Abstract from the paper in the article:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280
Large constellations of small satellites will significantly increase the number of objects orbiting the Earth. Satellites burn up at the end of service life during reentry, generating aluminum oxides as the main byproduct. These are known catalysts for chlorine activation that depletes ozone in the stratosphere. We present the first atomic-scale molecular dynamics simulation study to resolve the oxidation process of the satellite’s aluminum structure during mesospheric reentry, and investigate the ozone depletion potential from aluminum oxides. We find that the demise of a typical 250-kg satellite can generate around 30 kg of aluminum oxide nanoparticles, which may endure for decades in the atmosphere. Aluminum oxide compounds generated by the entire population of satellites reentering the atmosphere in 2022 are estimated at around 17 metric tons. Reentry scenarios involving mega-constellations point to over 360 metric tons of aluminum oxide compounds per year, which can lead to significant ozone depletion.
PS: wooden satellites can help mitigate this https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01456-z
I hate Elon, but he ain’t the only one trashing the LEO
Okay, but he’s trashing it the fastest and for the dumbest reasons.
If I have to compare, giving people in underserved areas access to the Internet is a better reason than spy sats or satellite TV.
Tv is still kinda important, like backup of streaming Tv (freely&freesat)
At least the article came with the numbers. Given what I regularly read about all the pollutants we daily pump into the atmosphere, the numbers in this article for the materials being atomized is…well, they’re very small in scale.
Basically, if a few hundred tons per year is hurting the ozone (and other things), just imagine what the billions of tons per year of emissions does.
The point here is not that aluminum oxide “pollutes” on its own, it is that it “speeds up” the harmful reaction between ozone and any chlorine (like CFC) “pollutants” up there without being consumed, so it keeps acting over 30 years. It makes all the pollutants you mention “more effective” at depleting ozone.
I didn’t see a mention in the paper on what amount the bump up would be with the maximum amount of AlO2 distributed in the layers of the atmosphere where the reactions would occur. When emissions are in the trillions of tons, I wonder if it would even be measurable.
When emissions are in the trillions of tons, I wonder if it would even be measurable.
emission of what? There aren’t trillions of tons of Chlorine in the stratosphere (that’s what interferes with O3) being pumped into the atmosphere. Are you thinking of CO2?
I doubt anybody can give a confident answer today about the value of the effect that a kg of Al2O3 can have per ton of atmosphere at ozone layer height, because that would involve not just doing what they did in the paper, but also figuring out what “shape” the Al2O3 particles have to know what their adsorption surface would be, for e.g. zeolites this can be 16m2 per gram. e.g. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/earth-extraterrestrial-space-dust-weight-meteorite but maybe it can be simply extrapolated from analogous metallic meteorite dust samples :/
Carbon monoxide also contribute to ozone breakdown, and there are additional manmade substances similar to CFCs with chlorine and bromine that are still leaked. Environmental changes in the Antarctic also can increase ozone depletion as well as longer lasting cold air in the stratosphere (observed in 2020 in the Arctic). The mention of emissions was just to suggest that smaller reactions can get lost in all the other problems we have created, although wildfire increases are raising CO.
Its good to keep an eye out for new sources of pollution, but the possible ozone depletion from satellites burning up is a tiny tiny fraction of what we’re doing on Earth right now for pollutants.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While researchers have largely focused on the pollutants being released by rockets as they launch, we’ve only begun to understand the implications of having thousands of retired and malfunctioning satellites burn up in the atmosphere.
“Only in recent years have people started to think this might become a problem,” said coauthor and University of Southern California astronautics researcher Joseph Wang in a statement.
Since it’s practically impossible to get accurate readings from the kind of pollutants satellites release as they scream back through the atmosphere, scientists can only estimate their effects on the surrounding environment.
By studying how common metals used in the construction of satellites interact with each other, the team estimated that the presence of aluminum increased in the atmosphere by almost 30 percent in 2022 alone.
