Elon Musk-controlled satellite internet provider Starlink has told Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel it will not comply with a court order to block social media platform X in the country until its local accounts are unfrozen.
Anatel confirmed the information to Reuters on Monday after its head Carlos Baigorri told Globo TV it had received a note from Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in Brazil, and passed it onto Brazil’s top court.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last week ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X, which is also owned by billionaire Musk, for lacking a legal representative in Brazil.
The move also led to the freezing of Starlink’s bank accounts in Brazil. Starlink is a unit of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX. The billionaire responded to the account block by calling Moraes a “dictator.”
Why does the weird one think that he should have more power than a government?
Daddy didn’t say no enough?
Or he said no too much?
Not to his step daughter/baby mama
Why does the weird one think that he should have more power than a government?
Because he quite literally does in a lot of cases. When is he ever punished?
His life experiences? Having that much money and power really fucks with someone’s perceptions of the world.
I’m scared of the day Amazon realises they actually do have more power than the government.
They absolutely do not. It is genuinely shocking how many people in this thread fail utterly at comprehending the scale of the power wielded by the government.
It’s called the government cloud. Where do you think it runs. Amazon could bring a LOT of TLA agencies to their knees pretty quickly if they so chose
Neat.
The state has a monopoly on violence and infinite resources. Amazon is an upjumped bookstore.
You really are clueless.
Why don’t you go ask crowdstrike how easy it is to bring down enormous amounts of seemingly unconnected infrastructure .
Slightly different, but same concept:
Certainly not on AWS ours does not. And even in the US I think the TLAs you might get are the likes of the DMV, not the FBI, or anything else even remotely connected to law enforcement or the military.
Literally on AWS ours does. Since 2014:
That’s why it’s in West Virginia
Amazon engineers will oversee the hardware because AWS owns the hardware and is responsible for maintaining it just as they do in the company’s public data centers.
It seems I severely underestimated just how cooked the US are.
They key is to weld that power but not get caught doing it, then along came Elon…
Amazon may have more power than some tiny countries, but not the US govt as your comment would imply
Because obviously the benevolent billionaire will do so much more good to the world than an evil government specifically elected by the will of the people. (/s)
Money and racism
He absolutely shouldn’t, but isn’t this just a dick swinging contest by both Brazil and Musk?
I haven’t been following it but banning an entire website because they don’t have a ‘legal representative’ in your country sounds bizarre.
Twitter did have an office in Brazil (with legal representation) but after refusing to implement court ordered bans, the court fined them. Elon Musk threw a temper tantrum and shut down the Brazil office and eliminated his legal representation in Brazil.
Note that Musk will implement bans when requested by authoritarians, just for some reason he draws the line when it’s a court order in a democratic country.
Anyway the situation where Twitter doesn’t have legal representation is a situation Elon Musk created. Basically “I fired my lawyers so there’s nothing you can do against me now! Checkmate!” So Brazil says “fine, I guess we’re banning Twitter then…”
So Space Karen thinks the the law doesn’t apply to him and it’s going to cost him a lot of money. Again.
It is when the law says that for a company to operate in Brazil it has to have an appointed legal representative, and you close down your offices and refuse to re-appoint one when the judge demands you to.
Musk entered a “No pants no service” restaurant, took his pants off, was told to put them back on and refused, and is now surprised he gets no service.I don’t know what you thought I said to begin your comment with ‘it is’, because if you’re agreeing it’s a dick swinging contest, then the rest of your comment seems strange.
Anyway, fair enough - like I said, I have not been following it.
Shut down the offices and evacuated employees when threatened with arrest. There’s a whole lot more to this story…
That’s what Musk tells, the reality the legal representative alone could be arrested because Musk don’t want to pay the fines, the employees just lost their jobs because Musk don’t want to spend 0.00001% of his wealth.
I mean, yes, when you are the legal representative for a company, that is what might happen when the company breaks the local laws and refuses to comply with court orders. That’s kinda the whole point.
I think that’s a bit reductive.
It’s fair enough to expect a large company to have a rep to attend court if they want to do business in your country.
If they refuse then it becomes a “rule of law” situation - even if it’s a dumb law, you can’t have a multinational disregard the court’s instructions.
It was banned because they refused to comply with anti-hate speech policies. According to musk, moderating his platform would be “political persecution” against those poor nazis.
I’m on side with Elon and Radio Caroline in this issue.
He’s not broadcasting from inside Brazil’s borders, so the regulators can get stuffed.
The ground antennas that enable the service totally broadcast from inside Brazil.
They can disable them, they can jam them too.
I think the next logical step for Brazil is to revoke a license to operate in that spectrum, rendering all user terminals illegal.
