Neither has SLS entered orbit to be fair, and it had a massive development budget and a half decade head start (plus existing engines).
Everyone is taking Starship reuse as an assumption because of SpaceX’s earlier work. It will likely be less easy than people think with such a massive vehicle, but even fully expended mode Starship will loft far more mass at less than an eighth of the cost of a SLS launch.
I feel like you’re missing the part where I said I was father of four. I failed to mention I recently helped my oldest with newborn twins (if you’re thinking 2 is twice is hard as one, you’re wrong, it’s more like 4x).
I’ve accrued some experience with newborns. It’s a very tired time at times. It’s a time of wonderment. Especially with your first, it’s surreal, after 2 weeks you can barely remember “what was life like before this again?” But despite its otherworldliness, it’s also a lot of downtime. It’s different than normal downtime, because you’re tied to this growing little life, but it’s there. And I did indicate that it is in the latter half where having this project to work on would be ideal. Guess that’s just me and apologies if that seems insensitive. It worked for me.
- I have a piece of art
- I too want that piece of art
You either become or hire an expert art imitator to imperfectly recreate that same piece of art or you can't have it.
vs
- I have an NFT for a png
- I also want that PNG
This is like saying, I now own a million BTC because I forked the Bitcoin blockchain and moved all of Satoshi’s holdings to my wallet.
Ownership is just a social construct. Society now recognizes cryoto keys on the blockchain as a form of ownership. The attitude of “just copy the JPEG” is a little bit like the Native Americans who were happy to trade Manhattan for beads because they thought it was ridiculous that anyone could “own” land.
The world has fundamentally changed. You might not like it. You might think it’s stupid. You might even think that it will snap to its senses sooner or later. But the reality is this is the world we live in now, and scoffing at the new reality doesn’t change the facts that JPEGs of monkeys on the blockchain are now worth more than Picassos.
The blockchain allows me to cryptographically prove that I knew some information at a certain time.
If I was the first person to record that I knew this information, that's a pretty good proxy to proof that I created it. That makes me the author, artist, or inventor of this information.
If other people find this information valuable, then they might want to pay me because I released this information. Because I was the first person to sign the information on the blockchain, they know the right person to pay.
So the blockchain provides a way of tracking the author of information, which is not controlled by any company or government.
Or I could just buy the T-shirt at a fraction of the cost, and not care that it's not carrying a cryptographic signature.
Most NFTs that I've seen are incredibly flimsy-looking digital 'pieces', if I can even call them that. Their value itself is just as questionable, considering the artsts are unknown, the art is not a limited edition, and the cost to reproduce it is zero.
Maybe the market for NFTs is purely the '1000 true fans' types, the followers who will always pay for what you put out. But the majority of people are unlikely to have that relationship with the artist, even if they like what they saw on a transient Twitter post one day.
> Or I could just buy the T-shirt at a fraction of the cost, and not care that it's not carrying a cryptographic signature.
Sure, if you want to have that T-shirt, or support the artist, or something. But the goal of NFTs is to guarantee the uniqueness of what you bought, usually (probably 99% of the time) because people want to invest in them. So a T-shirt won't do.
I see NFTs as the "ultimate abstraction" of all speculation. It's not anymore about the value of the thing itself, it's just that you can buy it, prove that you have it and resell it.
> Most NFTs that I've seen are incredibly flimsy-looking digital 'pieces', if I can even call them that. Their value itself is just as questionable, considering the artsts are unknown, the art is not a limited edition, and the cost to reproduce it is zero.
I agree with that, but still, you can speculate on the NFT so some people will do that. Again, I don't think the cost to reproduce being zero is a problem for NFTs. If you could make a copy of any Picasso painting for free, people would still buy and sell the original for millions.
> Maybe the market for NFTs is purely the '1000 true fans' types, the followers who will always pay for what you put out. But the majority of people are unlikely to have that relationship with the artist, even if they like what they saw on a transient Twitter post one day.
