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Stories filed under: "starlink"

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Judge, Jury And Moderator

from the ctrl-alt-speech dept

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.

Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed.

In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:

This episode is brought to you with financial support from the Future of Online Trust & Safety Fund.

Filed Under: brazil, content moderation, internet archive, oversight board, pavel durov, starlink, texas
Companies: meta, spacex, telegram, twitter, x

from the first-do-no-harm dept

Fri, Aug 16th 2024 05:36am - Karl Bode

Last June scientists warned that low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites constantly burning up in orbit could release chemicals that could undermine the progress we’ve made repairing the ozone layer. Researchers at USC noted that at peak, 1,005 U.S. tons of aluminum will fall to Earth, releasing 397 U.S. tons of aluminum oxides per year to the atmosphere, an increase of 646% over natural levels.

Numerous companies, most notably Elon Musk’s Starlink and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, are working on launching tens of thousands of small LEO satellites in the coming years. A new report by U.S. PIRG adds to concerns that these launches haven’t been thought through environmentally, noting that the disposable nature of such satellites means 29 tons of satellites will re-enter our atmosphere every day at peak.

After years of delays, the FCC did recently release rules requiring that satellites be removed from orbit within five years to help minimize “space junk.” But the organization notes that very little if any thought was given by innovation-cowed regulators toward the environmental impact of so many smaller satellites constantly burning up in orbit:

“We shouldn’t rush into deploying an untested and under-researched technology into new environments without comprehensive review. Over just five years Starlink has launched more than 6,000 units and now make up more than 60% of all satellites. The new space race took off faster than governments were able to act.”

The steady launches are also a notable pollution concern, the report notes, releasing “soot in the atmosphere equivalent to 7 million diesel dump trucks circling the globe, each year.” Space X has consistently played fast and loose with environmental regulations, with regulators even in lax Texas starting to give the company grief for releasing significant pollutants into nearby bodies of water.

These concerns are on top of additional complaints that the light pollution created by these LEO satellites are significantly harming astronomical research in a way that can never be fully mitigated. And again, the problems we’re seeing now are predominately caused by Musk’s Starlink. Bezos and other companies plan to launch hundreds of thousands of more satellites over time.

SpaceX’s Starlink service can be a game changer for those completely out of range of broadband access. It’s also proven useful during environmental emergencies and war. Getting several hundred megabits per second in the middle of nowhere is a decidedly good thing, assuming you can afford the $120 a month subscription cost and up front hardware costs.

But while Starlink is great for global battlefields, vacation homes, yachts, and RVs, it’s not truly fixing the biggest problem in U.S. broadband right now: affordability. It lacks the capacity to really drive competition at the scale it’s needed to drive down rates, and as its userbase grows it’s inevitably going to require more and more heavy-handed network management tricks to ensure usability.

So while these LEO services are a helpful niche solution to fill in the gaps, they come with some fairly notable caveats, and it’s generally more economically and environmentally sound to prioritize the deployment of fiber and then fill in the rest with 5G and fixed wireless. It’s a major reason why the Biden FCC retracted a wasteful billion-dollar Trump handout to Starlink, something that made MAGA cry.

Filed Under: constellations, environment, fcc, leo, low earth orbit, ozone layer, satellite, starlink
Companies: spacex, starlink

Republicans Are Mad The FCC Rejected Elon Musk’s Attempt To Get A Billion Dollars In Subsidies To Deliver Pricey Satellite Broadband To Some Traffic Medians

from the always-the-victim dept

Thu, Dec 14th 2023 05:23am - Karl Bode

You might recall that Elon Musk claims to hate taxpayer subsidies. They should all be “deleted.” Except for the subsidies given to his companies (often for doing nothing), of course.

Back in 2020, Musk’s satellite broadband venture, Starlink, gamed a Trump-era FCC subsidy program to try and grab $886 million in taxpayer dollars. It was a deal consumer groups noted was a huge waste of money, because the proposal itself — which involved bringing expensive satellite broadband to places like airport parking lots and traffic medians — clearly wasn’t the best use of taxpayer funds.

