It's time to speak out against unchecked growth of satellite mega constellations

Posted by randycupertino 8 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by PaulHoule 8 hours ago

Somebody should have spoken for fiber everywhere 15 years ago rather than telling us rural people to drop dead.

Comment by ProllyInfamous 5 hours ago

I live in one of the few US regions where our electric provider also provides fiber internet to every single customer (EPB, Chattanooga).

Even ramshackel cabins in the middle of nowhere can get gigabit internet (25+ syncronous, actually). ISP giants have effectively lobbied to prevent this from expanding outside of the electric-provider's supply area, despite ready availability and demand.

It's a racket.

Comment by cpburns2009 7 hours ago

Exactly this. A family member of mine had no good option before Starlink. Dial-up is obsolete, traditional satellite internet was not available due to some angle of a valley or treeline. A 4G signal booster can only do so much with a poor signal.

Comment by metalman 4 hours ago

rural here also. ridiculous to suggest that mega sattelite fleets can be recalled now. little know fact about high tension power lines: they have has fibre in the core for mreo than 25 years, but in most cases are left unused, per contracts with the telecoms ie: massive price fixing deals

more?, look into the truely surreal world of overlapping rights of way for power, phone, roads, water,rail etc that are spread and smeared into blurry mess that EATS MONEY, that then dissapears again. the satellites just fly right over all that.

Comment by wolvoleo 7 hours ago

Wouldn't mandated fibre for everyone be considered 'communism' in rural US?

I mean, even public healthcare is vilified.

Comment by verzali 6 hours ago

A million satellites is implausible any time soon. You need to launch 300 a day for ten years straight without losing any. Just will not happen.

Comment by whattheheckheck 6 hours ago

And we will only use 64kb of ram

Comment by verzali 6 hours ago

Not the same at all my friend.

Comment by rationalist 2 hours ago

Or launch 3,000 a day for one year.

The comment you replied to indicates that our needs and production capabilities can grow.

Comment by SilverElfin 5 hours ago

I am absolutely frightened but the satellite constellation arms race. Especially by the Chinese companies that are launching constellations into very high orbits, where debris will take thousands of years to decay. These satellites are also ruining the night sky for astronomy. The public should not have to suffer for the greed of a few companies.

Comment by jiggawatts 6 hours ago

The science fiction vision of our future is orbiting factories, massive space stations where you can take a holiday, captured asteroids mined for their precious metals, space elevators, etc...

Many people think that this is realistic, eventually.

The eventually is starting now.

How exactly did people think it would happen? Someone clicks their fingers and we live in a sci-fi universe suddenly? Or that magically the entire space industry will restrict their orbits to a few narrow bands to preserve the oh-so-precious long exposure views of sunsets forever?

These articles are just futile bleating.

The future just isn't going to wait for grey-haired astronomers to catch up.

PS: If we can launch satellite constellations cheaply enough to cause an issue for terrestrial telescopes, then almost by definition we can launch telescopes to space at a low enough cost to solve the problem and get a better vantage point without the pesky atmosphere in the way.

Comment by CamperBob2 6 hours ago

It is truly a time of insanity.

Why doesn't Musk just put the data centers on container ships, if he wants to avoid red tape?

Comment by aaron695 6 hours ago

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