FCC Denies Starlink Low-Orbit Bid for Lower Latency
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FCC Denies Starlink Low-Orbit Bid for Lower Latency
https://spectrum.ieee.org/starlink-vleo-below-iss
Agency says SpaceX craft could hinder International Space Station
Please try reading the article before commenting. This is the very first paragraph.
The FCC has once again rejected a Starlink plan to deploy thousands of internet satellites in very low earth orbits (VLEO) ranging from 340 to 360 kilometers. In an order published last week, the FCC wrote: “SpaceX may not deploy any satellites designed for operational altitudes below the International Space Station,” whose orbit can range as low as 370 kilometers.
That doesn't say anything about lethal range. It just says they won't allow it to be lower than the ISS's orbit. It could be because of "lethal range" or it could be that they want as little crap in the way of routes to and from the ISS.
I looked over the article (albeit very quickly) just in case you didn't quote enough of the article on accident and I didn't see anything about lethality. I could have missed it or I'm not reading between the lines (maybe missing their meaning in the article).
There's less than 10 kilometers between them and SpaceX has been known to have some go out of their designed orbit. So it has the potential to be and they determined the risk is not worth it.
In general, these things are zipping around the earth at 17,000 mph. There's 5,504 of them. Space is already dangerous with all of the space garbage in orbit. If these were to collide it could easily make getting things into orbit due to the debris and the chain reaction if the debris caused more debris from impact even more dangerous. Space garbage really is something we don't have a solution for.
This is a pretty ignorant take and borderline disinformation. Yes they travel fast. Yes there are a lot of them. No they don't pose any risk of blocking space travel even if they all exploded because they're not in a stable orbit where they can just stay up there forever. They're low enough that they're facing a constant pull back into earth.
Just for others, they'd all burn up in the atmosphere in a few years.
So it may disrupt things temporarily but not long term.
Awww poor Musk. Maybe stop helping Russia by giving them access while denying Ukraine. Also fuck you for ruining Twitter .
Edit - apparently coverage on the Crimean coast was never activated. Still dickish for helping Russia. They're sanctioned up the wazoo and this might come back to bite him. Starlink is a recipient of US Federal Assistance and that can easily be leveraged.
For what? Is your life in any way any meaningfully different? Why is it important to be connected to people that you don't know, will never know, and will never interact with? Wouldn't a better expenditure of energy go towards fostering relationships with people in your community?
At least it's easier.
I think Mastodon kinda has the same setup too, but they had all the issues with server-level cascading blocklists and stuff that put me off.
I don't want to be blocked from seeing the posts of someone I'm interested in on another server just because the admin of my server refuses to block another server which refuses to block posts from servers where some users have posted "offensive" content, etc. - like it's so many levels of separation it's ridiculous.
yeah the blocklists were a mistake, instead of the interconnected new internet we just got even worse social bubbles and isolation, the only difference from current social networks is that it's not algorithms doing it, but admins.
Then why complain about what another person decides to waste time on the Internet while you're wasting time on the Internet? I'm replying to you while taking a shit so that's multitasking.
Message board isn't social media.
Social. What we're doing now.
Jazzhands Media!
Facebook is just a message board with different features.
Yes. It's called profiles, that you use to generate links, socially, within your peer group.
Not a fucking message board. You don't get to re-define history just because something new came up.
It was by no means perfect, but it did become the defacto town square. The Arab Spring was facilitated in part through Twitter and George Floyd related protests were arranged, amplified and shared through Twitter.
There's plenty of incompetence in Musk, but a significant part of this "effort" was deliberate, as a favor to other like minded billionaires upset and frightened that the people had a working, maturing megaphone. They needed that to be broken, if not fully silenced, and musk was the pathetic piece of shit with daddy issues that the other old money billionaires could convince to do the work here as an attempt to gain their favor.
Which is why I don't understand why the likes of Blue Sky and Mastodon try and copy it. It's a terrible idea.
Why are you repeating retracted fake news? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/12/elon-musk-biographer-admits-suggestion-spacex-head-blocked-ukraine-drone-attack-was-wrong
That's the problem with media today.
I truly don't blame you for not knowing. There were huge headlines for the initial story, and then smaller headlines on the retraction. Then even after the retraction people that KNOW it was retracted still spread it because Issacson must be lying.
Its not just Elon, this happens everywhere.
Get the big headlines, and bury the corrections or clarifications.
Granted, in this case I don't think Issacson was malicious in his original reporting, but it really often is malicious
I found myself in a huge echo chamber over Brexit. World news on Reddit had me believing that it would never happen.
And yeah, I follow someone for Ukraine news on YouTube. He's pushed some theories that proved to be untrue so I guess that I have to do my own fact checking. Overall he seems to be good, but he seldomly talks about times that he was wrong.
He denied the request by Ukraine to enable starlink in crimea because "it would make SpaceX explicitly implicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation" it would also have been illegal for him to do so because US sanctions prohibits it. The original claim about him disabling it is false and has been debunked. It wasn't enabled in the first place. He also later added that had the US government asked him to enable it he would have but they didn't.
