How Starlink Is Rewriting Connectivity and Its Global Implications

Picture this: You're kicking back, watching one of those jaw-dropping SpaceX rockets launch into the cosmos, carrying astronauts or top-secret cargo to the space station. Yeah, that's the same SpaceX we're talking about today on Things Have Changed. They've been lighting up the skies and our feeds with a whopping 96 launches last year alone. Impressive, right?

But here's the kicker: even with all that rocket-fueled spectacle, we're left wondering, does all this bankroll Elon Musk's dream of an inter-planetary human?

Enter the game-changer: Starlink. Imagine thousands of tiny satellites zooming above us, bringing high-speed internet across the globe. In just a blink (A few years), Starlink's morphed into a giant slice of SpaceX's revenue, raking in nearly 40%.

And let's face it, in a world where the internet's as essential as the air we breathe, Starlink's looking to shake things up big time. So join us on Things Have Changed Podcast as we dive deep into the Starlink saga. It's more than just a tech tale; it's about connecting corners of the Earth that have been left in the digital shadows. 

Here are some helpful links:

• How Much Money Will Starlink Make?
• How Elon Musk’s Starlink Is Bringing In Billions For SpaceX
• More than 14M households across the US don’t have internet
• Design Flaw - 100 Satellites
• Starlink Satellites
• Starlinks Rapid Growth
• Broadband Gaps Dirty Secret - redlining in Digital Form
• Starlink Subsidy Denial
• Military Importance

Transcript

0:00

There's recent data from the FCC that finds that more than 8 million American homes and businesses nationwide do not have access to high speed broadband internet service.

Shikher Bhandary: 0:09

One of the hottest private companies in the world right now, SpaceX, is known for launching these humongous rockets. The company partners with NASA and other government agencies for incredibly complex missions like transporting astronauts and valuable cargo. to the International Space Station. SpaceX more or less dominates the global space industry with 96 successful launches in 2023 alone. But is that enough to fund the company's ambitious goals of driving humanity to become an interplanetary species? So today on Things Have Changed, we explore an ambitious project that has rapidly become close to 40 percent of SpaceX's revenues in the span of a few years. Enter Starlink, SpaceX's answer to providing global high speed internet coverage using a network of thousands of satellites buzzing around the planet in a region known as Low Earth Orbit. Starlink has the potential to truly disrupt one of the largest industries and most significant money printers we see in business today, the internet. So tune in.

Jed Tabernero: 2:21

Yosemite is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, man. So my parents live quite near and every time we have a guest over it's like one of our things to take them to. Hey, let me take you to one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I have a ton of friends who you know, because I'm from the Bay Area and Yosemite is relatively close. I have a ton of friends who's that's their go to for a weekend hiking trip is let's go to Yosemite. Let's go hike some of these, most beautiful trails. And I actually have friends who've, decided to settle there. They actually bought houses really nearby to Yosemite. It's a relatively rural environment, and there's a ton of people moving in still, even if it's a rural environment. And one of the things I noticed was I stayed there for a couple of weekends in my friend's places, right? One of the things I noticed that was annoying for us city people, is that the internet really sucked out there. It's tough. It's tough to get infrastructure out there to build internet. So it's understandable. Many folks have maybe been to big bear mountain. It's the same scenario, not too much internet, ton of folks who come in. And sometimes you just really have to rely on, really slow solutions that have been provided all throughout these years. My friend recently got himself. Starlink membership, a subscription to Starlink.

Shikher Bhandary: 3:43

Dang.

Jed Tabernero: 3:44

It just changes the way you look at being able to live there, because it used to be a weekend thing, right? Like I mentioned earlier, that's like his weekend home. He still lives in San Francisco, but all of a sudden now he can see himself working from his house near Yosemite. And it's an insane type of transition because. That type of access was so quick to set up, man. It was super quick to just get on, buy the equipment needed, sign up to the subscription and just get onto the product. So

Shikher Bhandary: 4:17

It's on a global scale, right? This specific application from SpaceX. Traditional internet companies are really looking for servicing a lot of customers. They have to justify the costs of actually laying down the line, right? Like fiber costs a ton because it's just too capex heavy. It's too expensive for them to actually put up a tower, put up the fiber and then be unsure of what returns they're going to get. They have to get guaranteed return on investment and some to justify their decision to actually service a community. in these far off places. So this is where that solution, the solution that we were about to talk about comes super handy. And it's not only being used for this purpose, but also like folks where, the government has cut access to the internet or natural disasters. Suddenly you can just log into the, to a wifi in the sky and call for help.

