SpaceX needs to claim thereās a need for 100k more satellites to prop up unreasonable valuations. This is no different than Elon claiming Tesla owners would be renting out their cars as FSD taxis while at work (next year, we swear guys!!!)
In a functioning economy heād have faced criminal charges for knowingly misleading investors and customers about a dozen times over by now. Itās one thing to set lofty goals internally to keep your workforce motivated and innovative. Itās something else entirely to state things publicly with a targeted date when you know thereās absolutely no chance it will ever happen.
digitaltreestoday at 5:48 AM
I have started to see what I think are star link satellites at night on walks with my kids. It actually makes me sad to see that on person owns the night sky and is changing the literal stars my kids will grow up with. It feels different when itās the government that theoretically represents people but when itās one person that feels truly depressing.
consumer451yesterday at 6:09 PM
When Starlink first became available here in poor-ish Central-EU, I was excited. Then, only months later, but after years of planning: EU funding brought fiber to my farm area, at ~$25/900mbps 10ms.
While my story is just n=1, I don't understand the huge upside for Starlink outside of Africa or India, where they have <.1% the money to spend on such things.
However, I am dumb, and very open to be convinced.
rayinertoday at 2:26 PM
A couple of billion people are doing to join the global middle class over the coming decades. They donāt have pre-existing cable and phone networks that have been in the ground for 50+ years they can incrementally upgrade to broadband. Rich countries spend trillions getting to the point where most people have some sort of wired broadband option. If newly middle income countries want to pursue the same route, it will take decades.
Starlink short circuits that process. It means newly minted middle income people my dadās village in Bangladesh can get broadband now instead of in 2050. Replicate that story all over South and South East Asia and Africa.
j-bostoday at 2:15 PM
My mom lived with overpriced, underdeveloped, unreliable, and slow internet for years. Now she pays less for fast, reliable, sometimes improving bandwidth that doesn't go down for weeks after a storm. Progress is often gross, but it can be a lifesaver.
dtagamestoday at 3:25 AM
I just finished a long RV trip and I can tell you it's hard to underestimate the importance of internet access (which also means Wi-Fi calling and access to maps and weather) across our entire, enormous nation.
It's important not only for individuals but even more for businesses. Despite cell phone company ads with handsome celebrities in the desert, cell phones actually do not work in many places. But people do need to live and work in those places.
culitoday at 6:17 PM
If you think that's concerning for the nightsky, wait till China's competitor, SpaceSail, tries to catch up.
This is the problem with a private or single nation creating a system like this and then politicizing it or using it for war. It forces other nations to compete.
The night sky shouldn't belong to any individual company or nation. We should all have a say on whether this is something we're willing to give up. Including the more-than-human world
spullarayesterday at 11:41 PM
I think most of this thread is missing the part where this will also work for cellphones and give you truly global coverage.
senderistatoday at 1:27 AM
Will this be the last generation to remember the night sky?
baranultoday at 4:42 AM
At what point are people going to have a conversation about all the pollution and the consequences of so many satellites burning up (metals and other toxic stuff) in the atmosphere and fragments falling wherever.
100k... how much can we keep putting up and let keep falling around the world? Multiple other companies and countries want to do the same as SpaceX.
runakotoday at 6:43 AM
My understanding is that Starlink can only service ~6-7 houses per square mile today. The US is ~95/sq. mile on average. 80% of Americans live in "cities."
Anchorage metro is ~15/sq. mile; Yuma, AZ is ~36. The Nashville metro is ~250.
Also, Starlink satellites spend ~70% of their time over the ocean. This will impact the utilization ratio of their gear and force them to launch still more satellites.
porphyrayesterday at 6:37 PM
One cool thing about Starlink is that it can potentially improve latency across the world. In optical fibers the light travels only two thirds as fast due to the index of refraction. But in space you can use a laser to send the data in a straight line in a vacuum.
diddidtoday at 12:55 AM
I think the end game is convenience. Nobody really needs anything more than 200mb/s. If the average person can have their entire family stream their favorite Netflix show at the same time then thatās good enough. āNow lil Jimmy can watch it in the minivan too!ā
sidcooltoday at 2:59 AM
I understand no one here likes Elon. But does it mean we find justifications for our collective bias in everything his companies do?
hunmernoptoday at 5:32 PM
Sign me up! Love the global internet and the tech behind it
petilontoday at 5:31 PM
It is very important for an unstable/eccentric person like Elon Musk to be the new AOL and "own the internet", which is what could happen if he launches 100k satellites. Elon Musk will use his power to make political decisions.
Musk has acknowledged withholding Starlink Service to thwart Ukrainian attack on Russia. Musk had conversations with a Russian official that led him to worry that an attack on Crimea could spiral into a nuclear conflict, so he made the decision to thwart Ukraine.
Right or not, such decisions should be made by elected representatives, not an eccentric trillionaire.
