segments from residential. Planes are definitely a textbook use case for satellite internet, but just like airlines are in a race-to-the-bottom for everything from in-flight snacks to legroom, they're not going to spring for premier high-quality internet service, they're just going to scrape by with the bare minimum. The market potential is not spectacularly impressive. Meanwhile, for residential services, rural areas continue to shrink, the people remaining in rural areas tend to be poorer, and the rural areas where rich people live have fiber, because the rich people can pay for it. Satellite internet will remain a crucial service for certain rural populations, but it's not going to take over the world, and it's not going to justify an order of magnitude more launches. Let's stop beating around the bush: the bull case for both Starlink and SpaceX is that the US military sees them as indispensible military assets, the former for global logistics, and the latter for the rapid weaponization of space.
NetMageSCW 5 minutes ago [-]
Airlines are already springing for Starlink and can’t charge their customers for it.
m463 4 hours ago [-]
one difference is that fiber isn't mobile.
Though all these satellites might give fixed-location folks higher bandwidth, they could also service many more concurrent mobile customers. Connectivity would probably be better too because more satellites would be in view.
Also, don't underestimate the benefit of robust competition, even if you don't use starlink.
spwa4 4 hours ago [-]
The price difference for mobile satellite service is rather substantial though.
CrankyBear 6 hours ago [-]
There are many places, even in the US, where your only alternative is--believe it or not--dial-up modems. Others had painfully slow--1 Mbps up, 5 Mbps down--Internet.
game_the0ry 51 minutes ago [-]
Elon is probably setting sup the infra for space data centers.
fragmede 36 minutes ago [-]
But would that have happened that way if Starlink hadn't come about?
dfee 5 hours ago [-]
i live a few miles west of core Palo Alto (technically, still in Palo Alto); Starlink is my only real choice for broadband, and it's great.
therobots927 6 hours ago [-]
24/7 high fidelity radar of the entire earth’s surface. Probably used by NRO’s sentient system and similar classified skynet projects
varispeed 6 hours ago [-]
It's good to have option in case your own government turns rogue.
ravetcofx 6 hours ago [-]
Option being Starlink run by the rouge fascist billionaire who tries to use it to manipulate global wars?
Petersipoi 5 hours ago [-]
Even if your outburst was true, yes.. If your government turns rogue it's better to have 2 options than 1. Period.
ThrowawayTestr 6 hours ago [-]
People in rural parts of America where ISPs don't want to expand into.
adventured 6 hours ago [-]
They seem to be expanding even across rural America. These days it's fairly common for small and medium size towns to have access to 500mbps-1gbps for $50-$90 per month, and essentially all small cities and above.
Reddit is overflowing with threads where people are getting AT&T to give them 1gbps for $30-$35 per month. Comcast has repeatedly offered me 1gbps for ~$50/m for five years locked-in. I have no practical use for it.
The US has more broadband than it knows what to do with at this point. Somebody needs to figure out a mass public use for home 1gbps+.
AngryData 51 minutes ago [-]
It is far from complete but yeah I got co-op 1 gig fiber in my rural 56k only area like 2-3 years ago. Some places nearby still don't have it but expansion is ongoing. Some select areas are starting to offer 2 gig but im unsure what most users would use it for.
jonah 5 hours ago [-]
Fastest option I can get where I am is 260 Mbps for $250 from a local wireless ISP...
This makes starlink tempting but for that I'd have to run cabling 50 plus. M to get the this where it has a clear view of the sky...
(Edit) A nearby small town is installing municipal fiber right now, which is great, but that's half an hour away.
ThrowawayTestr 4 hours ago [-]
Do you think those prices would be available if SpaceX wasn't providing strong competition?
vessenes 5 hours ago [-]
You’ve clearly never lived in the US! Big place, not a lot of fiber.
Elon really needs to drop some cash on Iain Bank’s family, if he’s going to keep stealing ideas/names for his empire.
walrus01 5 minutes ago [-]
I've read the entire series of Culture novels and don't recall seeing "starmind" as a term anywhere. Mind, yes, but used in a somewhat different context, as the minds are both sentient conversational AI entities with equal or greater intellect to a meat-based human or alien, and also semi-godlike AI powers (a single Mind has the capacity to have a 1:1 conversation with all of the residents of an Orbital if it wants to).
I wonder what spacex will be worth when launching satellites is impossible for a couple hundred years.