Jed Tabernero: 5:26

There's a massive population that don't have, don't enjoy the luxuries that we have to the internet. So with the advent of such things like Starlink, we have to think like, why did we go towards the Starlink solution? Versus everything else. We mentioned fiber is just way too expensive. Setting up cell towers are also a capex heavy activity. Isn't launching satellites really expensive too. And I think this is the interesting piece, right? Is the interesting piece. Like we think, okay, launch is heavy. All of these things are quite expensive pursuits. But income SpaceX, that is the Boeing for the aviation industry where they've now made it so cheap to launch up in low earth orbit. And so all of a sudden these ideas with providing internet in a way that, by the way, is not super novel becomes just more cost effective, right? Why do I say not super novel? It's just because we've had satellites that provide internet, right? And some of you who who are listening to the show, who are in like rural areas, your first internet likely was coming from a geo stationary satellite, right? And. That just means it's a lot farther out, a lot slower, a lot higher latency, but these satellites were already existed. So it's not like a novel idea that we're putting satellites up in the air for internet, but it just became so cost effective that it's obvious. All of a sudden it's obvious to provide internet in this matter.

Shikher Bhandary: 6:57

mean, Jed is super animated because he obviously works in this space. But that's all confidential. So we're not going to talk a whole lot about his work, but isn't it really expensive to put up these satellites up in space? Yes, it is. But this company anyway, is sending rockets into space. So they have figured out a way where, and they could do both. This is the power of vertically integrating, right? A rocket company that owns the rockets and transports astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station is now hang on. We can now put up satellites ourselves. And so what they have done is they have built this network of how many, like thousands of satellites in the lower orbit of Mars. The earth that now works as a network where they can now beam the internet with very low latency to you.

Jed Tabernero: 7:56

Exactly. And I think we should clarify for the folks on the call who haven't heard of low earth orbit, that's, it's pretty low. And for some of you may have seen the constellation coming by your house. One of these days, right? If you don't have too much light pollution, a lot of people, I've seen it on Tiktok, at least a bunch of folks will see Oh, those are lines of satellites. People think, damn, those are aliens. But they're not, they're starling satellites. It's very interesting the way that it works because this low earth orbit area that we've been talking about, me and Shaker, the difference between that and our outdated geo stationary satellites, is that it's a lot closer. That's why it's low earth orbit versus geostationary, right? What does that mean in terms of scale, geostationary satellites, which are the ones that we've had for decades, GPS uses it in all sorts of different kinds of satellites, right? They're up there about 33, 000 kilometers away from earth, right? 30, 000 kilometers away. So that's the coverage is pretty big, but it's pretty far from low earth orbit satellites. I think it's only about what, 300 miles, 500 kilometers or something like that from Earth. Okay, so that's a factor, a huge factor closer to the Earth than these geostationary satellites. A couple of advantages come with being a lot closer. When you're beaming data between ground gateways, which are often connected to data centers or the terminals, the ones that you see when you actually buy Starlink that communicates with the satellites it's a lot easier because it's closer. Of course, the disadvantage is that you'd have to have a lot more to cover. All of the earth, right? Cause geostationary so far that it covers a ton of the earth. And while you're getting closer, you're only covering a portion of the earth at a time. That's why they got to put out so many.

Shikher Bhandary: 9:47

It's like a flashlight, right? The further you move away. from a torch, right? You cover more space, but the strength weakens and it's not as focused as if you come closer. So think of that concept, but like satellite in space. So SpaceX, I was like, okay, let's just flood. Low earth orbit with satellites. And they have what over 5, 000 satellites

Jed Tabernero: 10:11

Yes. Yeah. And dude, they're not stopping there, man. They're not stopping. I think 2027, they're going to have 42 K satellites up in low earth orbit. And that's just one company, dude. That's just one company. We haven't talked about the rest. Wink that are going to have massive networks out in low earth orbit as well. So we see now that it works, right? Like we were talking earlier about how many customers Starling casters, 2 million people using this service. At least 2 million people. So

