[runarberg]

Is there a reason you need fast internet connection in forrests/on the Arctic/while sailing in the middle of the ocean?[1] Is there a reason why much of Africa or Asia can’t invest in similar infrastructure as Europe has done to provide internet to where people live?

1: Maybe it could be handy to transmit large amount of science data I suppose, but they seemed to be able to cope with this limitation while photographing the black holes

[sigstoat]

> Is there a reason you need fast internet connection in forrests/on the Arctic/while sailing in the middle of the ocean?[1]

is there a reason you need fast internet at home? now imagine being some place that isn't home.

> Is there a reason why much of Africa or Asia can’t invest in similar infrastructure as Europe has done to provide internet to where people live?

crushing poverty? come on, just tell them to eat cake while you're at it.

[runarberg]

> is there a reason you need fast internet at home? now imagine being some place that isn't home.

My internet needs away from home are vastly different then at home, so I don’t understand how this is an answer.

> crushing poverty?

It is highly likely that the same poverty is going to prevent locals from using Starlink. Besides lacking infrastructure in large parts of Africa and Asia has often been the result of bad policy, or wars, not poverty (or poverty as a result of war). A lot of African nations are catching up on their infrastructure projects, and I see no reason why they will skip internet connectivity as they build up their infrastructure (given that most African nations have infinitely better policy—and a lot fewer wars—now then say 30 years ago).

[kirrent]

I used to live on a boat. It'd be nice to have access to the internet when I do so again even coastally. I can't even imagine how much of a boon getting internet access across an ocean would be. Not only to help with boredom, but also to get heaps of up to date weather observation and prediction data to do routing.

[runarberg]

I’ve never navigated across oceans so I don’t know this, but can’t you already get (albeit slow) internet connection at sea via satellite? Or at least sufficient connection for accessing weather data?

Regarding boredom, I know a lot of sailors bring with them physical media, i.e. books, DVDs, video games, etc. knowing the internet connection will be slow.

I know getting fast internet at sea would certainly make life better for people traveling across oceans a lot, but the question is: Is is worth sacrificing the night sky for astronomers over?

[kirrent]

Yes, but you're already bandwidth constrained when getting grib files through a satphone which often means using coarser grids over a smaller area (constraining your options) less frequently. Not the largest limitation, but better bandwidth would be useful.

As you point out, it's largely a value judgement between worldwide fast internet and ground based optical astronomy and it's one I'm conflicted about. I comfort myself with the thought that because of the expense these constellations either will bring internet access to large numbers of people justifying continuing satellite replacement or they'll fail and the satellites will be gone sooner rather than later, but as I say, I'm conflicted.

[nickik]

This is crazy. Why do you need fast internet away from ground based infrastructure?

Are you just acting dumb or trolling? Because its easy to come up with 100s of reasons why you would want internet in those places. You can't seriously claim you don't see the need for that.

[runarberg]

What you need and what you want are vastly different. Off course I want fast internet wherever I am, but I don’t need it. And I’m certainly not willing to sacrifice the night sky for astronomers for it.

[nickik]

I have disposable income, most of what I do I don't 'need'. So yes, I want faster internet, period. Now if you want to morally shame me for not living like a month that is fine.

You make it sound as if a cloud of eternal darkness will rise. Some parts of astronomers will have a somewhat higher rate of bad signals, that they are already having to work around anyway. And we can iteratively improve both sides to make it less of a problem.

At the same time this change will help drive 10x more science overall by the simple economics of scale the space industry will reach.