Polizeiposaune 5 minutes ago [-]
It won't be centuries.
starlink satellites are in low orbits and will deorbit in a few years at most if bricked; to stay in orbit, they use ion thrusters to counter drag from the very uppermost reaches of the atmosphere.
Kessler is much less of a problem at their altitude (480km). Debris has too much drag and would get pulled down too quick to have a sustained Kessler situation. It's possible, but very very unlikely at that altitude.
NetMageSCW 12 minutes ago [-]
Stop trying to make Kessler syndrome a thing - it was never a thing, it isn’t a thing, it will never be a thing.
It is just pearl clutching by those too afraid of modern life. Gravity wasn’t a documentary.
serf 6 minutes ago [-]
a new hot take spotted : newtonian physics isn't a thing.
let's see how well the freeways work once we stop cleaning up after the accidents.
NetMageSCW 2 minutes ago [-]
I see you haven’t read the paper. How long do you think Kessler syndrome is projected to take? How long do you think natural clearing of debris at Starlink’s altitudes is?
micromacrofoot 8 minutes ago [-]
I mean it might be a thing in 100 years but we're not even close now
SubiculumCode 50 minutes ago [-]
So, at some point, will our devices connect to their corporate offices in any environment, even without providing access to your network, short of putting it inside a Faraday Cage?
6 hours ago [-]
porphyra 5 hours ago [-]
One cool thing about Starlink is that it can potentially improve latency across the world. In optical fibers the light travels only two thirds as fast due to the index of refraction. But in space you can use a laser to send the data in a straight line in a vacuum.
wolvoleo 56 minutes ago [-]
Um yeah but the transmission path is longer and the equipment and signal processing on each hop also adds latency. I really doubt it'll make much of a difference.
prescriptivist 6 hours ago [-]
I spent last weekend under some of the darkest sky you'll find in the eastern US. Miles from cell service. I had a starlink portable with me and it was nice to get some service and stay in touch, but to watch the sky is to see satellites everywhere.
I've spent a dozen or so weeklong stretches in the last few years completely off grid, only connection being bringing up the inReach once a day. At this point I actually get anxiety at the end of such a trip, knowing that I'm going to be wading through a morass of notifications and slack/email/texts. Doing a once or twice a day sync via starlink didn't really bother me so much when I'm out in the backcountry this last trip.
I'd love to be rid of all of it, but that's not how the world works today.
rishikeshs 5 hours ago [-]
Your comment was interesting.
i just read somewhere about spacex slowly destroying our dark night skies due to their satellite constellations. Thoughts?
prescriptivist 53 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, I meant to point out there that there is a tension between the technology that I don't mind, but the infrastructure for it that I do mind. I don't really know what the answer is. I do know that we're probably not going to put this toothpaste back in the tube.
porphyra 5 hours ago [-]
Starlink satellites are intentionally designed to be very dark, but they become more visible when the sun is about to come up or if there are super bright light sources on the ground nearby to reflect off of them.
panopticon 5 hours ago [-]
I love being off-grid with just my slow inReach Mini 1. I can communicate in case of an emergency, but otherwise it's a great forcing function to not be hyper connected. I worry if I brought the portable Starlink with I'd connect much more than necessary.
ggoo 6 hours ago [-]
Soon enough these will start showing ads - I pray for our night sky.
seydor 5 hours ago [-]
Is that because China applied to launch 200000 satellites?
ck2 6 hours ago [-]
no, just no
make them pre-pay a multi-trillion cleanup and cancer fund for all the toxic waste, not just the launches but pollution burning up in the atmosphere
You want them to pay a multi-trillion dollar clean-up and cancer fund for car-sized multi-year-service-life satellites burning up in the atmosphere? How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay?
EDT: I should have clarified I'm not only talking about incumbent satellite companies because people are replying about the launch volume. Think about pollution from oil companies and coal plants and consider how that compares to an aerospace company. How much have polluting companies been fined relative to multiple trillions of dollars?
sailingparrot 5 hours ago [-]
> How much do you want incumbent multi-decade culprits to pay?
You are clearly not grasping the magnitude change in how many satellites we used to launch vs how many we are launching nowadays.
"Elon Musk's company has now lofted more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined — and its lead is likely to grow over the coming months and years."