Shikher Bhandary: 10:41

over the past three years, over the past three years, it's gone from, we were just looking at some numbers. They even though SpaceX is a private company, they do. release some numbers, which kind of gives the public a feel as to where they are headed as a company, right? Because this is a future public company, hopefully, right? And they grew their revenues from 200 million In 2021, just from Starlink to 1. 4 billion. Now that's seven X. So in, in the span of two, three years, they have grown their revenue seven times, because that's the demand, not just from the consumer point of view, but also like enterprises, but also government, right? So we'll get to that later, but it's just, they found this niche where now they are now available on all seven continents. In over 60 countries, that's mind boggling the ramp, over the past four years, we are talking not just of software is, you can do this a lot easier. You can just publish it into into the app store and it's automatically. Allowed or spread in the different countries, right? Based on regulation and stuff. This, we're talking about hardware. So for them to be able to get the satellites, satellites out in space, and then be able to strike these deals with different governments is just mind blowing execution.

Jed Tabernero: 12:19

Yeah. Yeah. And it's paved the way for other companies to start thinking about what are the other alternatives to getting internet. And yeah, like you said, UI is super easy. One thing that we haven't even mentioned dude is latency. The closer that it is, it's also provides better better internet service in general. And the fact that you have thousands up there, especially right now with Starlink's constellation, the fact that you have thousands out there, these customer terminals that you have at home, they connect to specific satellites. And they find satellites in close proximity to be able to beam that data up and down. The more satellites you have, the better connectivity you'll have in a specific region as well. And so that also lends to like lower latency. Which is something it's mentioned a lot with with satellite internet, because a lot of people, when they think about satellite internet, it's like, Oh, that's slow as hell. Like people already have pre preconceived notions about how satellite internet is Starlink change that, starlink changed that, that kind of view. And that kind of lends to just a better overall customer experience with Starlink. And now there's a completely new space focusing on ISPs that actually provide. Internet in low earth orbit. So impressive stuff, what they've done.

Shikher Bhandary: 13:37

Them being vertically integrated is so crucial for their success because now they are independent and they are able to operate on their own.

Jed Tabernero: 13:47

You mentioned controlling the economies of scale on this kind of vertical integration that they have. The most expensive the most expensive thing about satellites. If you were to look at, in a costing world where what's the actual cost that you spent on a specific satellite, almost always a majority of that cost is attributable to the launch cost. Of a satellite, of course, if you're not Starlink who has SpaceX who launches their satellites, right? They charge. Okay, this is just an estimate that has come from our research. Let's say a Falcon nine launch right with a couple of satellites will cost them internally. About 15 mil. Okay. Just think about that. 15 mil to launch satellites that cost them internally. So what do you pay for the rocket, all the stuff that's not reusable, all the things that go into a launch. Would they charge customers for that same launch? Is about 50 mil. Okay. So you can think if you had, if you're, if you don't have your own launch service, you're paying effectively, most of your satellite costs, the actual asset that becomes a satellite when it gets into space, a ton of that more than 50 percent of that will be launch costs. Just thinking about the vertical integration here, the fact that they also have SpaceX, the fact that they build their own ground gateways.

Shikher Bhandary: 15:18

Incredible.

Jed Tabernero: 15:19

Makes it so much easier for them to optimize in this regard, right? Because they can find ways to, okay, what do we have to do to make launch cheaper? Let's put more capacity on the rockets, right? Let's make it so that it's easily integrable. With this rocket, anything that you're building as far as satellites, you're also making the satellite so you can make the satellites more efficient. You can make the satellites collect more sun so that it has more energy. You can think of really cool stuff. One cool thing that the SpaceX did for their satellites, right? With the advent of AI is that thing up in the air, when you see those lights that are following each other, they'll look like aliens, right? It's because they move in a constellation. So they communicate with each other. They know what's going on. They're not going to hit each other. So there's going to be thousands of satellites up there that, that are not going to hit each other if they're coming from the same the same company. Cause they're communicating, they're using lasers to do that, to get out of way for collisions. They're using, A gas called Krypton that's on their satellites that kind of inch them somewhere, if you, if they see something that's about to disrupt their constellation, they could save their entire constellation by just recognizing that and then pushing a little bit to the left with this Krypton gas, which is, That's amazing, by the way, which a lot of companies have followed that path as well. If they're going to lower orbit is to use kind of these Krypton thrusters. I didn't know there was a gas called Krypton before I worked in this space. But it's really interesting stuff what they've done, right? That all comes from vertical integration, because now when you say optimize, you can look at other parts of your end to end process of getting a satellite up in the space and then optimizing for the overall cost reduction, right? Which SpaceX is. devilishly good at dude. Devilishly good at those guys. But yeah, again, like we're talking today, which is what? March 17, a couple of days after starship launch. You know what they did with Starship launch that was so interesting. They increased the capacity of their biggest rocket 4X for satellites.

