[londons_explore]

0.018% of the worlds population have starlink subscriptions.

Yet 100% put up with the atmospheric pollution of a lot of mass being plasmified on the way back to earth, the light pollution, the lack of other services delivered with that spectrum, etc.

One might ask how the 99.982% of us will be compensated.

[xnx]

Could we say the same about flights to Hawaii? Small number of people take lavish vacations, everyone else gets the pollution.

It's good to look at the costs vs. benefits of everything, but satellite networks are way far down on my list of concern (and I do some astrophotography).

[ggoo]

After just coming back from a trip to Maui, yeah you can totally say the same about flights to Hawaii.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

We should. A global pollution tax would shake out a lot of problems.

A strong and trustworthy global democracy to enforce it, and to provide for the general welfare of everyone currently trapped in car-based cities... Is left as a simple exercise to the reader

[JumpCrisscross]

> A global pollution tax would shake out a lot of problems

There is a reason these taxes are popular among rich countries and opposed by emerging ones.

[loeg]

Personally, I've never suffered from satellite plasma or light pollution from satellites, or spectrum allocation. I suspect most of the 100% are like me.

[ggoo]

Scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution and that advancement is a driving force behind your modern life. So you have (or will) suffer indirectly over time.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Scientific advancement has suffered from the light pollution

Has it?

Destroying the Amazon destroys information. Light pollution simply raises the cost of our accessing it. I suppose one could model this out to some effect on deep-space astronomy's productivity. But if that effect is real--and I've seen zero evidence it is--the solution is a tax on satellite launches to fund more observatories.

[ggoo]

Your response is not in good faith - this is very easy to google.

[JumpCrisscross]

> this is very easy to google

Then it should be easy to cite. Astronomers have complained. But I haven't seen anyone link that to output, including the complaining astronomers.

[runarberg]

Search term: "low earth orbit satellite effects on astronomy" first result:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01904-2

[loeg]

I think your attempted connection between astronomy and modern technological conveniences is pretty thin.

[ggoo]

Does your phone have a camera on it?

[IAmBroom]

Unless you don't breathe air, you can't make the first statement with absolute certainty.

"Workin' in these coal mines ain't hurt me none no-how."

[oceanplexian]

A single terminal could serve an entire African village. It's also serving use cases in the Ukraine war, ships at sea, Antarctic research stations, numerous aerospace and military use cases, and so on. DTC is provide texting and emergency services to countless people who might need it in an emergancy, like we saw in North Carolina.

Last and most importantly, Starlink exists is to create revenue for SpaceX and to fund the Starship program. The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

[xnx]

> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless. If that's what rich people want to spend their money on, go nuts.

[chermi]

I'm quite confident if it was anyone besides Elon behind spacex, we'd be hailing starship(cross fingers it works out) as one of the most exciting things we've ever done. And we should be, because it is.

It's something for humanity to be excited about and root for. What happened to wanting to achieve things? Having things to look forward to, build toward and be proud of is healthy for society. Must we aspire to and dream of nothing because there's suffering on earth, is that what it is? Why can't we take it as the objective good it is that we're trying to push technological boundaries that will unlock more advancements in science? In what world does HN not want that?

[Ancapistani]

> Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless.

I strongly disagree.

If "Starship to Mars" is a possibility, then so is "Starship to the asteroid belt". It's very close to "Starship to the asteroid belt, capture asteroid, return to Earth orbit" - and that's very close to orbital mining of metals that are rare and valuable on Earth.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It's very close to "Starship to the asteroid belt, capture asteroid, return to Earth orbit"

To put this into perspective, an Earth-Mars round trip costs about 15 km/s; Earth-main Belt about 13 km/s.

You'd need to add Δv for returning the mass of the asteroid. But you get your reaction mass for "free."

(To be clear, we are hundreds of billions of dollars of capex and decades away from asteroid mining. But the work to get there is decently in line with the work we would need to establish a logistical chain to Mars and back.)

[oceanplexian]

> Starship to orbit sounds useful, but Starship to Mars is near useless.

A single astronaut with a shovel could do more science in a couple days than all the probes combined in the last 54 years (Which have barely scratched the surface). For all we know there are literal fossils a few meters below the surface but none of our technology had the ability to even start looking.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Starship to Mars is near useless

Apollo to the Moon was near useless by that metric. We wouldn't have Starship to orbit if we hadn't gone to the moon.

