I got almost 20 minutes in but gave up at that point. This chap makes a number of good points but it's a very one sided polemic. A few points for the sake of balance.

I'm not certain, but when comparing the cost of a launch he said this included the staffing costs but then I think might have double counted space-x staff working directly for starlink. Either that or he double counted their wages when he added up the costs of the satellites themselves. And he certainly used the retail cost of a space launch rather that the internal cost. But for all I know the US government gets launches at cost price in return for investing at the ground level.

When comparing Starlink with satellite services provisioned from geostationary satellites we hear a great deal about how the greater ping times would have no effect on anyone but hardcore gamers. That's stretching the truth somewhat. Details of the comparison to these ping times are not provided but I can tell you that the 20-65 ms ping times discussed for Starlink would be more than adequate for most purposes. He's right that the most hardcore of live action gamers would baulk at that sort of lag but there's no mention of how much lag you get routing your traffic through a Geostationary satellite. Best case scenario that's over half a second. For many nearly a full second. Now while I agree that for Netflix all you care about it bandwidth and not whether a 90 minute movie takes an extra half second to start that's not the case for more interactive tasks. Even basic web browsing becomes a more frustrating experience when the page takes an extra half second to respond and saying Facebook would be unaffected could be misconstrued as suggesting that the video and voice functions in Messenger would be fine. In fact they'd be a almost unusuable. Same goes for any other Voice over IP service including the WiFi assisted calling that many users are unaware that they're benefiting from. Not to mention remote desktop services that are increasingly coming to the fore. If you think that a satellite service provided from a Geostationary satellite means you can move to the unspoiled wilderness and still work from home then you may have to give that some more thought, with Starlink that's a far more realistic prospect.

There's certainly a place for geostationary Internet but this comparison is anything but like for like. This is notable as there are other services being developed for this market. [circleid.com]

Watching the video (at least the 20 minutes I bothered with) you'd be forgiven for thinking that offering Internet connections from a Low Earth Orbit was a particular folly for Elon Musk alone.

We also hear a fair bit about contention on Starlink but nothing about the maximum capacity of a geostationary satellite. Also with thousands of devices in low earth orbit redundancy is a given but when a geostationary satellite has problems that's an issue for a whole continent.

The Kestler effect is a very real concern. I'm no expert but I think it's probably worth raising the issue. That said the narrator seems to be giving the impression that 46,000 new object would be added to low earth orbit every 5 years. In fact when you replace one of these the older satellite is de-orbited and burns up in the atmosphere. A satellite that fails and goes offline in such a way as to prevent it receiving the command to de-orbit will burn up eventually anyway. These low earth orbits are not entirely outside of the atmosphere and decay through the very slight drag from the thin remnants of atmosphere at these levels.

As side note the so called greenhouse effect that traps heat in the lower levels of the atmosphere also prevents this heat from warming the outer extremities of the atmosphere meaning these outer layers contract and are thinner. Satellites at that altitude expend less fuel to stay aloft thanks the fossil fuels we burn down here. A very thin silver lining indeed but a great bit of evidence for the occasional climate change denier who thinks increased temperatures are just due to increased solar activity.

Anyway it was at about this point that I wondered what other topics this Common Sense Skeptic might tackle and it is wall to wall Musk Musk Musk. I then lost hope that additional balance might be added if I stuck it through to the end.

And now m'lord the case for the defense shrugs and says plbst!

I'd better get on with some actual work.

An excellent analysis. Thank you for sharing this video!