The Biden FCC noted the problems with the application and forced Starlink to re-apply. After some whining Starlink did, but was then rejected again by the FCC last year. The FCC stated that they weren’t sure Starlink could meet program speed goals consistently due to growing congestion and slowing speeds on the over-saturated network.

They also expressed concerns that the service might not be affordable to the heavily rural, lower income users most in need of help. Starlink requires a 600upfrontequipmentfeeandcosts600 up front equipment fee and costs 600upfrontequipmentfeeandcosts110 a month, and data consistently shows that affordability is a key obstacle to broadband adoption.

So this week, the FCC formally finalized its rejection of Starlink’s attempt to grab a billion dollars to deliver satellite broadband to some parking lots:

“The FCC is tasked with ensuring consumers everywhere have access to high-speed broadband that is reliable and affordable. The agency also has a responsibility to be a good steward of limited public funds meant to expand access to rural broadband, not fund applicants that fail to meet basic program requirements,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “The FCC followed a careful legal, technical and policy review to determine that this applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade.”

The FCC made the right call. It makes much more sense to spend those subsidies to extend affordable, faster, and more reliable fiber access as far as possible, with 5G and fixed wireless filling in the gaps.

Starlink is nice for folks with absolutely no other options who can afford it, but we’ve noted repeatedly that it lacks the capacity to truly scale. The service only has around 1.5 million subscribers worldwide (far less than the 20 million Musk promised investors it would have by this point). It’s a rural niche option whose importance is routinely overstated in stories (like this latest story at the Nation).

For context, somewhere between 20 and 30 million Americans lack access to broadband. Another 83 million (as of 2020) live under a broadband monopoly. Even with its full suite of low-Earth orbit satellites in space a few years from now, Starlink will barely make a dent in the underlying problem. And that’s before you get to the whole ruining astronomical research thing.

But, of course, Republicans like the FCC’s Brendan Carr are already throwing hissy fits because the Biden FCC refused to waste a billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies on an expensive service that doesn’t scale. Carr, as is his way, took a very valid rejection of a wasteful proposal, and distorted it into a narrative where the government is somehow being particularly unfair to Elon Musk:

Even Elon’s mommy popped up to complain that the mean old government is being mean because it refused to give her son a billion dollars for no coherent reason:

It’s worth pointing out that Musk’s company certainly wasn’t alone in trying to game this particular program (the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, or RDOF) with the Trump FCC and Brendan Carr’s help. The Biden FCC has had to come in and clean up the mess, suing numerous companies that tried to mislead the agency to grab taxpayer money for services they couldn’t actually deliver. All under Carr’s watch.

In fact the Trump FCC and Carr screwed up this particular subsidy program so badly, that when it came time to dole out $42 billion in infrastructure bill broadband funds, the Biden administration leapfrogged the FCC and put the NTIA in charge of managing much of it instead because they no longer trusted the agency’s reputation or competency. So Carr whining about the end result is particularly exhausting.

Again, the Biden FCC (which I criticize frequently and extensively) made the right call here technically and logistically. But Musk and his loyal Republican color guard are already busy reframing this as some kind of seedy personal government vendetta against Musk across the growing right wing propaganda echoplex.

Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, elon musk, fcc, fraud, high speed internet, rdof, rural digital opportunity fund, starlink, subsidies
Companies: spacex, starlink

from the whoops-a-daisy dept

Fri, Sep 15th 2023 05:30am - Karl Bode

To be clear: SpaceX’s Starlink service is a game changer for those out of range of broadband access. Getting several hundred megabits per second in the middle of nowhere is a decidedly good thing, assuming you can afford the 600hardwareand600 hardware and 600hardwareand110 a month subscription cost.

That said, a few telecom analysts had quietly noted for years that the project lacked the capacity to be truly disruptive at any scale. Starlink has also long been priced well out of range for many; a problem given that high broadband prices are the primary obstacle to adoption for huge swaths of underserved America. Then there’s the company’s notoriously terrible customer service and long waitlist.

With that as context, it’s not particularly surprising that Starlink has signed up significantly fewer customers that originally projected. A paywalled Wall Street Journal report (see this non-paywalled Ars Technica alternative) notes that a 2015 Starlink investor pitch claimed that by last year Starlink would have 20 million subscribers and generate nearly 12billioninrevenueand12 billion in revenue and 12billioninrevenueand7 billion in operating profit.