Fiber is just getting cheaper and cheaper, more resilient, and is faster too. Plus it has no value like copper so thieves dont steal it.
I donāt think itās wise to pollute all of low earth orbit with Muskās satellites, that area belongs to all of us collectively.
prescriptivistyesterday at 6:17 PM
I spent last weekend under some of the darkest sky you'll find in the eastern US. Miles from cell service. I had a starlink portable with me and it was nice to get some service and stay in touch, but to watch the sky is to see satellites everywhere.
I've spent a dozen or so weeklong stretches in the last few years completely off grid, only connection being bringing up the inReach once a day. At this point I actually get anxiety at the end of such a trip, knowing that I'm going to be wading through a morass of notifications and slack/email/texts. Doing a once or twice a day sync via starlink didn't really bother me so much when I'm out in the backcountry this last trip.
I'd love to be rid of all of it, but that's not how the world works today.
dom96today at 2:36 PM
What I don't understand is where are the Starlink competitors. Supposedly the UK government owns a stake of 10% in OneWeb and yet they are planning to use Starlink for trains.
Is it really just too hard to put enough satellites in orbit to be competitive with Starlink?
cm2187today at 6:19 AM
Am I right to understand that it will do nothing to big cities, where you share the radio frequency with lots of users just like a wifi? What it the minimum radius where two satellites will not interfere with each others (chatgpt says 40-130km radius if not allocated more spectrum)?
If that understanding is correct it means the addressable market is countryside and transportation (planes/ships/RV). Which necessarily makes starlink at most a fairly modest size ISP in terms of valuation?
guidoismtoday at 5:38 PM
I think this is cool and all, especially watching all of the launches, but I don't understand why we aren't all talking about the growing potential of a Kessler Syndrome and are inability to access spaces for a century or so. Maybe I'm completely out-of-touch but it seems like a massive downside for only a small upside.
TheAdamisttoday at 2:49 AM
He really does want to speed run everything sci fi, Kessler syndrome here we come!
Haven880today at 12:29 PM
He promised a lot. Really a lot. I doubt it will happen. Still waiting the SolarCity, Gigabattery, 4680, and CyberTruck he promised. Instead I get solar burst. CATL, CATL, recalled and finger cutting. And let's not talk about AutoPilot FSD. Waymo is way ahead NOW. Mars? I double down my invest in Shanghai exchange now.
testaburgertoday at 8:13 AM
I read that by syncing up several space telescopes, astronomers can use something called interferometry to make them work together as one large telescope.
I wonder it's possible for Starlink to attach small telescopes on each of these satellites, and if so, if this could lead to a massive PR win for them and a science win for humanity, while at the same time helping to combat any genuine concerns from the public about Starlink harming astronomy. Just an idea (again I don't know if it's possible).
daniel_iversentoday at 12:25 AM
Surely itāll be an issue some day for other space activities with all the SpaceX kit up there? I know space is very large :) but surely itād be hard to scan, calculate and control trajectories of millions of orbiting tiny things when youāre launching rockets and things? A spacex satellite almost crashed into the Chinese space station some years ago and the Chinese had to perform an evasive manoeuvre I believe
l0ng1nu5today at 3:44 PM
We'll block all of the night sky, deal with it.
mparramontoday at 7:32 AM
Loving this, not loving the negativeness in this thread.
I wonder what the negativists will say about Reflect Orbital, which uses their EƤrendil space mirror to light the world.
I wonder if it would be possible for Starlink to use less reflective materials for their satellites so that the sky is less polluted for the astronomers.
ozgrakkurttoday at 5:57 AM
It is incredibly stupid that this is happening instead of doing regular cable which works better and is cheaper
deletedyesterday at 6:24 PM
oatmeal1today at 3:45 AM
If they pay an appropriate tax for light pollution affecting telescopes on earth, I'm all for it.
josephernesttoday at 4:13 PM
Please stop this.
How did we collectively accept that it's ok that a private company can forever change how our sky looks like (especially at night) for the generations to come?
This is so dystopian but it seems nobody cares. The most important thing is to have fast internet to watch cool AI-generated videos.
So depressing.
meindnochtoday at 9:27 AM
How much does this cost? Something tells me we could have covered the planet in fibre for the price of these Starlink satellites.
ggooyesterday at 6:13 PM
Soon enough these will start showing ads - I pray for our night sky.
chasd00today at 12:54 AM
Starlink is going to become a phone carrier that doesnāt have to pay for pole or tower access. This is the real story, so long att, verizon, and T-Mobile. Starlink is going to beat them on price and availability. Just think, no international calling fees or hassle and cheaper mobile rates.
seydoryesterday at 6:35 PM
Is that because China applied to launch 200000 satellites?
weezingtoday at 4:34 PM
The death of astrophotography.