I think the artist doesn't even matter. NFTs today are a bit like shitcoins, some people just want to speculate/gamble.
I'm really crypto-skeptic in general, mostly because I can't see a use for any of those things. But I can see why the concept of NFTs is useful.
Right? My idea above is sort of -- let's assume NFTs more or less work for the "1000 true fans," could the idea be tweaked for the smaller or more divisible for the "100,000 casual" fans?
Read carefully: I'm refusing to read it unless you give me a compelling short synopsis. Why? I'm not going to read just a bunch of links that you throw at me. I want you to at least show me some indications that you have spend some effort thinking about it, especially after you've made a claim that is trivially refutable by personal experience.
If a flat-earther just gave you a wall of links, would you read it? No. You would demand at least a short synopsis of why these are compelling reads.
Arizona also allows people under 30 to drive, and every age group under 30 has a much higher accident rate than 80+. People under the age of 18 have quadruple the accident rate of people aged 80. The reason people incorrectly believe that octogenarians are bad drivers is they have a tendency to die in even minor accidents.
I think folks think 80+ drivers are bad, is they drive conservatively and carefully. Its annoying to 20-something drivers who want to race around and take chances.
See, the thing is, Waymo controls the data, and certainly knows how good their driving is. If it was clearly better than the average octogenarian driving, wouldn't they be letting us all know that? Wouldn't they be announcing that and writing up white papers and giving presentations at conferences about this? They need to start building the safety case, and it is entirely to their benefit to release this data, if it truly is more reliable than even just the average octogenarian. The fact that they don't, and so far as I can tell only release the minimum data that they are legally obligated to (and marketing-speak like https://waymo.com/safety/ is not the same thing at all), leaves me with an inference that the data is not nearly that rosy.
There's a difference between something being safe and being capable. I can make a trivially safe self driving car that just sits there and does nothing, completely safe but not capable :) My point being that Waymo could have zero colissions (which I believe is not true) but still not be as capable a driver as someone for which it is unsafe to be driving, but is reasonably capable of getting around.
They are actively working on reducing reflectivity but there will always be an impact and honestly any effort to improve it will be well appreciated by me. However, even though I love the work astronomers do and the view of a clear sky into the stars, I must say I prefer global Internet availability over making astronomers clean their data from satelite datapoints.
Most discussions about this leave the goal of Starlink out of the picture. If this can bring Internet access to every spot on Earth, the immediate benefit for humanity is clear.
On the other hand, Starlink is going to make use of their next-gen Starship, and with a viable amount of business space launches will become cheap enough for launching lots of cheap specialized space telescopes.
> However, even though I love the work astronomers do and the view of a clear sky into the stars, I must say I prefer global Internet availability over making astronomers clean their data from satelite datapoints.
That’s great because apparently nobody but SpaceX has any say in what happens.
Are you unaware of the federal licenses required for these satellites to be deployed, or do you just mean they were granted without taking astronomers' wishes into account?
Edit: This is a sincere question. Several comments on this story indicate people don't believe there's any regulation as to what happens in space.
Edit 2: While I'm editing things, here's the FCC Record for the original Starlink proposal in case you're curious what some of the objections brought up during the original comment period were. https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-18-38A1.pdf Mostly it looks like other satellite operators worried about interference, orbital debris concerns, and there was a note about potential impacts on radio astronomy.
To be clear, I'm not actually saying this is all the fine. I think there are discussions to be had about the obviously worldwide impact. However, the point that I'm making was that "nobody but SpaceX has any say in what happens" is not true.
Certainly people can complain that current international treaties, federal regulations and so on aren't sufficient, that the decisions reached by regulatory bodies were incorrect, or ill informed, etc. But first they should be aware those decisions existed and did take into account input from a variety of sources, and it's not just 'if you can get it to space, do whatever you want'.