[thrance]

You're discounting the fact that building Starship, if successful, has a non-zero chance of taking Musk away from Earth forever. That's a huge potential positive.

[londons_explore]

> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

If humanity agreed with this statement, humanity would fund the program directly through investment, donations or taxes, the same way we fund roads and schools which we also value highly.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If humanity agreed with this statement, humanity would fund the program directly through investment, donations or taxes, the same way we fund roads and schools which we also value highly

...Starlink and SpaceX are funded through investments and taxes. When they launch a non-profit's satellite I guess, indirectly, through donations, too.

Also, what? Why is the funding source a measure of value?

[inemesitaffia]

Like SLS?

[tgv]

> The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

I beg to disagree. I see no value at all. This must be one of those accelerationist or extropianist/utilitarian beliefs.

[leptons]

>The value to humanity of Starship succeeding at its goals is extremely high.

This does not benefit "humanity" at all, even if they do succeed. If a human colony on Mars is established, and all of humanity is wiped out on Earth, does it really benefit "humanity" or only the 0.000000001% of "humanity" located on Mars?

And life on Mars is going to be difficult, it isn't habitable, and is in fact quite hostile to life. I seriously doubt any colony on Mars would be viable long-term. If life on Earth is wiped out, the colony on Mars will very likely wither and die soon after without continued support from Earth.

Any colony on Mars is going to be so exponentially more fragile and fraught with problems for sustaining life, that the suggestion that it's somehow going to save humanity is ridiculous.

[bryanlarsen]

The primary benefit of Starship is a sizable reduction of the cost of getting mass to orbit, not Mars dreams.

[leptons]

That's a bit of a re-branding.

How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now? Not that much, I think, but maybe you have some inside scoop that the rest of us don't know about.

[JumpCrisscross]

> That's a bit of a re-branding

No, it isn't. Starlink's entire commercial value is in being able to perform high-mass / low-latency launch to LEO. There is some fun stuff on the Moon. And a long-term pitch on Mars. But the commercial branding has always been about LEO.

> How does "getting mass to orbit" benefit all of humanity more than what we have now?

Better Earth observation. Better space observation. Communications outside our ecology versus based on wires strung through it.

Let's reverse the question. For the environmental impact of space launch, what else do we do that's more-agreeably useless?

[leptons]

Bullshit. Every story I've ever heard about "Starship" is how it is going to Mars to take humans there to build a colony. I've never once heard that "Starship" will be used to launch even more starlink satellites. They even made movies about it:

https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+movie+mars&oq=spacex+...

Google tells me exactly this:

>"Yes, SpaceX's Starship is being developed with the explicit goal of transporting humans and cargo to Mars, with Elon Musk aiming for the first uncrewed test missions to send robotic Tesla bots by 2026 and crewed missions potentially beginning around 2029 or 2031. The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and is the world's most powerful launch vehicle, intended to eventually establish a self-sustaining city on the planet."

It's pretty wasteful to blow up starship after starship after starship when they could have spent that money launching normal rockets for their satellite deployments.

Of course spacex probably wants to rebrand starship now that Mars is looking like the very stupid plan that it was.

There are better things humanity could be doing with the time and money spent blowing up "starship" after "starship". And really, why name it "starship" if it's just meant for LEO? Because it wasn't intended for LEO, that's why. It's a rebrand. Just call it "LEOship" if it's just going to be launching satellites.

It's yet one more case of Musk over-promising and under-delivering.

[chermi]

Umm, a lot. Do you know how many cubesats falcon has launched? Did the space station help humanity? Now imagine a bigger one(s) faster. Bigger satellites- do you know how much of James Webb design and difficulty was around packing into tight space? Bigger satellites, big enough for new wavelengths. Big interferometer setups. Microgravity for bio and pharma crap. Better for particles far enough away to be unaffected by earth magnetic field.

Do you agree science is good for humanity? Do you like James Webb? The other things mentioned above? I'd guess yes to all based on your username. How is getting more mass into space of questionable benefit? If starship works, which everyone on earth should be hopeful and excited about, we get more mass for cheaper into space. It's the equivalent of new funding(falcon has brought down launch costs sooo much) while also unlocking previously inconceivable experiments/instruments. Who doesn't like more science funding? Who doesn't like new experiments and instruments?

[chermi]

I'd wager many of those connections are serving much more than one person, considering they're often hubs in rural areas. But screw them.

