 I just had to update my numbers for a lecture, so here's your periodic reminder: Starlink is now 55% of ALL active satellites in orbit. And given the recent news about that awful billionaire unilaterally deciding to cut of Starlink internet access to parts of the world whenever he wants to, this is extra important to share. Why did our governments effectively gift Low Earth Orbit to one awful dude? This is so bad. 109 comments
@railmeat Yeah, true. They gifted it by not regulating it, and he took advantage of the lack of regulation.    @sundogplanets it's very sad. I was sitting outside with my spouse last night to watch a Starlink train pass (her first) and I pointed out that as the train crossed paths with another satellite the odds were very high that the other sat was also a Starlink. Didn't realize the odds were that high😬 @paulknightly Almost all the satellites you can see with your eyes now are Starlinks. Nicely demonstrated in this awful/beautiful photo: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220614.html  @sundogplanets @paulknightly There are other companies trying to launch their own large constellations of communications satellites, including OneWeb and Amazon Kuiper. Starlink is moving faster but not the only culprit. @EricFielding @paulknightly Astronomers are painfully aware of this fact https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html @sundogplanets @EricFielding @paulknightly Anyone that used to enjoy a peaceful view of the night sky is painfully aware.  @sundogplanets @paulknightly Wait'll they all crash into each other... No satellites, no space travel for decades! Fun, fun! #KesslerSyndrome @sundogplanets one of the things I wondered, as a young aspiring aerospace engineer, was how the chicken-and-egg problem would work out in rockets like it seemed good to make bigger rockets, but would customers show up for it? It'd be a huge business risk, etc etc now the biggest launch provider (by far) and biggest launch customer (by far) are both owned by the same jerk @sundogplanets America was definitely in a mindset of we want to beat other countries to the punch even if this is done through commercial enterprise.  @sundogplanets How is Elon Musk a real person, and not a fictional Bond villain? This reality is broken. @sundogplanets@mastodon.social This is surreal! Thanks for sharing; I didn't realize Starlink was anywhere near that predominant.
Because that is how capitalism works. It has worked like that since rich people started fencing out common land in England and the courts uphold the fencing  @Gojira1000 @sundogplanets Honestly, I'm kindof with you on that 😮💨 I'm fairly scared that within the next 50-100 years we'll see the very first for-profit asteroid mining. One asteroid contains QUINTILLIONS of dollars worth of precious metals; a company with a monopoly would be richer than continents. I'd PREFER for us to grow past capitalism before then, but since that seems unlikely 'no space for ANYONE' might be best🙄 Also, small note: *Kessler syndrome, not Keppler 👍  @danwentzel @sundogplanets Nationalize providing everyone with fiber and local wireless; and skip the making a mess of the sky. For example: SpaceX got a lot of publicity when the Hoh Tribe purchased Starlink service, but the Hoh Tribe has more quietly been building out community-owned fiber internet connections that it controls to use instead.   In a world controlled by Musk & investors: 1. Can we trust the data on climate change provided by his satellites? 2. Can we trust he isn't copying data streams on military operations over to Putin, Alwaleed bin Talal, Larry Ellison, or Mohammed bin Salman and his other investors? 3. Can we trust that the products he developed using government subsidies & taxpayer funded research will benefit the planet & democracy? We should have long memories for folks who betray the nation  @Npars01 @sundogplanets just a word about your 1/ : Musk doesn't operate/own/control satellites doing Science. His sats are specialized for internet access. "1. Can we trust the data on climate change provided by his satellites?" Not a single one of his satellites so far provides data on climate change, so for now it is not an issue. (1/3) "2. Can we trust he isn't copying data streams on military operations over to Putin, Alwaleed bin Talal, Larry Ellison, or Mohammed bin Salman and his other investors?" Cryptography makes sure it is not an issue. If cryptography is not used properly for sensitive data, it is an issue - but in this case an issue for the customer. (2/3) 3. Can we trust that the products he developed using government subsidies & taxpayer funded research will benefit the planet & democracy? I guess, no company on earth can guarantee this. @Npars01 @sundogplanets Neither Musk nor Space-X operate any satellites that provide climate change data. The big players here are Copernicus 🇪🇺 and NASA/NOAA 🇺🇸. Especially Copernicus has a radical open data model, so nothing can be withheld or manipulated. @sundogplanets No individual should have anywhere near that much control over the foreign policy of ANY country.  @sundogplanets This is indeed both horrible, and to some degree predictable if somewhat unprecedented @sundogplanets I would consider moving to Mars because that would be very cool (and very hard), but I refuse to be under the rule of said awful billionaire.  @sundogplanets you know that situation where american colonists merely had to land and set foot on an island in international waters, and then that island became property of the US government and therefore could be defended using force? Yeah. Its precisely that. Musk met with the Trump fascists just after those fascists took power. I wonder what they discussed -- you know, just before Trump made a "space force"?  @sundogplanets well, greed, incompetence and a lack of morals spring immediately to mind :(.... @sundogplanets In Amer. $$ is dictating what we do and how we do things. And it’s going to kill us all. Profits over everything …… even human life. 🇺🇸💔🥀👎  @sundogplanets Why? Tax cuts. We decided when we scuttled the Space Shuttle that the future of space lay in corporate sponsorship instead of government investment. But with awesome power comes awesome responsibility, and we let billionaires be beholden to no one but their own egos. I wanna know if we get to prosecute Melon Husk for treason in undermining an operation deemed gravely important to US national security? @sundogplanets Neoliberalism / privatization of govt activities & services to private sector interests & deregulation of those private sector interests for profit. Our governments gave Low Earth Orbit to any awful rich dude who would come along & make a buck off of it, because our government exists to serve the interests of awful rich dudes. (Sorry to be a downer. Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one saying this in the comments.) Thanks for the count, & pointing the issue out to all of us.  @sundogplanets Starlink is incredibly disturbing on so many levels, among which, is that this important technology is controlled by someone so unstable and with objectively ill intent. And congrats on making it past my filters :) @sundogplanets It is very simple- origin of the most problems is TRADE. Do you ask question because you want to sort a problem, or just being self-pity - to express your anger? Observe your anger.
