[DemocracyFTW]

I think it does make a difference whether you spend fuel on the necessary or the expendable, the luxury, the frivolous, even if there's no hard and fast framework to judge this.

As for the assumption that SpaceX is getting a free ride on this just because "space!"—you're wrong. SpaceX is getting heavily criticized for littering the skies with tens or hundreds of thousands of satellites, just so people can have internet. I mean it's a laudable goal (probably), but beyond the enormous expenditure in terms of materials, as you write (even keeping in mind that in the rocket business SpaceX is Nr1 when it comes to re-using rockets), there's still the additional material they send into the orbit, material that sooner or later will have to be replaced, material that is not unlikely to cause problems at some point (like a possible Kessler event which could shut down space exporation altogether, not to mention the light pollution they cause).

[greyhair]

The biggest issue to me concerns the will of people to distribute other existing methods. For example, establishing fiber, transoceanic as well as transcontinental around the globe. Proper fiber rollout would take longer, but should have started ten years ago. It would consume less energy per Tb of transmission, particularly over its lifetime.

The problem is the overcoming the will to do the work, plus the geopolitics. Vast sections of the rural US still lack usable broadband to this day. Right here in the USA, where large swaths of RF licenses are held by the large cellular carriers, but have never been rolled out.

SpaceX is going to address those communities, as well as communities in other nations, in ways that traditional telecom has completely ignored. I grew up and lived rural until I was nearly thirty. I still have family living rural with completely unmet internet wants. It is shameful that in this day and age, in the USA, we have such huge regions in need of basic internet access.

In addition, satellite service opens up internet in ways that bypasses local governmental control.

I am not saying it is the best solution, by any stretch, but the reality is, we as a nation, and we as a planet, could have short circuited satellite based internet service by properly funding and building out internet infrastructure over the last ten to fifteen years. The technology certainly already existed, but we lacked the commitment, we lacked the will.

And that left a technology void that had to be filled.

We have ourselves to blame.