I didn’t realize how temporary and disposable Starlink’s satellites were. They incinerate 4 or 5 a day by de-orbiting them into the ozone. Here’s a pretty good CNET article that talks about how they “dispose” of them. IDK, doesn’t seem sustainable. They also mention the bandwidth gains are being diminished with the influx of new users, so their solution is more temporary satellites.

You are right in how wasteful it is, especially since it turned out a lot of those satellites don’t even make it to 4 years.

However there is zero risk of space trash with Starlink. They orbit so low, it’s basically within the atmosphere still. They need to constantly boost themselves, otherwise they fall down and burn up. So these satellites are coming down within years all on their own, even without any controlled disposal.

It’s insanely wasteful, but it keeps SpaceX in business launching every week, which is kind of the point. But at least there isn’t a Kessler syndrome waiting to happen.

Starlink provides service to areas where fiber is impossible. Like the middle of the ocean and actual rural areas where fiber runs could be tens of miles or more between homes. Those are area where no one will build out fiber unless the homeowner is paying for it themselves, the various government programs would never cover those actual rural areas despite what they claim. At best they might cover city outskirts for new infrastructure, where fiber nodes are already relatively close by. They’re never adding fiber to existing rural farms and ranches.

They are not a 1:1 service comparison. You would need to compare It to other satellite providers, and there isn’t a comparison because all of those are dogshit in comparison to Starlink.

There’s a reason it’s as popular as it is so quickly despite satellite internet in general not being new. The low earth satellite constellation means a massive difference in capability compared to conventional geostationary satellites. Multiple second latency, slow downloads nowhere near advertised double digit Mbps speeds, single digit Mbps upload speeds and often monthly data limits as low as 50GB per month are what the conventional satellite providers offer.

If only we could adjust the plot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes to where it’s mostly just cleaning up dead starlink satellites.

In any case, highly recommended as a fantastic anime. And for those that haven’t seen it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZESIHA0qK3U

That’s a dubbed trailer, but those of you looking for a Japanese language trailer know where to find it or probably have already watched it lol

I’m not sure what isn’t viable about it, I mean it’s demonstrably viable, it’s working now.

Well, now that you bring it up…

lol you really threatened Lemmy with a good time

Yes, absolutely. And power too

Don’t threaten me with a good time!

What do you mean little to show for it?

Reusable rockets are cool

No I’m also with the commies on single payer health care and super high tax brackets for the rich. I do hate me a fascism, infact I hate all authoritarians.

I’m clearly for the workers rights we have fought for and established in this country. And while I can acknowledge the communist impact in these achievements, I would not go ahead and give you guys full credit nor say that these are policies that are specific to you. Most of this stuff is just center/left social welfare and human rights. Commies are the ones that like to do purity tests and isolate anyone that doesn’t agree with 100% of your policy points.

Pretty big jumps from liberal to leftist to self proclaimed communist ideas on how these ideas and policies look, so yes we agree on general principles and concepts. But we certainly don’t agree on how to bring them about.

Also, every single self-proclaimed communist is on the suspect list because you guys did a lot of campaigning against Joe Biden to help Donald Trump get elected so I’m just saying I don’t really fuck with you guys anymore. That’s my new purity test. Did you support Joe Biden and Kamala during the most important election in American history?

*in theory

The agency that landed people on the moon so long ago most of the people involved have died if old age, and the event will soon pass out of living memory?

The one where when they let a single rocket explode, one time, rocked the nation, because their record was so close to flawless?

The one that constantly gives us new sources for scientific data?

Yeah fuck them. They never made a dick rocket.

You mean the NASA who landed people on the moon?

So let’s assume you aren’t a moon landing denier and use that as a baseline, NASA is clearly capable of things given the right circumstances and budget.

SpaceX benefited from his reputation and money, because they sure as shit didn’t benefit from his technical acumen.

Business wise he is successful because he’s rich and influential and that works to mitigate how shitty he is at actually running an organisation, that doesn’t mean he has skills as a business person that means he has money and influence, in his case originally from the mine, then from buying and bullying his was in to businesses that were technologically sound and boosting them with his money.

You could make an argument he’s a relatively good investor, but he’s an actively bad CEO.

Not to mention that Musk himself contributed nothing to SpaceX’s technical achievements. All he did was insist that the audio of their launches and recoveries include employees cheering maniacally - easily the most annoying aspect of SpaceX.

You paid for services rendered. By your logic you should eventually own your neighborhood grocery store because that’s where you buy your bread.

Let’s say I bought you a car, I paid for it in full and then gave it to you, and in return you sometimes drive me around.

Let’s say I get tired of this arrangement, should I repossess the car just to drive it into the ocean? What would be the point of that? Sure, it’s rightfully mine, but what good does it do to destroy it?

“IT BELONGS TO US” is not a very compelling argument for arbitrary distribution.

Us? Do you own NASA? Do you have any say on how funds are assigned to NASA? No? Then it doesn’t belong to “Us” it belongs to the government, a distinct organization with different goals and motivations than “Us” the people.

