[consumer451]

I agree with that, but it's great for a greenfield project/area. Say, Mars or very high and low latitudes, or ships/airplanes.

However, once you are in an area of "civilization," there is not only an opportunity for fiber, but also maybe the locals don't want a foreign power controlling your citizens' data access. India + China = 35% of the global population, and Starlink is not legal in either place.

Meanwhile, the free speech absolutist is focused on breaking up the ~5.4% of the globe, (EU) where Starlink is legal.

[mooktakim]

Yes, but those are different reasons. Eventually we'll have many different providers offering LEO internet. Competition is the best way to solve this. The benefits of LEO internet is obvious.

[consumer451]

> The benefits of LEO internet is obvious.

No, I disagree, maybe. The terrestrial Internet was literally designed to route around a nuclear war. That was its initial purpose, was it not?

Starlink needs ground stations, which are visible from orbit, and can be Shaheded... unless every Starlink terminal can also become a down-link.. which would be cool. However, then it all still relies on terrestrial fiber, right? Or, then that would be a Starlink-only WAN?

I don't want to call out a specific HN'er, but he is an HN hero. Years ago, in person, he told me he was bored. I tried to convince him to work for Starlink in Redmond, as what could be cooler than working on an entire new satellite laser-based Internet 2 backbone?! This was back when GMaps labeled that office "A Place of Worship."

I failed at that, because he probably saw that the entire concept was questionable. My point here is that this is all very complicated, and while Starlink is the coolest tech in my lifetime, it still relies on terrestrial fiber in the end.

Please, help me work through this. I am likely very confused.

[ACCount37]

Starlink can now jump the connections satellite to satellite, and curve them around the planet. You need to knock out not just the nearest ground station but also the stations the traffic can be rerouted to for the constellation to be meaningfully degraded. Stations that are spread across multiple countries and continents.

In which case, yes, SpaceX can also spin up new makeshift ground stations using off the shelf user terminals.

The current ground stations use specialized transceivers, but that's an efficiency improvement, not a fundamental limitation.

> I failed at that, because he probably saw that the entire concept was questionable.

There's a lesson there: if you think you understand a bleeding edge emerging technology better than Musk does, think again. Think for a long time - maximum reasoning effort.

It's not impossible that you truly are, but it is unlikely.

[consumer451]

> There's a lesson there: if you think you understand a bleeding edge emerging technology better than Musk does, think again. Think for a long time - maximum reasoning effort.

Starlink is undeniably some of the coolest tech I have ever seen. However, I was once one of Musk's biggest fans and defenders, and I am no longer that.

He really was the best of us, going all-in on physics-based ideas, not giving any f's about money... until the Tesla payout. That appears to have broken his brain. He went from a real truth-seeker, to a financial engineer. I get it, how could that much money not change one? I bet it would change 99.9999% of us.

As far as musktradumus, he once stood in front of a very warbley Starship prototype and answered "yes, this specific article is going into orbit." It took many more years, and many more articles to even start to get close.

FSD is still incoming, maybe. Tesla created a special call center in Las Vegas to deal with the fact that Tesla greatly over-promised the range on all their vehicles.

[mooktakim]

Internet routing around nuclear war not because it's cable but it's because it's an inter connected network (ie "internet"). Meaning there's multiple routes to the same destination.