They found that a 550-pound satellite generates roughly 66 pounds of aluminum oxide nanoparticles during reentry, which would take up to 30 years to drift down into the stratosphere.
“The environmental impacts from the reentry of satellites are currently poorly understood,” the researchers note in their paper.
The original article contains 371 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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Starlink shouldn’t have existed. SpaceX should have been a division of NASA
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That’s never going to happen. Both Democrats and Republicans abuse NASA and take money from it. Because the public doesn’t care or understand the importance of space travel. Your comments are a prime example of misinformation about space capabilities that NASA has. Without SpaceX, we would still be sucking Russia off to launch on the ISS. Spacex doesn’t give a fuck about politicians and just does what they want. That might be bad one day, but today it’s fucking great, and anyone saying otherwise is either misinformed or intentionally misleading
NASA has blown up their fair share of rockets in their day. A couple of shuttles as well. I’m saying that all the people working at SpaceX would have been better employed as NASA employees so their research isn’t payealled.
Yes it went so well with innovation from NASA’s existing practice.
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That might be true. But every organisation has to achieve its goals in the context that it exists. And to be fair to NASA they’ve realised it’s better to outsource development because it’s less prone to porn barrel politics.
“Porn barrel politics” I’m intrigued.
Wow 🤣 I am not sure what happened there. Should have been PORK barrel politics.
I’m also intrigued. Clearly things are more exciting at NASA than I thought.
At least they’re not blowing their budget exploding rockets…
And the lesson is that they probably should’ve blown up more rockets on purpose rather than lose them on accident.
The Falcon 9 has the largest number of successful launches of any rocket ever by a large margin.
on purpose
lol
Another example of failing on purpose is when you do push-ups until the point of collapse.
I mean you can giggle at the turn of phrase, but clearly what is meant is to be more willing to tolerate risk. Very clearly that’s been a much shorter path to success than the one NASA took.
You can be more direct with it. Going out and doing something you know will fail is failing on purpose. SpaceX fails on purpose sometimes. They don’t just tolerate the risk of it; they set up cameras and other sensors and push their systems to failure on purpose.
No they’re somehow managing to blow it neither launching nor exploding rockets.
They’re blowing it on extra helium to make up for all the blowing helium
I am pretty sure they are making lots of money. You know based on the little bit of financial information leaking out.
Lots of people are experts on this topic it seems. They should form their own launch provider and show how it is done. Because results generally speak for themselves. They went from nothing to controlling over half the launches of the human race as a whole in about a decade. Did they get government money? Oh you betcha. Did they get as much as their rivals did? Not even close.
Reusability makes sense, this technique of rapid trial and error also makes sense.
Be nice if you could go into a bit more detail about your thoughts on this. Rather than just asserting your conclusions.
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Ok congrats on successfully moving the problem backwards. You have made another assertion without evidence to backup your previous assertion without evidence.
I understand your opinion but it is just an opinion
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If the Russians had not been rude to Musk, and hurt his little ego, SpaceX wouldn’t exist.
I guess we blame the Russians for this too then.
Idk, i think SpaceX is catching a lot of heat just because they have musk “at the helm”. He doesnt even do anything there, he isnt an aerospace engineer. They just let him sit in mission control so he can feel special. The actual work spacex is doing is revolutionary. Reuseable rockets are a seriously groundbreaking development. Almost everything you do these days relies on a sattelite connection, so doing that cheaper, more reliably, and less wastefully is massive.
Starlink is a different matter tho, its just another ISP but with a fancy connection method.
I think starlink is more than that as even more things rely on a (good) Internet connection ingeneral than rely on satellites, and traditional connectivity methods leave many people underserved even in countries like America let alone the world.
It definitely has its problems, if nothing else that it’s privately owned and anyone who wanted to compete would then massively amplify those problems.
Almost everything you do these days relies on a sattelite connection
Except GPS and satellite TV, say what now?
My internet doesn’t rely on satellite, neither does basically anything else
Can you imagine the world without GPS at this point?
In any case since you asked the biggest things besides those are weather predictions, spying, part of the large region emergency response systems, research, and land management.
