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Why Starlink is doomed to fail
Weaver:
Chunkers, did you watch the video? What do you think about the space junk and Kessler syndrome argument?
Moving off topic, it seems to me we urgently need a space hoover.
Chunkers:
--- Quote from: Weaver on May 20, 2022, 03:49:03 PM ---Chunkers, did you watch the video? What do you think about the space junk and Kessler syndrome argument?
--- End quote ---
I watched about half of it but it just seemed like a one-sided hit piece so I stopped ....
I didn't get to the Kessler piece so I googled it, not surprisingly some people think he is ruining space travel forever and others think its fine as low orbit satellites have to keep themselves in orbit and otherwise decay and burn up very fast (apparently over 80 starlink satellites have already done this)
I know you guys are all very aware of this, but in general I don't find YouTube a very good source of objective information anymore. Unless its on something very neutral e.g. how to unblock my toilet. Most of the reviews are now extremely biased, 'sponsored' and the news content is both biased and heavily censored and you are rarely able to establish where the bias is coming from.
I am sure he is no saint, but since Elon Musk came out as a 'free speech absolutist' or whatever it was he said there are now parts of mainstream media who are desperate to discredit him
I currently work in North Africa, here people can't afford internet connections and those that are available are incredibly slow, heavily censored and unreliable. People here dream of fast, independent and affordable internet connections, maybe this might help.
Regarding his lack of speaking skills and charisma, this might be partly explained by the fact that I believe he has Aspergers ...
C
Alex Atkin UK:
Its a debunking channel using facts, figures and Musks own claims vs reality. There are other channels not focused on debunking that also do the odd debunking video on stuff like that, such as EEVBlog. You don't have to rely on one source, just look at the many scientists and engineers.
You don't have to believe everything they said is true (though I'm sure you can Google the figures to confirm them), they include video of him actually saying things that were downright lies, period. Full self driving, hyperloop, electric trucks, all things he can claimed he could do but has completely failed. Even one of his own AI employees was highlighting how flawed the self driving is, so he fired them.
The problem with Starlink is even if it works, more lower earth satellites means you need more base stations to bounce the signal off, and if you have those base stations then just take broadband over land from them for a far more efficient and reliable service. It never seemed plausible to me that there could be enough bandwidth to just bounce the signal between satellites to a few base stations. The whole reason StarLink is so slow to roll out is the cost and the fact many areas CAN be served right now, but everyone would suddenly be on dialup speeds due to the lack of capacity.
The problem with the things he has done is its not financially sustainable. Starlink/SpaceX is being propped up by government funding, when they finally realise its just a never ending cash sink, its dead.
Its a short term solution when by their own admission, the satellites need replacing every 5 years + any that fail early or never make it to orbit in the first place.
I can absolutely believe he has Aspergers (though were not supposed to call it that any more), I had a friend who also had it and he also stole things from school without asking because he thought it was okay as he was only "borrowing" them, plus many times I absolutely denied things he had done that I knew for a fact he HAD done. But my point wasn't about that, it was about the confusion that anyone would think his arguments and lies were convincing.
celso:
I don't really give a s... about Elon Musk. I think he made electric cars attractive and main stream, and I also think that developing a cheaper rocket that can land, engines, and space capsule that can actually fly is a nice achievement. Impossible stuff for some, but they did it. This doesn't mean that the state of Tesla self driving is acceptable, that I agree with Musk's behaviour, what he says, what he claims, his promises, the way he treats his employees, how he names his kids ( :lol: ), etc. I also don't own stock or anything like that.
With this said, I like space stuff. I skimmed through the video (edit: the one from the main post) and I think it's a bit one sided. Parts of it are also outdated. I can't talk about the financial aspect of it (if it will work as a business), but he's taking some facts and presenting them in a negative and sometimes even misleading way.
As we know now, there will be more than one service (to get faster speeds, business, backhaul for remote areas, financial services wanting something faster than fibre connections for high frequency trading, etc) that cost way more than $99 (and prices have increased recently). Not to mention military applications... Russia took down Viasat in Europe because Ukraine used it for their GIS Arta system, that's why they quickly received 15k Starlink terminals (resulting in them being attacked and jammed). And what does the US Army knows that we don't? Can you imagine the things one could do remotely if low latency, high speeds are available (with the new satellite)? Maybe it's all a scam, but then even the Chinese are falling for it?
