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Yeah I mean the tax payers have literally already paid for all of both SpaceX and Starlink. The public paid for it, the public should own it.
They’re just following in the footsteps of Comcast. The FCC gave SpaceX/Starlink $885.5 million to provide rural broadband after they gave Comcast over $1 billion less than 5 years ago to do the same thing. Starlink actually works out there from what I understand, so I guess that’s something.
The main problem is that starlink is not a viable ISP like Comcast. Relying on low earth orbit is extremely wasteful as you need to constantly launch more and more satellites. Starlink gives their satellites a 5 year lifespan where fiber can go on for 40 years or more. There are 7,500 starlink satellites, so we’re talking a constant replacement of satellites all falling into earth’s atmosphere, not being recycled.
Starlink is literal space trash waiting to happen.
I didn’t realize how temporary and disposable Starlink’s satellites were. They incinerate 4 or 5 a day by de-orbiting them into the ozone. Here’s a pretty good CNET article that talks about how they “dispose” of them. IDK, doesn’t seem sustainable. They also mention the bandwidth gains are being diminished with the influx of new users, so their solution is more temporary satellites.
Yeah, if they want to make satellites last longer, they could go a bit higher in their orbits. The option is there.
But they specifically don’t want to do that because ensuring a 5 year service life means you are required to continue buying more satellites from them every 5 years. Literally burning resources into nothingness just to pursue a predatory subscription model.
It also helps their case that LEO has much lower latency than mid or high orbit but I refuse to believe that that is their primary driving concern behind this and not the former.
You are right in how wasteful it is, especially since it turned out a lot of those satellites don’t even make it to 4 years.
However there is zero risk of space trash with Starlink. They orbit so low, it’s basically within the atmosphere still. They need to constantly boost themselves, otherwise they fall down and burn up. So these satellites are coming down within years all on their own, even without any controlled disposal.
It’s insanely wasteful, but it keeps SpaceX in business launching every week, which is kind of the point. But at least there isn’t a Kessler syndrome waiting to happen.
Starlink provides service to areas where fiber is impossible. Like the middle of the ocean and actual rural areas where fiber runs could be tens of miles or more between homes. Those are area where no one will build out fiber unless the homeowner is paying for it themselves, the various government programs would never cover those actual rural areas despite what they claim. At best they might cover city outskirts for new infrastructure, where fiber nodes are already relatively close by. They’re never adding fiber to existing rural farms and ranches.
They are not a 1:1 service comparison. You would need to compare It to other satellite providers, and there isn’t a comparison because all of those are dogshit in comparison to Starlink.
There’s a reason it’s as popular as it is so quickly despite satellite internet in general not being new. The low earth satellite constellation means a massive difference in capability compared to conventional geostationary satellites. Multiple second latency, slow downloads nowhere near advertised double digit Mbps speeds, single digit Mbps upload speeds and often monthly data limits as low as 50GB per month are what the conventional satellite providers offer.
i dont feel the cost and waste of all the rocket launches and debris justifies remote areas having satellite Internet
I doubt the Ukrainians would agree with you
This is a really weird “ends always justify the means” because I could also say it wouldn’t be necessary if Ukraine never gave up their nuclear weapons and how I doubt the Ukrainians would disagree. This is also further impacted by the protection of Starlink by the US military because if it wasn’t an act of war against the US to destroy them, Russia could take down low earth orbit satellites pretty easily.
But none of this is relevant to how Starlink is not an ISP, it is not infrastructure it is a fleeting wasteful service.
From what I understand the Ukrainians never had control of the nukes, they didn’t actually have the launch codes to use them.
Regardless, having global access to the internet is great. Ask the people living in remote areas of the Amazon, no chance for them to get fiber, or Africa, or remote islands, or ships/airplanes.
If youre speaking of rural America not needing starlink because fiber is a thing, then you should broaden your horizons
I think if you consider the cost to manufacture then bury a fibre optic cable for everyone who lives 10km from a town centre, I think it’s still a net positive. It’s not great for sure, but amortised over a huge population it’s probably the best option we have at this time.
Only short term, long term the repeated rocket launches can’t win out over a ditch digger.