Fair enough.
SpaceX and the reusable Falcon 9 is incredibly incredible. It has already eliminated lots of waste in the field of space travel.
Why?
futurism article… seriously?
There was the scientific article and the abstract in the body of the post if you wanted to read it, wtf more do you want?
Buy a ticket to mars. Problem solved.
Before anyone jumps on the Anti-Musk train, read the article, please. They admit that they don’t understand the complications that could arise and that they don’t have any hard figures for the damage being caused. I’ll be the first to jump in and say that it’s probably a bad thing to just let metals burn in in atmo, but let’s make sure we discuss the facts, and not just the politics of the potential polluter.
Guys, let’s not jump into conclusions. I’d say that it is not a real issue until at least a billion people have died from it.
Ah yes, the usual method of waiting until the issue becomes confirmed and also way too severe to fix instead of acting on precaution and harming profits of private companies. What could go wrong?
There is a line somewhere I think. Like people weren’t 100% sure the atomic bomb won’t ignite the atmosphere (it’s only very unlikely), but they still tested it. Similarly the probability of creating micro blackholes at LHC is not zero either, yet they still ran it.
If we have to make sure everything is 100% safe before we can do anything, we will be stuck with the status quo.
We will die of starvation because nothing is 100% safe, so waiting until we find that level of safety means we just won’t do anything.
I don’t know how that is usual in your mind. Since from my perspective I see it constantly.
Nah, this is a different method. It’s the one where we get all of the facts before we take action. Maybe you aren’t up on it, but knee-jerk is so 1700s.
We don’t have to wait until it’s “fully confirmed” to start being concerned about it. Remember climate change denial? We were in the “we don’t know if humans are causing it” phase for a while.
I also agree, let’s not jump on the anti-Musk team for this, but satellites burning up has always been a rather obvious source of pollution, and it’s good to see more discussion on it
Yeah, and now despite what the scientists say, everyone believes climate change is going to render Earth uninhabitable, and we are taking massive steps to avoid the problem as if it were an existential threat, which the science again does not support.
We’re treating climate change as if it were as serious as a planet killer asteroid, and we’re massively violating people’s rights as if it were.
Can’t tell if this is sarcasm, orr
We were in the “we don’t know if we’re causing it” phase for a long time because big oil knew about global warming and deliberately ran disinformation campaigns so they could keep profiteering. Had Exxon done the right thing in the 70s we wouldn’t have this looming crisis.
And now we’re in the “is burning up thousands of satellites bad?” phase of space exploration. I’ll be waiting for spacex to do the right thing.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending corporations here. I’m simply stating the fact that climate change denial wasn’t the case of waiting until it’s “fully confirmed”, it was pretty much confirmed back in the 70s. They even had predictions for the next century on how things will go bad if nothing is done and the last time I checked we were pretty on course with their predictions. When it came to the scientific consensus, it was pretty much “fully confirmed”. It was simply the public opinion where it wasn’t “fully confirmed” because corporations deliberately ran disinformation to make it seem like scientists didn’t know what they were talking about.
But this paper isn’t really confirming anything. The paper itself says that the model does not account for all the factors and to literally quote the paper:
As reentry rates increase, it is crucial to further explore the concerns highlighted in this study.
This paper is not presenting a final conclusion, it’s presenting concerns that need further studies. let’s wait for further studies and if there’s scientific consensus about it being an issue I’m all for bringing out the pitchforks. In the mean let’s keep calm and dread over the doom and gloom that is climate change.
So you’re saying that in the 70s they had predictions about how things will go bad for the next century?
Where are these predictions? It’s been 50 years so at least some of these predictions should be checkable now.
I would feel so much better if I could see some examples of climate science predictions being proven accurate.
It’s highlighting a potential significant risk. Major ozone loss is much worse than lack of internet. The high uncertainty of the paper is easily offset by the harm that would be caused if the paper is correct.
