Yea no. This company might even sincerely want to do its own constillation yet I doubt that. This is just to give the optics of ‘see! Musk isn’t a monopoly!’ along with ‘see! we’re not trump’s puppets! We’re fighting against President Musk!’
Same as their halfhearted attempts at laying fiber.
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.
Completely destroying space and satellite communication might actually be for the best… maybe.
Not if you’re in a place that relies on satellite infrastructure, such as places conventional telephony doesn’t work in.
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…
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.
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They split off from Google.
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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.
Zaybatsu. Japan lives in the 00s since the 80s, as they say. Since 1880s.
The picture of a dystopian future where feudal oligarchs are shooting down each others low orbit internet satellites in the furious competition for best coverage popped into my head.
Who are we casting as the satellite retrieval specialist with a penchant for bonsai trees living in an off grid log cabin?
Heh, that’s a good future.
The one we’re speeding towards is where they all collude, and all the service is shitty and the same (or worse) as its ever been. If its not just monopolized. That’s why Night City is a relatively good place to live in CP2077: There’s still competition.
Not familiar with the current crop of actors, but Honestly I’d love william shatner and nicolas cage be in this one. Cage getting to go full tilt as the CEO who’s put offensive lasers on his satilites marketing them as an anti kessler syndrome measure but really jsut wanting to fry competitors.
Shatner even has the bonus of having a REALLY nice ranch they could use for location shots of shatner’s home as he’s talked into helping train the group of loonies that are going up there.
ok cool, whos gonna buy that? Europe wants to be independent from US big tech, elon got the US gov by the balls and china surely has their own thing.
