this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Microblog Memes

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[–] [email protected] 239 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Fuckin space garbage is what it is.

Yes it was impressive that they landed a rocket again once, but the quantity of launches and satellites is doing nothing good for anyone. It should've been a stepping stone for better technology, but instead they're just mining money. Privately owned space engineering is a disgrace to humanity.

Space engineering used to unite even the worst opponents as with the international space station, but now those institutions are underfunded, while billionaire space-musk can shoot his loads into the atmosphere without any regard to the rest of the worlds population living inside said sphere.

Tax the asshole already.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 months ago (16 children)

I was excited about starlink when it was announced, but already it's way too expensive, already bows to actual totalitarians and isn't affordable on the ocean and not available in remote places without a license.

And with more satellite constellations planned by amazon and others, it seems the kessler syndrome is just a question of time.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (7 children)

On the Kessler point, Starlink birds fly at an altitude where they will deorbit in 4-8 years if they go dead, so that particular orbit will always be fairly clean, and if a Kessler event does happen, the debris will deorbit in a reasonable length of time.

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[–] pg_jglr 25 points 2 months ago

This. I wish I had more than one up vote I could give for this comment.

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[–] [email protected] 128 points 2 months ago (27 children)

starlink wouldn't have a leg to stand on (in the US, can't speak for elsewhere) if isps were held to installing/maintaining/upgrading infrastructure that was already paid for by the federal government decades ago and then the isps just didn't do the work.

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[–] [email protected] 109 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sending so many satellites also requires so many rocket launchers that Google passed on it because it was too polluting.

Starlink is the poster child of "fuck you, I got mine."

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Google is the second largest shareholder of Space X.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 months ago
  1. get rid of "do no evil"
  2. invest in evil
  3. ?????
  4. profit!
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[–] [email protected] 79 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Don't forget all the fun chemicals they leave in the atmosphere when they deorbit.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 56 points 2 months ago (5 children)

"Don't worry, you can just build one on the moon. You can even pay me to use my rockets to get there." - Elon

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

*Terms and conditions apply

**Rocket may or may not be capable of reaching low earth orbit, payload fractions subject to change, not responsible for loss of equipment, habitat, or lives

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Capitalism!

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago (9 children)

To me Elon Musk is like the real-life, slightly less dramatic and slightly less evil Handsome Jack out of Borderlands

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

Less evil than Handsome Jack?! Jack's at least a good guy in the Presequel. Was Elon ever good?

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm sure Musk is perfectly willing to turn certain constellations off at specific times... For a price, of course.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago

If it can interfere with large aperture ground telescopes.. it would be a shame if those ground telescopes grew transmitters and started interfering back.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (21 children)

Is it weird I agree these are terrible and yet also hope this spurs the end of ground based observation in favor of a larger orbital presence?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

We could and should be doing both ground and orbital radio telescope observations. One really interesting idea I've seen floated is to put one on the far-side of the moon; it'd be shielded from all our radio emissions but, of course, it would be somewhat suspectable to interference from the sun for weeks at a time.

What I've never understood about Starlink is how it's better than existing satellite internet beamed from geosynchronous craft... like, geosync is crowded (especially over North America and Europe), but it's not so crowded we couldn't put a couple more transponders up there. Objects in geosync rarely have the astronomical side effects that Starlink is apparently causing. It would even solve the Starlink issue of having to have an expense af receiver with active tracking... just nail up a stationary ku-band dish that doesn't need to move ever. This is already solved technology.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (27 children)

The problem with geosynchronous orbit is that you need to be at a high altitude to maintain it. That increases the packet round trip time to a receiver on the ground. Starlink satellites orbit low enough to give a theoretical 20ms ping. A geostationary satellite would be at best 500ms. It’s fine for some tasks but lousy for applications that need low latency, like video calling.

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[–] Saledovil 24 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Isn't Starlink also too expensive because you have to replace the satellites every 5 years? As in you'd have to sell to basically everybody on earth to be profitable. And they charge 50Euros a month, almost twice as much as I currently pay, and I'm satisfied with my current provider.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (10 children)

Their target market is people who don't have a better option, not people who already have fibre to the door.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

50Euros a month, almost twice as much as I current pay

Wow Canada sucks in our ISP choices

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Cries in long island

I have one option that isn't 4g wireless crap... It's $110/month for 500mbps... It was $80/month but they felt the need to make more money by eliminating their lower tiers and "forcing" you to upgrade... I just suddenly had a 500mbps plan and $110 bill without asking them to change anything...

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

Great. Musk is building a Sophon.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Disclaimer - I have a starlink terminal. I feel that the complaints should be made to the various governments that haven't mandated modern terrestrial technologies to those of us outside metro areas.

I live 14km/9m from a town with underground fibre optic. The best I can hope for is geo-synch satellite with data caps and latency around 600ms. I will never see fibre optic rolled out here. I can sort of understand, it's quite expensive and needs to be balanced against income from operations to justify it. But they rolled out electricity, and they rolled out PSTN, so the justification was found in those cases.

So, Starlink found a need and filled it. Had governments filled the need instead, the problem wouldn't exist.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

The problem isn't that they are filling a niche, the problem is that they are doing it carelessly and ruining other people's work in the process.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (2 children)

elon musk is a terrorist that will make astronomy harder if not impossible if he trashes orbits too much

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

SpaceX is in the business of launching satellites. It's in their best interest if ground-based astronomy gets harder. They should be required to pay for their negative externalities.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Hahahaha imagine if we made everyone pay for their negative externalities! It would probably be paradise.

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[–] HorseyMD 14 points 2 months ago

Fuck Leon Skum

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

All worth it so lord Musk can push his shitty memes to remote tribes in the Amazon.

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