(And most of the other providers don't plan for theirs to burn up within a few years. Giant disposable LEO constellations are new.)
ck2 6 hours ago [-]
we cannot have private trillionaires milking "privatize the profits and social the costs"
no more, it has to end immediately
they aren't just silo-ing their wealth, they are leveraging against societies, funding far-right violent politics against society
even the evil Koch-brothers have cancer wings in hospitals around the country, Musk doesn't give a dime to charity, just his own foundation which he controls to only do what he wants to manipulate
pre-pay costs to society before damaging society
bubblegumcrisis 6 hours ago [-]
also, criminal murder charges for those who enable actions like, "poisoning a water supply," "creating an opiode epidemic," "giving millions of people cancer, knowingly"
I just don't understand why, killing one person is murder, but killing hundreds over many years is, "just the cost of doing business."
ls612 6 hours ago [-]
The amount of matter which enters Earth's atmosphere from non-manmade sources is far higher than any conceivable amount of space junk today.
ceejayoz 6 hours ago [-]
But a significantly different makeup than plain old rock dust.
briandw 59 minutes ago [-]
Citation needed.
ThrowawayTestr 6 hours ago [-]
Do you have any proof that starlink satellites are worse than the tons of space debris that enter the atmosphere every day?
tzs 4 hours ago [-]
The satellites aren't worse. It is the rockets that are worse. On the way up they emit various things into the stratosphere, which is about the worst place you can emit stuff when it comes to affecting the atmosphere.
It has not been a major problem so far because in its entire history humanity has only launched around 35000 rockets that have reached the stratosphere. Ramp that rate up significantly and it comes something we serious need to worry about.
(That's not to say that space debris reentering the atmosphere isn't bad. It also unfortunately deposits various things in the upper atmosphere that we really do not want to put there).
redsocksfan45 6 hours ago [-]
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lousken 6 hours ago [-]
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formvoltron 6 hours ago [-]
soooo good that they'll burn up one day and this nonsense can finally end.
investors provide infinite capital to nonsense projects so that the showman can create an endless show that will attract new nonsense capital.
sorry but already in rural morocco they have 200 mbit internet for 20 bucks a month. Yes there are some 6 wheeled vehicles roaming the planet that might really benefit from these 100k satellites. but for 99.9% of everyone else? we're good!
StuMarkSez 5 hours ago [-]
"...we're good." ?
It seems that you are excluding all of the actual users onboard with Starlink tech. I'm one. I had choices and Starlink was a welcome addition to the short list.
In a short time, Starlink proved to be that disruptive "invention" that changed everything. There are already millions of users. Nobody is forced to use Starlink. Yet here we are.
Whether there are investors or not, a positive cashflow and the millions of users prove that Starlink is not just valid to our society at large, but wildly so. My opinion is that it is almost as disruptive as cell phones when they became affordable.
Current number of paid subscriptions: 12 million +. So, actual users is many times that, if subscribers generally represent multiple users per account. Think "Household". And then, if one extrapolates users under institutional, municipal, state or military, the numbers are astronomically increased. Just, individuals walking around inside a Dollar General store...
ThrowawayTestr 6 hours ago [-]
Starlink was funded internally by SpaceX. What investors are you talking about?
wmf 6 hours ago [-]
SpaceX's money came from outside investors.
vessenes 5 hours ago [-]
… and customers. It’s cashflow positive.
thinkthatover 5 hours ago [-]
not since X.AI got folded in
1234letshaveatw 6 hours ago [-]
imagine thinking you speak for the 99.9% lol
StuMarkSez 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
1234letshaveatw 6 hours ago [-]
Musk is nothing if not ambitious
ryandvm 5 hours ago [-]
Eh, his promises are ambitious.
And the gullibility of his investors is bottomless.
I too plan on increasing my revenue 100-fold by 2030.
croes 1 hours ago [-]
So SpaceX is just an overvalued internet provider?
58 minutes ago [-]
arjie 1 hours ago [-]
Boy it's going to be exciting when we can get Internet access literally everywhere. Excited for humanity's return to space infrastructure!
0x59 36 minutes ago [-]
How could this not end poorly? I cant think of one realistic scenario where there world benefits.
While my story is just n=1, I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
However, I am dumb, and very open to be convinced.
The backups are sadly becoming trickier, as fewer and fewer carry SSB radios or operate shore stations.
And yet we do have SSB, and also an Inreach as backups. You never know when Elon wakes up and decides he doesn't like sailors.
Last year, when I asked whether they still liked Starlink, all of them said it is amazing, but they had gotten fiber coverage in their area from a local provider, so they don't use it anymore, or just use it as a backup.