I’m sure digging fiber out in the Amazon rainforest will turn out great
Those places can get internet from satellites outside of low earth orbit that is simply slower with higher latency.
If only we could adjust the plot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes to where it’s mostly just cleaning up dead starlink satellites.
In any case, highly recommended as a fantastic anime. And for those that haven’t seen it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZESIHA0qK3U
That’s a dubbed trailer, but those of you looking for a Japanese language trailer know where to find it or probably have already watched it lol
I’m checking this out!
I’m not sure what isn’t viable about it, I mean it’s demonstrably viable, it’s working now.
The FCC revoked that award before the money was handed over because starlink wasn’t meeting the speeds they needed to meet for the deadline 3 years in the future and they didn’t think they would make it. The speeds that money was supposed to help them achieve launching the satellites required to meet it.
No one else had that made up requirement put on them in advance.
The goal that was 3 years in the future, which would have been around now or early 2026, required them to meet their speed (100d + 20u) and latency (<100ms) goals for 40% of the 650k rural users.
They had 1.5 million US customers at the start of 2025, not sure how many are part of this rural 650k but id imagine the majority are, and only 260k of the rural ones have to meet the requirements.
Ookla did a post about starlink in Maine where it shows many of the users are meeting those requirements
https://www.ookla.com/articles/above-maine-starlink-twinkles
Median DL: 116.77 (over the required 100)
Media UL: 18.17 (just shy of the required 20)
90th Percentile DL: 250.96
90th Percentile UL 27.17
If Maine is a representative example, then they are probably meeting their 40% target of 260k rural users despite not getting the money which would have accelerated things and made launches more focused on meeting the goals.
Edit: extra details.
Edit: I was just looking up more info on the program, and the deadline to report would have been in January 2025, so it would have been with the 1.5 million users they had at the start of the year, not around now, or 2026 as I’d said. That Ookla report was December 2024. We should get a report from the FCC (this summer?) that outlines how many others met their respective 40% target.
Works is a strong word. It’s a better choice than dialup or Hughesnet, but that’s damning with extremely faint praise. If you need to rely on it you might be in trouble. There are still gaps in the coverage where you will be dropped for a while.
You could always just fund the space agency you already have, instead of funneling money to a foreign billionaire.
Has anyone considered funding NASA?
They made rockets that didn’t explode with duct tape and a TI-83 calculator.
Shouldn’t be incompatible with nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. Just give it all to NASA, actually.
Sure, that’s the ideal.
Is it likely? Ehhhh
From this admin? Nah. It’ll be stolen and given to, idk, Thiel or Vance or whoever, but not nationalized, just reprivatized.
They didn’t, because someone got paid to write this article!
Where’s the grift tho? What’s the angle? How will this enrich an uber-privileged pale bro?
Looks like we found someone who believed it was financially necessary for the manufacture of the shuttle to be spread across the country.
If that was actually their expenditure I don’t think they’d have their budget cut.
What “they made” 50 years ago is of little value now. Expertise matters, and it’s lost with time passing.
Still - yes. Nationalization is a bad solution because it gives the state power to nationalize. Seems a truism.
Just let NASA work in its normal role. Instead of replacing that with SpaceX contracts.
Fold it in into nasa.
Yeah, let’s give the trump administration the power to seize companies it doesn’t like, that is a great idea that def won’t be abused all the time
The author probably forgot who runs the nation of usa.
putin
Congress has always had this power. I’m personally for nationalizing telecomm companies.
Health; education; energy production; food production & distribution; water; housing; mass transit and telecommunications should all be classified as essential services and nationalised. Everything else can be whatever.
The problem would be that nationalising them in this day and age would mean prices would get even worse for everyone, as the government having a monopoly on these things would mean they can charge whatever they want, and with the amount of debt and deficit they have, they’d charge a lot.
As we all know, private corporations don’t charge whatever they want, and don’t jack up the prices because of a “Fuck you, why not?” fee and bill.
Did you stop reading after the first part of my sentence?
No.
Your comment says yes.
We no longer live in a world where our biggest fear would be the government controlling high level corporations and their operators.
