I am skeptical of anything like 600Mbps being offered to anyone at anything like an affordable price, but overall, sure, globally-available internet seems like a good thing.
Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.
I don't think we give up the night sky for this. naked-eye observers will never notice except close to sunrise and sunset, and even if astronomers are complaining about it now, there are solutions for their issues, either in image processing or with better scheduling (scheduling is straightforward if you have tracking data, so I imagine they're doing both already to some extent). Also, better heavy-lift capabilities will likely make space telescopes easier to manufacture and deploy.
We're going to have a lot of satellites and even space stations (hopefully) in our future, its just the way it is.
>Also, better heavy-lift capabilities will likely make space telescopes easier to manufacture and deploy.
Exactly. If ITS/BFR/whatever it is right now actually starts launching in the next 10-15 years we'll be able to deploy (relatively) cheap space telescopes of all variety.
Even better, if it does get operational, we'll be able to build one or more observatories on the moon where you'll basically have a 14 day night at any point and they could be operated entirely remotely and actually be upgraded/changed as needed with manned missions showing up to swap out instruments.
You could even go drop a bunch of smaller-optic telescopes on the moon and use optical aperture synthesis to do some pretty impressive stuff. Spread little clusters all around the moon and you'd have an optical astronomer's dream come true. Similarly you could distribute a bunch of relatively small radio telescopes on the far side of the moon and aside from some communication relay satellites (which you could use lasers for) you'd have virtually no interference from Earth.
While it's certainly said for research from Earth right now, if Starlink gets profitable it gives SpaceX more money to develop better launch technology which opens up space for far cheaper science.
I'm also skeptical. A single LTE node can have a total bandwidth of 1+ Gbps. In Poland there are probably over 20k such nodes. Yet, the average speed you get is about 25 Mbps.
With Starlink we're talking about covering the whole world, not a 40 million country. So I believe it may be usable for rich people in rural areas, but in densely populated areas it stands no chance to LTE (and 5G is coming and promises lower latency than physically possible with Starlink).
> I'm also skeptical. A single LTE node can have a total bandwidth of 1+ Gbps. In Poland there are probably over 20k such nodes. Yet, the average speed you get is about 25 Mbps.
I imagine usage is not evenly distributed between those nodes!
Also LTE connections are limited by the speed of the connection running to the base station. even worse, if that base station is on a microwave link to another tower that then has fiber running to it, expect slower speeds.
Also there is the phone hardware. Take Wi-Fi for a minute, which is a more controlled environment, the performance difference between different chipsets rated at the same speed can be huge! Firmware, drivers, and just how the chip is wired up. Plenty of opportunities to screw things up, sometimes even with the same chipset between different laptop manufacturers.
And finally, there is going to be a power trade off, I wonder how inefficient those LTE chips are when running full bore! Now I am curious as to what that graph looks like. :) Some sort ∩ shape I imagine where it starts being more efficient as you download faster so the radio is on for a shorter period of time, and then getting less efficient as you try to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the chipset.
Not the night sky, you can't seem them at all at night. You can see them during twilight, when they aren't in the shadow of the earth.
Work is ongoing to reduce their visibility during twilight, and even during twilight it's not giving up the sky, just making a minor alteration.
For comparison, there are as many planes in the sky at any time as their second phase plan of 12,000 satellites, and planes are much more concentrated around where humans are. There is also something like 5000 satellites already in orbit.
Giving up some of the night sky for the billions of humans that live in rural areas, or live in countries where the physical internet is controlled by oppressive governments hellbent on withholding information from its citizens is worth it. The trillions of dollars it would take to build out infrastructure (and maintain) in Africa and India is worth it. In fact, even 20 Mbps would be life changing in bringing information to ~10-15% of humans is worth it.
I'm glad you think it's worth it. I'm not as sure, personally. Especially since your examples don't hold water with me.
Oppressive governments that don't like the internet aren't going to just allow the transceivers. They need line of sight to the sky and even if you hide them, detecting them would be trivial. Super rural areas and 3rd world areas have their own set of problems. I'm thinking of the OLPC type issues here. I'm all for spreading knowledge, but these areas have far bigger issues than internet access.
Personally, I view this as just another bulldozing a place of nature to build a hospital or something like that. Is that hospital useful? Undoubtedly. Is it worth having one less place of nature? Debatable.
The only difference is scale. We're talking about the destruction of a place of nature for the entire world. Over dramatized? I don't think so- there are many examples of people talking about looking up at the stars in wonderment, driving them to great things. Maybe that will still happen when there are thousands of satellites streaming by, but nobody has that foresight.
Yeah, all that talk about free internet for all the poor and oppressed sounds pretty suspicious set beside the claims that starlink is supposed to make money too. How will a rural Guatemalan farmer that cooks on a three stones fire provide any sort of profit?
Don't underestimate how cheap smartphones + solar is and how cheap Starlink actually is.
Sure he cooks on a fire because it's practical. You don't need to fetch gas/fuel for your stove. Now with Starlink you won't need to go to town once a week to check your bitcoin transactions.
You’ve missed out on irony and bitcoin and guatemala farmer (cant find it right now). Also you are underestimating the needs of impoverished people. Part of impoverishment is lack of connectivity and facilities to charge phone. Not other way around.
It's just gonna be routed thru China. Probably each country internet is going to go first thru local provider, unless you've got some sort of privilege (same as it is now with VPN's).
We won't give up the night sky. Starlink won't be very high so majority of satellites will be in the shadow except close to sunrise/sunset.
Starlink satellites are quite small and probably won't be very visible even when deployed. SpaceX is working to reduce "glare" so this will probably be further improved.
Even with a full grid deployed, I doubt you would see more than a dozen satellites at any given time. Someone probably has numbers so please correct me or chip in.
Too bad we have to give up the night sky for it, though.