Many Rural Americans Lack Access to High Speed Internet in Their Area

Are we going to grow/make all our food in cities? No. That would be infeasible.

While rural America is probably shrinking, there will always be a demand for it, based primarily around how our food systems work today.

Should that change in a massive way, perhaps it could result in rural America stopping being a thing. But I'm not currently aware of anything that will stop us needing things like Farms and Wheat fields.

Actually, rural America is going away. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-wave...fting-regional-patterns-of-population-change/



Modern information-based economies need modern information infrastructure.

When rural areas were being electrified a century ago, we created massive programs like the TVA and regulated these utilities tightly. Now, we install corporate stooges like Ajit Pai to let ISPs have their way with the country.
 
I lived with 1mbps dsl for the last 3 years. It was horrendous lol. 2 months ago moved into a new home and am now on 400mbps. Its a bit faster...
 
Websites are way way too fat.
We have to face the fact that in America, at least, everything revolves around money. and the companies who have the money, want to keep getting the money, so they actively support things that will do that.
Back in the 90's when the internet craze was really starting to catch fire, most websites were mostly text, with occasional pics. Now everything is graphics, and full motion video automatically loaded into the page so it plays as soon as the page loads. Why? Because the powers that be, like it that way.
I can't document any of these, but this is basically what I was reading a lot about back then:
Intel and Microsoft providing seed money for website developers to incorporate more and more graphics into their web pages; hence, inflating the need for faster and faster computers and connections.
Within a few years, the text on web pages had nearly all been changed into pictures.
The only reason for all this was to make more money by pushing consumers to replace what they already owned.
Dial up actually seemed pretty quick, until they started to bloat the web pages. Now if the page isn't cached at the nearest Verizon place, we often get buffering and have to watch the little circle thingy spin. Today's speedtest was 58 down and 62 up. No normal web page (no streaming) should be buffering (my bank pages).
 
Are we going to grow/make all our food in cities? No. That would be infeasible.

While rural America is probably shrinking, there will always be a demand for it, based primarily around how our food systems work today.

Should that change in a massive way, perhaps it could result in rural America stopping being a thing. But I'm not currently aware of anything that will stop us needing things like Farms and Wheat fields.

In the 1930s about 54% of the people who lived in rural areas actually engaged in farming, average farm size of 155 acres. By 2000 that number dropped to 10% and average farm size grew to 440 acres. This number is dropping all the time, as farms today for the size that they are and food they put out, require very little man power. However the other 90% of people living in rural areas are paycheck wage earners, not farmers.
 
But what about the fact that a satellite only stays in orbit 24 hours before it falls out of the sky and has to be replaced. Until they can get one to say in the sky for weeks, or even over 10 years we can't be expecting people to use that for data. Do you know how hard it is to lock onto a satellite for anything with the constant plummet they are in. It is terrible. That is why we don't use them for anything yet. They just haven't proven to be a viable solution to transmit data for anything yet. ;)


WTF are you talking about?

Are you talking about a single failure that someone had, or about the hundreds that have been up so long that they finally just stopped working at all and are still up there in slowly decaying orbits. There is a big difference in geosynchronous orbits and non-geosynchronous orbits. Your comment is so far beyond reality as to be laughable.

Who here has had Dish or DirectTV and had to adjust your antenna because the satellites were always falling out of the sky? Right, nobody.

Elon Musk's proposal claims that they intend that you could put an antenea/transceiver on your car or boat and get signal while on the move, presumably you won't need to be "locked on". This suggests a very dense pattern of satellites. It sounds like a very different solution and maybe he's talking out his ass and maybe he isn't. I'm not that well versed on the subject.

As for a viable solution, they sure worked just fine for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
https://defensesystems.com/articles/2015/01/23/army-merges-intel-and-c2-on-win-t.aspx

Do some reading on something called Trojan SPIRIT.
 
WTF are you talking about?

Are you talking about a single failure that someone had, or about the hundreds that have been up so long that they finally just stopped working at all and are still up there in slowly decaying orbits. There is a big difference in geosynchronous orbits and non-geosynchronous orbits. Your comment is so far beyond reality as to be laughable.

Who here has had Dish or DirectTV and had to adjust your antenna because the satellites were always falling out of the sky? Right, nobody.

Elon Musk's proposal claims that they intend that you could put an antenea/transceiver on your car or boat and get signal while on the move, presumably you won't need to be "locked on". This suggests a very dense pattern of satellites. It sounds like a very different solution and maybe he's talking out his ass and maybe he isn't. I'm not that well versed on the subject.

