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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Based on the article the satellites are not staying 100% on their intended spectrum spec and are bleeding some unintended interfere noise. I hope the starlink cloud doesn't interfere so much that it excludes possibility of some research. On earth, if you transmit even slightly out-of-spec radio signals, the government agencies will get mad and really really fast.
ELI5: Low earth orbit is becoming over crowed "FM radio station", with regulation lacking who can broadcast and at what frequency.
I am biased here because I am benefiting heavily from each space-x satellite launch.
Without starlink I would not have been able to afford to buy a house. A weird statement I know, but in spite of being a dual-income, tertiary-educated household we were completely priced out of the city I grew up in including even the most far-flung suburbs.
We were also priced out of every other nearby city and their suburbs, and to be frank - never once in my life have I dreamed of holding a mortgage for almost 1 million dollars. That is indentured servitude for the remainder of my working life in my book and I just can't do it.
With starlink, I am connected to the world. I rely on it to make phone calls, to carry out my work and to socialize. It is the sole pipeline through which we receive all media and entertainment and without it we would have nothing. I am happy living in the middle of nowhere, and I could easily afford a house here.
With that said, starlink already have 12,000 sats in low earth orbit, and plan to bring that number to over 40,000.
The technology works. In two years, I have had one major outage (for which I was financially compensated) but otherwise, not even so much as a slowdown.
If 12K satellites are interfering with the work of science towards common goals of humanity though - 40K will make this much worse. At some point, Space-x must atone for their sins here and do something to help the affected communities. Eg. Launch radio telescopes far above the reach of their low-earth-orbit satellite array and gift its use to the communities whom they have affected.
I don't think it's so easy to walk back what space-x have achieved here. Already they have partnered with several telecommunications companies around the world to bring genuine global cell coverage without the need for any towers. This is a massive leap forward for emergency communications, and continues to open possibilities where before there were none.