I think Starlink was a huge demand signal that there were people willing to pay a premium for faster-than-radio internet. So, unless they manage to be cheaper and faster than fiber, I don't think there is much of an endgame there.
But there are a few places that will need Starlink, like planes, cruise ships, and islands. I'm just not sure if that will justify that $1T valuation.
Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.
> Separately, from SpaceX's own prospectus, Starlink is only a tiny fraction of the overall conglomerate that went public recently. It "only" needs to support double digit billions of valuation to pull its weight inside of the company.
So, where does the rest of the valuation come from?
It feels like it comes from the alien simulation-theory overlords.
There's also drones and front-line trenches, but your point still stands.
To offset costs they'll then provide it for civilian use, competing with Starlink in the above areas.
In my country today the people who use it the most are in northern cities that don't even have roads going to them.
I've had to reset the router 3 or 4 times in two years. I don't suffer outages even in thunderstorms.
It may be slow compared to fiber or something, but it's the fastest steam game downloads I've ever had personally (no big city life).
But reliability has been almost 100%
Having lived in Central America, imagine all the workers that are laying the internet cables going back at night and digging them up to sell. A government that, 50% of the time, won't actually build anything when given the funding, and usually can't get the funding anyways. Plus, in some parts, weather can result in internet going out and, given the government, staying out for quite a while.
It's a fair point that those in poorer places will have less money, but for instance, Mexico's Starlink pricing is pretty standard, it's like 50-100 EUR per month. They pay it anyways because they need it, and because it's the best option.
Starlink is a great decentralization for anyone living under corrupt dysfunctional governments, where they can't rely on that centralized system.
Except there's rich parts like Germany or Austria where internet infra is poorly run due to monopolistic telco capture and regulations keeping infra upgrades costs high, and so have slower and more expensive internet than Starlink in some areas. Poorer nations of EU often have faster internet than the richer ones so poverty is not a reason.
So Starlink is definitely still relevant. I've seen several small/medium businesses here in Austria that have a starlink terminal as a backup.
However, once you are in an area of "civilization," there is not only an opportunity for fiber, but also maybe the locals don't want a foreign power controlling your citizens' data access. India + China = 35% of the global population, and Starlink is not legal in either place.
Meanwhile, the free speech absolutist is focused on breaking up the ~5.4% of the globe, (EU) where Starlink is legal.
No, I disagree. The terrestrial Internet was literally designed to route around a nuclear war. That was its initial purpose was it not?
Starlink needs ground stations, which are visible from orbit, and can be Shaheded... unless every Starlink terminal can also become a down-link.. which would be cool. However, then it all still relies on terrestrial fiber, right?
I don't want to call out a specific HN'er, but he is a hero. Years ago, in person, I tried to convince him to work in Starlink Redmond as what could be cooler than working on an entire new satellite laser-based Internet 2 backbone.
I failed at that. My entire point here is that this is all very complicated.
(I know you said you didn't select that option, but just the idea that it's even offered to residential units is mind blowing).
India has still not permitted starlink to start ops.
Starlink has a Military arm called Starshield. If strategically important to US military and other militaries who are partners of the USA, that will be many millions/billions.
https://www.spacex.com/starshield
The first time I experienced it, I could not believe what was happening. I messaged my nerd friends with screenshots of https://speed.cloudflare.com/
Also, their required zero-friction UX is the shiznit.
Then, I fell asleep as I finally had theoretical time off.
Satellite internet works for a low density of customers spread evenly across the globe. But customers are not spread evenly they mostly live in megalopolist regions that can be served more efficiently with land infrastructure.
Worse most of the people not in the megalopolists have less money to spend on internet services.
So your customer base are limited to people who aren't already served by better/cheaper terrestrial internet, but who can pay for better internet.
Those people exist but the history of satellite internet service hasn't been a massive money printer. Most providers have struggled to stay solvent let alone produce great returns for shareholders.
Paul Allen wanted to build a megaconstellation back in the 1990s but then Iridium went bankrupt twice.
Iridium ended up being rescued by the US military. I wonder if this is ultimately SpaceX's plan.
[1]https://ctcommunications.co.za/blog/south-africa-fiber-rollo...
[2]https://tech.yahoo.com/science/articles/us-pushes-nations-fa...
There are many parts of the US that are very spread out, and thus running wires to every home is expensive without subsidies.
Though all these satellites might give fixed-location folks higher bandwidth, they could also service many more concurrent mobile customers. Connectivity would probably be better too because more satellites would be in view.
