Elon Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet, according to an excerpt adapted from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of the eccentric billionaire titled “Elon Musk.”
Elon Musk biographer admits suggestion SpaceX head blocked Ukraine drone attack was wrong:
SpaceX’s rapidly growing fleet of Starlink internet satellites now make up half of all active satellites in Earth orbit. […]
"These big low-orbit internet constellations have come from nowhere in 2019, to dominating the space environment in 2023,” says McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “It really is a massive shift and a massive industrialization of low orbit.”
Why do governments provide Low Earth Orbit to one awful person?
Low Earth orbit is the safest orbit because the orbits will naturally degrade due to friction with the atmosphere and fall back to Earth after a set number of years without a boost.
Higher orbits are much worse because the satellites can be there forever and clog up space. Space is really big though, and we are not close to blotting out the sky with satellites, but we want to encourage the use of low Earth orbit whenever possible so we have control over it.
Nasa does the r&d on tech that they hand off to private companies so they can make a profit…
Sure spacex can clutter up leo but i dont see them sending probes to the outer solar system, maintaining a deep space network, working with the russians on a space station, or any of the other numerous things governmental space agencies can and have accomplished.
It feels like you’re ignoring the giants whose shoulders lil musky is standing on.
It must not be the state or the government that controls such systems. Imho, these communications networks are commons and could be managed as such -e.g., by a cooperative or a cooperative-like entity, maybe even by a DAO im some cases.
I feel like few people are aware of the billions it cost to deploy and maintain a large scale LEO constellation. If it would come 100% from taxes, people would get mad
All true, but blotting out the sky isn’t what everyone’s afraid of. A chain reaction of space junk impacts that locks us on Earth for a century or two would be the worst case scenario.
Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here’s why that may be a problem (March 2023)
Why do governments provide Low Earth Orbit to one awful person?
Low Earth orbit is the safest orbit because the orbits will naturally degrade due to friction with the atmosphere and fall back to Earth after a set number of years without a boost.
Higher orbits are much worse because the satellites can be there forever and clog up space. Space is really big though, and we are not close to blotting out the sky with satellites, but we want to encourage the use of low Earth orbit whenever possible so we have control over it.
What I mean is that such a communications system should not be controlled by a private company or a person. That should be under public control.
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Nasa does the r&d on tech that they hand off to private companies so they can make a profit…
Sure spacex can clutter up leo but i dont see them sending probes to the outer solar system, maintaining a deep space network,
working with the russianson a space station, or any of the other numerous things governmental space agencies can and have accomplished.It feels like you’re ignoring the giants whose shoulders lil musky is standing on.
I mean, they did space travel in the first place, during peacetime. An unsettled peacetime, but peace none-the-less.
It must not be the state or the government that controls such systems. Imho, these communications networks are commons and could be managed as such -e.g., by a cooperative or a cooperative-like entity, maybe even by a DAO im some cases.
I feel like few people are aware of the billions it cost to deploy and maintain a large scale LEO constellation. If it would come 100% from taxes, people would get mad
All true, but blotting out the sky isn’t what everyone’s afraid of. A chain reaction of space junk impacts that locks us on Earth for a century or two would be the worst case scenario.
Because governments are run by politicians, and they need money for campaigns.