On 3 March 1968, the radio ships Mi Amigo and Caroline were boarded and seized before the day’s broadcasting began. They were towed to Amsterdam by a salvage company to secure unpaid bills for servicing by the Dutch tender company Wijsmuller Transport.[6] Caroline was broken up for scrap in 1972.[21]
Looks like being in an international area doesn’t actually make you immune to consequences. If Brazil doesn’t want something broadcasting then the only way to keep them from shutting it down is to broadcast from inside a national area. If push comes to shove they can ban Starlink too, confiscate any receivers they can find, and even shoot down the satellites.
The satellites may be carrying starshields on them which are national security modules with the DoD. Shooting down the wrong satellite would be attacking US national defense infrastructure.Nevermind starshields are whole DoD satellites.
I think when I read this, I replaced starshield with starlink
the ability to put a wide variety of instruments on the Starshield satellite bus
There are 6350 Starlink satellites in orbit. Dude launches 60 of them at a time, has FCC permission for 12,000, and plans to launch another 30,000.
Brazil has about 12. They can threaten to shoot down Starlink satellites, but they lack the capacity to actually do it.
That’s not how that works? It’s a missile. And they wouldn’t be trying to shoot down the entire system. Just enforce the ban in their own country. Odds are Starlink folds pretty quickly when they start losing assets.
With what weapon system is Brazil going to pose a debilitating threat to a constellation of 6000 satellites?
“Shoot them down” is well outside the scope of Brazil’s military capability.
Fighter jets and missiles. And before you go, oh no fighter jets don’t go that high! Their missiles can go that high with a flying start. Everything after that is just targeting. This is 40 year old technology and it’s available for sale.
And again. There are not 6000 satellites servicing Brazil, nor would they need to hit nearly that many before Starlink caved.
There is a serious lack of appreciation for the power and wealth countries command in this comment section. Brazil has an order of magnitude more wealth to use than Starlink.
Fighter jets and missiles. And before you go, oh no fighter jets don’t go that high! Their missiles can go that high with a flying start
Please elaborate. There are a lot of fighter jets and a lot of missile systems. Please show me one capable of even guiding itself outside the atmosphere. Please show me one capable of causing significant impact to Starlink operations over Brazil.
The missiles typically carried on fighters generally have some kind of rocket motor that burns out in seconds, and utilize aerodynamic fins to maneuver itself to the target. While such missiles are theoretically capable of achieving the altitudes you’re talking about, they become unguided once they lose sufficient atmosphere to maneuver.
Very few missiles actually have an anti-satellite capability. Nothing in Brazil’s arsenal has ever been demonstrated to have such an capacity.
I’ll give you a hint: the total anti-satellite capability of the entire planet could shoot down maybe 50, and would take weeks to replenish. Starlink would replace its losses in one launch.
There are not 6000 satellites servicing Brazil,
These aren’t geosynchronous satellites. They don’t sit still in the sky. They don’t each serve a specific region on earth. They each complete an orbit every 90 minutes. Each and every satellite in the constellation passes over some part of Brazil multiple times a day, providing service to that area as it does. Yes, there are, indeed, 6000+ satellites servicing Brazil. Pick the right one, and you might be able to interrupt service in some part of Brazil for a few minutes a day, until the constellation adjusts itself to compensate.
I’m sorry. How do you expect a jet flying to get even close enough to a satellite to accelerate a missile to it?
Highest ever flow fixed wing “aircraft” is SpaceShipOne with rocket engines. Well above what a typical fighter jet might do: 112km height at 910m/s And a typical rocket will go what? Mach 2 or 3? So let’s say Mach 4 at 112 km, which is 1096 m/s
A typical Starlink orbit is either around 340km height or more typical 550km at either 7726 m/s or 7613 m/s at the different heights.
That gives a minimum distance traveled of at least 228km and a speed gap of 6630 m/s or 23868 km/h that the missile still needs to close.
There are probably ways that Brazil could try and destroy satellites if they want to. But launching missiles from (rocket powered) jets definitely isn’t one of them.
shoot down the satellites.
I guess enjoy immediate war from the US?
The US is not going to go to war over SpaceX’s private Internet satellites.
Lets assume they’re not carrying DOD data (they are), do you really think the US will sit back and let some third world-
-
Destroy US Commercial property
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Start a Kessler Storm
Without consequence? US destroyed Iran’s navy over a single shipping vessel…
The DoD is not depending on starlink in South America. And dropping a few satellites is not going to create a Kessler effect. And Operation Praying Mantis was because they attacked a US Navy Frigate.
Are you done being dramatic?
I’m not sure you understand how Starlink works, it’s not geostationary like you’re implying.
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He really thinks he is above the law.
Why can’t musk get stranded in space like these astronauts at ISS. We would all be better off.
I mean to be fair, Starlink is a satellite network.
Edit: this is a shitty Dad joke for those that are taking my comment seriously.
Most of you don’t deserve your humor license if you have one
To be more fair, Brazil is a sovereign country, Starlink is not.