Also, don't underestimate the benefit of robust competition, even if you don't use starlink.
Reddit is overflowing with threads where people are getting AT&T to give them 1gbps for $30-$35 per month. Comcast has repeatedly offered me 1gbps for ~$50/m for five years locked-in. I have no practical use for it.
The US has more broadband than it knows what to do with at this point. Somebody needs to figure out a mass public use for home 1gbps+.
This makes starlink tempting but for that I'd have to run cabling 50 plus. M to get the this where it has a clear view of the sky...
(Edit) A nearby small town is installing municipal fiber right now, which is great, but that's half an hour away.
Elon really needs to drop some cash on Iain Bank’s family, if he’s going to keep stealing ideas/names for his empire.
I wonder what spacex will be worth when launching satellites is impossible for a couple hundred years.
starlink satellites are in low orbits and will deorbit in a few years at most if bricked; to stay in orbit, they use ion thrusters to counter drag from the very uppermost reaches of the atmosphere.
https://ai-solutions.com/newsroom/why-starlink-is-lowering-s...
It is just pearl clutching by those too afraid of modern life. Gravity wasn’t a documentary.
let's see how well the freeways work once we stop cleaning up after the accidents.
I've spent a dozen or so weeklong stretches in the last few years completely off grid, only connection being bringing up the inReach once a day. At this point I actually get anxiety at the end of such a trip, knowing that I'm going to be wading through a morass of notifications and slack/email/texts. Doing a once or twice a day sync via starlink didn't really bother me so much when I'm out in the backcountry this last trip.
I'd love to be rid of all of it, but that's not how the world works today.
i just read somewhere about spacex slowly destroying our dark night skies due to their satellite constellations. Thoughts?
make them pre-pay a multi-trillion cleanup and cancer fund for all the toxic waste, not just the launches but pollution burning up in the atmosphere
* https://satellitemap.space/
* https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellit...
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787042
EDT: I should have clarified I'm not only talking about incumbent satellite companies because people are replying about the launch volume. Think about pollution from oil companies and coal plants and consider how that compares to an aerospace company. How much have polluting companies been fined relative to multiple trillions of dollars?
You are clearly not grasping the magnitude change in how many satellites we used to launch vs how many we are launching nowadays.
In 2026, we are putting 10x as many objects in space as we did just 8 years ago, with Starlink being the bulk of it: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-....
Starlink has 12.5k satellites in space and looking to ramp up massively, the biggest "multi-decade incumbent", oneweb, has 5% as many, about 600.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
"Elon Musk's company has now lofted more spacecraft than the rest of humanity combined — and its lead is likely to grow over the coming months and years."
(And most of the other providers don't plan for theirs to burn up within a few years. Giant disposable LEO constellations are new.)
no more, it has to end immediately
they aren't just silo-ing their wealth, they are leveraging against societies, funding far-right violent politics against society
even the evil Koch-brothers have cancer wings in hospitals around the country, Musk doesn't give a dime to charity, just his own foundation which he controls to only do what he wants to manipulate
pre-pay costs to society before damaging society
I just don't understand why, killing one person is murder, but killing hundreds over many years is, "just the cost of doing business."
It has not been a major problem so far because in its entire history humanity has only launched around 35000 rockets that have reached the stratosphere. Ramp that rate up significantly and it comes something we serious need to worry about.
(That's not to say that space debris reentering the atmosphere isn't bad. It also unfortunately deposits various things in the upper atmosphere that we really do not want to put there).
investors provide infinite capital to nonsense projects so that the showman can create an endless show that will attract new nonsense capital.
sorry but already in rural morocco they have 200 mbit internet for 20 bucks a month. Yes there are some 6 wheeled vehicles roaming the planet that might really benefit from these 100k satellites. but for 99.9% of everyone else? we're good!
In a short time, Starlink proved to be that disruptive "invention" that changed everything. There are already millions of users. Nobody is forced to use Starlink. Yet here we are.
Whether there are investors or not, a positive cashflow and the millions of users prove that Starlink is not just valid to our society at large, but wildly so. My opinion is that it is almost as disruptive as cell phones when they became affordable.
Current number of paid subscriptions: 12 million +. So, actual users is many times that, if subscribers generally represent multiple users per account. Think "Household". And then, if one extrapolates users under institutional, municipal, state or military, the numbers are astronomically increased. Just, individuals walking around inside a Dollar General store...
And the gullibility of his investors is bottomless.
I too plan on increasing my revenue 100-fold by 2030.