Actual Starlink revenue for 2022 was $1.4 billion. And the company only has around 1.5 million users worldwide; a far cry from the 20 million originally predicted. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband is a sector riddled with failures, so the fact Starlink has reached this point is notable. But the Journal seemed surprised to learn that Starlink won’t change the world anytime soon:

“Starlink is bumping up against a reality articulated by many skeptics of satellite Internet,” the WSJ wrote. “The majority of the world’s population that the business could serve and that can afford high-speed broadband lives in cities. In those regions, Internet service is readily available, usually offers cheaper monthly costs than Starlink and doesn’t require specialized equipment.”

Unlike many of his other projects, Musk was actually fairly clear about the fact that Starlink wouldn’t have the capacity to be disruptive in populated cities. And he noted several times that the project might not be financially viable over the long haul (especially without subsidization, which we all know Musk hates — unless he’s the one being subsidized).

But even in more rural areas, 1.5 million isn’t much of an impact. The FCC (whose data is notoriously… optimistic) notes the U.S. alone has 20 million residents without any broadband access. Some 83 million Americans currently live under a monopoly. Starlink is a tiny drop in the bucket.

The laws of physics and limited capacity aren’t playing well with Musk’s continued decisions to quickly expand access to the service (RVs, airlines, luxury yachts). Over the last few years there have been increasing reports of significant service slowdowns as reality begins to inject itself into the equation. Speedtest provider Ookla has measured it, and found the service has slowed significantly in most countries.

While Starlink has certainly been useful in Ukraine, the flood of stories discussing Musk’s efforts to undermine Ukraine military efforts he personally disagrees with tend to overstate the size and importance of Starlink. Starlink’s customer service also doesn’t appear to be scaling very well, with users routinely noting it can be very difficult to get refunds or even a response email from the company.

So again… Starlink is useful for those out of range of traditional broadband who can afford it, but the idea that it was ever going to truly disrupt broadband access was mostly the byproduct of Musk fanboys and tech press outlets that weren’t fully paying attention. It’s never been something that was going to be disruptive at the kind of scale the company originally promised investors in pitch decks.

There are plenty of challenges on the horizon as well, including fewer government subsidies (a Trump attempt to give Musk’s Starlink a billion dollars for absolutely no reason has long-since fallen apart), a flood of LEO competitors (like Jeff Bezos) coming to market, and Musk’s ongoing erratic descent into tween 4chan memelord dipshittery all pose additional challenges for the service in the years ahead.

Filed Under: broadband, digital divide, elon musk, internet service, low earth satellite, starlink, telecom
Companies: spacex, starlink

from the not-exactly-trustworthy dept

Wed, Aug 2nd 2023 05:24am - Karl Bode

While Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband technology is too expensive and capacity-constrained to seriously put a dent in US broadband problems, it’s helpful in low connectivity situations like disasters, select parts of rural America, or the war in Ukraine. But Musk’s growing power over the fledgling LEO satellite sector has started to worry global military leaders, according to the New York Times.

Especially after an incident last year where Musk restricted Ukraine’s access to the service near Crimea because he personally opposed Ukraine’s military aims:

In Ukraine, some fears have been realized. Mr. Musk has restricted Starlink access multiple times during the war, people familiar with the situation said. At one point, he denied the Ukrainian military’s request to turn on Starlink near Crimea, the Russian-controlled territory, affecting battlefield strategy. Last year, he publicly floated a “peace plan” for the war that seemed aligned with Russian interests.

Musk’s mythology is so outsized, even global military leaders are worried about expressing their concerns that his increasingly-erratic behavior (and ties to countries like China) could impact global connectivity and national security, lest they upset the petulant billionaire:

At least nine countries — including in Europe and the Middle East — have also brought up Starlink with American officials over the past 18 months, with some questioning Mr. Musk’s power over the technology, two U.S. intelligence officials briefed on the discussions said. Few nations will speak publicly about their concerns, for fear of alienating Mr. Musk, said intelligence and cybersecurity officials briefed on the conversations.