What part of the joke aren’t you getting???
No I mean it’s literally a satellite network. It’s in orbit.
It’s above the law. Literally.
Edit: a lot of people whooshing this. How? It’s so fucking simple.
Orbit = Space. Brazil = Earth.
Space altitude > Brazil Altitude.
Orbit is literally above guys. Like come the fuck on. It’s a funny joke.
There is literally nothing literal about that
Its a joke. Literally.
Yes. There is. Orbit is a higher altitude than Brazil. Don’t play dumb.
We get the joke. You were being downvoted for your egregious misuse of the word ‘literal’
It’s not misuse. Come on. You can’t fucking honestly convince me that satellites orbit lower than Brazil.
Literal: Conforming or limited to the simplest, nonfigurative, or most obvious meaning of a word or words.
Above: On high; overhead.
It’s ok to not pretend to be stupid to push a joke
Pretend?
Technically, I own a little piece of earth from the center of the core to space. I can’t control the skies above me, but I technically own them.
Brazil does not control the space in which the Starlink network operates. If Brazil wants to get in a pissing match over the operation of satellites that they can’t control, it will be about as effective as my efforts to stop 737s from overflying my house at 30,000 feet.
About all they can do is threaten the operations of other Musk properties operating within Brazil.
In a very real sense, Starlink is above the law. They can’t stop him from operating Starlink any more than we can stop foreign radio propaganda from being transmitted into our borders.
Edit: For the exact same reason that Starlink is above the law in North Korea, it is above the law in Brazil.
Technically, I own a little piece of earth from the center of the core to space. I can’t control the skies above me, but I technically own them.
This is just plain incorrect in any jurisdiction of which I’m aware.
If you own a house in suburbia, then you have a “title” which “entitles” you to certain rights within the boundaries described on set title. These rights will vary by jurisdiction but they’re things like the right to erect fences, erect structures, control access, contain livestock, and quietly enjoy that area.
The concept of “owning” land merely means owning that title and the rights it confers.
Your title will not grant you any rights as regards, for example, air traffic passing over the property in question.
A classic example of this dynamic is mining rights. The specifics will vary a lot by jurisdiction, but generally a title holder does not have any rights as regards the minerals located below their property. In many cases this might be moot, given that the only way to mine those minerals may be to buy the property and construct a mine. However it does present some interesting intricacies of the law. For example in Australia you may be authorised to access private property for the purposes of a mineral survey (using a metal detector …) but it’s a fairly fraught practice being “technically allowed” might be small comfort when faced with a shotgun.
Brazil does not have title to or otherwise control that part of the sky where Starlink operates its satellites.
You just used a lot of words to repeat what I said, while claiming I was incorrect.
I’m not really interested in talking about sovereign nation powers with someone who got their political education from wikipedia.
Try elsewhere, thanks.
That’s not even my joke >.>
Yeah, and they can do in space whatever they want (probably). But if they want to operate on earth providing a service within a country, they have to abide by the law of this country or stay out of it.
It’s like American Internet companies have to follow EU law if they want to operate in the EU, even if the company itself or their servers are in the US. GDPR privacy laws is a good example.
Oh my god how is this joke that fucking difficult to understand
Ever thought of the possibility that your joke just isn’t good…
It’s not supposed to be >.>
He’s good for absolutely nothing in this world. The only true altruistic path for him would be euthanasia and donating his water to the tribe.
He’s arguing that it’s illegal because they are separate entities.
Supreme Court ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X
If Starlink refuses to comply or hinders others to comply, they are in contempt to the Supreme Court orders.
As long as this order is within the law, it shouldn’t matter if Starlink and X are connected or not.And even if they are in orbit “above” the law, the ruling is only about their operating in brazil not about the satellite itself. And their operations within the country of Brazil do have to comply with Brazilian law and courts.
The decision to freeze Starlink’s accounts stems from a separate dispute over unpaid fines X was ordered to pay due to its failure to turn over some documents.
The issue of freezing star link accounts predates this shut down and was the result of some issue with x.
I’ve got no love for musk, but if the government is going after starlink because they have issues with x, it’s hard for me to disagree with him when he calls this dictator like. And thus it’s hard for me to fault him for using it as leverage.
If it’s about paying fines then that’s standard procedure. You can’t limited liability yourself out of fines: If the subsidiary doesn’t pay they fall onto the owner, said owner is Musk, said Musk has assets in Brazil in the form of Starlink accounts, hence, you impound them. If he had parked his Yacht there they would’ve gone for that.
This reminds me of an old, really old case: Some nobleman owed a Hanseatic trader money over a grain shipment. Refused to pay. Had the gall to show up in Hamburg. Trader had him arrested, noble threw a fit, appealed to the Emperor. Emperor said: “Dude that’s Hamburg, they DGAF if you’re a noble short of forbidding you to take up residence in the city, pay up”. Ended up selling most of his land to get out of debt and therefore prison, and an important lesson about assumed privilege was learned.
