[palata]

> Your attitude of nobody is allowed to show any pride in anything related to fossil fuels and its general bad and shouldn't be done is simply no way to go forward.

Not saying it should not be done at all. Reusable rockets would be nice, if they were used like the non reusable ones (i.e. rarely). But that's not how technology works: if the technology becomes cheaper, we don't use the same amount for cheaper; we use more.

Can you seriously look at SpaceX and think that they just want to send a few rockets per year, for a fraction of the cost?

> Just like with aviation we need to consider what regulation we want to apply to these things.

That's the thing: if you regulate the rockets market such that it does not start polluting orders of magnitudes more, then it is not a viable market.

> Earth observation sat measure climate change. [...] GPS is a vital technology for so many industries.

We did not need SpaceX for that. Compared to Starlink, Copernicus and all the GNSS satellites (GPS, Galileo, Glonass, ...) just don't count. GPS is something like 30 satellites. Starlink wants to send tens of thousands.

[panick21_]

I think that globally communication sats, GPS, planetary sience planetary imaging and so on are well worth the fossil fuel we spend to launch them. I want more rockets to launch because I think these things are good. This is really the disagreement here. Don't think its worth arguing about more.

[martin8412]

No, Starlink is simply not needed. Push ISPs to deploy fiber everywhere. It's already reality for 90% of Europe.

[panick21_]

They are gone set up fiber connection into every ship and airplane? Into ever remote corner of the world? To every mining site? Along every farmers field? Is your proposal to connect Ukrainian tanks with fiber connections as well?

And what if a government doesn't make the necessary investment into fiber? You can stand around here saying what everybody should do all you want, but governments don't just magically do it because you want them to. Those people are just fucked and its their problem?

There are also advantage to using lasers as internet backbone.

In summation, if it wasn't need and it was so easy, why to millions of people want it?

[palata]

> fiber connection into every ship and airplane?

Sure, life without TikTok in every ship and airplane is terrible. /s

> To every mining site? Along every farmers field?

Yeah, to me the biggest problem is really not having fiber while I'm visiting the Titanic. I hope Starlink is working on that. /s

> governments don't just magically do it because you want them to. Those people are just fucked and its their problem?

Is that a new kind of US interventionism? "We believe those people deserve to pay a subscription to our national high-speed satellite ISP. We do it to save them." The world loves US interventionism. /s

> There are also advantage to using lasers as internet backbone.

And disadvantages.

[panick21_]

Yes your right all use for internet is tiktok and tourism.

That people like you exists on a platform like Hacker News is actually mind blowing.

[palata]

Most flights are tourism, so there's that. Then even considering a business flight, the vast majority of people are not important enough that they need an internet connection during the flight.

Then most of the Internet bandwidth is used for videos, not for corporate e-mails. So... not just TikTok, but I suppose you can make the effort to get my point.

> That people like you exists on a platform like Hacker News is actually mind blowing.

You mean software professionals who don't believe that technology will save us and that we should produce more connected crap because we can?

I like good technology, not profitable technology.