What is not proven is if Starlink will work the way it's been sold to you as an idea. What is also no proven is if it can be profitable even if it does work. People in these remote places of the world are unlikely to be able to afford internet... not have a need or desire for it. They have other priorities.
Not to mention there's already ways to get very high-speed internet to remote villages that want it. The only barrier is cost - but for motivated villages and/or governments, it's not very expensive ($10's of thousands up front cost, trivial long-term costs). I've sat in many conferences with people building out wireless networks in remote regions - very fascinating work.
There's some pretty non-trivial chance Starlink was only approved because of the Cult of Elon.
SpaceX wants to put 1,584 satellites in orbit[1] to the cost of around $10 Billion USD, and will need to replace these routinely due to orbital decay.
There's only 2,666 satellites in orbit currently[2]. 1,327 of which are from the US[2].
Re: No fly zones - they can be established for all sorts of things. There's no fly zones around many amusement parks, for example, and not just because of the remote possibility of some terrorist attack.
> UN General Assembly HRC declared access to the internet as a basic human right
That seems simply to be virtue signaling. Of course everyone should have access to information and knowledge, but that's not exclusive to the internet.
It costs money to provide internet access. Basic Human Rights don't cost money to exercise. The Right to be Free doesn't require a monthly payment to some mega-corp. If it did, you would not be free, would you?
Literally anything that hasn't been done yet hasn't been proven, so I don't really understand how you can use that as an argument against it. At worst, if it is unsuccessful, then the satellites will just stop getting launched and will all fall back to earth after a few years, and Elon et al will be out a few billion dollars.
> People in these remote places of the world are unlikely to be able to afford internet... not have a need or desire for it. They have other priorities.
Not my experience visiting some remote areas of India, Nepal, and Tibet. A single anecdote, but I gave a man a ride to the top of a mountain near Ganden monastery so he could use his cell phone. He went with a list of messages of various people in his family and who to send the messages to. He would normally walk 3 hours uphill in order to get service to send those messages (This was in 2007, maybe things have changed since then).
> The only barrier is cost - but for motivated villages and/or governments, it's not very expensive ($10's of thousands up front cost, trivial long-term costs).
Many places in the world wouldn't be able to drum up tens of thousands of dollars, and it isn't for a lack of motivation. But they might be able to drum up $500 and then $60/mo.
> There's some pretty non-trivial chance Starlink was only approved because of the Cult of Elon.
The FCC isn't composed of the twitter mob or the spacex subreddit.
I'm not really interested in debating positive or negative rights, or whether the UN was virtue signaling. My point was that many people view internet access as extremely important for humanity, and starlink and other projects may be an incredible boon for the world, at the expense of some astronomy observations.
Not to mention there's already ways to get very high-speed internet to remote villages that want it. The only barrier is cost - but for motivated villages and/or governments, it's not very expensive ($10's of thousands up front cost, trivial long-term costs). I've sat in many conferences with people building out wireless networks in remote regions - very fascinating work.
There's some pretty non-trivial chance Starlink was only approved because of the Cult of Elon.
SpaceX wants to put 1,584 satellites in orbit[1] to the cost of around $10 Billion USD, and will need to replace these routinely due to orbital decay.
There's only 2,666 satellites in orbit currently[2]. 1,327 of which are from the US[2].
Re: No fly zones - they can be established for all sorts of things. There's no fly zones around many amusement parks, for example, and not just because of the remote possibility of some terrorist attack.
> UN General Assembly HRC declared access to the internet as a basic human right
That seems simply to be virtue signaling. Of course everyone should have access to information and knowledge, but that's not exclusive to the internet.
It costs money to provide internet access. Basic Human Rights don't cost money to exercise. The Right to be Free doesn't require a monthly payment to some mega-corp. If it did, you would not be free, would you?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
[2] https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/satellite-database#:~:text=....