/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.12045870]

Will Starlink actually be worthwhile, or is it a total meme idea /sci/?? It seems overly ambitious to me personally.

[Anonymous No.12045907]

yeah printing infinite money is a pretty good meme idea

[Anonymous No.12045922]

>>12045907
>printing infinite money
explain how

[Anonymous No.12045924]

>>12045922
literally the entirety of rural america is gonna be throwing money at it

[Anonymous No.12045927]

>>12045924
>rural america
so its useless

[Anonymous No.12045937]

>>12045924
This. Also, if the trend of remote work continues, cheap reliable satellite internet could completely alter the population distribution in the US. Working for a major tech company without having to pay to live in California will undoubtedly be attractive for a number of people. You could see mass migration out of cities into cheaper communities in less populous areas.

[Anonymous No.12046035]

>>12045922
If they're smart they'll use it to connect 5G hotspots literally anywhere, not having to run cable will give them an insane advantage.

[Anonymous No.12046062]

>>12046035
One of the proposed uses is having it connect to a local network hub, but remove the requirement to run fiber down to every individual residence.

[Anonymous No.12046409]

>>12045870
Right now, there are over 500 Starlink satellites in orbit. ~50 are launched every month or so. By the time Starship is completed, this number will have increased to over a 1000, and will grow much faster afterwards due to Starship's high capacity and reusability. This project is ambitious, yes, but not impossible.

[Anonymous No.12046637]

>>12046035
5G is a meme outside extremely dense city centers where the line of sight reach is actually beneficial to prevent nodes interfering with each other.

[Anonymous No.12046716]

>>12045924
>literally the entirety of rural america is gonna be throwing money at it
And south america, and africa, and many parts of asia, and australia, and the nordic countries, and russia.

[Anonymous No.12046730]

>>12045870
it's a commercial product, it doesn't have to be "worthwhile" to you when it makes money for the operator.

[Anonymous No.12046737]

>>12046716
>and russia
Depends. Their monthly fee was said to be 80$, which is 8 times more than I pay for 250 Mbps internet, unaffordable for most russians, especially ones living in the rural areas.

[Anonymous No.12046743]

>>12045927
>Rioting and disease is emptying out cities as wealth flees to rural areas
>Rural areas are worthless
Try to get out of 2019 and into 2020.

[Anonymous No.12046746]

>>12046737
Ahh fair enough, still starlink will drastically improve internet for many countries besides rural america.

[Anonymous No.12046748]

Amazon and Virgin plan to launch competing systems, which should increase reliability and reduce cost for everyone. If it's profitable, expect to see several other companies get in on the business too.

[Anonymous No.12046789]

>>12045870
the bandwidth is not nearly enough to provide millions of people, starlink is an ISP for niche cases
we ruined our sky for rural connection which could have been done with LTE anyway

[Anonymous No.12046831]

>>12046789
nope. The full system will be more than enough bandwidth for pretty much anything but cities. Also the sky has not been ruined, all of the starlink sats that have a high enough albedo to be seen with the naked eye are being deorbited as we speak. On top of that they will no longer be facing in a direction where they can reflect as much light, while also being covered in a non-reflective covering.
pic related.
Elon has said that each successive launch will have further optimized anti-reflective coatings.

[Anonymous No.12046833]

>>12046789
Telescopes belong in space.

[Anonymous No.12046847]

>>12045927
Farms

[Anonymous No.12046951]

>>12045870
>Being assembled at this very second, process is well understood and the tools (rockets and satellites) already exist.
>Overly ambitious.
Perhaps you're just overly retarded.

[Anonymous No.12046986]

>>12046789
>we ruined our sky
"Our" sky has already been ruined by city lights.

[Anonymous No.12047359]

>>12046986
Whilst this is true city lights have a bit of a lessened effect compared to Starlink due to the fact that they don't literally block out the sky.

[Anonymous No.12047447]

>>12046831
>all of the starlink sats that have a high enough albedo to be seen with the naked eye are being deorbited as we speak.
That's bullshit. Most of the current ones are high albedo. They only made one darksat and only very recent launches had visors. They are not deorbiting most of the constellation. Don't make shit up.

>Elon has said that each successive launch will have further optimized anti-reflective coatings.
More bullshit. They gave up on the coatings completely after testing it on one satellite. Now it's visors.

[Anonymous No.12047508]

>>12046716
I wonder if you could smuggle the antennae into china or other authoritative shitholes to circumvent their strict censorship laws thereby causing unrest a la the Arab spring. How could you even jam them? It's a freaking laser.