As for a viable solution, they sure worked just fine for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
https://defensesystems.com/articles/2015/01/23/army-merges-intel-and-c2-on-win-t.aspx

Do some reading on something called Trojan SPIRIT.

Musks plan was thousands (close to 10k if I remember right) of low (200-800 mile) orbit sats, rather than one or two 20,000 miles up, they would be Ku band. The idea is sound and should work, but the launching of that many would be a challenge no one has taken on, and because of orbit, would only last a few years before needing to be replaced. A plus side to this however would be lower, MUCH lower latency. The cost of such a plan would be huge and not many could make it profitable. However with his space program, filling up empty space on rockets could feed this plan. As right now it's just wasted space, when someone else is paying for the launch anyway, it's more or less a free ride for his business.
 
Musks plan was thousands (close to 10k if I remember right) of low (200-800 mile) orbit sats, rather than one or two 20,000 miles up, they would be Ku band. The idea is sound and should work, but the launching of that many would be a challenge no one has taken on, and because of orbit, would only last a few years before needing to be replaced. A plus side to this however would be lower, MUCH lower latency. The cost of such a plan would be huge and not many could make it profitable. However with his space program, filling up empty space on rockets could feed this plan. As right now it's just wasted space, when someone else is paying for the launch anyway, it's more or less a free ride for his business.


There were a lot of details posted above in a very large and exhaustive post. A link probably would have sufficed but ok. The number from that post was just over 4,400 satellites.
 
There were a lot of details posted above in a very large and exhaustive post. A link probably would have sufficed but ok. The number from that post was just over 4,400 satellites.

For the first stage, 4,400 are at the 700-800 mile level, another 7k+ will be at a 200-250 mile level for stage two.
 
For the first stage, 4,400 are at the 700-800 mile level, another 7k+ will be at a 200-250 mile level for stage two.


With that many platforms in orbit all networked, I wonder if he's planning a distributed computing server farm in space? Heat shouldn't be an issue, power would be another thing.

But sure, host your content in the "New Cloud".

EDITED: Interesting question, space is cold right? But would a hot running satellite be able to "bleed off" heat in a vacuum?
 
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With that many platforms in orbit all networked, I wonder if he's planning a distributed computing server farm in space? Heat shouldn't be an issue, power would be another thing.

But sure, host your content in the "New Cloud".

EDITED: Interesting question, space is cold right? But would a hot running satellite be able to "bleed off" heat in a vacuum?

Space is cold, but heat transfer is an issue without a medium to transfer to, so conduction and convection are almost totally out of the question, those two being the main ways we cool things here, like a fan pushing air through a HS or rad. Space only really has radiation, which is far worse. It also makes things a bit odd, in that one side of a sat can be hot due to radiation from the sun (250F), while its "dark side" can be freezing (-250F), heat pipes were actually designed for sats to move heat from one side to the other in a solid state manner. The easy part is rejecting radiant heat is pretty easy by using reflective material (Mylar), and temperature at Earth distance from the sun, in sunlight can be quite high, transfer is pretty slow due to particle density, as well as how conductive or reflective the surface is. In space Heat and Temperature are not the same thing, the temperature, which is the measurement of matter in the area, and space being almost a vacuum with maybe a few particles per square inch, they may be thousands of degrees, however the heat from so few is very low. Funny enough, despite what movies show you are not going to freeze in space, at least not very fast, as your body generates a lot of heat and with the only way to dissipate it being radiation in space, it would be a very, very slow freeze. You would long die of not having oxygen before freezing, or ebullism, or ruptured lungs if you tried to hold your breath.
 
Well, assuming what you're saying is true, it doesn't detract from my point that I don't see it reaching zero. I still see value in running fibre as a long-term investment for such things. Especially since more and more farms are using network/internet connected machinery.

In the 1930s about 54% of the people who lived in rural areas actually engaged in farming, average farm size of 155 acres. By 2000 that number dropped to 10% and average farm size grew to 440 acres. This number is dropping all the time, as farms today for the size that they are and food they put out, require very little man power. However the other 90% of people living in rural areas are paycheck wage earners, not farmers.
 
Well, assuming what you're saying is true, it doesn't detract from my point that I don't see it reaching zero. I still see value in running fibre as a long-term investment for such things. Especially since more and more farms are using network/internet connected machinery.