“All the facts” is counterfactual, superstitious thinking. There is no such thing as “all the facts”, except in game theory examples like tic-tac-toe.
In all realms other than small mathematical models, there’s no circumstance under which one has all the facts.
Sure, PFAS were also considered a nonsignificant issue until they weren’t, only it’s too late to unfuck it now. Well, no harm in generating more potential ticking time bombs I guess.
Like maybe wait a few years and finance some science to check that your mega constellation of satellites (built to fail after only a few years to make sure your rocket company never goes out of work) won’t be a fucking nuisance on so many levels before you actually launch them ?
This “get all the facts before taking action” ?Edit: I think I knee-jerked
Oh, you mean a study on the Satellite Internet Constellations that have been in orbit since the 1990s, a full 30 years before Starlink launched? As with nearly everything else, Musk isn’t the first to do whatever he does, he’s just the loudest. If Starlink hadn’t launched we would still be facing the same problems. Thankfully, he’s a big enough ass that he makes a easy target for these kinds of things.
Maybe I didn’t get my facts straight, but iirc there are around 7.5k satellites up there, with starlink current count about 5.5k. And I think I read they got the greenlight for the 7.5k gen 2 sats launches.
That looks like a scale change to me. Associated with the short lifespan (which contrasts with the situation 30 years ago, where launches were more expensive), it’s kind of a new situation and should have warranted a more careful approach.So musk isn’t the first one to launch satellites, I agree. But the way it’s done is kinda new, and mostly on the worse side. And I’m not saying the old way was good, and not absolving previous actors from responsability in the pollution.
As opposed to acting before you understand the effects of your actions? Neither seem like good choices.
Probably the best option would be to research harder. Make the polluter fund a much larger scale research program to understand the problem and viable solutions as quickly as possible.
Yeah, PFAS comes to mind. It took decades to confirm it’s harmful to humans but at this point it is everywhere and hard to get rid of. Worst part is they try to use other chemicals to replace PFAS, but again how harmful they are we don’t know and we will learn that decades later too because companies don’t want to make long term research before releasing the product. Enviroment shouldn’t be a billionaire’s testing ground.
So if moving from PFAS to alternate chemicals means moving foolishly into untested chemicals, why didn’t they wait to test them? Were they forced to make the change?
Ah yes, the usual method of waiting until the issue becomes confirmed and also way too severe to fix instead of acting on precaution and harming profits of private companies.
No, but as even them don’t understand what the complications are and how much the damages could be, maybe to wait to have at least some hard number looks like a good idea.
What could go wrong?
And what could go wrong if we start to fight a problem that we don’t understand how big it is, maybe using the wrong solution on a wrong scale ?
Perfect is the enemy of good.
If it is worth doing, it is worth getting it done, even if we aren’t 100% certain or ready on a lot of things. Doctors don’t wait for the worst before starting treatment. Specially if corrections carry none or way less risks than what is currently being done.
One of the big risks of not having a global communications satellite network is that people can get cut off from the internet by land-based ISPs loyal to whatever local government they’re trying to be free of.
So there’s a danger of just saying “no satellite clusters”.
We’re always balancing dangers against other dangers. There’s danger in not acting, not growing too.
Doing scientific experiments to understand the risks is worth doing.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
I agree on this.
If it is worth doing, it is worth getting it done, even if we aren’t 100% certain or ready on a lot of things.
From the article it seems we are not even 10% certain. In summary, we don’t understand (yet) the problem, we have no clue on how complex is, we have no hard number to tell us how big it is.
I agree, something need to be done. But for now the “something” is just to try to understand better the problem, or at least how big it is.Doctors don’t wait for the worst before starting treatment.
True, but they start treatment when they know what they need to cure or at least they have solid evidence that indicate something, not before.
Specially if corrections carry none or way less risks than what is currently being done.
Hard to decide that corrections carry lower risks of something we don’t understand.
maybe to wait to have at least some hard number looks like a good idea.
Good plan. So they’re holding off on starlink launches to let the science catch up, right?