Not sure if you're aware, but it's widely publicized that SpaceX was granted licenses, waivers, and extensions that other companies were not, nor have been in the past. So yes, they have licenses, but it seems lobbying and Elon's fame has far more to do with this than anything.
Radio astronomers were all over it well before the first Tintin test satellites launched.
The optical astronomers weren’t in the habit of commenting on satellite launch licensing and got caught on the back foot. Now the media campaign is basically optical astronomers complaining that “there is no process” because they didn’t get involved in the process in time.
The same process the other people use: respond to the applications while they are open for comment. Just write a letter with pen on paper if that’s the level of funding you have.
30 minutes away from Microsoft main campus in Redmond WA, (and just a bit further away from Google/Amazon campus' in the area)
Best available internet is a 3mbit down, 1-if-you're-lucky-mbit up DSL connection from CenturyLink with latency that jumps into the 2.5+ second range when it rains hard. Which, fortunately it never does in the pacific northwest. :-D
And no, traditional satellite is a no-go, even if it was an affordable option. We have these things called "mountains" you see, and the satellites are only at certain spots in the sky, sadly occluded by a couple billion tons of rock and tree.
To reiterate, this is within commuting distance of "big tech" HQs.
Starlink can't come fast enough. Existing ISPs need to feel the pain of screwing their customers so bad for so long.
I'm within line-of-sight of Google HQ (I can literally see their campus from my porch, less than six miles away) yet my only wired internet option is AT&T DSL. Comcast offered to add my home to their network for a paltry $22,000. I look forward to Starlink creating a universal competitor even if I'm not a customer. It'd be even better if rockets needn't be involved in creating a competitive marketplace, but that doesn't seem likely.
I don’t understand, why is it not feasible to bring faster internet connectivity to suburban America with traditional infrastructure? Why do we need an entrepreneur to launch a constellation of satellites into low earth orbit—ruining the night sky for astronomers globally?
Countries like Finland and Iceland can bring decent speed internet to rural populations where it rains as much (or even more) then in the pacific north west. So I don’t know what makes America so exceptional that they can’t bring good internet to their population.
Since the problem is lack of internet infrastructure, as the market has failed in providing decent internet to a significant portion of the population, I suggest that the government subsides (or even funds) the infrastructure projects required for bringing the portion of the population a decent internet connection that the marked has failed.
That seems like a pretty obvious policy change that a mere layperson can come up with in their couch. I’m sure a civil engineer can do better though.
I don't know how much you can say it's a market problem as such, a role is clearly played by regulatory capture combined with/leading to/reinforcing monopolies. Local american governments granting big ISPs de jure or de facto sole rights to law down cable in a town means it's very hard to break in to the market as a hypothetical newer, smaller ISP.
I don't know that monopolies and rent-seeking wouldn't show up anyway with laxer regulation, but it's something to be taken into account.
Like I indicated, I’m not a civil engineer and am in no position to be coming up with a policy my self. I can say though—and I might be wrong—that America has some policy that might be hindering traditional infrastructure being build to provide decent internet connectivity to some parts of the population. I’m sure there are civil engineers though that can provide examples of better policy that may help solve this issue.
Claiming that the market has failed in a industry that has been utterly dominated by government and that was never actually a real market is pretty rich. This started out as basically a state monopoly that was then partially privatized but local monopoly laws were held in place.
Just throwing more money at utterly gridlocked system is not the solution.
So all you need to do is change the policy determining billions of dollars of infrastructure and profits with powerful entrenched interests? Where do I sign up?
This system is not primary for suburban America, but for places that are further out. But if suburban America is so shit, then why not solve this problem as well.
It is absolutely not a "mostly-US problem". We have the same problem in Australia. A lot of places only option was crappy ADSL. Then new (centre-left) government announced a project (NBN) to install fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) to the majority of the population. Massive, very expensive project, that was going to take a long time. Quite predictably, the centre-right party attacked it as costing too much money. Six years later, the centre-right win election, and thus far only a small number of lucky people had got their FTTP installed. New government decides FTTP was too expensive, replaces it with crappy fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) instead, which slows to a crawl whenever the node is oversubscribed (happens a lot due to the growing popularity of video streaming). And it tells other people that any fixed line solution was too expensive for them, and forces them on to wireless or satellite. Some people even got told they were losing their ADSL and having it replaced with a less reliable wireless or satellite connection.