Except they don't use internet connected equipment. While computerization of it has grown, it is all local control with some GPS help, but doesn't require internet, anything that does is cell or satellite based already, as you are not going to cover a 1,000 acre farm with WiFi. I also don't think you understand the term investment, as you would never get any sort of return off of it as a business without government subsidy. In which case you are just forcing other people to pay for a convenience for one person based on their willful choice of living location.
 
Unfortunately Satellite varies a lot by region. In my area you are promised similar speeds \ caps, but are lucky to get several megs down. During peak times or after hitting your cap you are relegated to dial up speeds.

If you currently have a dsl option, and Comcast even gives you the option to have a line run, I suspect your zones are much less congested.

HughesNet uses Echostar 19 for North America.
https://www.satbeams.com/satellites?id=2556

E19 went offline recently and HughesNet was crippled for the entire continent. Talk about putting your eggs in one basket.
 
Comcast has finally begun installing a fiber network in our community.. in about a month's time I should be having internet speeds that rival my 70Mbit T-Mobile hotspot....
 
WTF are you talking about?

Are you talking about a single failure that someone had, or about the hundreds that have been up so long that they finally just stopped working at all and are still up there in slowly decaying orbits. There is a big difference in geosynchronous orbits and non-geosynchronous orbits. Your comment is so far beyond reality as to be laughable.

Who here has had Dish or DirectTV and had to adjust your antenna because the satellites were always falling out of the sky? Right, nobody.

Elon Musk's proposal claims that they intend that you could put an antenea/transceiver on your car or boat and get signal while on the move, presumably you won't need to be "locked on". This suggests a very dense pattern of satellites. It sounds like a very different solution and maybe he's talking out his ass and maybe he isn't. I'm not that well versed on the subject.

As for a viable solution, they sure worked just fine for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
https://defensesystems.com/articles/2015/01/23/army-merges-intel-and-c2-on-win-t.aspx

Do some reading on something called Trojan SPIRIT.

I was trying to make a joke about how the person you were replying to was complaining about how satellites are not a valid form of technology to use because satellites don't stay in orbit very long. You had just glanced over that part of his argument and were only focusing on the speed / latency part and so I thought I would toss in how silly it is to try to claim that their time in orbit is something to be highly concerned with. DirecTV is still using stuff in orbit since 2001.
 
I was trying to make a joke about how the person you were replying to was complaining about how satellites are not a valid form of technology to use because satellites don't stay in orbit very long. You had just glanced over that part of his argument and were only focusing on the speed / latency part and so I thought I would toss in how silly it is to try to claim that their time in orbit is something to be highly concerned with. DirecTV is still using stuff in orbit since 2001.

The situation is not the same for Musks plan however, the Satellites will be a bit more disposable in nature (LEO vs GEO), in that their normal life will only be a few years before they can no longer hold orbit. The Starlink plan has them lasting about 5 years before a planned de-orbit.
 
Space is cold, but heat transfer is an issue without a medium to transfer to, so conduction and convection are almost totally out of the question, those two being the main ways we cool things here, like a fan pushing air through a HS or rad. Space only really has radiation, which is far worse. It also makes things a bit odd, in that one side of a sat can be hot due to radiation from the sun (250F), while its "dark side" can be freezing (-250F), heat pipes were actually designed for sats to move heat from one side to the other in a solid state manner. The easy part is rejecting radiant heat is pretty easy by using reflective material (Mylar), and temperature at Earth distance from the sun, in sunlight can be quite high, transfer is pretty slow due to particle density, as well as how conductive or reflective the surface is. In space Heat and Temperature are not the same thing, the temperature, which is the measurement of matter in the area, and space being almost a vacuum with maybe a few particles per square inch, they may be thousands of degrees, however the heat from so few is very low. Funny enough, despite what movies show you are not going to freeze in space, at least not very fast, as your body generates a lot of heat and with the only way to dissipate it being radiation in space, it would be a very, very slow freeze. You would long die of not having oxygen before freezing, or ebullism, or ruptured lungs if you tried to hold your breath.

Not all of space is "cold". Depending on the energy input from a source like the sun you might actually cook in space. But assuming you arent in the sun (maybe you got dropped out on the dark side of the moon) it would take about 11 hours for you to freeze post death. If you were in the sun and it wasnt "warm" enough to cook you - i.e. you radiated heat faster than you absorbed it then it would take about a day I think. The real bitch is you could have a perfect albedo and be in a balanced stay of never freezing or never frying.

On the other hand you wouldnt feel anything because after about 15 seconds or so youd probably pass out. And no you cant hold your breath in space in case anyone was wondering...
 