In short, imagine the kind of petty, incoherent, counterproductive bumbling that reflects Musk’s management of ex-Twitter, and apply it to a global communications resource increasingly being used for sensitive military endeavors, aid work, and disaster relief.

In some ways the New York Times oversells Starlink’s importance. While slowly growing, the network has unavoidably struggled with speed issues due to the nature of satellite physics. Like Tesla Solar, Starlink customer service is a mess that’s also struggled to scale. There’s that whole undermining scientific research through light pollution thing. It’s also not particularly profitable, relying on the heavy subsidization of Space X to function as a concept.

Personally intervening in military conflicts while spewing right wing tween 4chan memes on a social media platform you’ve made increasingly friendly to CSAM probably isn’t the best strategy to keep this particular gravy train afloat.

Like Tesla Motors, Starlink also has a growing parade of well-funded competitors (like Amazon) looking to enter the space. And all of their lobbyists are surely licking their chops at the idea of using Musk’s erratic behavior and (tendency for self-immolation) as a reason why global organizations and governments should consider switching to less…dramatic communications alternatives.

Filed Under: china, elon musk, leo satellite, military, national security, natsec, russia, starlink, telecom, ukraine war
Companies: spacex, starlink

from the first-do-no-harm dept

Fri, Mar 10th 2023 03:42pm - Karl Bode

Scientists say that low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations like Starlink continue to pose a dire threat to astronomy and scientific research, and that too little is being done to address the issue.

Last fall, scientists declared satellite constellations an “existential threat for astronomy.” In short, the reflection and light pollution (Musk claimed would never happen in the first place) is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated. Musk’s promises of a fix have, like many of his products, been a no show.

German researchers recently studied LEO satellites’ impact specifically on the Hubble telescope and the results weren’t great:

The research, led by Sandor Kruk from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, found that 3.7% of Hubble images taken from 2009 to 2020 were tarnished by satellite streaks. By 2021, this number had risen to 5.9%. There were 1,562 Starlink and 320 OneWeb satellites in orbit at the time, “increasing the population of satellites close to the orbit” of Hubble, the scientists write.

Things have gotten worse since this data. And of course there are numerous other companies, including Amazon, that are preparing to launch tens of thousands of additional LEO satellites in the next few years.

It’s worth noting that the newer Webb Space Telescope isn’t impacted, given it’s 932,000 miles away. But numerous ground based observatories have reported the same problems Hubble is experiencing, forcing them to implement costly and impractical countermeasures they say can’t scale with the growth of LEO deployments.

Space X and Starlink SpaceX recently entered into a voluntary coordination agreement with the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to try and mitigate some of the worst effects its Starlink satellite network is having on ground-based astronomy observations. The issue was forced by the Biden FCC, which wouldn’t give approval for Starlink’s 30,000 satellite launches until such a deal was struck.

Musk being Musk, and the FCC being, well, the FCC, there’s no guarantee that the effort ever amounts to much, that SpaceX and Starlink adheres to any requirements that come from the deal, or that the FCC will hold anybody accountable should Space X, Starlink, Amazon, or other politically influential companies fail to address concerns.

Filed Under: astronomy, broadband, Hubble telescope, leo, low earth orbit satellites, science, scientific research, starlink, webb telescope
Companies: spacex, starlink

from the sorry-about-that-whole-astronomy-thing dept

Fri, Jan 20th 2023 03:44pm - Karl Bode

For years, scientific researchers have warned that Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband constellations are harming scientific research. Simply put, the light pollution Musk claimed would never happen in the first place is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated.

Musk and company long claimed they were working on upgraded satellites that are less obtrusive to scientists (using dielectric mirror film and solar array changes to minimized reflection), but it’s Musk, so those solutions haven’t materialized years after they were promised.

That said, Space X and Starlink SpaceX has entered into a coordination agreement with the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to try and mitigate some of the worst effects its Starlink satellite network is having on ground-based astronomy observations. The issue was forced by the Biden FCC, which wouldn’t give approval full Starlink’s 30,000 satellite launches until such a deal was struck:

According to reports, the FCC gave permission for the company to launch 7,500 of the nearly 30,000 satellites it hopes to send aloft, while deferring consideration of the rest of the constellation and making a coordination agreement with the NSF a condition of the licence.