I hear you, why can’t we be in that timeline?

From this admin? Nah. It’ll be stolen and given to, idk, Thiel or Vance or whoever, but not nationalized, just reprivatized.

As we all know, private corporations don’t charge whatever they want, and don’t jack up the prices because of a “Fuck you, why not?” fee and bill.

It’s hilarious seeing all these “anti oligarch” people come out of the woodwork now that it’s a catchphrase of their political party, despite that party being run by oligarchs.

Like you said, this is how the world has been essentially forever. People are only against it now that their teams oligarchs are upset that they aren’t in as much control as usual.

First of all, America is not “the most violent empire on the planet.” America has the capability of being the most violent nation, but at the moment, our potential for violence is being eclipsed by other nations who are actively employing the same levels of violence that we are capable of. Nothing we are currently doing comes close to the violence that Russia and Israel are employing.

And yes, America is the only nation to have deployed nuclear weapons against human targets, but that was 80 years ago, and ended the worst war in human history. After demonstrating its power, just the presence of nuclear weapons in a nation’s arsenal has been enough to keep the most powerful, well-armed, violent nations (including America) from going too far.

I’m sorry, but credit for what? For being born privileged and buying talent? If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em, right?

Yeah, I guess he deserves praise for being a good liar and basically selling pipe dreams?

Sure, he gets credit for building hype and getting investors on board. He’s a decent salesman, and probably decent at business in general.

I don’t care if he’s rich or not, he’s relatively harmless when it comes to things I care about. Trump, on the other hand, is dangerous because he seems to work off vibes and compliments, and that’s scary.

The GM situation was a more than a bailout, they took complete control of the company, took it private, liquidated some assets, then sold it off in a new IPO.

It’s not all that different from a private equity firm doing the same thing, the major difference is the legal protections the US had (e.g. it got priority over all other creditors). If the US wanted to keep it and run it, it could’ve.

It was more than something like a loan, the federal government actually a fair amount of control over the company. It ended up divesting itself once the new, restructured company made its IPO, but during the bailout, the US gov was technically in control, and it got priority over all other interests since the company went private with special financing.

It’s certainly different than other nationalized industries, but it was also much more than a regular bailout.

First of all, it was performed the way that nobody knew what to even do with those privatization vouchers. They didn’t directly give anyone stocks, just vouchers for part of a company etc. Those had to be exchanged for stocks.

People didn’t know what to do with them, people had problems feeding their families, and people were offered some money for them. And people thought that’s what capitalism is, you get offered money for something, you give it. Nobody scams you, right?

Since those oligarchs happened to all have right friends, it’s without any doubt not a mistake that those stocks could even be sold.

And - attention - another history lesson. All the Soviet propaganda against religion led to everyone becoming “kinda church-loving” in the 90-s initially. All the Soviet propaganda for scientific view of the world led to thousands of sects and charlatans, together scamming most of the population. All the Soviet propaganda for honest and labor ethic led to most people not even considering such scams really scams, because in Soviet propaganda doing business was treated same as scamming someone.

So nobody even thought what’s happening is wrong. And the part of the population which did understand was those who got the shorter stick. People losing themselves in a bottle or a needle, people literally dying from hunger, people having to do crime or prostitution or mercenary work to survive. It was an unholy kingdom where for a part of the population it seemed they are almost the middle class now, just like in those American movies and ads, and the other part saw those ads and those people daily, but could barely survive.

And then, after a few years, the former part grew some understanding that Russia is approaching fascism, and the latter part, which already lived it since 1993, was so broken that it obeyed the fascists after they gave it a bit of a life without hunger and depression in the 00s.

See, there is a layer of the Russian (and general ex-Soviet) culture, in vibes and emotions, showing things as they really were, but it’s horrible to look into that. It was plainly impossible for a normal person to accept some group of people like Anatoly Sobchak’s daughter as opposition. After real opposition figures were being marginalized, jailed and even murdered for a few years. After the Chechen wars. After the way that privatization happened, and the 1993. Nobody would follow people who are just a subset of the same evil, except playing clean because it’s in fashion.

Then, of course, such a decision, so to say, made by a whole country leads to madness.

And this is what we live since then. Those stormtroopers on crutches storming Ukrainian positions - they know that their orders come from the evil itself. They are not fighting for something or against something, only to feel that evil as more material, or take their share of the suffering, or prove something to themselves. It’s a whole society of depressed people who need to prove something to themselves, because everything around is both evil, fake and dirty, one yearns for purification. It’s desperation of the better kind of people, whether you believe it or not. The worst kind finds ways not to die. It’s even natural for humans, like best shown in Japanese culture of honorable death. In European military cultures honorable suicide was a thing, well, in 2022 a few Russian generals shot themselves. I’ve read about them.

It’s really disgusting to be of the “fat” part of the population of these two.

I’m not sure our idea of happiness aligns.