this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 217 points 1 day ago (6 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] 5 points 7 hours ago

agreed. it's a technology we need but like everything meant to improve humanity, it should be publicly owned (no, not the stock market - truly public).

[–] [email protected] -1 points 20 hours ago

the quantity of launches and satellites is doing nothing good for anyone

Except for the millions of people accessing internet via Starlink to whom the alternative is either no internet, slow internet or extremely expensive internet.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

When people talk about taxing these horrible people I think of tax as being a euphamism

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 day ago (3 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] 1 points 3 hours ago

It's extremely affordable on the ocean. What are you talking about?

Just until recently satellite internet was really expensive. Like only large corporations could afford it. And the bandwidth was shit. Also it was barely available in the deep northern and southern hemisphere. Sure it's considered expensive for the regular kayaking dude. But it's insanely more available than ever before.

The dudes an asshole. But don't invent arguments.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 15 hours ago (2 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago

A portion of the debris from collisions would enter elliptical orbits though so might need more time to de-orbit. But loosing all LEO satellites and even just 4-8 years without use of LEO would be an absolute catastrophe. You could still launch satellites to medium or geosynchronous orbit though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Where will they go after they deorbit? Do we get em back?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

They burn up on re-entry, at least they're supposed to.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Thanks, atmosphere 🙂❤️ that's interesting design! Will any of the debris reach the planet or is it designed to break apart in a particular fashion?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

My understanding is they're designed to completely disintegrate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

Will any of the debris reach the planet

Not in a solid form. There may be some undesirable effects though at greater numbers, we don't really have good data. Here's a blog post by the European Space Agency talking about a couple studies on the effects of satellite reentry. Note that the satellites they simulated were significantly larger than the Starlink satellites.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

already bows to actual totalitarians

Care to elaborate?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Turkey and Russia. It's clear that profit seeking corporations would bow, but then Elon screams bloody murder when reactionary forces in Brazil manipulating social media get censored.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

What about Turkey and Russia? Starlink doesn't work in Russia.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 hours ago

Follow the news so we don't have to catch you up.

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

I feel like that explanation is missing a verb or something.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

To bow, or bow down or kneel for. But I'm not going to google that for you haha. The basic problem is that starlink theoretically has immense power so it becomes a political tool. He bows to those ones but not to legitimate democratic interests.

Especially once starlink and others can make landline based internet connections obsolete by pricing them out - which they are not currently doing though, but it seems only a matter of time with competition. Basically we could get to a situation where there are only like 2 or 3 internet provider practically controlling internet globally.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

They won't be able to price landline based connections out as long as they have to replace their satellites every 5 years. I wouldn't be surprised if they're running at a loss currently.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Enshittification happens to all things, sadly.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

It happens really early with that fuckin' weasel in charge.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago

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