Shikher Bhandary: 17:23

Oh, wow.

Jed Tabernero: 17:24

That's 4X. Which is, this is, remember when I said it was the most expensive piece was launch. Now that you have more capacity, yes, it's a little more expensive, but they could optimize for that too. Now that there's 4X satellites available there on the typical, maybe Falcon 9 it becomes so much more attractive to put more stuff. They all of a sudden have more capacity. What does that mean? They can have a rocket where they have their own satellites, Starlink satellites, and then they can also have other people's satellites, OneWeb satellites, Kuiper satellites that they can put onto the rocket so that they can charge a margin that makes their launch cost much lesser. I like that you brought up the Vertica integration piece because That is what will make this scale. You know what I mean? So really cool stuff, what they've done, honestly,

Shikher Bhandary: 18:12

Yeah. And one thing, like I was just thinking through that and so SpaceX is transporting cargo and astronauts into space, right? Space station future lunar establishments and stuff. That's their goal. That's their mission vision, right? It's really ambitious, but coming down to the ground and maybe out to the seas They are now striking these really smart deals, and they are going after these big logistics heavy industries that need access to data and the internet at all times. What is one of that? Shipping. 80 percent of all goods that we transport across the world is shipping. So what SpaceX and the Starlink team have done is they have now signed up so many. Cargo ships and like shipping companies to have, the SpaceX terminals on the cargo ships. And now, so those cargo ships now have access to fast internet, which probably unlocks a lot of productivity there, right? Because in our conversations about the shipping industry, everything is still very manual.

Jed Tabernero: 19:28

dude, that's interesting. Cause in our conversations with Martin Verhagen, at least talking about kind of the logistics industry and shipping, the interesting thing was that. They don't know how long or where a vehicle is at all times, all the time, right? They've created technologies for that. And there were some startups who came up with okay, we can track the ship to where it's actually at. But a lot of the times it's an estimate, right? A lot of the times it's an estimate. All of a sudden you give them full internet. Connectivity, they might be able to have better GPS frequencies that could do coordinates. So that's an interesting piece as well. And I don't know how many people, in the Navy dude, but these guys, they got to stay in these ships for six months to a year. Which is insane. That's like a six month job. You're in the ocean. A lot of times you won't have access to everything. You got to bring all your movies and stuff that you got to watch for these six months whenever you're bored. But now all of a sudden there's a potential for them to have internet on board. That's huge.

Shikher Bhandary: 20:27

and they are partnering with all these airline manufacturers to have a SpaceX terminal so that they can beam internet to all the passengers in the flight at a fraction of what it used to cost. They are expanding a ton and now they are coming to direct to sell teamed up to a T Mobile to go straight to consumer, right? So your sell LTE would be with SpaceX maybe in the future.

Jed Tabernero: 20:57

So this partnership, you mentioned it, this partnership with T Mobile, you would think because these companies are kind of competitors, into the providing internet space that they would work with each other because it's tough, but the truth actually is these internet service providers are partnering up with each other to cover for their scale and make a better service on both ends because the T Mobile example is interesting because I just mentioned Yosemite at the beginning of this call. Even in Yosemite, my internet is gone. It's not there. The interesting thing is that if T Mobile partners up with companies like SpaceX, when you go to those places that are underserved by even cell towers or just. The government doesn't allow it to be built nearby, right?

Shikher Bhandary: 21:41

Yeah,

Jed Tabernero: 21:41

All of a sudden you've given access to them without disrupting the local, the local infrastructure, right? Like you said, you don't have to put a tower there. You don't have to put, certain things around. All you got to do is partner up with a telecom company to get yourself some access from space. So all of a sudden these like partnerships are making services better across the board. I don't know if you've seen this dude, but you have an iPhone.