Musk being Musk, and the FCC being, well, the FCC, there’s no guarantee that the talks ever amount to much, that SpaceX and Starlink adheres to any requirements that come from the deal, or that the FCC will hold anybody accountable should Space X and Starlink fail to address concerns. That’s in large part because the agreements are entirely voluntary:

The agreement is voluntary, since beyond the FCC requirement for such an agreement in the Gen2 Starlink license there is no law or policy requiring SpaceX or other satellite operators to mitigate the effects of their constellation on astronomy.

Again, it’s worth reiterating that Musk insisted that none of this would ever be a problem. And regulators, wary of being accused of harming innovation, didn’t even consider acting until it was already a widespread problem.

It’s also worth reiterating that while Starlink is a useful service for those with no other broadband options, the system’s capacity constraints mean it can never really function at the kind of scale needed to truly address even just the U.S.’ broadband gaps. The service, with a $710 first month charge for hardware and service, still falls well short on a main obstacle to broadband adoption: affordability.

In the interim, astronomers have been forced to adopt elaborate and costly countermeasures, such as a system that tracks all low-orbit positions allowing them to turn off observatory systems when needed. The problem: the solutions place the onus on researchers, and they don’t scale to handle the massive incoming parade of low-orbit systems coming from SpaceX, Amazon, and others.

A voluntary overlay asking SpaceX and Starlink to at least try to not demolish astronomy could prove somewhat performative if there are no hard requirements or penalties involved.

Filed Under: astronomy, fcc, high speed internet, light pollution, low earth orbit satellites, nsf, scientific research, starlink
Companies: spacex, starlink

from the complicated,-expensive-solutions-that-don't-fully-fix-the-actual-problem dept

Tue, Dec 13th 2022 03:34pm - Karl Bode

While Space X’s Starlink is a promising broadband option if you’re out of range of traditional options (and can afford the $710 first month price tag), many users who’ve pre-ordered aren’t having a great time. Some say they’ve been waiting for service more than a year, during which time Starlink has often refused to answer basic emails or issue refunds, while imposing price hikes on waiting customers.

The laws of physics also aren’t playing well with Musk’s continued decisions to expand access to the service (RVs, airlines, luxury yachts). Despite endless press hype about Starlink’s disruptive potential, the current generation satellites can only provide service worldwide to somewhere around a million or so users in a country where 20-40 million lack access, and 83 million live under a monopoly.

Things have gotten so bad, some users on Reddit say they’ve seen their Starlink speeds drop as slow as 5 Mbps during primetime.

Good news though: while the average Starlink US speed has dropped from 105Mbps to 53Mbps (still fairly impressive if your only option previously was traditional satellite or shitty DSL), the service should be getting some help from the launch of 7,500 second generation low orbit satellites that just received approval from the FCC (of a total 29,988 Gen2 satellite launch approval requests).

The FCC did impose some limitations to account for the growing surge in “space junk”:

“To address concerns about orbital debris and space safety, we limit this grant to 7,500 satellites only, operating at certain altitudes,” the FCC said. But the approval of 7,500 satellites “will allow SpaceX to begin deployment of Gen2 Starlink, which will bring next generation satellite broadband to Americans nationwide, including those living and working in areas traditionally unserved or underserved by terrestrial systems,” the FCC said.

While updated satellites with greater capacity should aid congestion, Wall Street analysts have suggested that even with a full array of 42,000 next-gen satellites (which will take years to deliver and likely a working and successful Starship launch) total Starlink global subscriber reach could still be somewhere around 6 million, which remains a drop in the bucket when it comes to the kind of volume needed to bridge the digital divide or disrupt the nation’s lumbering telecom monopolies.

That doesn’t account for Starlink’s apparent issues with customer service. Or the fact that the service’s 110permonthcost(plus110 per month cost (plus 110permonthcost(plus600 hardware charge) is out of reach for those who lack access to broadband due to affordability. Nor does it guarantee the fact that Starlink can be profitable, something Musk has repeatedly stated remains largely uncertain in a low-earth orbit satellite industry rife with past failures.