SoftTalkertoday at 2:52 PM
Literally building skynet.
bilsbietoday at 12:16 PM
ITT donāt build on earth. Also donāt build in space.
drnick1today at 12:12 AM
Last time I checked, you couldn't get a public IPv4 through Starlink, let alone a fixed one. This makes it a non-starter as a backup link for self-hosters, a use case it is well suited for.
gskytoday at 1:52 PM
More trash in the space
gagabitytoday at 4:53 AM
And Amazon going to add their own 100k, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about
arjieyesterday at 10:57 PM
Boy it's going to be exciting when we can get Internet access literally everywhere. Excited for humanity's return to space infrastructure!
deletedtoday at 2:44 AM
tootietoday at 2:40 AM
On twitter yesterday, someone posted a question about SpaceX/xAI making a poor financial decision and Musk answered saying SpaceX will be worth more than the rest of the Earth. His megalomania is really running wild so I would not put much stock in this. They are asking the FCC for permission to launch 100k satellites which puts this very much in the "aspirational" category. They neither have plans nor approval to do it. This is a combination of ego and signalling to SPCX investors because it's down nearly 10% from IPO.
Elon really needs to drop some cash on Iain Bankās family, if heās going to keep stealing ideas/names for his empire.
deletedtoday at 2:46 AM
christkvtoday at 9:18 AM
Iām more worried about the geo synchronous ones as they donāt degrade and burn up in the atmosphere
westurnertoday at 1:33 PM
Hopefully LEO constellations can be made redundant with terrestrial comms.
Are there additional terrestrial signal propagation modes that could solve for the same needs as satellite data?
SubiculumCodeyesterday at 11:11 PM
So, at some point, will our devices connect to their corporate offices in any environment, even without providing access to your network, short of putting it inside a Faraday Cage?
phs318utoday at 11:18 AM
So over 100K starlink sats and then another 50K mirror sats (see that other HN post). Leaving aside the very tragic destruction of the night sky for observers, Iām afraid for the day we have a cascade of satellite debris events that send us backwards an and pretty much destroy our spacefaring ability.
xinaydertoday at 6:15 AM
Can't wait for Kessler syndrome to actually become a thing.
khazhouxtoday at 1:41 AM
The sky gets visually and physically polluted. Some parts of the world that havenāt mastered cables get faster internet. Elon gets richer.
Win-win-win?
andyjohnson0today at 10:33 AM
I was surprised recently to read that the centre-point of the orbits of the starlink satellites doesn't actually correspond to the earth's physical centre. Instead, they orbit around the centre of Elon Musk's ego. As he moves over the surface of the planet, the constellation actually shifts its orbits in response.
hulitutoday at 7:11 AM
> 100k more ā for 100x the bandwidth
I guess some things do not scale. The only thing that humans are good producing, is garbage.
HackerThemAlltoday at 6:40 AM
I can't wait until this junk starts to collide and blocks us from making any space flights. This has to happen and probability grows with the square of the number of orbiting satellites.
zakkitoday at 12:12 AM
Will it make our sky "cloudy" most of the time?
kometoday at 12:27 AM
i want to see a dark sky at night
shevy-javatoday at 7:52 AM
I don't think Musk needs any more money.
ck2yesterday at 6:05 PM
no, just no
make them pre-pay a multi-trillion cleanup and cancer fund for all the toxic waste, not just the launches but pollution burning up in the atmosphere
soooo good that they'll burn up one day and this nonsense can finally end.
investors provide infinite capital to nonsense projects so that the showman can create an endless show that will attract new nonsense capital.
sorry but already in rural morocco they have 200 mbit internet for 20 bucks a month. Yes there are some 6 wheeled vehicles roaming the planet that might really benefit from these 100k satellites. but for 99.9% of everyone else? we're good!
slicendicetoday at 5:31 AM
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louskenyesterday at 6:14 PM
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1234letshaveatwyesterday at 6:12 PM
Musk is nothing if not ambitious
croesyesterday at 11:00 PM
So SpaceX is just an overvalued internet provider?
deletedyesterday at 11:03 PM
0x59yesterday at 11:25 PM
How could this not end poorly? I cant think of one realistic scenario where there world benefits.
I wonder what spacex will be worth when launching satellites is impossible for a couple hundred years.
linzhangruntoday at 2:36 AM
Commercially speaking, does Starlink really need 100x bandwidth?
Starlink's target market is limited. It is very good for ships, remote area, but not necessary in cities where most people live.
I am not sure whether the launch and maintenance cost of another 100k satellites is necessary for such a limited market, unless the cost of launch (Starship) and the satellites themselves drops greatly.
sdevonoestoday at 6:53 AM
Always surprises me how people feel identified with progress they didnāt participate with. These satellites have nothing to do with you. You didnāt build them nor researched about them. These are the toys of a far-right asshole. It sucks