[Anonymous No.12047529]

>>12047508
SpaceX has already said they're going to cooperate with local laws. They need ground stations for it to work anyway. And it's not a laser.

[Anonymous No.12047537]

>>12045927
700,000 people signed up for the private beta test. Yearly revenue from that customer base alone would be around half a billion dollars per year.

[Anonymous No.12047544]

>>12046833
Putting a telescope of a given size in space is literally 50 to 100 times more expensive than a ground based telescope. There are lots of things ground based telescopes do much better because of their larger size, upgradability and complex instrumentation. The technology doesn't even exist to put a 40 meter telescope in space, even ignoring the cost.

[Anonymous No.12047633]

>>12047508
Why would you need to "smuggle" an antenna into china, you think they won't sell normal services there or something?

[Anonymous No.12047654]

>>12047544
Then build them in space. Better yet, turn the Moon into a telescope.

[Anonymous No.12047688]

Much better concept than 5G.

For mobile connections with high reliability and coverage, a satellite link is the next logical step.

For high-speed connections with high security and low costs, fiber directly to homes is the next logical step.

[Anonymous No.12047690]

>>12047633
>you think they won't sell normal services there or something
China isn't going to allow its citizens to access the open internet through a western ISP. They only tolerate VPNs due to the impracticality of enforcing their restrictions on them.

[Anonymous No.12047697]

>>12047654
Studies into in-space assembly have shown it doesn't significantly decrease the cost.

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exep/technology/in-space-assembly/iSAT_study/

The Moon is a bad place for most telescopes because of the levitating dust and the extreme temperature swings. L2 is a much better location. The only interesting concept for the Moon is to do an extremely low frequency radio telescope, but that's niche.

[Anonymous No.12047702]

>>12047690
Obviously the system will be china compatible dum dum.

[Anonymous No.12047840]

>>12047702
That’s pretty unlikely.

[Anonymous No.12047849]

>>12047840
There's is just about 0 chance they don't sell to china because the constellation will cover china anyways and it's the second biggest market after USA. It's literally free money at almost no cost.

[Anonymous No.12048447]

Kessler syndrome here we come.

[Anonymous No.12048454]

>>12048447
>what is orbital decay

[Anonymous No.12048513]

>>12047529
Once satellite to satellite communication is enabled, they won't need ground stations everywhere so if they wanted to provide service to places like China they could but it would be a very bad idea to make enemies of such a powerful nation-state.
>>12047544
NASA is incompetent. That's why space based telescopes cost so much more. Once NASA is turned into little more than a regulatory agency similar to the FAA, astronomers can get a much better telescope than James Webb for a small fraction of the price.

[Anonymous No.12048518]

>>12047697
>NASA says that NASA can't do a good job.
Solution: don't rely on NASA.

[Anonymous No.12048691]

>>12048513
>NASA is incompetent. That's why space based telescopes cost so much more. Once NASA is turned into little more than a regulatory agency similar to the FAA, astronomers can get a much better telescope than James Webb for a small fraction of the price.

This is just baseless hope. There already was an ambitious project to radically cut the cost of space telescopes, that project was called the Next Generation Space Telescope. NGST was later renamed JWST. JWST is literally the product of a ill-conceived attempt to cut costs. Just declaring your intention to do things cheaper is not enough. You're just waving your hands as if it's a solution.

>>12048518
Good luck funding it without them. NASA has the vast majority of money for astronomy in the US.

[Anonymous No.12048791]

>>12045870
If it does what they say it will and is price competitive it will be hugely successful.

[Anonymous No.12049717]

>>12048691
NASA only has that money because Congress gives it to them. Congress can earmark money to go elsewhere such as directly to universities or NFS. There's no reason why NASA must be the entity that does pretty much anything. Congress doesn't send money to the FAA to build aircraft.

[Anonymous No.12049723]

>>12049717
NFS = NSF, though I guess the National Forestry Service could build a space telescope given enough funds.

[Anonymous No.12049796]

>itt: freshly hired big telco shills, their first days on the job after schlomo communications Inc realise they are about to lose hundreds of billions of dollars

[Anonymous No.12049808]

Elon said billion of times this is a low latency, broadband internet system for an affordable price for the people of US rural areas AND the people of third world countries. Basically a gold mine since third world countries have shit internet.

This thread has no place on /sci/, it should be on /g/ since internet from satellites has been a thing for ages.

[Anonymous No.12051264]

>>12047447
a visor is a coating...

[Anonymous No.12051274]

>>12049808
Is anyone looking forward to even more low IQ posters flooding the internet?

[Anonymous No.12052062]

>>12051274
Nigerians are top-tier shitposters, we could be entering a golden age