Starlink exists less as a genuine way to tackle the digital divide, and more as a cool side project designed to boost Musk companies’ reputation for innovation, goose stock value, and nab the kind of subsidies Musk routinely claims disdain for.

But the Trump administration’s decision to give Starlink a billion in subsidies has been backtracked by the current FCC due to some falsehoods in the company’s application, and remaining questions about whether the service can reliably scale and survive the next decade (read: if you’re going to subsidize broadband, you should focus on subsidizing future-proof fiber first and foremost).

This is all before you get to the whole “ruining scientific research due to light pollution” issue, which the FCC claims to have helped mitigate by “limiting SpaceX’s operations to below 580 km, requiring SpaceX to continue to coordinate and collaborate with NASA to minimize impacts to NASA’s science missions, requiring SpaceX to coordinate with the National Science Foundation, and requiring SpaceX to coordinate with specific observatories to protect radioastronomy operations.”

Musk being, well, Musk, we’ll see if any of this stuff is actually adhered to, or if we continue to pretend that Starlink is simply so innovative, all federal rules and accountability for service issues should be deemed a cumbersome and unnecessary afterthought.

Filed Under: broadband, digital divide, fcc, high speed internet, low earth orbit satellite, satellite, starlink
Companies: spacex, starlink

from the government-is-not-always-your-mortal-enemy,-weirdo dept

Wed, Dec 7th 2022 03:43pm - Karl Bode

For years, scientific researchers have warned that Elon Musk’s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband constellations are harming scientific research. Simply put, the light pollution Musk claimed would never happen in the first place is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated.

Musk and company claim they’re working on upgraded satellites that are less obtrusive to scientists, but it’s Musk, so who knows if those solutions actually materialize. Musk isn’t alone in his low-orbit satellite ambitions. Numerous other companies, including Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, are planning to fling tens of thousands of these low-orbit satellite “megaconstallations” into the heavens.

One 2020 paper argued that the approval of these low-orbit satellites by the FCC technically violated the environmental law embedded in the 1970 U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Scientific American notes how the FCC has thus far sidestepped NEPA’s oversight, thanks to a “categorical exclusion” the agency was granted in 1986 — long before LEO satellites were a threat.

Last week yet another study emerged from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO, full study here), recommending that the FCC at least revisit the issue:

“We think they need to revisit [the categorical exclusion] because the situation is so different than it was in 1986,” says Andrew Von Ah, a director at the GAO and one of the report’s two lead authors. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) recommends that agencies “revisit things like categorical exclusions once every seven years,” Von Ah says. But the FCC “hasn’t really done that since 1986.”

Despite the fact that low-earth orbit solutions like Starlink generally lack the capacity to be meaningfully disruptive to the country’s broadband monopolies, and are, so far, too expensive to address one of the biggest obstacles to adoption (high prices due to said monopolies), the FCC has generally adopted a “we’re too bedazzled by the innovation to bother” mindset until recently.

The FCC this year did recently decide to roll back nearly a billion in Trump-era subsidies for Starlink (in part because the company misled regulators about coverage, but also because the FCC doubted they’d be able to deliver promised speeds and coverage). And the FCC did recently enact laws tightening up requirements for discarding older, failed satellites to address “space junk.”

But taking a tougher stand here would require the FCC taking a bold stance on whether or not NEPA actually applies to the “environment” of outer space and low-Earth orbit, which remains in debate. This is an agency that can’t even be bothered to publicly declare with any confidence that telecom monopolies exist or are a problem, so it seems pretty unlikely they’d want to wade into such controversy.

Like a lot of Musk efforts (like the fatal public potential of misrepresented “full self driving” technology), the issue has been simplistically framed as one of innovation versus mean old pointless government bureaucracy. This simplistic distortion has resulted in zero meaningful oversight as problems mount, something that impacts not just the U.S. (where most launches occur), but every nation on the planet:

“Our society needs space,” says Didier Queloz, an astronomer and Nobel laureate at the University of Cambridge. “I have no problem with space being used for commercial purposes. I just have a problem that it’s out of control. When we started to see this increase in satellites, I was shocked that there are no regulations. So I was extremely pleased to hear that there has been an awareness that it cannot continue like that.”

