Would the money be better spent on fibre in most places, with some masts and higher orbit or fixed geo sats (Yes, the latency is rubbish) for extremely remote areas?

What is the environmental cost?

Anywhere with mains gas, sewage, water or electricity can have fibre cheaply.

Is there sufficient oversight if they are having to junk 100 due to a design flaw?

There will be a crossover point. Based on 300t of carbon per starlink launch and 8kg of carbon per km of fibre laid overland, that's equivalent to 37.5Mm of fibre but some 5.7Gm of fibre for Internet connectivity was sold in the UK in 2021 alone and, by 2022, that only yielded (in conjunction with existing fibre) 42% of homes on full fibre broadband.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-measures-protect-uks-88m-optical-fibre-cables-industry

Obviously, there's the potential for multiple strands to be laid in the same trench and all of it may not have been laid yet but, assuming it were laid singly, doing so would emit more carbon than 150 Falcon 9 launches. Perhaps in a very densely populated country like the UK, almost everyone could be connected up for less carbon emissions than Starlink but there will be outliers and there are plenty of sparser countries.

I would suggest that no one method is "best" for everyone and the ideal solution is to find the balance point where the lowest carbon solution can be applied. If fibre works out best for one customer, use fibre, if Starlink or similar works out best for another customer, use that. In the meantime, while the fibre barons are stalling, perhaps Starlink and other similar services which might arise later could fill the gap, because Internet connectivity is important.

Geostationary isn't ideal because, in addition to latency, it takes a lot more energy to get the satellites up there and they take a lot longer to come down (long after they become broken or obsolete).

The catch is that Starlink needs about the same number of satellites regardless, because there will always be a lot of places where running fiber isn't practical and even placing cell towers makes little sense like much of the American west or Canadian north where population densities are less than 1 person per square mile in vast areas, or impossible like oceans.

So as fiber or 5G fills in the areas that it can/should cover and eventually leaves only the kind of places like the above, while Starlink continues with the same amount of resources employed. I think for Starlink to succeed the availability of Starlink has to actively prevent some of those areas from being covered by fiber or cellular, because as their potential customer base shrinks they will need to raise prices on those who have no option in order to foot the bill for continually replacing satellites. There's a limit to how cheap they can make the satellites or rockets simply due to the materials and technology involved, and it won't fall quickly enough to make up for the loss in potential subscribers as fiber and 5G continue to expand their footprint over time.

I'm not too sure on your assessment for the number of Starlink sattelites. Simply achieving global coverage could be pulled off with a little over 1k while the current increases are all about bandwidth, which is a function of density. Naturally, it's not possible to have arbitrary density increases over a given spot but if the number of subscribers were to drop to those on the very geographic fringes, the needed bandwidth density would also drop.

Starship has the potential to make the costs drop and will enable next generation sattelites that are much larger and can offer more bandwidth per unit, as well as better optical meshing (decreasing the restrictions on uplink stations). All this, to me, adds up to a fairly consistent drop in the cost per bandwidth density.

I think that growth might not be guaranteed but, even then, could still happen as areas without reliable Internet develop and, in turn, enjoy the developmental benefits of high speed Internet access. Perhaps Musk may be unhappy with poor growth but I don't forsee the scenario you envision.

The catch is that Starlink needs about the same number of satellites regardless, because there will always be a lot of places where running fiber isn't practical and even placing cell towers makes little sense like much of the American west or Canadian north where population densities are less than 1 person per square mile in vast areas, or impossible like oceans.

Yet, somehow, back when population densities were even lower, AT&T somehow managed to run copper wire to every single home in the US. Everyone from the person who's literally miles away from their nearest neighbor to dense urban cities like New York had a phone line. It's not that it's a matter of practicality, it's a matter of companies being too cheap to do it. You could easily run fiber next to existing infrastructure, which is in desperate need of a massive overhaul in the US anyway, and thus make it a lot cheaper to do, but it's more profitable to keep overselling access to an existing network and never bother upgrading capacity because you're the only option within a 50 mile radius.

Would the laid fibre optic have a 5 year life span?

I would say longer but how much longer is a really interesting question. On the surface, it looks like an optical fibre should last almost indefinitely once buried because it's ultra pure glass. However, the ground shifts, protective layers decay and animals (including humans) cause damage. Naturally, these can be repaired with splices but every splice degrades the fibre and the longer the fibre, the exponentially higher the chance that cumulative damage will eventually reach an irreparable point more quickly.

This means that the most remote areas (needing longer runs) probably won't enjoy as much of a cumulative saving as you might expect and, unlike satellites, every failure must be repaired/replaced for every corresponding area to stay online. This is why I believe deep analysis of the problem is needed, rather than a random ping pong of snappy bullet points.

FFS people, stop bringing logic, reason, and good sense to a simp fight!

Is there sufficient oversight if they are having to junk 100 due to a design flaw?

My guess is no. This is a company that was recently fined for the near amputation of a limb of an employee by a machine that was deliberately set up to bypass a lot of safety checks. There's another employee still in a coma after suffering a skull fracture, and in true Xitler fashion, the company seems to think it's a violation of their Freeze Peach and Freedumb to have to actually report worker injuries on the job. Just like Tesla, where they've gone to pretty extraordinary lengths to try to deny injured employees proper medical care.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/musks-spacex-fined-near-amputation-suffered-by-worker-records-show-2024-02-13/

https://revealnews.org/article/inside-teslas-factory-a-medical-clinic-designed-to-ignore-injured-workers/

I'm not sure that knowing where a satellite is, and where it's going, necessarily avoids a collision... though it does tell you who to blame.

Any time I see 'SpaceX says' or 'SpaceX claims' I remind myself of the overhanging Muskian influence, and that any statements they excrete need to be taken with an oceanful of salt.

Or just flushed straight down the Xitter.

What the engineers at SpaceX have managed to accomplish is pretty amazing. Doing it despite executives like Xitler makes it all the more impressive.