I also find it hilarious that Russia being able to obtain a limited amount of terminals is somehow proof that Elon is helping Russia but at the same time you're conveniently ignoring the fact that there's thousands of terminals in use on the Ukrainian side which SpaceX sent there for free when the invasion happened. It's not Russia he sent those to but Ukraine.
He didn't send them all for free, they were also funded by the U.S. government. Sanctions say sales of such would be illegal in Russia. So yes, people in Ukraine can legally purchase and use Starlink and people in Russia legally should not be able too.
So any of his terminals being used illegally are in fact his responsibility. They are using his companies satellites which are included in the sanctions.... It doesn't seem very confusing to me
What part of that is confusing
Do you know how many terminals SpaceX has already found out to used by Russians and have been disabled? Because I don't but you seem to be implying that they're not doing anything about it, so what are the numbers?
So you claim they are doing something about it and demand someone else find you proof for your claims. Run around with your goal posts all you want.
I'm not claiming anything. How could I know? I'm assuming they do, but to what extent is anyone's guess. If someone has that strong opinion about it, I think it's only logical to expect them to have a reason for it, such as evidence to the contrary.
The BlueAnon cultists don't care about the truth.
It's crazy how polarised these sorts of debates have become. I wish we could have sensible politicians with views like Andrew Yang, Lee Kuan Yew, Robert Zubrin, Nayib Bukele, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, etc. - focus on developing technology and building up infrastructure and institutions for everyone.
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I can't speak for the others but Dawkins has fallen into an anti-trans rabbithole lately and has said some pretty hateful stuff. :(
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It goes to show that people are complex, and contain multitudes. Cherrypicking isn't a bad thing. The older I get, the harder I find it to get along with strangers, because I'll have some point of contention with them. :/
Good call. Being crashed into with a 16km/s closing speed probably would be a hindrance.
"The FCC has once again rejected a Starlink plan to deploy thousands of internet satellites in very low earth orbits (VLEO) ranging from 340 to 360 kilometers. In an order published last week, the FCC wrote: “SpaceX may not deploy any satellites designed for operational altitudes below the International Space Station,” whose orbit can range as low as 370 kilometers. Starlink currently has nearly 6000 satellites orbiting at around 550 kilometers"
Fun fact: Tiāngōng, the Chinese Space Station currently in orbit, operates as high as 450km up (its currently at 360km). So its even closer to the Starlink constellation that the ISS is.
The ISS is planned to deorbit in 2031: https://www.nasa.gov/faqs-the-international-space-station-transition-plan/
Wonder if the FCC ruling will change after it comes down?
That's still a lot of satellites floating around that can get in the way. And it doesn't even include the other LEO providers like Project Kuiper spooling up.
At some point there will be more satellites than is feasible to manage.
If they aren't already, will we start treating them like telephone poles or cell towers?
It's already a bit of a mess to manage, especially if you include the debris. Back in 2007 China blew up a satellite, and as of a few years ago that represented almost a third of all tracked space debris.. (it has its own wikipedia page) If these jokers ever start deliberately blowing up each others' satellites, we could end up in a situation where space becomes inaccessible.
If these jokers ever start deliberately blowing up each others' satellites, we could end up in a situation where space becomes inaccessible.
We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.
Nope, everyone knows that the best source of power is humans.
Mobius even admits like two lines later that the machines even have fusion power, and then no one ever talks about that ever again. The whole movie makes no real sense when you think about it.
Well for starters they wanted to use us for computing power not energy. But it didn't test well because your average movie goer didn't understand.
There's wildly different orbits. Starlink flies low and has a decaying orbit due to atmospheric drag meaning nothing is going to stay up there for very long. They designed them to just burn up on reentry after ~5 years. Stuff in much higher orbits are more of an issue because they don't experience the same amount of drag.
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Has Starlink considered just using really tall antennas? Should be a lot easier than all the risks associated with putting equipment into low Earth orbit.
I can SEE his removedass writing a mad xit right now in my head, and I hate that its so easy for me to do this.
What is the actual technical reasoning? These all have active tracking, I can't imagine it ever being an issue for missions (compared to defunct Soviet satellites with no tracking, like Kosmos 2221 and Kosmos 1408).
It'd be cool if Starlink could also be used to replace some base stations, although I guess the huge power requirements are an issue there.
It's a shame to see technology held back due to political interference like this though. Hopefully China will achieve it instead. Imagine how much this can help the developing world - like high-speed internet for Cuba (if the USA doesn't block it) and rural Nicaragua, etc.
I would expect it's the sheer number that would be BELOW the ISS. Active tracking or not, there's already plenty of things that influence when you can launch to the ISS. Having to navigate a route through 10,000 satellites between the earth and the ISS is just adding another obstacle they don't need.