You can limit liability by creating separate entities and this is absolutely the standard, at least in the US. You would have to be very ignorant, or have sought no outside counsel, if you have some kind of decently profitable business and haven’t done so. It’s the whole point of these legal structures, such as LLCs. I don’t know the particulars of the case, nor the particulars of Brazilian law, so I don’t really know if it the case here.
That being said, speaking from an only slightly informed US perspective, if they are suing Musk himself, then yes they can absolutely go after his assets, which would include ownership in Starlink and X. However, if they fined X, it wouldn’t even remotely be a stretch that they do not have the legal authority to lock down Starlink accounts, as they are two separate entities that are presumably linked only by common figurehead.
State fines against a company aren’t a civil matter. Brazil isn’t suing anyone, they’re enforcing compliance with law by means of fines and the laws governing that would be written shoddily indeed if you could avoid fines by incanting “limited liability” like some sovereign citizen. “I’m not breaking laws, I’m doing limited liability business”.
Nor did I say anyone was suing anyone. I was just drawing up an example of a case how they could go after both entities. In this case, it appears the fine was levied against X, and not Musk.
And no one is talking about “avoiding fines.” WTF are you even on about? We are talking about them seizing Starlink assets because of fines levied against X. Musk doesn’t even own a majority share of SpaceX (who owns starlink). You are confusing “the face of” with “the legal entity.”
The order to block Twitter went to all Brazilian ISPs, and Starlink is the only one that didn’t comply on Saturday.
So the escalation stems from the disregard of an order that everyone was required to obey, but the intertwined nature of both companies being controlled by Musk is both part of the reason why SpaceX would even consider not complying with local law in a country it operates in, and why the Brazilian courts seem to be willing to aggressively enforce their own orders.Edit: I’m convinced. This comment as originally written presented the facts out of order.
So the escalation stems from the disregard of an order that everyone was required to obey
You’ve got it backwards. Right in the article, it notes “The decision to freeze Starlink’s accounts stems from a separate dispute over unpaid fines X was ordered to pay due to its failure to turn over some documents.” The escalation of Starlink not complying comes from that, not the other way around.
ut the intertwined nature of both companies being controlled by Musk is both part of the reason why SpaceX would even consider not complying with local law in a country it operates in
Again, seemingly backwards. It was the government of Brazil that used their “intertwined nature” to freeze Starlink accounts, and Musk has, in turned, used that “intertwine nature” as leverage.
To be clear, I hate defending Musk, but I don’t see why it makes sense to freeze Startlink accounts if it’s X that hasn’t paid the fines. Can they go after any company that he owns stock in? Can they start seizing Teslas? How about MS infrastructure, if he holds some ownership in that company too? I’m just not sure the government of Brazil is on the right side of this, and not simply using their power to punish Musk. If people said “I don’t really care and I’m glad they are holding his feet to the fire” that would be one thing, but people are arguing that it’s actually Musk who is doing all of this, while it appears that it’s actually the Brazilian government that “intertwined” them and Musk just responding in kind.
The escalation of Starlink not complying comes from that, not the other way around.
I’ve looked closer (at other articles, too). You’re right - the freezing of the SpaceX accounts came from the same order that ordered that Twitter be blocked, and before SpaceX announced it would refuse to comply.
The proper thing to do is to recognize the legally distinct personhood of SpaceX, which isn’t part of Twitter, even if Twitter/X itself is wrong on the law.
We need more people like you.
I wonder if he would have complied with the court order if the Brazil government hadn’t done this, if so then yeah, I guess that’s not shitty.
My gut says he would have started drama regardless.
It certainly wouldn’t be surprising.
Well, technically… he is- until proven otherwise. But so far, it hasn’t happened.
Innocent until proven otherwise?
I think you get something mixed up here. Innocence is not the same as being above the law. Innocence means you didn’t do anything outside the law.
And it’s a fact, that Starlink and X defied orders of the Supreme Court. I wonder what you think must be proven here?
I think you got something mixed up here. I never said he was innocent. I said he is above the law until proven otherwise. The guy hasn’t suffered a consequence for a single action.
Until he does- he IS above the law.
Yeah… I’m still waiting on the orange one to face some consequences…
This is literally a thead about how brazil is blocking X and froze starlinks accounts and assets.
And my comment was in response to something different. You’re free to move along unless you can show that you’re authorized to police the comments in this thread.
For fucks sake, YOU replied directly to MY comment.
Please move on yourself, if you don’t want replies from people you talked at
Right. My comment was in response to something YOU said about his accountability. Brazil is slapping his wrist. Nothing more.
This is NOT him facing consequences. This is not accountability.
