What an argument.
Internet access is good.
You can call your relatives and check in. That has been huge. My relatives traveled the US in the 80s and could call home maybe once a week? Month? Now intl calls are free.
You don't need to check everything everyime like social media apps brainrot.
Just like once people didn't use electricity or vaccines or indoor plumbing. For all its minuses the internet makes these long trips 10x easier.
What it does do, for sure, is encourage people with no proper grounding in multi day off road adventuring to have a go and die through lack of prior experience and skills.
Whether you like it or not, Starlink being an easily-accesible internet service has likely saved dozens of noobs from certain death by offering emergency eSIM services, GPS navigation, or communciation systems that they wouldn't otherwise have. Can I prove it objectively? Likely not (outside of forum anecdotes), but I wasn't the first to make a claim with the burden to do so.
Sure - West Australian newspaper pretty much any week of the year - tourists come from all over the globe to visit the vast untamed outback, rent a 4x4, head out, and get into life threatening (sometimes life ending) trouble despite having a phone connection via either mobile towers or starlink. You know, no charge, no backup, no paper maps, no experience, etc.
Whether you like it or not, ePiRBs being an easily accesible service has actually saved dozens of noobs and experienced personal from certain death by offering emergency service alerting - Fact! (and no internet required)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_position-indicating_...
You could do that, or you could do the 21st century thing, and put up enough satellites to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country. Compatible with any smartphone.
Like Starlink? Glad we agree.
> to have emergency-grade LTE coverage across the entire country.
Literally does not stop people dying and is not a substitute for knowing what you're doing in remote areas.
The claim was:
For all its minuses the internet makes these long trips 10x easier.
A big issue with yelling help! from a remote location rather than having the skill set to self rescue is that now third parties (rescuers) are putting themselves at risk and using their time and resources which may or may not be reimbursed.
May I remind you what world are we living in?
Denying emergency comms to people who didn't buy specialized hardware because "they should have prepared better" sounds like social darwinism to me.
Especially in an age when everyone has in their pocket a smartphone that's crammed full of advanced RF tech. Starlink has Direct to Cell on new sats, iPhones can use GEO satcom - what's your excuse?
All part of the adventure!
SpaceX spend a few billions on StarLink. But if you look at how much network operators have spent over the years on cables, base stations, etc. it's not all that much for a network that offers high bandwidth access all over the planet.
Adding 100K more satellites is going to make Star Link a direct competitor to many of these operators.
I’m writing this from a small island in a remote country using Starlink, and it’s very popular over here for people that want reliable internet.
One days work for one house. Multiply that across an entire nation, and work out how much diesel is burned for that. Where they live you can't get cable (not very common in the UK), but if it was available I guess there would have been another digging day in the 90s.
To know when a asteroid is on its way to us.
All that satellites make discovering them more difficult.