It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to complain about how the poor are causing the privileged some difficulties.

[runarberg]

I would like to see stats how many people got new connections via traditional infrastructure. I bet that number is much higher, probably even an order of magnitude higher.

This is HN, so I should probably look for the data my self...

EDIT:

In 2024 global internet usage grew from 5.3 billion users to 5.5 billion. Starlink grew by only a 1/100 of that in absolute terms, from 2 million users to 4 million over the same time period, majority of users in the USA already had access to the internet via traditional infrastructure.

I tried to find how many StarLink users got internet access (or even high speed internet access) that didn’t have one before, but I couldn’t find the numbers. Somebody could correct me, but I very much doubt that number is high enough to consider StarLink to make even a blimp in providing internet to new users.

EDIT EDIT: I was off by a factor of 100 in initial EDIT, see child post.

[londons_explore]

> In 2024 global internet usage grew from 5.3 billion users to 5.5 Starlink grew by a similar absolute amount, from 2 million users to 4 million over the same time period,

Is this some AI answer or did you foobar this math by a factor of 100?

[runarberg]

Whoops, a standard off by a factor of 100 error.

StarLink got 2 million new subscribers in 2024. Meanwhile the internet got 200 million new users. So even if every new StarLink subscriber would be a new internet user (which is obviously not true) they would still only account for 1% of new internet users. The real number is off course much much much lower.

[chermi]

This is definitely a small number. But I don't think it tells the whole story. Not every n+1 is the same. New satellite hookups in rural places, especially poor rural areas, combat zones, emergency situations etc. are more impactful than a new wired hookup in a city where there's already wifi in the library, for example.

[runarberg]

You made the statement:

> It's interesting how if it's anti-elon, it's ok to complain about how the poor are causing the privileged some difficulties.

Now it is up to you to show that this has outsized influence on impoverished communities.

According to ITU[1] the number one factor for lack of internet access is economical. The price of internet access can be reduced with traditional infrastructure, but governments are often unable or unwilling to invest in the infrastructure needed to bring faster and cheaper internet connectivity to underserved areas. StarLink should in theory fit perfectly here, but in reality very few people from underserved communities, especially in impoverished areas, can afford StarLink, and keep being underserved. What makes this even worse is that in the rich countries (like the USA and Australia) underserved communities that had been promised infrastructure to bring the broadband internet are facing delays and cancellations because politicians believe the community can get StarLink instead (when in fact they cannot afford it). This is known as the Uber effect (from when politicians used Uber as an excuse to cancel public transit projects).

1: https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/2024/11/10/ff24...

[dweinus]

If we wanted to subsidize internet for rural and low-income communities responsibly, we could invest in fiber and other solutions, and control the externalities (this is exactly the ReConnect program is). Starlink is not that, it is a classic case of privatizing profits by socializing hidden externalities, in this case to the entire world. Externalities in the form of pollution that will cost us all more than fiber in the long run. Funny story though, Starlink was awarded a $900M subsidy to provide rural USA internet access. In the end, that money was not given because the FCC found that Starlink "failed to demonstrate that the providers could deliver the promised service.". So no, it is not about screwing rural people, it's about not getting taken advantage of by fat cats and grifters like Elon.

[JumpCrisscross]

> If we wanted to subsidize internet for rural and low-income communities responsibly, we could invest in fiber and other solutions, and control the externalities

Running cables across out land is less impactful than lofting satellites?

[dweinus]

Per the article, Starlink runs 8k satellites with an average life of 5 years. They launch in payloads of 20-40 satellites. That's 50+ launches per year if everything goes perfectly. About a million pounds of kerosene per launch. Plus everything else that goes into the rockets and satellites. Then the pollution impact from the launches and reentries. Then the eventual need to clean up LOE to avoid Kessler Syndrome. So yeah, well understood ground tech may be cheaper over the lifecycle. At a minimum, it should be a reasoned choice, not environmental debt pawned off by the richest man in the world.

[JumpCrisscross]

> About a million pounds of kerosene per launch

Quarter of a million pounds kerosene per Falcon 9. Zero for Starship, which burns methane. (And thus emits pure methane, CO2 and water vapor.)

> the eventual need to clean up LOE to avoid Kessler Syndrome

Not a thing. (Search this comment thread for the term. There are good answers on the current state of research.)

[dweinus]

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2024/09/12/spacex-launches-...