Shikher Bhandary: 22:08

yeah.

Jed Tabernero: 22:09

One of the new features that was like really big for the iPhone 14, at least when it came out was the fact that if you don't have coverage in some places, they can actually offer you Satellite internet, right? 911 calls when you fall off a fricking ledge, right? When you're stuck on a mountain, dude, we've seen so many of these things on the news, right? Where somebody stuck at, Oh, this guy was stuck in the mountain for 20 days. It's a step closer to covering yourself for emergency services. It's us moving closer to a safer world. So it's interesting that these partnerships are

Shikher Bhandary: 22:47

Basically half of the serial killer slasher movies would not exist if we had this level of

Jed Tabernero: 22:56

Oh

Shikher Bhandary: 22:57

everywhere, right?

Jed Tabernero: 22:58

that's so

Shikher Bhandary: 22:58

the whole part. You're in a cabin and you don't have any connection. Batteries are dead.

Jed Tabernero: 23:03

Villains, dude, villains beware, man. We mentioned it a little bit earlier. They're also doing a ton of partnerships with the governments. Right

Shikher Bhandary: 23:11

Their biggest customer.

Jed Tabernero: 23:13

That's it. I didn't know that. That's insane. And based on what's happening right now, like around the world it's 2024, ton of war going on out there. That's like first time televised. All of a sudden you see the importance of something like Starlink. Okay. We're not going to spend too much time in this area, but if you've seen anything about the war that's happening in Ukraine at the moment, their infrastructure for internet. Was completely obliterated, right? It was completely obliterated at the start of this conflict and nobody was providing them internet, dude. Nobody is because you can't, right? They've destroyed that infrastructure to be able to provide for the end, but guess what Starlink was able to provide internet to that region,

Shikher Bhandary: 24:01

Yeah, incredible. So what we access as maybe Starlink, right? Through SpaceX satellites. That's for public. So what they're building right now is something called StarShield. And StarShield is the private satellite network for the Pentagon. So they are getting into these discussions of like serious national security and the government absolutely would want to build, would want to use all that investment that SpaceX has done and the efficiencies that they have driven to make sure that they have the best spacecraft sensors and communication services. So it's in, it's like they, they are not only cracking the consumer code, but also the enterprise code. We mentioned the shipping and the airline industry and also self service, but also now the regulatory and the government side of things as well.

Jed Tabernero: 25:03

The government has. Geostationary satellites as well, right? That has existed for quite a while, but with the advent of this really close satellites in orbit, all of a sudden it becomes more efficient to even grab satellite like that, right? More secure as well.

Shikher Bhandary: 25:19

Yes, way easier than if the government did it

Jed Tabernero: 25:23

way cheaper.

Shikher Bhandary: 25:25

way cheaper.

Jed Tabernero: 25:26

It's in some sorts. It's an Internet revolution, right? Because all of a sudden there's a solution to bridge the gap between the underserved and unserved as well. But on the other side, there's also a not so rosy picture about that. And, just to name a few. A lot of people who complain about this idea of constellations in space to be able to provide Internet. A lot of what people are worried about is there's already so much shit in space, man. There's a lot of shit in space, especially in low Earth orbit. There's a lot of shit in space because there have been, unfortunate collisions of different government satellites, private satellites, et cetera, and we've seen it. There's a ton of trash in low earth orbit. So one of the things that people really complain about is, Hey, we're launching so many things. There might be a way more dangerous situation in low earth orbit than we'd like, right? And so that's one of the big things that people are concerned about the overcrowding of space.

Shikher Bhandary: 26:33

It's a super interesting concept called Kessler syndrome. I've been reading, 30

Jed Tabernero: 26:38

Wow.

Shikher Bhandary: 26:39

To bring that up. One of my favorite books in science fiction is this book called seven eves by Neil Stephenson. And that covers this concept. Basically, if there's a lot of debris in space. One, one thing can cause a chain reaction. So if one big, say a used jet or discarded satellite, or other mission related, related debris, if they strike each other, they. even though it's unintentional and they collide because of gravity and so on, they end up exploding into these thousands of debris fragments and they and those fragments then do the same and then create, thousands of debris. So it becomes like this exponential exponential number of incidents where you then have Your entire low earth orbit completely crowded, which ruins it for everyone, right? So this is called the Kessler syndrome, where it's just a runaway chain reaction of collisions will result in such a dense cloud of just debris around the earth. It would really threaten future missions.

