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Not sure I’d be trusting Musk’s communication network at this point. Especially not in Ukraine.
Why?
Even ignoring the track record of Starlink, he’s also buddy buddy with Putin.
Track record of what? Helping Ukraine rather than Russia? Even this article is about helping Ukraine, not Russia. Pretty much every Ukraine related action SpaceX has taken goes against this pro-Russia narrative yet the narrative sticks.
Guess you forgot about the time he shut down Starlink to stop a Ukrainian assault?
Maybe you should read the article you linked.
To clarify on the Starlink issue: the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.
Starlink is not enabled in Russia or the occupied territories because it would be against U.S. sanctions and enabling it there would be literally illegal.
Musk has even said that had he been contacted by U.S. officials and told to enable it he would have but they didn’t.
That sure was their rationale after the fact, wasn’t it?
However, as Musk objected immediately and Isaacson would clarify soon after, the claim that Musk had ordered Starlink coverage in Crimea “turned off” wasn’t entirely accurate. (Both CNN and The Washington Post subsequently corrected their reports.)
From the article you linked.
CNN and TWP both corrected what they wrote, but you know better?
Just read the article.
Your claim is that they disabled it. They didn’t. It was never enabled in the first place.
deleted by creator
Because Musk bad. Or something.
All kidding aside, if you’re looking for objective, emotionally mature conversation, this platform isn’t the place.
Because at the start of the war in ukraine a journalist eventually reported that Musk turned off access to starlink to thwart an attack on the Sevestapole port.
Except that didn’t happen, they were never on in Russian controlled territory, and the journalist retracted the statement.
People are still hung up on that though.
This was also when the US Department of Defense was not yet involved and SpaceX was doing this for free, out of pocket, with strict rules about not using starlink as a weapon, because it’s a civilian tool, and being used as a weapon would contravene US law and put starlink at risk of falling under ITAR or some other law which would be VERY bad for SpaceX.
Shortly after that, the DoD went into contract with SpaceX and now they deal with all that and it’s no longer a risk to SpaceX so they can use it as a weapon now.
Then, it was reported that Russia was getting dishes from 3rd parties (smuggling them in) and that again was proof that Musk was supporting Russia. Except it’s not an easy problem to solve, and even the DoD said it was complicated and would be an ongoing game of cat and mouse to prevent.
Edit: I like how hours after I made this reply, someone above is again claiming Musk shut down Starlink to stop the attack, and in the article they link it even talks about what I wrote in this post saying that the claim was retracted. I can’t tell if that person didn’t read the article and took the first link he found… or doesn’t understand the difference between turning something that was on to the off state (action), and simply not turning something that was off, on. (inaction)
Guess you forgot about the time he shut down Starlink to stop a Ukrainian assault? -> link to snopes article
Exactly. People are mad that SpaceX didn’t go out of its way to help Ukraine, and they’re largely making up stuff about them somehow supporting Russia, when SpaceX just wants to provide civilian service
If SpaceX gets involved in US military interests, that’s going to significantly impact their ability to provide their service outside the US.
You just know that once the direct to cell service is live, Russians are going to kill Ukrainian civilians, take their cell phones, and use starlink to send a message, and it’ll be yet more proof that SpaceX does Russia’s bidding!
Yup, SpaceX is always coming up with ways to get their service into Russian hands…
I figured it out…
It’s trickle down war supplies.
SpaceX can’t support Russia directly, so they give all sorts of support to Ukraine. Then, they know Russia will get a small portion of it somehow and that’s how Russia will win the war.
All SpaceX has to do is keep giving more and more hardware to Ukraine and eventually Russia will be able to turn the tide and defeat them!
Oh I was under this false impression. Thanks for the fact check
What’s your point? Yes, he denied a request to turn it on.
SpaceX made the decision prior it wouldn’t be available in Russian controlled territory. Also had he turned it on, that would be using Starlink as a weapon and break US laws (edit: and the terms of their contract with Ukraine), and jeopardize starlink being available world wide for civilian use.
He did not actively turn if off to thwart an attack though. It was already off.
I believe that it was off not because of SpaxeX’s decision but due to U.S. sanctions. Enabling it there would’ve literally been illegal.
Musk has also added that had he been contacted by U.S. officials and told to turn it on he would have, but they didn’t.
Ya, its quite possible it was related to that.
And you’re right, had the DoD contacted them and said were approving this, do it, they would have done it. They won’t fuck around with that. The DoD has control now and does whatever they want with dishes given to Ukraine.