@sundogplanets @kegill @sundogplanets I would love to be that optimistic (econ MS here). The Biden Administration has made more noise about antitrust than I can remember. I don’t see it happening. The structural issue is bigger: no one person should be so wealthy that they privately control (sans regulation) any infrastructure, much less two. We can look to railroads for one example, but that was an issue of interoperability not ownership. Cable (tv, internet access) is infrastructure but is regulated (lightly) at the local level. That didn’t stop Comcast from becoming a corporate octopus, controlling content it delivers via its infrastructure. Quite right. The operation and/or provision of infrastructure should never be subject to the whims of an individual no matter how benevolent. Thanks for the stark reality that news orgs ignore. We have privatized infrastructure: from am/fm radio to cell phone towers (let the “market” decide which tech is best) to satellites and space launches (all Musk, all the time) because Rs in Congress, accelerating after Reagan, believe that “the market” can always “be better.” Chicago School economists gave them that rhetoric, which legitimizes IMPERFECT markets that should be regulated. 🤦🏼♀️ The US gave up on anti-trust.  @sundogplanets Where do you get your active satellites list? I see 4619 starlink satellites (meaning they have the word 'starlink' in the name) in the space-trak database and a total of 23985 tracked objects (excluding classified objects), but from a list like that how do you extract the active vs inactive ones? @sundogplanets and with launches being super eco- unfriendly - essentially big fires- have humans ever left caves? - what did we achieve? Better coverage for Facebook videos?   Our tax dollar & our NASA helped pay for this, if you ask me, the whole network showed be confiscated immediately & if Musk don't like it, confiscate Twitter & those exploding cars while we're at it I tell you what, these bad guys better be glad Peachfront isn't the king of the world @sundogplanets Everything that boosts the economy gets a go. Until the bitter end. @jknodlseder @sundogplanets or until one realizes it's been heavily subsidised by us tax payers only to become a russian military asset. @jknodlseder @sundogplanets it would be fun if the us military suddenly decided to hack the whole lot of them. Would make for a nice meteor show... @sundogplanets I share your concern. Giving this to a fascist with a missile system. I don’t see it ending well. @sundogplanets https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-22-91A1.pdf Is the question rhetorical?  @65dBnoise @sundogplanets And how many governments are there besides the US? @sundogplanets I would argue that the loss of the commons is one reason why democracy is threatened by populist movements. Ironically, those who pilfered the commons are now leading those movements.  @sundogplanets Because the people in charge of billionaire gift-giving have no idea what you mean by "Low Earth Orbit". When the technocrats tried to explain, they were told to leave. WOW lots of comments already - I can't answer all of these individually, sorry. It's actually not super easy to find satellite numbers - surprise! Private companies aren't real excited about sharing info. Best info for civilians is from @planet4589's excellent website https://planet4589.org/space/con/conlist.html and T.S. Kelso's database https://celestrak.org/satcat/search.php. Both of these are run as side projects by individuals - not paid for by the companies launching all this stuff. @sundogplanets @planet4589 There is also https://space.skyrocket.de/index.html by @Skyrocket71 which is very nice and useful  @sundogplanets  @sundogplanets He’s definitely set aside the resources to clean up after himself when these reach the end of their service life, yes?  @sundogplanets It wasn't a gift, he found a loophole in the regulations, decided to not report the bug in US Code to regulators and instead just started launching one after another without saying anything, before regulations could catch him. Problem is, if this is indeed true, eventually DOJ Antitrust will find him a monopolizer of Satellite Internet services. What happened to HughsNet etc? Not sure but I'm pretty sure that DOJ is going to want to look at Starlink and SpaceX activities. @sundogplanets At least the #Starlink satellites have finite lives and eventually reenter and burn up. Which means if we put a stop to Starship and the launching of new ones, we will be rid of them entirely. @sundogplanets more context: starlink started launching satellites in 2019. They currently have 5000 satellites in orbit, and plan to reach 12000. @sundogplanets once again, musk proves that he is an unreliable businessman. The guy is his own worst enemy, and probably all of ours. This is going to accelerate many countries development of their own satellite infrastructure for defence, because Musk is unreliable.  @sundogplanets Honestly, I thought it was more!  @sundogplanets sometime I fantasise about the amount of effort/energy/$ it would take to launch a satellite-cleaning satellite. Not a whole lot I suspect (provided you’re not in too much of a hurry and are happy with slow but efficient orbit adjustments)…  @sundogplanets Q: how did Musk know the Ukrainian mission was underway? Weren't the drone transmissions encrypted?  @msbellows @sundogplanets I mean if you run the system you have to have the encryption keys so. @B_Whitewind @sundogplanets Do you? I figured the decryption would be done after receipt. @sundogplanets Let's not forget that one awful dude also owns the only way we have to get astronauts to and from the ISS right now. Well, him and Russia, I suppose, technically.  |
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@sundogplanets I don't think governments gave him low earth orbit, I think he just took it. That is usually what these guys do.