We now live in a world controlled by Sociopathic Oligarchs who can afford to create government level technology. Right now it’s mostly tourism rockets and satellites, but now we see Skum weaponizing that technology, and/or using it as a bargaining chip. He has cut off Starlink in a war zone to benefit the county who defers to him, but is openly hostile to the US, and now he’s threatening to cut off our access to the space station. He is using tech that WE PAY FOR with government contracts and grants, to pursue his own diplomacy, for his own benefit, and against our interests.
Eventually, someone will start building and stockpiling actual weapons, perhaps even atomics. Then we will be asking why someone didn’t step in and stop them before they became a bonafide threat.
We paid for Skum’s technology, and he gets to control it as a courtesy. Just the threat of using it against us should be enough reason to declare him a national security threat, confiscate his American-taxpayer financed businesses, and imprison him.
We now live in a world controlled by Sociopathic Oligarchs who can afford to create government level technology.
People have lived in that world for most/all of human history. Assuming you come from the west, you’re coming from a place where for the last couple of hundred years it’s been more cost effective to just buy the government instead. Is that better? Maybe, it’s a little more stable. I dunno if it’s good though.
It’s hilarious seeing all these “anti oligarch” people come out of the woodwork now that it’s a catchphrase of their political party, despite that party being run by oligarchs.
Like you said, this is how the world has been essentially forever. People are only against it now that their teams oligarchs are upset that they aren’t in as much control as usual.
Eventually, someone will start building and stockpiling actual weapons, perhaps even atomics. Then we will be asking why someone didn’t step in and stop them before they became a bonafide threat.
Bruh this has already happened over and over again. Nobody stops them because the most violence empire on the planet is leading the way. AFAIK the USA is the only state to have actually nuked people.
See also the zio regime. Imperial allies supreme.
First of all, America is not “the most violent empire on the planet.” America has the capability of being the most violent nation, but at the moment, our potential for violence is being eclipsed by other nations who are actively employing the same levels of violence that we are capable of. Nothing we are currently doing comes close to the violence that Russia and Israel are employing.
And yes, America is the only nation to have deployed nuclear weapons against human targets, but that was 80 years ago, and ended the worst war in human history. After demonstrating its power, just the presence of nuclear weapons in a nation’s arsenal has been enough to keep the most powerful, well-armed, violent nations (including America) from going too far.
We are already fucked. The choices given are siding with Trump, and end up like Russia, or side with Elon, and end up like Cyberpunk 2077
…or organize, start/join unions, get involved with your local community and build up some real resistance that isn’t based off obscene wealth, lawfare or media brainwashing. Once you have experienced something real, it’s quite hard to understand how or why anyone would fall for the alternative.
Only useless people side with those two.
Stop being useless.
We should just fund NASA and let SpaceX and Starlink go bankrupt to competitors.
SpaceX has loads of capable engineers. If NASA gets a massive budget increase, they need to draw from that pool of talent.
SpaceX and Starlink basically have no competition, and if they did, said competitor would also need to be heavily subsidized.
These last few years they’ve had very little successes, but the point is it should stay competitive and not be automatically handed to these doofuses. Even the USSR maintained a competitive rocketry sector.
How has spacex had very few successes? Their Falcon 9 rocket is basically operating like clockwork. They launch more rockets than the rest of the world combined.
The starship failures are higher profile but even those failures are typical when testing new vehicles, especially one as experimental and complex.
They weren’t as typical with previous SpaceX models, Starship is easily their least successful project.
Since SpaceX is launching large quantities of commercial satellites, big whoop, do you also celebrate when companies buy back stocks?
Why would I celebrate stock buybacks?
Also spacex lost like 20 or so Falcons before their first successful mission. Maybe they will explode as many Starships, but they have hit that number yet.
It’s ok to hate Elon, and there are many valid criticisms to make regarding spacex, but they’re the best in the world right now and it isn’t even close.
The biggest issue with Spacex is that Elon needs to be removed before he ruins it like he ruined Tesla.
SpaceX and starlink have had very little success the last few years? What have you been smoking?!
Compared to previously SpaceX has been seeing more and more failed launches, Starlink is banned in a number of countries and there are already other low orbit internet satellite providers popping up.