...but sure, for the sake of argument, maybe it's only a quarter million lbs of kerosene 50 times a year, upper atmospheric pollution, and LEO crowding that gets solved by HN comments. ...instead of a dumb cable that doesn't come with a side of funding a billionaire neo-nazi. My bad.

[chermi]

The last mile problem is difficult and expensive. I think satellites are a good solution to it. As for SpaceX fucking up that contract, that sucks and is no good.

[inemesitaffia]

SpaceX didn't fuck up the contract.

You can tell because SpaceX delivers those requirements in 2025 ahead of the 2026 deadline.

[inemesitaffia]

Starlink is delivering the set that was said to be impossible by 2026 today in 2025.

[runarberg]

Also worth considering is the Uber effect of public infrastructure. Meaning that politicians may use the existence of StarLink as an excuse to delay or cancel public projects which would otherwise have delivered broadband internet to under-served areas via traditional infrastructure.

This is similar to how the existence of Uber has caused delays or cancellation of public transit projects because politicians were able to say the people were better served with Uber than public transit.

[inemesitaffia]

Economics is the study of ...

[j45]

It's less about percentage.

Economic opportunity is largely shifting towards not only having internet access, but performant internet access.

Costs will come down. There will be alternatives.

But they might have taken much longer to come to market without something like this.

I'm not a fanboy, but there's obviously a lot of people who have worked hard to make Starlink a reality.

[runarberg]

Traditional infrastructure is a proven method of bringing both the availability to uderserved areas, as well as bringing the costs down for those already served.

StarLink provides a great oportunity for politicians to delay or cancel projects which would otherwise have given broadband connection to underserved areas. In urban planning this is known as the Uber effect.

[j45]

In some ways, where we're used to seeing borders of countries, the new borders of opportunity largely are performant and accessible internet access.

Depending on the area of the world, wireless and other options that exist that are likely sub par. It is on every continent including North America.

Some regions of the world have aggressively invested in fibre in rural areas.

We can see in parts of the world where there is a lot of investment (and interactions with govt for permits, etc) in physical infrastructure, whether its coax for cable tv and internet, copper for phone lines (and ADSL), wireless doesn't always have a nice way in.

There are places in the world that didn't get as much wired infrastructure put in and were able to jump up to much better wireless.

Satellite based internet as a category provides an additional coverage where "traditional" infrastructure hasn't made it yet. This can be wires or other wireless.

[chermi]

Take this argument to it's conclusion. Take any point in history and freeze infrastructure. The only option we give ourselves is building more of that same type and maintaining it? So, more riders and more horses to carry messages, but no telegraph? Or maybe more accurately, keeping the medium the same, never using planes or trucks to deliver mail?

[runarberg]

I don‘t follow how that is the conclusion, nor do I understand your analogy.

Broadband internet via cables, fiber optics, and radio towers is state of the art in telecommunication infrastructure. Satellite is both slower, more limited, and more prone to various disruptions. The capabilities of the wires and the radio towers is also improving. 5 years ago we didn’t have 5G towers, and 20 years ago fiber optics seemed a distant dream. The only thing freezing traditional telecommunication infrastructure in place are dreams of low earth orbit satellites which will never materialize.

If I understand your analogy correctly (which I‘m not sure I do) this is like looking at the new technology of pneumatic tubes and stipulating that all postal delivery will be done using this new technology in the future, and we may as well stop funding the national postal service, remove mail-rooms from our ships and trains, because somebody will build a pneumatic tube that will deliver mail door to door between New York and Chicago.

[chermi]

"The only thing freezing traditional telecommunication infrastructure in place are dreams of low earth orbit satellites which will never materialize."

Do you truly believe this statement, literally?

[runarberg]

I actually don‘t believe this. But some politicians do, and that does real damage when they take funding away from actual infrastructure projects which would have otherwise benefited under-served communities with high speed internet.

When I say LEO satellite internet won‘t materialize, I mean that it won‘t serve everybody. It will always be an expensive option which in best case will be subsidized for only a portion of the people that actually need it. LEO satellite is not the future of telecommunication infrastructure, it is lacking in almost every way next to traditional infrastructure. The only thing it is better at is a) marketing and b) providing internet to rich people in their yachts or in their mansions 10 miles out of the suburb.

[inemesitaffia]

Their problem isn't LEO.

If SpaceX sells Starlink to Amazon and buys Corning, Ciena and Nokia, they'll be extolling the virtues of LEO Megaconstellations