If they don’t have grounds to accuse SpaceX then SpaceX can sue them for defamation. SpaceX doesn’t need YOU to defend them.
OP listed the referenced study in the description, it has “hard numbers” from simulations and citations to many other studies as well.
I was actually reviewing the O3 depletion process https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_monoxide and Cl only stops reacting with O3 when it ends up as ClO2, but that is rare, because ClO usually is too short-lived to react with another Cl into Cl2O, so it may be possible that a catalyst like Al2O3 could actually clean up Cl interfering with the ozone layer along with the effect of speeding up the nefarious reaction with O3 :D
The irony of a wikipedia expert agreeing with a tabloid skeptic.
Why did you write that? What do you gain or anyone reading from that comment? Who are you performing for? Where is the audience? Are you bored and I’m your little punching bag? If you know, contribute and tell us if and why I am wrong and I will welcome it, if you don’t or it is not worth the effort, just stfu, nobody needs your shit snark.
I wanted to reinforce good behavior, punish bad behavior.
Nah man, that’s just toxic hurtful criticism. Let people brainstorm and just let go of the gavel.
Sure I admit that your mistakes were purely imaginary and we can all pretend you never made them to hide your shame.
You didn’t mention any mistakes though
o7
About 48 tons of meteorites enter the atmosphere every day. I couldn’t find the elemental distribution, but I’d guess there is some aluminum in there. How much of an increase is 14 tons aluminum per year over the many tons of aluminum entering the atmosphere already? That might be good to get a rough estimate of how impactful this is.
I would put money down the meteorites are below 30% aluminum so I can’t see it being less than doubling.
48 tons per day, so it’d need to be less than 0.08% aluminum to double it.
ah. missed the per day vs per year thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements
That article discusses how to determine the average distribution of the elements. Considering that only 2% is not Hydrogen or Helium, I would guess that the amount of aluminum in those meteorites is either not burned up in the atmosphere, or is negligible enough to not make a difference.
Considering that only 2% is not Hydrogen or Helium
I assume that claim comes from:
The abundance of chemical elements in the universe is dominated by the large amounts of hydrogen and helium which were produced during the Big Bang. Remaining elements, making up only about 2% of the universe
I kind of doubt that hydrogen or helium comprise 98% of the mass of the 48 tons of meteors per day. I kinda suspect that the 48 tons of meteors are comprised almost entirely of “other” elements.
Even assuming the meteorites are 100% aluminum it’s a 30% increase which is quite significant.
From a short google search apparently only ~8% of asteroids in our solar system are metal rich which is mostly iron nickel. Rarer metals can be as rare as 100 grams per ton.
Which means of the 48 tons only 4.8 kilos could be aluminum. Compared to that the 14 tons would be a whopping ~3000% increase.
Al is a major element in the solar system. Most rocks have Al2O3 on the order of 3-10 wt.%. That includes chondrites (the major class of meteorite) which have plenty of feldspar, a mineral that’s like 20 wt.% Al2O3, and calcium-aluminium inclusions (CAIs), which are as their name suggests, Al-rich.
Isn’t it 48 tons of meteorites per day vs 14 tones of satellites per year?
The asteroid weights are given per day while the sats per year.
Still only 1752 kg per year
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4.8 kg not 48kg
Where are you getting a 30% increase?
Adding 14 tons a year to the 17,520 (48 x 365) tons of meteorites per year is a 0.07% increase (assuming that every meteorite is 100% aluminum and burns up entirely, which is definitely not reality)
4.8kg per day gives 1.75 tons per year, giving an 800% increase. That’s still really big, thanks for tracking down the numbers.
You would think space engineers would‘ve run those numbers before sending tens of thousands of them in orbit. It‘s really annoying that we can only hope for the best at this point.
Why would you think that?
When I fire up the grill, I don’t do calculations on how much weight in CO2 I’m putting into the air and then extrapolate that to find the total mass of CO2 that grills generate globally. I usually just make burgers.
That space engineer made sure that they were on the right side of the rocket equation and they made it to orbit (which is hard on its own).