The article seems to make clear, they can get this if they clear it with NASA. The implication being NASA believes this will be a problem for them, and if I had to choose who to believe between a company run by Musk, and NASA. I'd choose NASA personally.
Yeah y’know who’d love a low orbit relay dialed into all the root servers? Rhymes with Tooti Fruity all Rootie?
Ok FCC, then how do you plan on getting internet to me? Choppy terrestrial with 20% packet loss wasn’t working, Verizon lte with 2mbps upload wasn’t working, hughesnet…do we need to even mention it? Verizon dsl with 1.5/.25 isn’t even internet.
So please tell me how you’re going to do something about it other than deny me solutions? Starlink has been the best thing to happen to rural US in a long time.
So, what you're saying is, their current setup is working for you, and their new proposal for lower-orbit satellites isn't really necessary?
If you want low latency go to urban areas. Otherwise accept medium latencies and stop to scream at the sky.
Does the International Space Station worthes safety means nothing to countryside people ? Are you so self centered ?
What about rural farmers' children who want a good education? What about Cubans who are denied deep-sea cables service by the USA?
This is incredible technology that can help tens of millions of people.
"Just be a rich urban American" isn't a good answer for the rest of the world's population.
How do slightly higher latencies impact any of that?
You don't even notice those unless you play a FPS. Last I checked, pwning b00ns in CS isn't vital to a good education.
To make it competitive with local Internet, so all services work well. On high latency connections lots of stuff like websockets, etc. will struggle too.
It's competitive because as you describe, it's better than all other available forms of Internet access.
I used web sockets exactly once in an interactive piece of software. It worked perfectly fine with over-the-ocean latencies, which are higher than Starlink.
It's a non-problem.
I think Cubans would prefer access to other ressources before low lantecy internet. Because that's what the subject of this article. Starlink wanting access to very low earth orbit for reduce the signal distance, so the latency.
You can still have access to internet with a medium latency.
Then I'm the rest of the world. I live in an area with a density of 100people by km square. And I have fiber. Yes I'm from a west european country. My download is at more than 900mb, my upload the half. And I have a ping of 20ms.
That’s not how it works?
Everyone deserves decent internet access. Restriction to access results in poverty.
It is quite literally how it works.
In addition, Starlink is not a good solution. It requires an infinite amount of rockets sent into low earth orbit forever, at a heavy subsidised cost paid for by American taxpayers.
You should be pushing for long-term solutions, not ones that literally fall out of the sky six months after the subsidies stop.
It requires an infinite amount of rockets sent into low earth orbit forever
True.
at a heavy subsidised cost paid for by American taxpayers.
How are American taxpayers subsidizing Starlink? The gov certainly isn't paying for Starlink launches or satellites . Starlink was also denied the $866 billion for government funded rural broadband/
Where is the tax money you're saying come from?
Well, they were going to get subsidies https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/spacex-starlink-wins-nearly-900-million-in-fcc-subsidies-auction.html
Now starlink mad they not https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/spacex-blasts-fcc-as-it-refuses-to-reinstate-starlinks-886-million-grant/
It's a good thing that these are put on the low earth orbit which decays faster. That means it cleans itself of space junk in a relatively short time. Putting them higher up would mean higher latency and more junk in space for longer amount of time.
The alternative is not "higher orbit satellites", it's "put wires on the earth".
Firing infinite rockets that fall out of the sky in a year is a bad, wasteful option that only exists because the American government is not under enough pressure to fix its infrastructure problems.
the rest of the world, even the big countries with lots of remote citizens, they used wires not infinite rockets.
It doesn't make any sense to dig cables into rural areas. It would cost a fortune to connect some remote house to the grid. Going wireless is the obvious solution to this and satellite internet gives you much better connection than cell towers. They didn't dig landlines into poor african countries either but skipped right into mobile phones.
You might have a point if launching rockets was cheaper, but launching infinite rockets forever is not cheaper. The rockets fall out of the sky. So we're talking about one upfront cost or a cost forever.
The FCC and the government at large isn't to blame for this one. The ISPs collected the governments money to run high speed Internet to the rural parts of this country. Blame your ISP for not using the funds as intended. Maybe also blame the government for not holding them accountable for not delivering.
The article in this post is about the FCC refusing Starlink access to the very low orbit, which is close of the ISS orbit. Starlink wants access to this low orbit, for reduce latency. They don't refuse Starlink to send more satellites, so the internet access is still available.
Additionally, get mad at the ISPs that took government funding to expand rural internet access and then didn’t. It’s always the governments fault with these people, never the corporations that are working day after day to shaft people
The government and corporations are the same class of people. The government could have prevented that with more conditions and involvement in the grants - but they didn't because they'll get kick-backs from their friends later on.
Jeez, imagine having this little interest in the needs and desires of the people who literally grow your food.
Edit: not necessarily saying LEO satellites are the best solution; I’m the furthest thing from an expert on the topic. This tone just seems wholly unproductive and spiteful.