He starts by talking about terminals (the first gen). Yes, the cable should be removable, but sadly it's how some companies do things. Anyway, it's just a RJ45 cable. It's not that hard to add a connector to it (as explained in the thread he took that picture from) and I'd argue that you have to expect problems if you decide to leave cables exposed in the wild.
Then there's the hardware cost. It's public that they're selling terminals at a loss. There was an article in ArsTechnica(?) 1 or 2 years ago and they said the cost was higher than $599 and that they were trying to reduce costs. There's a new "dummer" terminal which costs less, but I believe it still costs more than $599? In any case, it's public that they're doing this.
Later on the video he mentions the warranty. Maybe it's a problem in the US, but in the UK and EU they have to replace your terminal if it arrives broken. The comment about extreme temperature, yes, it's a problem if you live in an extremely cold (rated up to -30ºC, there's a built-in heater) or hot place (+40ºC, can be a problem), but looking at feedback over at the /r/Starlink sub, they seem to have improved thermal management? I'm not sure if it's only improved only on the new gen or if the first gen was also improved (power reduction, less heat). Early adopter problems, I guess (not defending it, but it's the reality... eg: early 5G modems aren't as capable as the latest ones).
I don't think there's public information on the real costs of a Falcon 9 launch, but there are reports that it costs 37 million, not 50. Not to mention that they seem to be ok with the extra risks of reusing old boosters. We know two things: 1) with the alternatives charging 2 or 3 times more for the same service, there's no good reason for them to drop their prices; and 2), the main deployment is supposed to be done by Starship (not Falcon 9) and the satellites are also different: more capacity and with laser communication between them, reducing the need of ground stations and allowing for over water service.
Now, the the satellites. I think he's misleading people here (maybe I misunderstood him...) because the old satellites don't stay in orbit forever. First he shows a screenshot of a news article(?) with a claim from SpaceX saying that they stay in orbit (if they lose control) between 1 and 5 years, and then shows an image from ULA's Tori Bruno to prove that it's wrong... but it says right there: it takes years, not decades (edit: for that altitude). When a geomagnetic storm affected their launch back in Feb 2022, apparently the 40 satellites de-orbited in a week (lower than the operational orbit and according to SpaceX, but I haven't seen anyone contradicting them).
On top of this, it's important to keep in mind that they're not the only ones talking about big numbers. The UK's OneWeb asked for permission to launch 48k satellites. Amazon's Project Kuiper will start with 3k. And then you have countries like China planing their own constellations.
I think everyone doing things the old way will need to adapt to having more satellites in space. Automation is needed and we probably need to stop panicking because a satellite will pass 500 meters away from another satellite. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know...
The point about the Kessler syndrome: it's a concern. I guess that's why different countries/space agencies/private business are investing in solutions to clear space debris. SpaceX is one of the contributors to this problem, but not the only one. An even bigger problem is when China, Russia, India, the US, etc, blow up satellites in orbit... he mentioned the space station, well, guess why they had to move it late last year.
There's also a mention of the satellites affecting space observations. That's indeed a problem, especially at dawn/sunset. It was already a problem before SpaceX (see Iridium Flares, for example), but obviously more satellites makes the problem worse. The main difference between 2020 when people started to complain and now is that there's software to deal with that. In any case, it's a problem... but it's not going to get better even if SpaceX goes away. We have to find ways to deal with it.
Finally... speeds. I mean, it's hard to take it seriously when satellite internet isn't for cities and he uses numbers from cities. Two paragraphs from this ArsTechnica article, during beta:
> Musk has repeatedly said he does not view Starlink as a replacement for fast wireline Internet service. "You can think of Starlink as filling in the gaps between 5G and fiber, and really getting to the hardest, most difficult-to-reach 3 percent, possibly 5 percent [of Internet users," he said yesterday. "It quite nicely complements fiber and 5G."
[...]
> Still, Starlink can't provide enough capacity to serve a huge number of customers in high-density areas. Musk has stated that several times, and he said again yesterday, "We're well-suited to low- and medium-density areas but not high-density areas. In high-density areas, we'll be able to serve a limited number of customers."
So, why are we looking at speeds for cities like Seattle where fibre is available and during the beta (the video is from July 2021)? This is not for cities or aimed at customers that have fibre or gigabit 5G. Maybe it doesn't make sense for us Europeans because our countries are small compared to others, but places like Canada, US, Australia, etc (the ones that can afford Starlink) have lots of areas without any good coverage or coverage at all. And no, they won't get fibre any time soon... that's why terrible services like HughesNet had a business (at least until now).