Jed Tabernero: 28:01

We mentioned about this Kessler syndrome or whatever, that is gonna end to this crazy overcrowding of low Earth orbit. The reason why that's so dangerous, and you may not appreciate this as somebody who just watches stuff online, right? You see a satellite. And it's moving when you're looking at it on a video or something. It seems like it's just moving at a leisurely pace, right? You just see it and it's ah that's cute. Maybe I can get on it. That thing is moving 70, 000, 17, 000 miles per hour. That's about seven kilometers a second, right? You're scaling.

Shikher Bhandary: 28:40

do that? Did you do that math right now? Or you had it right in front?

Jed Tabernero: 28:44

What do you think? We'll leave it there. Dude, seven kilometers a second, right? You can imagine how fast this fucking thing goes, and then you add in thousands of debris. Ah, it's not just that when you launch a rocket, and maybe the launch vehicle is still up there with it and it's still dispensing satellites or maybe dispensing something to the international space station, which is a little bit above that could really cause a problematic scenario, right? Seven kilometers per second for any little thing that makes all those tiny debris. Just as dangerous as a big debris like this. Because it's moving so fast. So anyway, just to put some emphasis on how dangerous, this little project, this quite large project could be, we need to acknowledge that it's dangerous regardless, even if there's one, one piece of debris up there. I mentioned earlier about Starlink's AI capabilities, and the beaming of data lasers, communicating with other satellites as well. Why do they travel? In these like little constellations that you see up in the sky, right? It's because for them that's a way to avoid how dangerous it might be when one gets hit Right? The fact that they have those krypton thrusters move them around a little bit when one moves it then all of the whole constellation moves because it knows that there's a single piece of debris that might take out the whole constellation so in that way, they're able to avoid these collisions and dude, I gotta Communicate that there's a ton of near collision experiences happening On a daily basis, right? Near collision experiences that are caught. And, a lot of regulatory bodies track that they look at, Hey, how close can these guys get to each other? That job becomes a lot more difficult when you have thousands and thousands of satellites up in low Earth orbit, right? So there is something that they're doing about it. And the Yeah.

Shikher Bhandary: 30:46

Dude. One thing I want to point out is when humans have their backs against the walls, they always find a way. And I got into this rabbit hole of this Kessler syndrome stuff. And they are now creating. something called space trash lasers, where a laser will point it out, will map it out and then boom just do enough to push the satellite off its path. And then it just falls down and burns in the atmosphere. So there are some pretty fascinating things that people apply thinking and creating. to overcome this.

Jed Tabernero: 31:26

Very

Shikher Bhandary: 31:26

so yeah, so I, I don't think we're ever going to stop, with the number of satellites in low earth orbit.

Jed Tabernero: 31:34

Yeah it's true. And that being said, the reason that there even is debris is because the way satellites kind of work before is that if it's broken, governments don't give a fuck. They'll just leave it up there, right? The older satellites that we had, even the ones that were in low earth orbit, they just didn't disintegrate completely. So when they broke, they just left it there. Who's, there's no janitor for space, right? So it's just up there. Going fucking 17, 000 miles per hour which is insane that there's still debris up there. The thing about these new satellites, especially with Starlink satellites is that they promise to at least disintegrate 95%. And now I think it's 100, 95%, at least initially 95 percent of the satellite, right? When they deorbit it. A satellite's useful life is about five years. So when they decide Hey it's not working anymore. They do something called the orbit. And when they deorbit that you want to expect that it doesn't hurt one other satellites. Or other things in lower orbit to the people on earth, there was this crazy study that, that I just I read up on before the call which is that in 2027, there's a potential that deorbiting satellites from low earth orbit will actually result in one human death a year. That is a crazy stat. That's a crazy stat because we don't know what the effects of deorbiting satellites. Typically is because when something fall, you can't track all the pieces to fall down, right? It's just very difficult. So what they can do from there and the satellite manufacturers is ensure that the entire satellite goes away when they decide to deorbit. So that's one of the cool things that they're doing with the modern satellites these days, SpaceX and Starlink is always looking at. Newer designs of satellites, and they've just launched rather than a couple of months ago. It's important that they do these things so that there's no more debris that gets left up there when they decide to deorbit said satellite. So that anyway, those are just things that kind of defend against, the scientists who are actually working on this are actually thinking about those things as well. It's not like it's completely ignored.