... poor internet bandwidth or accessibility in remote region... is a "US only problem"??
I make it a point to not sound snarky or sarcastic on HN, we have a pretty good standard of discourse here - but that just seems a ludicrous statement to make, and I'm frankly curious what consideration went into it, as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction?
I don't think technology will solve all the world's ills; I agree that regulation of markets is a useful measure to undertake in certain situations; I don't find "Socialist" a swear word; but if ever there was a problem with a technical solution, then accessibility of internet in remote solution is almost the canonical use-case. Regulation of markets will not bring the Interwebs to remote or underdeveloped parts of the world.
Now... if we want to discuss whether bringing the Intertubes to all the world is a worthy goal or not; whether it is worth the compromises and risks a massive constellation of satellites will impose; sure, that's a productive tops to examine. But if we accept for sake of argument that internet in remote or underdeveloped parts of the world is a goal, I'm curious to see how market regulation will make that happen better and faster than a giant freakin' laser... I mean, giant freakin' constellation of satellites :).
Local market regulation is what is blocking any competition. The absurd believe people have that whenever something isn't working, markets will need more regulation is so absurd.
There are literally regulation that are preventing markets from even existing. But your solution is more regulation?
The quality of internet service falls off precipitously as you leave urban city limits.
It's better than it could be - when we decided to move "to the country", we almost bought a property where the only internet option was HughesNet. From all reports, HughesNet is incredibly expensive and barely usable. A big plus for the place we landed is that we can get "rural wireless broadband" - basically a point-to-point wifi signal bounced off of a solar-powered relay on a hill, to a set of towers on a faraway ridge, run by a folksy two-man ISP. It's expensive, unreliable, and slow compared to what I left in SF. But it's better than HughesNet and there's no data cap.
I don't know what to expect from Starlink, but I'm hopeful. Even if it's just a reliable 10Mbit connection I'll be ecstatic.
I feel for you. Our holiday house is about 30km beyond the middle of nowhere, but the 4g uplink is reliable. Plus we have to share it with very very few others...
If we ever need more, I'll probaby do just like the folksy two-man ISP you describe...
More supply drives down prices. Don't even mention current satelite Internet. Those operate via GSO satelites with seconds of ping and a way higher pricing considering SpaceX wants to be competitive with broadband pricing.
My mom's house in rural Arkansas. I mean basically if you live outside of a large city you have 1 choice of internet access and it's usually hot garbage and over priced.
Usually you are able to save the tasks that require fast internet connection for later. If you find your self on a slow internet connection while uploading a large video file, you can hold that up until you find somewhere that has a fast connection.
You also often have the option of lowering the bandwidth requirements (e.g. switch of the video call for a voice call at a lower quality). I find fast internet a luxury rather then anything while traveling.
And you can also not use wireless ever until you can connect to a cable.
What kind of logic is that? Sure, humanity has existed before global internet. But now that we can have it, there are 100s of reason to do so.
You see it as a luxury, but so is the ability to buy clean water or even get it of the tab. Things that are luxury in the beginning get cheap enough so many can use it and that whats called progresses.
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
> 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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most airlines will end up using it to stream telemetry as a backup and for areas where primary telemetry communication channels aren't viable. IIRC, it doesn't work near the poles but for everywhere else it would be good for knowing the last position when a flight vanishes.
"Albedo" sounds like visible light. That's fine for those guys. Then there's x-ray and above, and infrared- and radio- below. Doubt they'll be able to make those sats soak up all EM radiation. And a few thousand of them will also be bouncing ground-based signals back down in all directions ... forget about isolation from earth-based sigs in basins.