Any details on the technology? “Beaming phone signals” doesn’t tell anyone much. Would this require a proprietary antenna (thus new, flagship-only models after a few years, like iPhone 15 with its emergency satellite calls) for whatever protocol Starlink uses (unless there is some unified ground-to-satellite protocol by now)?
Satellite phones aren’t new, but are expensive for obvious reasons.
Starlink sats have enough transmit power and receive gain to use normal cellular frequencies with a normal antenna on the phone side.
You might think it’s a long way to space, but a few hundred kilometres of direct line of sight to your cellphone antenna isn’t that much more to overcome compared to say, 25 km to a cell tower on the ground.
The biggest hurdle was getting a few thousand satellites into orbit so that coverage and availability is there.
starlink should not exist.
Found the person who’s never lived in a area with dial-up or conventional sattelite as their only options. I hate Elon as much as the next person, but starlink is revolutionary for those with no other options.
Second-hand experience from many years ago when Starlink first rolled out: my friend has a cabin in the Appalachians, outside any cell service, so Starlink sounds great for that. However, Starlink site says there is “no coverage” for that area. Yes, somehow, no coverage for a satellite service. The nearest area with coverage was a town with already-decent 4G. And most large US cities had coverage too. So our inside “conspiracy theory” was that Starlink resells 5G/4G modems for hipsters.
Have no idea if the situation changed since then.
Starlink works differently than conventional sattelite. I’m not an expert, so I’m not going to try to explain it beyond saying that I think it’s due to the properties of the sattelites being low orbit, requiring more ground transmission stations and more sattelites than conventional sattelite internet.
I believe their coverage has increased greatly over the past few years. When it was first out my parents also didn’t have coverage. They do now, and have for a couple of years.
The satellites are extremely close to Earth in order to reduce latency. Traditional communication satellites sit in geostationary orbit hundreds of thousands of kilometers above the surface, this you being that that’s many times the diameter of the Earth so signal delay is pretty noticeable. Starlink satellite wiz around the Earth dozens of times a day, but the advantage is that they’re only 200 km up.
The disadvantage of all of this is that each individual satellite has a very small footprint, so it’s entirely possible for some regions not to have coverage yet as the network is not complete.
but starlink is revolutionary
it’s really not though it’s mid at best.
Do you understand how slow dial up is? Do you understand that conventional sattelite throttles you to unusable speeds after a shockingly low data limit is used up? Those services are not modern internet services. Starlink is. In my testing, I got an average of 45mbps down over a 40GB download. That’s so fucking fast compared to even DSL, which is commonly 10mbps down, and even slower up.
Also, typical satellite has horrendous lag. I used to work with someone who was in a remote area (didn’t even have cell service) and the quality was fine talking with him through VoIP, but it would take a few seconds to get a response for anything. I can only imagine video. Current boss has Starlink and I wouldn’t know a difference.
Heck, up until a few years ago my father-in-law had 1.5mbps DSL and that was pretty much unusable.
Care to elaborate on why not?
A megastructure filling space with trash, a project that in paper looks like either impossible to complete or a total waste of energy, time and pollution to solve a problem we don’t have* and leaving this new net of satellites on the hands of a psycopath.
I really like the idea of starlink, but those are the cons I can think off.
*connectivity is solved by adding cables. What’s the cost (money, energy, pollution + life) of a cable crossing the Atlantic vs the cost of a satellite?
Inb4, I’m not siding with anyone, just trying to make the discussion roll.
Serious question, have you ever been outside of a major city? Because that’s the type of ignorance you typically see from someone who’s spent their entire life in an urban environment.
You’re not running fibre out to every remote settlement, high country station, or remote farmhouse, most of these places aren’t even connected to the grid.
Never mind the many marine vessels that have Starlink.
I generally prefer arguments without this kind of hostility, specially after I specifically said that I was just enumerating whichever cons I could think off.
I think you understand that starlink did not invented internet through satellites. Do we really need this escalation?
I mean, most of the points you came out with are nonsense, and not worth dignifying with a response.
Especially considering a dead Starlink satellite will deorbit and burn up in under a decade, because they fly so low.
People keep posting that and it’s like they don’t actually think about it. Space is fucking enormous it’s very well named. In order to fill all viable orbits up you would have to have literally hundreds of millions of satellites. It’s not like they just whizzing around randomly, we know where they are, so any launch in rocket can avoid them, obviously so because there’s never been a case of a rocket been hit by a satellite.
I think you are greatly underestimating how a chain reaction works.
Starlink can get fucked.
Don’t satellite phones already exist?
You don’t need a satellite phone for this, though