I agree that thorough environmental studies really ought to be happening, but I’m not surprised that aspects got missed.
I was just worried about Kessler syndrome and just felt relaxed that their orbits were low enough to naturally decay and never become a permanent problem. What this research seems to show is that the aluminum oxide dust does not settle in days/weeks, but it is fine enough to stay there for decades :/
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it’s not just musk, Bezos too.
They do, and did. Perhaps this reaction with the ozone layer just hasn’t been considered until now.
I fully expect they did. I think this is partly why Elon went from “there’s no planet B” to a Saudi simp. Way to much money to be made to waste time on the concerns of scientists and the welfare of the planet.
damn, starlink is my only way to access the internet. I wish there were an alternative that’s usable. Traditional access providers don’t work and cell data is extremely slow and there’s no coverage where I live. I pay for Starlink with a bitter taste
Might I enquire as to where this remote location might be?
Like on a general basis, no need for addresses.
As a Finn I’m forever spoiled in terms of wireless coverage. We got tons of solitary forests. But you can get an internet connection in literally all of them.
97% of the country gets 4g. And not of the people. The country.
My family has Starlink, they live in mountainous rural. Cell towers aren’t too far away, but mountains get in the way of decent signal. No one is running any cables their way, despite a local telco taking money explicitly for providing internet service.
We Finns don’t have any of those pesky mountains.
Rural US most likely. Place is too big, too few people to be worth for comoanies to invest. So many places only have 1-2 providers at best, afaik.
I love it when ppl from small countries don’t get why there isn’t wifi / cell coverage literally everywhere…
I think they’re aware, given they said they’re spoiled?
Finland is not a small country compared to its population density and distribution.
Finland has 18 inhabitants per km².
USA have 35 inhabitants per km².
Huh. TIL.
But these are sort of not that good indicators, because the US has huge population centers on the coasts, and nothing in the vast center.
That’s not a good measurement as populations are not spread evenly. You could have 10 000 people per km^2 in the US then have 0.001 people per km^2 in another
The Finn already addressed this in their first post: 97% of the country has 4g. That is country, not people in the country. So yes, a reindeer in Lapland has a better potential internet connection than many rural north americans.
Edit: I found some recent numbers: this carrier claims to provide 4g to 99% of the population, 5g to 96%. https://www.dna.fi/wholesale/about-us/networks That 2nd statistic must be pretty damn rare, the country of Nokia indeed.
Yeah since most people don’t live in the parts of the country no-one lives in, when looking at how many people are covered, it gets pretty good. And we didn’t take long to get 5g to a lot of people.
Here’s a coverage map from Elisa. https://elisa.fi/kuuluvuus/
Tbh, that 4g coverage up north looks pretty damn good for how few people live there. To me it just makes no economic sense to provide that good a service there. So I’m curious and as a Finn you might know: does it make economic sense or was this investment done for other reasons?
My point was more that there is a lot more nothing land in the US
And why are you unwilling to accept that there is a lot of nothing land in Finland? Most of Finland is a lot of nothing land, plagued by mosquitoes in the summer and darkness in the winter.
Your country is neither unique, nor exceptional in this regard.
You are absolutely correct that distribution matters. However, Finland has an even more uneven population distribution than the US. 75% of the population lives in the costal cities, with 30% of the entire population living in the capital region( density of 193 persons/km²). The entire rest of the country is not empty dessert ( which would require no services), but very sparsely populated rural woodlands, down to 2 people per km².
Density still is an overall useful quantifier given that extra knowledge, as providing services for a small population of only 5.6mio inhabitants is not easy either. Sure, providing coverage for the 75% in the cities is fairly easy. But that still leaves 1.5mio rural residents, which require huge investments in cable to supply with broadband. And due to the vast distances, you definitely cannot cover them with wireless alone, if you were thinking that.