I don't recall any beforehand news of this being publicly discussed.
There are currently roughly 5000 satellites in orbit (per wikipedia). I don't have good stats on those 5000 satellites but I believe they are on average substantially bigger than the starlink satellites.
Either way, a few thousand things spread out over the surface area of the earth is practically nothing.
> Either way, a few thousand things spread out over the surface area of the earth is practically nothing.
and the surface of a sphere at the altitude they're orbiting at is even larger. and the satellites are all spread across a variety of altitudes, relative to their size.
Satellites already have a nontrivial effort put into keeping their orbits from colliding with each other. Increasing that number by 50% is not going to be easy.
there's other stuff in low orbits, but contrary to the claim, low earth orbits aren't carefully planned. you ask for a rough altitude, and then you get whatever you get, because you probably don't have anything on board for adjusting your orbit.
it's up in geosynchronous where things are carefully planned, and the spacecraft can adjust their orbits, and do lots of long term station-keeping.
First, I don't think space is either American or Non-American land :)
Second, I imagine outer space treaty covers this in much similar way that treaties governing international waters do.
Third, to a certain degree "satellite trash" is in the eye of beholder - I don't think there's any more or less legality in this, than in ISS, TV and comms satellites, GPS, etc all flying all around the world.
No one wants to get into a real estate battle in space. At least not yet. Maybe some day it will make sense to some nation but right now fighting that battle is a negative sum game.
I know people living in remote and even not so remote areas for whom cheap and easy internet access would literally be a live changer, and who wouldn't care less about astronomers having their work more difficult as a consequence, because, again, it would be a literal life-changing event for them in terms of personal safety, agriculture, income or education.
There's a lot of misinformation about how visible Starlink is. The satellites are barely visible (and only in dark skies) in their operational orbits. Next-gen versions (with albedo reductions, which they've started experimenting with) will likely be operationally invisible entirely. This doesn't mean it won't be an issue for astronomy with incredibly sensitive instruments from which almost nothing can hide. SpaceX is working with the astronomy community to try to improve the situation for (especially) ground survey campaigns.
As far as who will pay for it... SpaceX has lower launch costs than anyone else by a significant fraction as well as lower satellite costs (likely by a similar fraction). There are tens or perhaps (globally) hundreds of millions of rural users who these constellations would help, as well as some fraction of more urban users.
Satellite internet already several billion in annual revenues from rural areas, in spite of the terrible service and high (expendable) launch costs. It doesn't take much for SpaceX to be profitable here; being a satellite service provider historically is much more lucrative than being a launch provider. The main unproven hurdle I see is user terminals, not the constellation itself.
The launch costs are nowhere near the most expensive part. By using leo they have cornered themselves into using technology that won't be available to consumers.
Oneweb is not using the same technology. They're both using phased array, but SpaceX couldn't solve the low price point like oneweb, so they have it mounted on a motor. That will surely increase cost and reduce longevity.
Oneweb is another story, and regardless of their antenna, it's not clear how they're going to monetize.
They're both using phased array. The motorized mount is only for pointing optimization during the installation process; it's not going to be constantly motoring around. (and personally, I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX drops that eventually... they're trying to minimize installation costs to lower than current satellite dishes so the customer or unskilled worker can basically just plop it in the ground without adjustment while still optimizing the signal.)
Whether or not SpaceX "couldn't solve" the low price point is unknown. I'd be skeptical of anyone who claims they can't do it. Don't be too willing to buy OneWeb's PR. "Special sauce" is marketing speak. Execution is what matters. (This works both ways... OneWeb will eventually be using reusable rockets--i.e. from Blue Origin and others--like SpaceX.)
> The motorized mount is only for pointing optimization during the installation process; it's not going to be constantly motoring around.
Please cite a source on that one. If they're putting a motor on just for installation to point to roughly the right spot, that's a ton of money spent on a motor for a single-use item. That will again point to it not being a consumer product. What's more likely is the motor is making up for the poor scan loss of the cheaper phased array.
