Awesome, anything competitive at this point to get off of starlink is welcome.
this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
253 points (99.6% liked)
Technology
63451 readers
5459 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
That's definitely good news, if we can get anything Elon out of our lives, it's always a plus.
More competition? LETS GO!
How bad is it for low earth orbit to have multiple companies fighting over the market?
One field it impacts is radio astronomy. We can already see Musk's satellites mess with it (unintentionally) and it's probably only going to get worse from here.
Depends on a lot of factors. Due to uncontrollable factors like small untrackable debris, more satellites is always more dangerous, but that's still an extremely small problem. If all the Starlink-style companies cooperate properly and adopt high tech solutions for collision avoidance, it'll probably be fine - space is really, really big. Additionally, the extremely low orbits are a great mitigating factor for potential parts failures; even if a satellite outright dies, losing its telemetry and maneuvering capability, it'll be gone pretty quick.
Honestly, more than anything, I'd be concerned about the recent science showing that satellites burning up on reentry could be very significantly more damaging to our atmosphere and the ozone layer than previously thought.
I’d be concerned about the recent science showing that satellites burning up on reentry could be very significantly more damaging to our atmosphere and the ozone layer than previously thought.
Can you link to a source explaining the phenomenon? I am curious.
In the big picture I expect collisions and debris in LEO are less of a problem because things at that level tend to naturally deorbit without regular use of propulsion to make up for the effects of atmospheric friction (which is tiny, but still there and adding up over time).
Low earth orbit is very big. It's not bad.
Fuck the stars. Like they do anything for profits.
We need the UN to have crown corporations
I would support a petition for the UN to maintain control of that market. 1 it would give the UN an more active role and give it a means of funding itself 2 it would prevent multiple companies from rushing to install their cluster of sats keeping the sky as free of debris as possible
Just initial idea...
Would have been nice,but sadly we see how the US is handling the UN right now.
At least the EU has decided to get one unified network with Iris2 now. That is at least a step in the right direction.
Damn that sounds impressive. Hopefully they can get this service deployed before the others do and they can start to claim some more market share
Except Starlink already has direct to cell technology, with satellites already in orbit, and limited coverage already available. I don't know if they're using 5g, but this tech is available to the public already.
The article states that Starlink requires special equipment to access the satellites, and that's just not true.
Accurate.
More competition is good IMO. Ideally, we'll end up with a cross-company agreement to share satellites so each can compete on overall service instead of infrastructure, kind of like municipal wifi.
At the moment, what is happening is that people sign up to an existing provider, who then bundles in access as part of the plan.
I wonder if it wouldn't be cheaper and more practical to just install antennas all over...
In the ocean too?
And warzones
Considering the number of launches that will be required if there isn't just one provider with tens of thousands of satellites floating around? Yeah.