Compare the diameter of the two countries
If you only look at one line between LA and NYC, that is a lot more cable being laid. Now add something remote like the middle of Alaska vs the middle of Finland. We can assume for this example that they both service 100 people but the cost to do so for the US is a lot higher
That’s why using density makes no sense
Laying even 10 times the cable should not be more difficult when you have 60 times the total population (335mio in US vs 5.6mio in Finland) and hence more resources.
And sure, Alaska definitely it’s expensive and inefficient to service, having a pop density of about 0.5 inhabitants per km². But unlike Northern Finland, most of Northern Alaska is in fact entirely void of human life and more akin to a desert. There really mostly are a handful of oil industry clusters and native communities. And still, the extremely low pop density means it’s only 730 000 people living in Alaska. That is 0.2% of the entire population of the USA. If you were to completely ignore and not service Alaska, you should have a an even easier time providing service to the vast majority of the US population in all the main states. I think it’s pretty clear this is a political failure and not a matter of financial resources or natural obstacles.
estona has cell coverage on it’s intire rail network with 5g wifi? i read the Wikipedia page for Elron
I live in rural California. We only just this year are able to pick up a faint LTE signal. I think it might get us a very unstable 1-2 Mbps if we hold the phone just right. We have no cable, DSL or other land-based options and because of the topography can’t pick up the local wireless provider, which is very expensive anyway - like $175/month for 50/5
So without Starlink our only options are crappy regular satellite providers like Hughesnet which impose very low quotas - 10 GB monthly for day time usage - and have insane latency.
It bugs the shit out of me I have to give money to that fuckwit but without it we live in the dark ages.
We are in the mountains in rural Alberta
Majority of Canada is like that
We’re in Mayotte. Two undersea cables connect us to nearby continents (cf submarinecablemap.com) but they’re down most of the time. We haven’t had a connection in the last six months so we finally subbed to Starlink. Well, strictly speaking there was a connection but it would take anywhere between 5mn to 15mn to load the text of a static webpage, no images or anything else… forget about sending data, using forums… I had to get out and walk uphill for a minute or two to use my phone’s cell data
What about the remaining 3%?
Also, to (hopefully) answer your question:
Ignore Finland/Europe for a second and look at North America. The US has many population centers along the coasts and very few in the west inland. People still live there, so they need internet access, but oftentimes there aren’t enough people to justify expanding coverage across such a huge area without subsidizing said coverage with government funds or other customers, so there are bound to be coverage gaps if you don’t have unlimited money to throw at the problem. If you take a look at Canada, you can see how much worse the problem is as they have even more area to cover, and it reflects in the fact that they have some of the highest wireless prices in the world.
Also remember that these are wealthy countries. Plenty of other regions have the same problems with population density and physical size, and they can’t throw money at the problem like we can.
The TL;DR is that these deadzones exist in a ton of places because a lot of low-population areas are physically huge.
I remind you that it’s the remaining 3% of the country, physically. It’s not 3% of the population. It’s just some places in Lapland which don’t have the greatest coverage. And the 97% figure is 4g, 3g has better coverage.
The Northern part of Finland is very sparsely populated and people like internet and cables are very labour-intensive compared to setting up mobile network towers.
But yeah, compared to the US, we’re not really that sizable. We’re like the size of Montana or so, and they’ve around a fifth of our population.
tldr Yeah, it is about the size, but also, with Nokia and so on, we’ve sort of quite a lot of good know-how on building wireless networks. We’re the most sparsely populated country in the EU, but I think there’s quite a lot of Spain where there’s much worse coverage.
At least one hour outside any Midwest city.
lol that’s fantastic. Out in the forest with internet. How come, cell towers are closely packed ?
~75% of the country is forest, so it’s kinda hard to not be in a forest.
Idk if they’re closely packed.
Coverage map.
Thanks Elon
Give calyx some airwaves.
How about… HAARP? I would place my focus on HAARP.
What about it?
As fun as it might be to harp (ha) on them. It’s unlikely that a 30 year old atmospheric research station is a bond style earthquake machine.
ah but it helps Elon make money (maybe?) and Elon knows what is best for us, so that is fine