The situation is not the same for Musks plan however, the Satellites will be a bit more disposable in nature (LEO vs GEO), in that their normal life will only be a few years before they can no longer hold orbit. The Starlink plan has them lasting about 5 years before a planned de-orbit.

Talking about what is in space now. Your comment has nothing to do with the original post. Talking about people in rural areas somebody stated that it is not possible for anyone to actually use satellite internet because the speed isn't there, the latency is too high and the satellites don't stay in orbit forever so you are having to always send up new ones.

None of those are really issues right now for anyone that can get Hughes net or whatever their name is now. Yes it isn't the best but it is usable option for those that have nothing else to do.
 
Not all of space is "cold". Depending on the energy input from a source like the sun you might actually cook in space. But assuming you arent in the sun (maybe you got dropped out on the dark side of the moon) it would take about 11 hours for you to freeze post death. If you were in the sun and it wasnt "warm" enough to cook you - i.e. you radiated heat faster than you absorbed it then it would take about a day I think. The real bitch is you could have a perfect albedo and be in a balanced stay of never freezing or never frying.

On the other hand you wouldnt feel anything because after about 15 seconds or so youd probably pass out. And no you cant hold your breath in space in case anyone was wondering...

Passing out would happen pretty fast, though I don't think we have any solid info on this. Another interesting thing is that you would go blind before then, and your eyes would dry out almost instantly, as water in a vacuum turns into a gas in seconds, and shortly after boiling off of your eyes, would freeze into a solid. Without a doubt a weird environment to work in.
 
I just got an email from my US Senator that Missouri will be spending $255 million over the next 10 years to expand broadband internet access in rural areas in our state. Good progress but lets see what that $ can get us.
 
The situation is not the same for Musks plan however, the Satellites will be a bit more disposable in nature (LEO vs GEO), in that their normal life will only be a few years before they can no longer hold orbit. The Starlink plan has them lasting about 5 years before a planned de-orbit.


Musk's plan IS Starlink.

Unless I have been mistaken.
 
I was trying to make a joke about how the person you were replying to was complaining about how satellites are not a valid form of technology to use because satellites don't stay in orbit very long. You had just glanced over that part of his argument and were only focusing on the speed / latency part and so I thought I would toss in how silly it is to try to claim that their time in orbit is something to be highly concerned with. DirecTV is still using stuff in orbit since 2001.


Ahhh, IC. I do apologize for misunderstanding you.
 
Except they don't use internet connected equipment. While computerization of it has grown, it is all local control with some GPS help, but doesn't require internet, anything that does is cell or satellite based already, as you are not going to cover a 1,000 acre farm with WiFi. I also don't think you understand the term investment, as you would never get any sort of return off of it as a business without government subsidy. In which case you are just forcing other people to pay for a convenience for one person based on their willful choice of living location.


And this is a lot of what is behind my stance on this. Rural and Urban both have their good and bad. Why anyone thinks that it's a national issue is beyond me.
 
And this is a lot of what is behind my stance on this. Rural and Urban both have their good and bad. Why anyone thinks that it's a national issue is beyond me.

Both are a choice. Other people should never have to pay for someones life choices.
 
Passing out would happen pretty fast, though I don't think we have any solid info on this. Another interesting thing is that you would go blind before then, and your eyes would dry out almost instantly, as water in a vacuum turns into a gas in seconds, and shortly after boiling off of your eyes, would freeze into a solid. Without a doubt a weird environment to work in.

There were animal studies done I believe.
 
There were animal studies done I believe.

None that I have ever seen. If you have any info I would love to have a link to read, it's one of those weird fascinations of mine. There have been a number of animal and human vacuum chamber testing, but nothing in space.
 
None that I have ever seen. If you have any info I would love to have a link to read, it's one of those weird fascinations of mine. There have been a number of animal and human vacuum chamber testing, but nothing in space.

Well to be fair you just said solid info not testing in space. In my opinion on ground testing in vacuum chambers can be pretty solid info, much better than purposefully exposing someone. Not sure what data they gathered from all those animals that never made it back either...

Interestingly enough there was an incident in training (found this looking for some older studies): https://www.spaceanswers.com/space-...subject-being-exposed-to-a-space-like-vacuum/

This is the one I was talking about with animals being exposed to vacuum: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19660005052.pdf

ESA did do a study on tardigrades in actual vacuum: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14690-water-bears-are-first-animal-to-survive-space-vacuum/

Also Soyuz-11 experienced decompression I think...
 
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