this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Yay, more space junk, and knowing Google they would abandon the whole thing a couple years in when it gets boring and leave them to rot.
Edit:not actually sat, which makes it weird to call a 'starlink competitor' then, but I don't write the headlines.
They split off from Google.
They are not using satellites, they shine a lazer from one fixed tower to another, with range about 20 km.
Ah, see that's where not reading is a problem. Just saw star link competitor and remembered something a recently about China looking to launch a similar system.
Odd they would phrase it as a 'starlink competitor' then though rather than 'a new ISP bid'. Wireless systems with directional antenna relays are not really new, not sure if any use laser particularly but the concept is essentially the same.
Still raking in the upvotes though! Reading is for suckers!
That sounds similar to WiMax.
Yup. Now we have long-range WiFi filling that niche.
At sufficiently low orbits, the satellites would simply deorbit themselves because of the atmospheric drag. Several Starlink sats have been lost this way.
Yeah, more thinking the wasted time, resources, and emissions involved in building, launching, managing, and then whenever makes it down.
Take all that and make something useful instead, whatever happened to Google fiber being built out all over? More reliable, faster, doesn't involve sending piles of redundant satellites into space...
Supposedly traditional ISP's have tons and tons of lawyers and filed every single step of the way to stop Google from intruding on their local monopolies.
I think the existing telecoms tied them up in mountains of legal bullshit.
Wasn't starlink damaging the ozone layer as well?
I don't know about the ozone layer specifically, but reentry turns the satellite into danger dust -- mostly metal oxides and burnt polymers. Ozone, being a very strong oxidizer, is the most likely to react with the hot debris, so it probably does damage the ozone layer, but I can't quantify the damage, or the released pollutants.
When they say "burn up on reentry" they don't mean disintegrate, they mean burn. It's exactly like throwing thousands of home entertainment systems in a fire except that the pollution is in the upper atmosphere where normal pollution doesn't reach.
- every polluter ever
*Hope you have good lawyers and deep pockets
It was more they're worried it would, because of the sheer scale of metallic satellites that would be burning up in the upper atmosphere