How about you spend more time trying to understand what people are saying, and less time being butthurt because you think they’re disagreeing with you.
he’s above the law because he will not experience legal consequences.
And starlink also gets banned from the country
Tesla next?
the problem is starlink is actually a good thing, providing decent internet access to places that can’t get it otherwise. I think the thing to target is the clear collusion going on between companies in ostensibly unrelated industries to pressure a government into reversing a penalty on one of them.
I think the thing to target is the clear collusion going on between companies in ostensibly unrelated industries to pressure a government into reversing a penalty on one of them.
Specifically because they are controlled by the same asshat. This is the same exact type of shit he does with stock manipulation and why he was eventually forced to buy Twitter. All his wealth has been generated by cheating and exploitation. I hope Brazil drops the hammer.
Compounding fines would be a nice touch. Then send in the lawyers to actually break the money free.
Putting up tens of thousands of extra objects into orbit that we now have to track and worry about collisions with other satellites is not a good thing.
Not to mention that their orbits degrades over time so they have to be continually replenished.
That comes at a huge cost which is highly subsidized by US tax payers.That comes at a huge cost which is highly subsidized by US tax payers.
Hang on. Which subsidy are you saying Starlink is getting that is highly subsidized by US taxpayers? Starlink got rejected for the $900m broadband subsidy.
Note for clarity: Musk is an asshat.
That was indeed what I was thinking of. I didn’t realize it was rejected. My bad, and thanks for the letting me know!
The rockets that launch those satellites were developed using tax dollars.
The rockets that launch those satellites were developed using tax dollars.
Are you referring to the NASA contracts for Dragon cargo delivery flights to the ISS?
Also, each satelite that burns up upon re-entry isn’t just gone - it still introduces vaporized materials into the upper atmosphere.
Iirc they are harming the ozone layer.
They are far, far lower than the ozone layer.
You remember incorrectly.
Starlink satelites are about 341 miles above earth, on average. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/starlink-everything-know-network-satellites-151511672.html
Ozone layer is 9-18 miles above earth’s surface. https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/basic-ozone-layer-science
you remember incorrectly.
Well, I suppose that you are correct. Don’t I feel like an idiot.
Believe you mean far far lower than geosynchronous orbit. Which is not the ozone layer. Ozone is not particularly far. like… less than 20 miles. Geosync is like… 20k miles. While Low Earth Orbit is much closer to the ozone than to geosync, its still far past the ozone, around 300+ miles.
Where those vaporized materials end up kr the satellites themselves?
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In a lot of cases I would agree with you, but laying fiber optic cable through the Amazon in order to connect remote settlements is not feasible, starlink really does have a good use case there.
And ocean communication.
It’s amazingly clear none of these people have ever tried to use any of the existing Geostationary satellite data networks.
They are slow as shit. Not just by modern standards, by any standards. HughesNet is one of the remaining satellite Internet providers.
$50/mo gives you 50Mbps speeds, 100GB of “Priority Data”, whatever the fuck that is (probably your 50Mbps data, then it slows). And that price is only for a year, then it is $75/mo. They also love to tout a 30ms latency somehow, but that’s just a damned lie. Latency for a Geostationary satellite is around 500ms, or roughly the speed of light because that’s physics. So I have no idea where they think they’re getting 30ms, unless that’s only the additional latency they’re claiming AFTER it bounces off the satellite and reaches the ground to be routed to the internet on their end.
Starlink is a constellation of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, not geostationary satellites. That means that the ground station (i.e. subscriber equipment) talks to one satellite as it comes into view, and over time that satellite moves across the sky, and they switch to another satellite. This means the latency is highly variable as the distance changes, but at its lowest is much lower than a geostationary satellite since it is far closer.
I think they were talking about HughesNet the entire time. With the pricing, datacaps, and the latency lies. HughesNet does use geostationary satellites and has 600ms latency according to Wikipedia.
600ms is it’s absolute best under perfect conditions.
When do you need faster ocean communication, besides luxury? Nobody is owned fast internet on an environment-destroying luxury cruiseship.
Because cruise ships are the only thing not on the mainland. Certainly no cargo ships, research vessels, island nations, or anything else.
Ships should suffice with a 100 kB/s connection which already existed before Starlink. You don’t usually need to send tons of data.
Additionally, Starlink is currently only offered to a single island nation without submarine fibre-optic cable, the Easter Islands. Although they may get submarine fibre somewhere after 2026 anyways because that is when a new cable will be laid closeby.
Those speeds would be under ideal conditions, like sitting on land on a clear day with no weather.
It’s not about the raw speed honestly, but the machine latency and stability of the signal. Traditional GEO satellites need a pretty steady platform to maintain connection. The mobile capable dishes are usually less capable than fixed position ones because they need to be less directional to maintain a signal while moving. But in say rougher seas, the movement will be vastly different than a boat just sitting on a lake.