You say “failed”, engineers say “ok what have we learned and what can we improve/fix from this?”. These launches are tests. Every single launch is testing every single part of the hardware and software. Tests failing isn’t a bad thing, as it helps you fix problems and make things better.
They are years behind schedule and obscenely over budget on this testing. They’re not even making new technology here, they are just cheaping out on the builds to funnel money into their own pockets.
You have any links to support that it’s just cheap materials causing the failures?
NASA hasn’t take the slightest risk since Challenger. They wouldn’t have accomplished 1/20th of the launch capability SpaceX has developed in the last 5 years.
Generally NASA doesn’t “develop” rockets per se, they commission rockets to specification.
It’s the specification process that’s the thing, nobody there would have gone out on a limb the way SpaceX has with their recovery systems. Look where they are on a shuttle replacement: the Apollo capsule with more room.
See what we should do…is look to the french for inspiration on guillotine designs. Why would anyone not want to get rid of this asshole? Why would anyone like him?
Man, that was worth the wait!
Reverse accelerating space ship. I like the idea!
They think he’s a tech god because he has money to burn, knows how to make himself look smart, knows how to slave drive, and knows how to cut corners without pissing off the wrong people.
At least, there was a time when that appeared to be the case
knows how to make himself look smart
He said, talking about the guy who did a nazi salute on national television, intentionally, and then turned around and did it again for the people in the back. In case there was anyone who missed it the first time.
Lets reach a compromise. Impeach Trump (successfully) and then take away SpaceX from Elon. That way things would be fair.
Trump has been impeached successfully. Twice. What I assume you mean is that he hasn’t been removed from office. That could be the consequence of an impeachment, but not necessarily.
I honestly don’t care about Elon, just get Trump out.
For whatever reasons Musk has found himself as ceo of some wildly successful visionary companies. It has not changed that they are finally bringing the future to the present, disrupting old technologies in favor of newer and better, for a better world. And the musk from before his breakdown deserves a lot of credit.
At this point I no longer care about musk either, but SpaceX and Tesla are critical. Or at least SpaceX is. Tesla has not yet finished disrupting vehicle manufacturing , but if we’re content to let Chinese companies go ahead, they’re ready and willing. Legacy manufacturers have been slapped up the side of the face, but if they’re still not awake at this point it’s on them
I’m sorry, but credit for what? For being born privileged and buying talent? If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em, right?
Yeah, I guess he deserves praise for being a good liar and basically selling pipe dreams?
Tesla was started by a handful of really smart people with a great idea. Musk was ceo as it grew from an idea into the first new major automaker in almost a century. As it grew from a dismissed toy that no one would buy, into an industry-wide paradigm shift. Most of that time musk preached the gospel. You can’t disregard that influence, you can’t claim the guy in charge had nothing to do with it. You might decide his skill was more manipulative than visionary, but you can’t deny that him being the front man was part of the success. You might decide any engineering or problem solving ability was not real, but he was the guy in charge, he did make decisions, and Tesla has generally been a huge success (until recently).
We just need some drug rehab and find a way to reset the god complex ….
Sure, I mean technically paypal was a rather innovative idea for its time, but again, the guy basically associated himself with smart people that had bright ideas.
Yes, he does have a knack for growing businesses to a larger scale, but most millionaires/ billionaires do, cause they outsource brain matter and decision making to a select few.
I’m not sure if I ever liked the guy or his largely exaggerated marketing, but being a POS nazi isn’t helping either, so i’m biased towards nazi hate I guess. Either way, he will need a paradigm shift for people to accept him back into the decent human beings club. I do hope he will find a way, but doubt it really.
I mostly hope that his companies make it back into the “disruptive technology” club, regardless of him.
Sure, he gets credit for building hype and getting investors on board. He’s a decent salesman, and probably decent at business in general.
I don’t care if he’s rich or not, he’s relatively harmless when it comes to things I care about. Trump, on the other hand, is dangerous because he seems to work off vibes and compliments, and that’s scary.