I suggest checking out /r/Starlink to see who and where people are using this service, the speeds and pings they get, how fast or expensive it was before, and so on. It's not a service for someone like me because I live in a city, have FTTC, good 5G from at least one provider, don't have an RV, don't live in a farm in a large country, etc. This doesn't mean that there are no customers for services like Starlink.
From my limited point of view, Starlink will fail if the new satellites don't have enough capacity (we need to wait and see) or the inter-satellite connection fails to work and/or if they fail to capture enough customers (keeping in mind that they're not all paying £110/month and that the price can be lower in other countries in the future). I think it's too early to say that they're going to fail, but yeah, it can happen. I can see the risk. From a space access point of view, having so many satellites is a problem, but the problem is bigger than SpaceX/Musk.
To end, I'll just say that personally I wouldn't be affected if Starlink failed and that I'm rooting for SpaceX only because we need more affordable space access and more innovation to a space that has become a bit stagnant. Maybe this video is right and it's all a scam and they'll fail. I guess time will say.
On a side note, I don't really care about Musk (or famous people in general). I don't understand why there are so many people crazy about him (both pro and against)... but for some reason his name and his companies attract clicks. Fires on petrol cars are not uncommon, but no one talks about it... but if a Tesla catches fire everyone knows about it. A few months ago it was a SpaceX rocket that was going to hit the moon... tabloids went crazy with that... but they were quiet when someone noticed the mistake. And this video is from a YouTube channel that only talks/debunks him/his companies. I find it all a bit... weird.
(Sorry for any mistakes in this wall of text... I'm tired.)
---
Edit: Just to add, Adrian Kennard from AAISP seems to be happy with the service:
- https://www.revk.uk/2022/06/starlink-2.html
- https://nitter.net/TheRealRevK/status/1535337295380873217
- https://nitter.net/TheRealRevK/status/1535550468985966592
There are some issues and happy customers don't invalidate some of the things mentioned in this thread, but it works better than the video suggests.
Alex Atkin UK:
--- Quote from: celso on June 11, 2022, 10:52:43 AM ---I don't really give a s... about Elon Musk. I think he made electric cars attractive and main stream, and I also think that developing a cheaper rocket that can land, engines, and space capsule that can actually fly is a nice achievement. Impossible stuff for some, but they did it.
--- End quote ---
But that's exactly the problem, he "claims" to have these things but in reality, they don't exist or at the very least do not work how he describes. His entire empire is based on bold claims, pipe dreams and throwing good money after bad.
I'd call his empire a Ponzi scheme but its even worse, as he doesn't even pay off investors. He just moves money between his various companies to prop each other up. His empire is a a bunch of dominoes, as one starts to teeter he props it up with another, but once one finally goes the whole thing will collapse.
eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XIVjfRix_8
--- Quote from: celso on June 11, 2022, 10:52:43 AM ---From my limited point of view, Starlink will fail if the new satellites don't have enough capacity (we need to wait and see) or the inter-satellite connection fails to work and/or if they fail to capture enough customers (keeping in mind that they're not all paying £110/month and that the price can be lower in other countries in the future). I think it's too early to say that they're going to fail, but yeah, it can happen. I can see the risk. From a space access point of view, having so many satellites is a problem, but the problem is bigger than SpaceX/Musk.
To end, I'll just say that personally I wouldn't be affected if Starlink failed and that I'm rooting for SpaceX only because we need more affordable space access and more innovation to a space that has become a bit stagnant. Maybe this video is right and it's all a scam and they'll fail. I guess time will say.
--- End quote ---
You seem to be glossing over the calculations that show Starlink WILL FAIL, because even in a best-case scenario if SpaceX delivered everything they need, its still not remotely economically viable to launch that many satellites while also replacing them every 5 years, not to mention the environmental impact of that many launches. Plus the space junk problem it causes will have already have killed off any possibility of space travel, as once again he lied about how quickly those satellites de-orbit and break up in the atmosphere.
This isn't just about people losing out when the network fails, its about the long-term damage it will cause in the process. The absolutely bizarre situation that Starlink is detrimental to not only the claimed goals of SpaceX, but every industry that uses satellites or space travel, including early warning detection of asteroids which I think is a bit more important than rural broadband.
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