Starlink can compensate for this better because it’s designed to utilize multiple lower satellites simultaneously in view and a more omni-directional dish, alongside a signal that only needs to go to LEO. The difference between LEO and GEO or its is absolutely massive. The Starlink satellite constellation operates between 1/30 and 1/105 the distance of traditional GEO satellites. This means a latency of 25-35ms since they are so much lower. Lower latency will mean lower packet loss from instability which means higher throughout.
For a real world use case, look at the SpaceX landing ships. They originally used traditional GEO satellites for those video streams, and the motion and vibration from the rocket getting near caused total signal loss. Often signal loss for a white a while after the lending was over because the ship was still moving too much. After they switched to Starlink, I think I can remember maybe twice at the beginning where the signal cut for a second or so, and once they had a few launches to provide more consistent coverage and satellite redundancy, I can’t even remember the last time we lost a signal during a landing.
Real time video streams are essentially the worst use case for traditional satellite communication, and the differences between the network types of night and day.
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clear collusion
It’s less so “collusion” than it is “a billionaire brat using their obscene wealth and plethora of businesses to strong arm their way out of any accountability”. We can’t consider starlink a “good thing” because it will always be part of that, and any group or government relying on it to any degree should take note.
Nah, Starlink itself is bad, the intention is good.
what specifically is “bad” about it? I understand people are concerned about space junk, but it seems worth the benefit to me.
It’s wrecking astronomy already and we aren’t even at the peak of satellite constellations.
Wrecking is not really the right term.
It is causing work for astronomers, and wrecking very few older systems, but generally it is an issue you can work around. I.e. something temporary. What you usually see in my experience of the field is you have some of your work degraded by satellite streaks, which are about 2x more common since starlink, and you understandably complain at starlink. And then get around to coding up a solution to deal with the streaks, spend another few runs until it about works, and eventually forget this was ever a thing.In more detail, the base issue is, that you are taking an image, with probably minutes or hours or days of exposure, and every satellite passing through that image is going to create a streak that does not represent a star. Naturally that is not good in most cases.
The classic approach here, because this issue has existed since before starlink satellites, is to - depending on frequency and exposure length and your methodology - either retake the entire shot, or throw out at least the frames with the satellite on it, manually.The updated approach is to use info about satellite positions to automatically block out the very small angle of the sky around them that their light can be scattered to by the atmosphere, and remove this before summing that frame into your final exposure. Depending on methodology, it might also be feasible to automatically throw away frames with any satellite on them, or you can count up which parts of the image were blocked for how long in total and append a tiny bit of exposure only to them at the end.
To complicate this, I think more modern complaints are not about the permanent constellation satellites but those freshly deployed, that are still raising their orbits. Simply because their positions are not as easy to determine, since their orbits are changing. So you need to further adapt your system to specifically detect these chains of satellites and also block them out of your exposures.
The issue here is that you need to create this system that deals with satellite data. And then you need that control over the frames in your exposure, which naturally does not match how exposure used to work in the olden days of film, but to my knowledge does work on all “modern” telescopes.
My knowledge here is limited but I think this covers about 30-40 years of optical telescopes, which should largely be all optical ground based telescopes relevant today. Further, you probably do need to replace electronics in older telescopes, since they were not built to allow this selective blocking, only to interrupt the exposure.In summary, not affected are narrow fov modern optical telescopes, and in general telescopes operating far from visual frequencies.
Affected with some extra work, would be some older narrow (but not very narrow) fov telescopes, as you now have to make them dodge satellites or turn off shortly, when previously you could have just thrown away the entire exposure in the rarer cases you caught a satellite. This would be software only (not that software is free).
Modern wide fov telescopes might need hardware upgrades or just software upgrades to recover frames with streaks on them.
Old wide fov telescopes may be taken out of commission or at least have their effective observation times cut shorter by needing to pass out on more and more exposure time over satellites in the frame.It is a problem, yes, but in my understanding one that can be overcome, and is causing the main annoyance and majority of its issues while the number of satellites is increasing, not after they have been increased.
I don’t know of a single area of ground based astronomy that couldn’t be done with even a million satellites in leo.Sure, professionals can work around it, but for amateurs it fucking sucks.
Its also not just optical astronomy either, they shit out RF on the reserved radio astronomy frequencies too.
Yeah, for amateurs it’ll be a while longer for this tech to become easily available.
Though It is also fundamentally fixable, you can take the output of your sensor and apply the same sort of logic to it as professional large telescopes. The blocking spots will be larger since the telescope will not correct for atmospheric distortions and likely be in a less favorable spot, but still you can do far better than throwing out entire frames or even entire exposures.
It is ofc a much much larger ask for hobby astronomers to deal with this initial wild-west software mess of figuring all of that out.As for the RF mess, this is the first time I hear of that. It seems honestly kinda odd to me, we have a lot of frequency control regulations globally and I have heard SpaceX go through the usual frequency allocation proceedings. A violation of that would be easy to show and should get them in serious trouble quickly. Do you have any source on that?