Shikher Bhandary: 33:56

Yeah. I think it is extremely dangerous, but if we say, Hey, it kills one person a year, no one's going to take it serious. Like vending machines kill like 10 people a year. I don't know how.

Jed Tabernero: 34:12

But anyway it's acknowledged that it could cause some danger. That's all the fact that there is, that we're not completely safe from satellites, the orbiting basically. And that's one of the considerations. Another thing is I have a few astronomer friends who like to go to observatories and watch the skies, the other thing that is

Shikher Bhandary: 34:31

Oh, that's totally been ruined now because of this.

Jed Tabernero: 34:34

Oh, yeah. Dude, now that there's 5k, right? They said there's no chance of them taking like a decent picture from an observatory. My friend goes to the Lick Observatory. I think that's down in San Jose or something. South Bay. Which I've been to as well. Gorgeous. And it's amazing place for you to take your kids. But from the observatory, you cannot really expect to take a full blown picture without a Starlink satellite in the air. And so now they're not able to observe galaxies from very far away because the brightest thing to them in those pictures are now satellites. Now, like I said, there's always been satellites, but they are fricking far and not bright enough. So now all of a sudden these satellites are close and bright as fuck. So they look like stars as well. And that was one of the frustrations that my friend had of just looking at these, beautiful pictures that yeah, now there's starling satellites. I even had friends in the Philippines who are just astronomer, like they're not really astronomers, but they're just, Infatuated by space. So they bought themselves a ton of equipment to just observe the sky. There's not too much light pollution in a lot of places in the Philippines. And so it was enjoyable to look at the sky, but now it's confusing because there's kind of these satellites, so one of the things I was thinking about, which is how do you get rid of that? Maybe we send more things that can observe. In higher orbits further and further, which actually we do have, right? We have also medium earth orbit where some satellites are there for purely observation purposes. Obviously

Shikher Bhandary: 36:02

Yeah. And the Hubble telescope is all is like super far because then the earth does not distract it from actually capturing pictures. So there are solutions, but it's just it's where my head goes. With regards to all of this is like a dark and funny place where it's like, what happens when these uncontacted tribes look up in the sky and there are like seven dots just circling every day, they'll be like freaking out. So yeah, it's just funny that we live in such such unprecedented times where, satellites are in space, we are launching, I don't know, hundred rockets. in a year, more than that, like it's incredible.

Jed Tabernero: 36:48

it is. It is. And, I think going into this topic helped me appreciate number one, the digital divide that we talked over this Starlink isn't the beautiful solution yet to this digital divide primarily because of cost. Like we have a digital divide with underserved and unserved communities that they can't get access to internet because the infrastructure doesn't exist. Now the infrastructure can exist because of companies like Starlink, but it's not yet cost effective enough to provide that internet to everybody, right? Maybe in America, but not the rest of the world yet. So quite interesting to pay attention to that kind of stuff. And the cool thing that Starlink at least gives us is the ability to bridge that gap somehow. They're planning on bringing down those upfront costs for customers, by a healthy margin once they're able to scale. And so there's some things we can look forward to in bridging that digital divide. Another thing is, great security that, that comes from having your own satellites up in low earth orbit and that being accessible to governments all over the world. And really scaling technology across the board. We've seen the great things that have come out of space technologies, right? Like cell phones, all these cool projects that have come out of this, right? We even have better cell phones today because of these new technologies, right? And so I really appreciate the kind of science that has gone into solving these problems because of the cool shit that we can do today. But yeah, there's a lot more to come. And we just had a episode on stellar, that wonderful startup who's looking to connect even, mobile systems to the global web without much latency, which is going to be a really exciting topic. We'll link it in the show notes here, but lots to look forward to. And we'll keep tracking the progress of low earth orbit satellites. As always stay curious.

38:41

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