To me, these are capitalistic solutions looking for problems. It's the whole startup mentality. Let's just throw a bunch of shit in space and see if it ends up being useful for anything. This idea of connecting the world is as false as the other hundred millions times that's been sold.
Useful for anything? Starlink useful to its 2.7 million subscribers. And it's already profitable. As of last year, SpaceX makes more in subscription fees than it costs to build and launch the satellites. The economics will only become more favorable when SpaceX improves their launch capabilities with Starship.
What environmental impact? So far there have been 162 Starlink launches. Each launch uses around 200 tons of RP-1, which is equivalent to the fuel capacity of a Boeing 747. In other words: A single 747 burns more fuel in a year than all the Starlink launches in the past five years.
Rocket launches are far more environmentally non-friendly than planes. You can't just look at fuel capacity. It's the composition and where the waste product gets dumped. Rockets dump their waste much higher up in parts of the atmosphere much more sensitive to it. Comparing a rocket and plane isn't an effective comparison in terms of environment impact. So this:
> A single 747 burns more fuel in a year than all the Starlink launches in the past five years.
is not an accurate summary of the environmental impact of rocket launches.
Also, rocket launches are incredibly disruptive to the local ecosystems of the launch sites.
> is not an accurate summary of the environmental impact of rocket launches.
So what is the accurate summary of the environmental impact of rocket launches? 10 times more than B747? 100 times? How would it look compared to aviation?
> rocket launches are incredibly disruptive to the local ecosystems of the launch sites.
Not according to FAA when they issued license for SpaceX's launches at KSC - [0]
You can just search for it. The general answer is that it is not good, and it's getting worse. The comparison to aviation, once again, is not really needed. Aviation is extremely polluting and damaging to the environment (not just poluttants but also disease and invasive seed spreading). There's nonquestion about that. But it isn't related to rocket launches anymore than other pollution.
What's more, and this is touched some in the articles, deorbiting satellites so routinely is dumping toxic metals and plastics into the upper atmosphere at increasing rates. We're literally turning the atmosphere into a burn skyfill.
> Not according to FAA when they issued license for SpaceX's launches at KSC
The FAA is not an environmental or even scientific agency. Additionally, the FAA has revealed itself to be a captured regulator in several instances. There's no question that it is susceptible to political and monetary pressures.
Well the goal of SpaceX is to launch as many rockets as technically possible. Even if SpaceX could only reach the same impact as the rest of the aviation sector, that would be infinitely too much. The aviation sector is already a problem.
Falcon 9's exhaust is almost entirely carbon dioxide and water vapor. If anything the exhaust is less polluting than aircraft or combustion vehicles, as air-breathing engines create nitrogen oxides.
And yet, that's not true. One of the primary impacts from rocket launches are the heights they reach and the particles they produce, as mentioned in the articles I posted elsewhere.
I'm not sure how the existence of subscribers and profit negates the point. Their are plenty of things that have those that aren't useful beyond a capitalistic sense.
SpaceX provides internet access. Millions of customers pay for it. The revenue from the customers is more than enough to cover the business costs. The negative externalities are much smaller than say... aircraft or cargo shipping. If a sustainable business like that isn't enough to justify usefulness, then what is?
Starlink is not there to bring Internet in places that don't have it. It's here to bring fast Internet in places that already have slow Internet.
The question is: how fast an Internet connection do we need? Do we really need to swipe 4k videos on social network, or to download 50G of docker containers for every build? I don't think so.
I say there is one: survival. Not only of our species, but of the others, too. We're failing at that, and the vast majority of the technology that got developed in the last decades is making things worse.
OK, but I don’t think tech progress = dead ecosystem.
In fact, newer tech tends to be cleaner. We use less land than we would’ve using 1800’s farming techniques, for instance. Nuclear is cleaner than coal.
Also, everybody having more money is a huge help for the environment. Compare the size of the green movements between say, Sweden and the DRC.
Yes, more money = more consumption, but it also means we can do innovative things in a better way.
In this particular case, surely extra-planetary infrastructure is better than millions of miles of ditches with lead cables in them.
Either way, our current state of development isn’t sustainable. It has to be millions of times smaller, or an unknown amount larger. I vote for more tech.
I feel like I almost agree with everything you say, except that I systematically conclude the exact opposite. You seem to keep stopping half-way through every single point you mention:
> In fact, newer tech tends to be cleaner.
Newer tech is cleaner if you ignore rebound effect. It's absolutely certain that in history, new tech has always resulted in more energy use, which is the exact opposite of "cleaner".
> Also, everybody having more money is a huge help for the environment. Compare the size of the green movements between say, Sweden and the DRC.
Everybody having more money means that they can consume more. Do you know who goes on holiday by plane? Those who have more money. It's absolutely clear that those who have more money pollute more, even if they feel good because they drive a Tesla (which is all but environmentally-friendly).
> Yes, more money = more consumption, but it also means we can do innovative things in a better way.
Okay, it is "better" by many metrics. But certainly not by the environmental one. We are talking about the environmental impact here, right? Starlink is technically impressive, but it doesn't mean we should do it. It's just part of the problem, and we don't need it.
> In this particular case, surely extra-planetary infrastructure is better than millions of miles of ditches with lead cables in them.
Surely? It's all but sure. You don't even say precisely what you are talking about: do you account for the cables that are already out there and work perfectly fine? Or do you just consider the cost of bringing fiber to your tent in the middle of the desert? Maybe Starlink is better for that, but we don't need it. In fact we just can't afford it, at this point.
> Either way, our current state of development isn’t sustainable. It has to be millions of times smaller, or an unknown amount larger. I vote for more tech.
This is preposterous. With our current understanding of physics, more tech will certainly not help. We would need a breakthrough that is akin to wishing for a miracle. You may as well wait for Jesus to come back.
But there is more: our society depends on fossil fuels. But not only there is no serious way to replace them entirely (meaning that we cannot save the climate/biodiversity without fundamentally changing society), but they are limited and will become a problem in the next few decades (meaning that society will fundamentally change, whether we want it or not).
You can wait for a miracle, or face the truth: we need to prepare for a world with (much) less energy. And in that world, there is no place for fiber in your tent in the desert.
> We're massively more connected than ever before.
In a certain electronic sense, yes, but emotionally and socially, we are not more connected than ever before. So like I said, this utopian promise of the Internet connecting and liberating and educating us has not happened. In fact, it's the opposite that has happened.
Yeah, this. And people ignoring this point or actively downvoting it ... that's not just puzzling it's symptomatic.
The capitalism I'm fine with, though we need the New Deal version to come back. But universal isolation and depression, or feeling like we live in a factory farm, no.