But a one-time-use, non-precision motor is pretty inexpensive. A precision motor that has to run 24/7 outside in the elements is super expensive.
Musk is trying to get rid of the $100 cost of professional installation by substituting with a $10 motor. I'm not sure it'll be successful (I wouldn't be surprised if professional installation still ends up happening and they eventually delete the motors), but that is the plan. It's just to get a good view of the sky, not to scan. A reliable scanning motor would cost a lot more. (And they need to track multiple satellites at once... can't do that with a single array steered by a motor, has to be beam-steered.)
Source is here:
"Looks like a thin, flat, round UFO on a stick. Starlink Terminal has motors to self-adjust optimal angle to view sky. Instructions are simply:
- Plug in socket
- Point at sky
These instructions work in either order. No training required."
https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12145487640542167...
Trust me -- it's NOT inexpensive. Maybe your definition of inexpensive is different from mine, but adding $20-$30 onto the cost of every install is a massive expense, especially when you still have to send a trained installer out to do it. You can't rely on an end user to do it since there are all kinds of issues with placement/blockage/etc. If you choose to ignore that, you spend more money on customer support to help them install it. Notice Elon doesn't say that end users will do it. He just said no training required, just like you don't need training to install tiles in your house either.
> There are tens or perhaps (globally) hundreds of millions of rural users who these constellations would help, as well as some fraction of more urban users.
indeed, even if you have a ground link, something radio based makes a spectacular backup. even if you've got one good high speed link available, it's unlikely you've got two whose failures are even slightly decorrlated.
Based on the prices I've been hearing, yes. $100/month or less for a GB/s connection shared between dozens of houses or more. Or an astute entrepreneur will create a cybercafe or resell it. The small businessmen can also afford it (since they already have satellite TVs), and they stand to make the most from it financially. The possibilities are many.
And it's not a problem of profitability for some, it's a problem of availability. Some could afford what their urban compatriots pay for internet, but that's simply not possible.
Yes! I live 90 minutes from Washington DC and have no land-based Internet access. Our community of 59,000 has probably just 65% true broadband coverage, from one cable provider. The FCC maps are a lie, they show my home and my neighbors as having access.
They've done a bit, enough that the public won't be severely affected. But as it stands: no, the techbros will simply kill large parts of ground based astronomy to stream gifs to rural California.
I think everyone making these comments is going to be eating their words in about 10 years when orbital telescopes are so cheap and plentiful that even third grade classrooms will be booking time for observations.
A comment below explained that we don’t have the technical capabilities to launch a 30 meters diameter telescope in orbit. And we’ll probably not have that capability in 10 years either. The extremely large telescope being build in the Atacama desert is almost 40 meters in diameter.
Sure maybe it can be fun for a third grader to look into images made for them by a cheep satellite telescope, but professional astronomers will continue to need the larger telescopes that remain technologically impossible to lunch into space for the next decade, or few.
Without wanting to get involved in the purpose of your rhetorical question (the purpose being some kind of analogy to the StarLink situation)...
How many compilers were there back in the 60s? By codebase or by install count, your choice. Hundreds of codebases and tens of thousands of installs?
How about now? Tens of thousands of codebases and billions of installs?
Do you think this could have happened without lowering the cost of transistors pretty hugely? (circa 3e7-fold price decrease in 50 years)
Seems to me that lowering the cost of transistors DOES increase the number of compilers, whether by counting the number of distinct codebases, or by counting number of users, or counting number of installed copies, or number of times executed, or whatever.
Here's the logic: If space launches are expensive, you spend more on your satellite to make it worthwhile. Give it more features, etc. Then spend even more to make it extremely reliable, because replacing it would also be expensive (both the launch and the hardware itself). If launches are cheap and routine, you can just launch a cheap simple satellite for each type of sensor you want, and even if it fails you can launch backups (or just activate stand-bys already in orbit). You can even aggregate the sensor data from a swarm of smaller satellites to generate the view of a single large virtual telescope, potentially bigger than anything you could construct on the ground.