I’d expect this issue gets punted into the bowels of agency policy purgatory. Even if the agency does act it will be years from now, and unlikely to apply to the satellite licenses already doled out to companies like Starlink and Amazon. And while there are several bills aimed at tightening up restrictions in the space, it seems unlikely any of them are going to survive a dysfunctional and corrupt Congress.

That means that the light pollution caused by LEO satellites will continue to harm scientific researchers, who’ve been forced to embrace expensive, temporary solutions to the problem that are very unlikely to scale effectively as even more LEO companies set their sights on the heavens.

Filed Under: astronomy, gao, high speed internet, leo, light pollution, low earth orbit satellites, mega constellations, starlink, telecom
Companies: spacex, starlink

from the sound-and-fury,-signifying-nothing dept

Thu, Sep 29th 2022 12:20pm - Karl Bode

Despite Elon Musk’s disdain for the press, his legend wouldn’t exist without the media’s need to hyperventilate over every last thing that comes out of the billionaire’s mouth. We’re at the point where the dumbest offhand comment by Musk becomes its own three week news cycle (see the entire news cycle based on Musk’s comments on a baseless story about somebody cheating at chess with anal beads).

Of course it’s even worse if Musk says something that actually sounds important. Like when Musk recently proclaimed he’d be offering Starlink satellite broadband service in Iran in a heroic bid to help protesting Iranians avoid government surveillance and censorship. It was literally a two word tweet, but the claim, as usual, resulted in lots of ass kissing and a week long news cycle about how Musk was heroically helping Iranians.

But the announcement was hollow. Not that you’d know this by perusing press stories. Only a few outlets, like Al Jazeera and The Intercept, could be bothered to dig behind the claims to discover the announcement didn’t actually accomplish much of anything real.

Iran quickly banned the Starlink website, and the only way actual Iranians would be able to use the service is if somebody smuggled Starlink dishes (aka “terminals”) into the country in the middle of a massive wave of violent unrest, something that’s likely impossible at any real scale. There’s also the issue of no ground stations tying connectivity together in Iran:

Musk’s plan is further complicated by Starlink’s reliance on ground stations: communications facilities that allow the SpaceX satellites to plug into earthbound internet infrastructure from orbit. While upgraded Starlink satellites may no longer need these ground stations in the near future, the network of today still largely requires them to service a country as vast as Iran, said Humphreys, the University of Texas professor. Again, Iran is unlikely to approve the construction within its borders of satellite installations owned by an American defense contractor.

So even if Musk wanted to offer struggling Iranians broadband access they’re extremely unlikely to be able to get dishes. And even if they could get dishes, they probably couldn’t use them because the necessary infrastructure wasn’t in place. Of course Musk knew this. But Musk also knows that any random bullshit that comes out of his mouth creates several weeks of free press because the ad-based U.S. press has steadily devolved into a billionaire-coddling bullshit clickbait and controversy machine.

The Intercept found it didn’t take much for large swaths of the Internet to believe that the billionaire had dramatically changed things in Iran with a tweet. Musk fandom is often a fan fiction based community, where truth is fairly negotiable:

Implausibility hasn’t stopped Musk’s fans, either. One tweet from a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council purporting to document a Starlink dish already successfully secreted into Iran turned out to be a photo from 2020, belonging to an Idaho man who happened to have a Persian rug.

That’s not to say that Starlink can’t help people in countries where emergency connectivity is needed, such as in Ukraine. Or rural Kentucky (assuming they can afford the $710 first month bill). But it is to say that turning your brain off every single time Elon Musk opens his mouth because you’ve convinced yourself he’s some kind of deity is violently annoying to people still living in reality.

And while Musk loves to whine and cry about the unfairness of the press, his legend literally wouldn’t exist without the endless supply of clickbait-seeking editors who are completely uninterested in the actual truth behind any and every claim the man makes, whether it’s the capabilities of “full self driving” or Starlink’s potential.

Filed Under: censorship, elon musk, high speed internet, hype, iran, satellite, starlink
Companies: spacex, starlink