- Neal Stephenson wrote the definitive essay on cybertourism when the first internet-dedicated oceanic optical fiber cable was laid, all the way back in 1996. His characteristic sharp prose ably describes the sheer cost and difficulty of building these wretched lolcat pipes. For much of the 2000s, so much cable was being laid that the rate of deployment, combined across multiple ships, was supersonic.
More from the Countering misconceptions in space journalism series:
There are no known commodity resources in space that could be sold on Earth
- Let’s consider a representative list of the most expensive materials in the world. In descending order, they are:
Antimatter, currently $62.5t/g.
Californium, $25m/g.
Diamond, $55k/g.
Tritium, $30k/g.
Taaffite, $20k/g.
Helium 3, $15k/g.
Painite, $6k/g.
Plutonium, $4k/g.
LSD, $3k/g.
Cocaine, $236/g.
Despite their high value density, none of these make good candidates for commercial extraction from the Moon or asteroids, for a few different reasons....
Space-based solar power is not a thing
- the fundamental problem with space-based solar power is that it’s obtaining a commodity, power, somewhere where it’s expensive and selling it somewhere where it’s cheap.... What are the extra costs? Broadly, they fall into the following categories: Transmission losses, thermal losses, logistics costs, and space technology penalty.
Starlink, and everyone hyped about it, can eat all the covid infested bags of dicks I can get my hands on. I see at lest two trains a night on every moonless evening I am outside. All this shit so they can sell you disposable gear to feed internet ads at gullible elon musk loving cunts.
https://phys.org/news/2020-05-costly-collateral-elonmusk-starlink-satellite.html
Let's talk about space junk. Before governments got involved the starlink policy was the same of every other tech company: externalities not related to day to day profits are for the poor people to deal with. In short, FUCK YOU. The goal is to get so big as fast as possible that they cannot be regulated, ie the Uber model.
The ESA had to move a weather tracking satellite because nobody at SpaceX/starlink was available to talk about moving their satellite on a "near pass" orbit. The first couple of launches of starlinks did not have a protocol in mind to avoid collisions. Some 5% of the satellites are already dead and deorbiting, and so many satellite rentries with their chemical make-up is a threat to the ozone hole.
But hey, fuck the poors stuck on earth, WE'ZE GONNA GO TO MERS Y'ALL!
You cannot use a Pihole or adblockers with starlink either, that is buried in the user agreement.
Fuck starlink, fuck spaceX and fuck the fanboys.
Great to see you around again!
- I see at lest two trains a night on every moonless evening I am outside.
I am hoping to get a look but haven't had any luck yet. You probably make better use of a moonless evening than I do.
- All this shit so they can sell you disposable gear to feed internet ads
It's an ISP. Wasn't everyone complaining about inadequate ISP options not long ago? The FCC handed out a ton of money to help "close the digital divide" by bringing service to difficult-to-reach rural areas "at rates that are reasonably comparable to the rates for similar service in urban areas." Something something poor people.
- The goal is to get so big as fast as possible that they cannot be regulated, ie the Uber model.
Larger firms are easier to regulate, they are more conspicuous and less flexible. Perhaps someone in D.C. will manage to optimize all the tradeoffs implied in the NOIRLab workshop report and keep SpaceX and Amazon's Project Kuiper in line. Then someone in London will do the same for OneWeb. And Ottawa for Telesat. Surely Beijing will follow the same rules with their mega-constellation, right?
National governments have externalities too.
- The ESA had to move a weather tracking satellite because nobody at SpaceX/starlink was available to talk about moving their satellite on a "near pass" orbit.
Forbes changed their headline from "SpaceX Refused..." to "SpaceX Declined To Move A Starlink Satellite At Risk Of Collision With A European Satellite". According to a statement, they replied to a warning of a "1 in 50k" collision risk, below the threshold for avoidance, and missed a USAF updated risk assessment of "more than 1 in 10k" due to a "bug in our on-call paging system."
Sounds like a flimsy excuse, but ESA confirmed that "Contact with Starlink early in the process allowed ESA to take conflict-free action later, knowing the second spacecraft would remain where models expected it to be." ESA performed 28 collision avoidance maneuvers in 2018, though this was the first incident involving a satellite constellation.
- You cannot use a Pihole or adblockers with starlink either, that is buried in the user agreement.
I can't find any evidence of this in the Starlink Pre-Order Agreement or Starlink Beta Consumer Service Terms.
I sympathize with your plight, living in a part of the world where the law shields ISPs from municipal competition. City WiFi is not ideal, but could promote better service.
You and your neighbors complaining that you have dollars you want to exchange for better data is the most hopeful approach, I think. HughesNet and Viasat already offer satellite service with speeds that would have seemed great ten years ago, Starry is expanding its wireless network, and Starlink adding one more potential option at least isn't making the situation worse, assuming you are not a grumpy astronomer.
Extraordinary post! I didn't knowral of these assets and I will go look at them now! https://1v1-lol.com
You and your neighbors grumbling that you simply have greenbacks you would like to exchange for higher knowledge is that the most hopeful approach, I think. HughesNet and Viasat already provide satellite service with speeds that will have appeared nice 10 years ago, starlike is increasing its wireless network, and Starlink adding an added potential possibility a minimum of isn't creating things worse, assumptive you're not a cross astronomer.
Um. Holy shit. I hadn't seen this detail before, which eliminates my last question about Starlink's viability, which was ping rates:
- "...Even though the path taken by Starlink data is longer due to the hop into space, the vacuum speed of light is about 50% faster than in glass, more than making up for the difference over longer distances..."
I'm not a huge Musk guy, but I have to admit to being very intrigued by Starlink after reading this article. I would very much like to believe Elon's pronouncements that taking SpaceX public, or spinning off Starlink and taking it public, are antithetical to the company's long term goals.
I understand why people hate/love Musk, and I can argue either side of that coin.
But, for me, he's a lunatic with big dreams, and every once in a while we need one of those to drag us Americans out of our comfortable doldrums and remember how fun and good it is to strive for Big Ideas and Big Goals.
And shit... if he gets me $1/gig internet to my house, and sticks a knife in the heart of Comcast at the same time, I'm happy for him to be just as rich as he gets to be.
Of course, he's a pretty shitty person and employer, and huge success won't make either of those things better... they'll only get worse.
But hey... I used to laugh at Bill Cosby and Louis C.K. when they were just funny guys, and then they turned out to be total dicks, and used Limewire and MegaUpload before those guys turned out to be evil schmucks as well. So my track record isn't so good.
I'm sure Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Ford and Morgan were complete assholes, too. My problem with musk is less with musk per se, and more with how his fans see him and how wall street treats him. I definitely hate the game as much or more than the player. All that said, I want SpaceX to succeed, musk or not.