Maybe to add a bit of general context to this, I am not an astronomer but I work in an adjacent field. So I hear a lot of astronomers talk about their work both in private and public.
You don’t really hear them talk about satellites often. What from what I gather really wrecks astronomy is light pollution, which has been doubling every few years for a while now and is basically caging optical astronomy to a select few areas.The worst thing for astronomy in the last century has probably, ironically, been the invention of the LED.
The satellite streak thing is probably a minor point, where newspapers caught some justified ranting of astronomers and blew it way out of proportion.
If I had to choose between global high speed internet access, and ground based astronomy, I’d pick the Internet every time. I’d completely blot out the sky forever if that’s what it took.
We don’t need ground-based astronomy to learn about the universe, I’d rather encourage more space-based astronomy. Or build some observatories on the moon if you really want to build on a solid space body.
However, Starlink is a for profit company run by Elon Musk. I don’t really want them doing it, because they’re not going to provide unlimited global Internet to everyone. So as the guy said, the idea is good, but Starlink is bad, although it is currently the only such option.
Do you know what the price difference is between a ground based observatory and a space based one? We are talking orders of magnitude in differences. It took an international alliance just to build the ISS in low Earth orbit. We are decades away from being able to build anything on the moon, and we definitely won’t be building visual telescopes there.
Can it be a good thing while it’s controlled by someone so clearly looking to exploit it’s influence for personal gain?
How would you do that though? The whole point is the signal is coming from a satellite
Starlink’s bank accounts are frozen. Musk loves money more than providing service. I doubt he’ll provide the service for free.
Need to ship receivers to customers and those could be seized at customs if they’re illegal radio equipment.
Then, new customers would need a VPN to sign up, and old customers might have trouble renewing with local payment methods
Why bother when you can just prevent Starlink from collecting any money?
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The comments here are weird TBH. No, Brazil will not start shooting down satellites. It can just simply outlaw and sanction Starlink, stop anyone from paying Starlink for their internet subscription, and have peeps go around and confiscate ground stations.
Also, they can just go and ask the US to help enforce their ruling, telling them “do you want to be friends with us or Musky boi?”
That’s a really good point. Starlink can ignore this order, but the courts can order banks to stop processing payments to them. Pretty sure Starlink isn’t going to “protest” this at the cost of profits.
Of rourse Starlink could then go be further shady by taking payments in Bitcoin to get around it. It’s an interesting arms race to follow.
Brazil is well within its rights to sanction Starlink and prosecute people for evading said sanctions, and have people pay fines and go to prison for buying Starlink with Bitcoin.
Just like the US does with Iran and Cuba.
How would they know it’s been paid by Bitcoin?
Because it’s very easy to track bitcoin?, that argument about bitcoin being untraceable is so funny, like it’s literally in bitcoin protocol to log every single transaction, and people need to convert money to bitcoin, easy to track there too
So tell me, where does the government link the person to the coin? I do a cash trade to buy Bitcoin, who logs it’s me and puts my name on the wallet for the government to track me down?
The exchange where you traded BTC for USD, which had to comply with AML and KYC laws in order to have access to the US banking system in the first place.
Like, it’s theoretically possible to work with perfect operational security and never ever link your Bitcoin address to the real world, but doing so basically precludes you from doing anything in the real world with it, including buying crypto in the first place.
Google anonymous Bitcoin… I’ll wait.
You need to pay a bank or something to trade your money to bitcoin, the bank only need to log what bitcoin it send to you or your wallet, the thing is, bitcoin isn’t anonymous it was never made to be, something like monero would be better, but you still need to trade your money for the crypto
Anyone can send anyone with a wallet bitcoin. There are services that do anonymous trades, the feeds don’t look great.
Thing is, it doesn’t have to be bitcoin to be opaque to the banks, there are dozens of payment services that don’t clearly state the end provider. just doing paypal is enough to hide it from an occasional glance.
They need a dish to operate, check for dishes and fine people for breaking trading laws by dealing with a company that has been sanctioned.
Just because the dish exist doesn’t mean it’s still being used. You have to do a blanket ban on having the dish at all. And even then they’re kind of tiny and easy to camouflage. You’d probably have to make the enforcement penalty scary enough to dissuade them. Or pay neighbors to rat each other out
Unfortunately, the US is now fully reliant on SpaceX for access to space now that they decided to rely on corporate spacecraft rather than building our own and Boeing has proven themselves unreliable since that change was made, and now that they finally have a craft they ended up stranding astronauts on the space station until SpaceX can rescue them due to defects. Plus we can’t use Russia like we did after the shuttle program ended but corporate space travel wasn’t there yet. And SpaceX isn’t publicly traded to where it might be possible that enough investors could pressure Musk to cave.