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Nasa with less risk aversion. If a Nasa rocket blows up that’s big news. If a Space X rocket blows up, that’s a Tuesday.
yeah but if SpaceX becomes NASA then what
Which is the advantage of SpaceX. As it is people are looking to cut money for NASA. Still, NASA has always subcontracted out, so absorbing SpaceX does not seem like it might change much (outside of public opinion)
Learn from SpaceX progress. Return to NASA risk aversion. Trial new designs in 20 years, repeat.
I don’t think the majority of Americans understand what that means. They’ll just scream “commies!” And raise their maga flag.
But the idea of a starlink-like business owned by UN would be nice, and not an American corporation owned by a nepobaby Elmo.
In the USA space-x gets away with a lot. A few years ago they announced they were no longer going to bother with getting all the FAA approvals needed for their rockets because it took too long. Space-x still got government contracts.
If your want proof that the wealthy live by a different set of laws, look no further than the time Elon Musk, ceo of SpaceX, went on a podcast and smoked weed.
SpaceX has DOD contracts for launches, and somehow him blatantly violating federal law had no impact on the contracts his company fulfilled for the government.
Do I think weed should be classified like it is? No.
Do I think that everyone should be held to the same standard? Yes. And if anyone else had been involved in government projects while going on podcasts and smoking weed, they’d at the very least be fired.
A few years ago they announced they were no longer going to bother with getting all the FAA approvals needed for their rockets because it took too long. Space-x still got government contracts.
How long back was that? I genuinely didn’t hear about that, but I believe that would happen. I tried googling “space x faa” but I’m getting results of FAA investigating rocket issues and approvals of rocket models.
Not sure if they followed thru but this was 4 years ago I remember reading about it.
You should familiarize yourself with Telsat Canada’s LEO plans. Should be complete in less than 2 years.
They say this is for enterprise and government, and they talk about “terminals”. This seems more like a Hughes network, and let me tell you, if it’s that bad, you want nothing to do with it.
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Can you imagine who would run those companies if they were government owned?
Yeah. A gov; be it the UN or a country.
Having worked and then contracted to regional and Muni govs, and worked for dotcoms, I can tell you one of them follows way, WAY more of the regs than the other.
It’s like transpo & highways vs private roads and rail: one of them is way better-maintained when there is a comparison.
What even is this comment?
Not the person you commented on, but think about the reason why people are wanting SpaceX to be nationalised when NASA exists and is already Government owned.
SpaceX is light years, pardon the pun, ahead of NASA. If SpaceX was taken over by the government, SpaceX would likely end up like NASA as it would be taken over by the same people and have mountains more red tape in order to do anything. It would destroy SpaceX and put space exploration back decades.
SpaceX is getting the government funding NASA doesn’t anymore.
Then the UN should start their own starlink-like company. Nothing is stopping them.
In an ideal world, starlink should be internationalized by the U.N.
We don’t need half a dozen companies in every developed nation putting their own garbage in orbit just to provide rural internet for a minority of a minority of the planet. Those systems are in orbit, they can provide internet to the overwhelming majority of humans.
But instead we’re gonna fuck up our ability to use a load of space telescopes needed to help see potentially dangerous asteroids, and all these satellites burning up in orbit are gonna fuck up the atmosphere, opening up the hole in the ozone layer even more.
Has US nationalized anything this millenia? I really don’t see that ever happening
Arrest Musk on violation of controlled substances acts, file immigration violation charges, invalidate his ownership shares due to securities fraud, as he falsified education and naturalization forms.
Or just emminent domain the shit. The Law is just made up right now.
Such an effort would be likely to fail AND take longer than the current administration is likely to exist.
Giving companies to the state doesn’t always work well. However giving companies to the workers does.
Don’t give bail-outs to billionaires.
Then don’t reimburse him.
Starlink should be globalized. A planet only needs one low-altitude orbiting communications network. Better to standardize the technology and platform and let them contribute to one system than to have a dozen identical competing systems crashing into each other and fucking things up for everyone.
Ah. My Kessler syndrome is acting up again.
There is no such thing as something being “globalized” The UN for instance is a debating club where the majority of the seats represent individual dictators who dominate but do not speak for their countries citizens.
The idea of 50 countries collectively providing 0% of the funds should determine the mission is somewhat laughable. Also no country on earth has a process by which foreign dictators can seize or direct a company run out of their nation.