I'm sure you know rural California is not the only place without stable and fast internet access. And while that is one usage that will probably dominate in the developed world, have you considered the possibilities in Africa, Asia and the oceans?
If the marginal cost is low enough, it may be profitable to give rural populations Internet at a price that they can afford, even if it's way cheaper than in California, and so low that the entire system couldn't be run profitably if everyone could get it that cheap.
SpaceX would have to run tens of thousands of what you're doing all over the world, where regulations and laws are different. It's not comparable at all.
Why would SpaceX run it? I am talking about freenets, the communities run these by themselves. SpaceX sells a station and connectivity to the group as a whole, and I'm pretty sure 600 Mbps (which conpares to nearly a hundred people watching a fullhd video, btw) is more than enough for a town - my network is still just 300 Mbps.
I think you're missing the point of spacex's business plan. First, what you're saying is somewhat common in the USA, but they have far too much competition in the USA for that to be profitable. Outside of the USA, WISPs aren't very common, and even if they were, it's a huge effort to sell your service through every other tiny company in different countries.
This is such a closed minded western centered mindset.
The idea of paying for infrastructure projects (or helping fund them) in foreign nations that you might do business with is just not on the horizon.
The only option on the table is to build some technologically obscene infrastructure that only those who can afford can use, leaving the local population in poverty.
So people that have some modest wealth in Africa shouldn't be able to get internet? Does it not matter that an entrepreneur and companies can get reliable internet? The local population can get together and buy one antenna is one more option they might be able to provide access to the net for a village. The government could provide one for each school. Human deploy infrastructure in so many different ways.
You can try to intellectualize everything away because you seem to have some intense dislike for this, but the fact of the matter is, this system will make internet easier and more affordable then any alternative system in a huge number of places all over the world. And in all those places it will have to compete with the alternatives and the people on the ground can make the choice what helps them the most.
Your counter argument boils down to 'We can't solve global poverty, therefore we shouldn't have global internet' and that is just such an insane position.
I’m sorry, my comment was very snarky and therefor not very clear.
What I was trying to say: A more reasonable way to get better internet connectivity to the poor parts of the world is to build tried and trusted traditional infrastructure funded by the wealthier communities around them.
You are right though, I do dislike Starlink. In general I have a big distaste for any endeavor that tries to solve a problem with new and untried technology, but that problem only exists because of wealth disparity.
Non of the individual parts of Starlink are totally untried. Its a new way to put it together really. Rockets being cheaper now is just a fact of the industry.
> What I was trying to say: A more reasonable way to get better internet connectivity to the poor parts of the world is to build tried and trusted traditional infrastructure funded by the wealthier communities around them.
The demand that you can live anywhere in the country and have people who live in the city provide you with a FTTH at the same price just seams like unreasonable to me. In most places, specially in the western world, its an organizational not a cost problem.
If Starlink is the cheaper way then why should richer communities not just provide Starlink antennas. Especially when you have large area and small communities.
> I have a big distaste for any endeavor that tries to solve a problem
Starlink solves many problems where other solutions simply don't exist. That is a plain fact. It just so happens that it will also be competitive in lots of other fields and if the competition is terrible, why not adopt Starlink?
Its global by design anyway so driving the marginal cost of utilization might make for a competitive price point in many regions and locations.
The reality is that its fine to talk about these potential changes, but they haven't happened for a long time now, and the most likely way for a totally dysfunctional system to change is with massive shock to the outside. Then ideas for reform might actually get adopted.
So even from that perspective, I really can't see any argument why putting another competitor in this market is not a fantastic idea.
If you're using stocks to back your debit card purchases then you would be realizing gains incredibly frequently and therefore likely subjected to short term capital gains, which are taxed at normal income tax rates. You would not see a benefit in taxes in this scenario.