So I doubt anything will come of it. Brazil will rattle their sabers. Musk will stand his ground, and the US will stay on Musk’s side while pretending as much as possible to be staying out of it.
Haha, that sort of dependency can be just as dangerous for a company as it is for the state. You start fucking around like that and antitrust and defense production act start knocking.
Is there precedent for the US government just flat out nationalizing a company like SpaceX?
Don’t have to. Defense production act allows them to legally direct the company without owning it.
No 737 has ever leaked helium. So why did the Star liner leak helium? Why couldn’t it just pop an emergency exit hatch mid flight like standard procedure? Why? Why? So many questions!
Easier than than just freeze musks money in brazil
I wonder what would happen if a Brazilian company failed to comply with a US court order.
There would already be boots on the ground.
They may get forbidden from operating in the US? Like, the same thing, in reverse?
They’d be getting ready for some FREEDOM!!!
When Republicans decide to have 4th of July at this judge’s house then I’ll believe he’s a dictator.
Lol, then I guess they can provide that access for free, indefinitely, all for just making sure they keep 200K (max) people in Brazil on Xitter.
I predict that nations will simply start blowing up satellites in space, creating a shroud of debris which will make space exploration nearly impossible.
All these LEO satellites are so low it would only cause trouble for less than 5 years. That’s part of why they are low.
If we ever had something as dense as starlink 500km higher though that’d be a different story.
The satellites trains do it already by themselves, it’s ok.
Seeing what we’ve done to this planet, it’s probably for the best. Space exploration is going to be for the rich and we know how shit they are.
There’s nothing we can do to space except make it harder for ourselves to use it. And we do use it, a lot, and not just for rich people stuff.
As of 2024-09-03T22:10:25.545Z, Starlink is now complying with Brazil’s X ban [1].
References
- “Starlink says it will block X in Brazil”. Emma Roth. The Verge. Published: 2024-09-03T22:10:25.545Z. Accessed: 2024-09-04T04:17Z. https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/3/24235204/starlink-block-x-brazil-comply-elon-musk.
“We immediately initiated legal proceedings in the Brazilian Supreme Court explaining the gross illegality of this order and asking the Court to unfreeze our assets,” Starlink says in a post on X. “Regardless of the illegal treatment of Starlink in freezing of our assets, we are complying with the order to block access to X in Brazil.”
- “Starlink says it will block X in Brazil”. Emma Roth. The Verge. Published: 2024-09-03T22:10:25.545Z. Accessed: 2024-09-04T04:17Z. https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/3/24235204/starlink-block-x-brazil-comply-elon-musk.
Shoot them down baby!
If I worked for Starlink in Brazil, I’d be on a plane visiting friends outside the country right now. I’m sure an order to arrest EVERYONE who works for Starlink is being drafted right now.
If Starlink is connected to any infrastructure inside Brazil, I suspect that’s about to go dark. What the Brazilian authorities need is access to Starlink’s internal admin network that controls EVERYTHING. Because Melon Husk is to stupid to pipeline infrastructure for each country. I’ll bet it’s all shared at some level. I doubt local IT person would risk jail for them and their families or “extended renditioning” to extract access to those networks to shut them down.
That’s a brave move. Brazil could just confiscate all star links in the country. Or shoot down the satellites.
Uh… And how would they do that?
It’s not like starlink publishes a list of all their customers, and you can’t simply pick up the signal.
And shooting down satellites in a geospatial orbit? Good luck.
They aren’t that high up. That’s how they provide better service than Hughesnet. And yes shooting down a satellite has been possible for decades. People put them up there, they can take them down a lot easier, much smaller payload and the tech/math has been solved since the 1950’s.
As far as banning starlink and confiscating receivers? The same way a country bans and confiscates anything.
There’s also the possibility of compounding fines for violating the broadcast ban after they place it. This isn’t Iran, Brazil has access to the banking network to go get that money.
And there’s the real answer. I don’t think anyone is paying for their Starlink account with a wad of cash in a back alley. They will probably give people some number of days to close their accounts and sending notices to banks and credit cards to not accept payments for Starlink from Brazilian accounts or some other means of interfering with payments. Things will likely escalate from there with fines not dissimilar to those with Twitter and other methods to deter people from using the services illegally. There may well be some political elements, as well, but I’m not sure how important Brazil is to America to make that happen.
You can use planes to scan for signals. Due to the wider band of the starlink units they could be detected by plane. Of course they can also be spotted on the ground.
Geospatial? Heh, try again. They are not in Geosynchronous (the word you were grasping for) orbits. Really they are low enough they could be destroyed easier than most. The only problem is there are so many of them.
Simple legislation baring unlicensed satellite transmitters could effectively make starlink illegal without a license. A prohibitively costly fee would create a situation that would kill the company in Brazil.
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