[flexie]

Yes, technologically, this is amazing. But I honestly think it's sickening that a company controlled by one man is allowed to send 30,000 pieces of junk into space.

The fact that the one man who controls it is a billionaire demagogue (yes, by now Musk is a political leader) with his own media company just makes it worse.

Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga. There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.

[afavour]

People will object to what you're saying but IMO there's a core truth in it. One person in control of this many things is capital B Bad, no matter who they are. Like the fact that he gets to decide whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not, this level of centralized control feels like a time bomb. Compared to technology like GPS it feels like we're backsliding.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/europe/elon-musk-st...

[pokstad]

How is it any less bad for someone else who didn’t build the thing to decide what is done with it?

[tsukikage]

The more people have to all independently agree that something is the right thing to do, the harder a lone nutter has to work to get a nutty thing done in the face of common sense.

It's certainly no silver bullet - bad actors have historically taken charge of companies, industries, governments, even entire countries and carried out insane and/or malicious policies with terrible results; a process which is demonstrably ongoing in huge chunks of the world right now.

But having at least some checks and balances on power generally works out better than having none at all.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

>The more people have to all independently agree that something is the right thing to do, the harder....

It is for anything to get done.

I mean come on... This is giving the world access to the internet. They have worked on "Cloaking" the devices to ensure they are not interfering with astronomy, have utilized materials that are sure to burn up in the atmosphere, have contributed code to NASA to be able to track these objects.

What happened to people that they are so cynical nowadays? Is it just me, or does everyone just hate everything nowadays? Any kind of technological advances/ Space fairing adventure is met with criticism like this.

To the OP's comment, "How can one man controls so much?" Because without that man, this wouldn't exist for another 10-15 years. Also, "Control" here is "We don't want our satellites used for offensive operations and WAR...." This is the exact kind of man i would like to be in control of such resources.

[tsukikage]

It all sounds great, doesn't it? Benevolent dictators are great right up until they aren't. Putin was super popular when he was first elected; he stabilised the Russian economy and made life hugely better for most. Then he made himself a little echo chamber of yes-men and eventually came to believe his own propaganda; look where we are now. Certainly he's getting something done, but it is no good thing. Might things have turned out differently if he didn't have completely uncontested control?

Britain's first-past-the-post voting system is designed to create strong governments that can get things done. They certainly got things done: after parting ways with their biggest trading partner, a decade of mismanagement by increasingly brazen kleptocrats has completely tanked the economy. Might things have turned out differently if extremists couldn't unilaterally make enormous changes to a population's way of life?

Meanwhile, well, Trump. Aren’t we glad the system checked him from turning the most hare-brained of his ideas into reality?

Perhaps this is unfair; examples from politics are like shooting fish in a barrel. Let's look at super intelligent businessmen.

Just recently, a maverick who thought he was smarter than everyone else built a super innovative submarine. Might that story have had a different outcome if he'd had some sanity checks from someone whose opinion he actually respected?

Another one founded a cryptocurrency exchange and a trading firm, and decided he was smarter than everyone else and so it was fine for him to just quietly make huge bets using other people's money. Might that have had a different outcome if he wasn't given unconditional access to a $65bn credit line with no oversight? He's still claiming he did nothing wrong and is an effective altruist to boot. It's for the courts now.

Musk himself hasn't the best track record here; just look at Twitter. Musk's other holdings have teams of people whose full time job is to interact with Musk, translating his proclamations into sensible things; with Twitter, however, we get to see the man unfiltered. It's quite a sight.

There’s risk/reward to consider here. Experiments are good; change is risk, and no change for the better can happen without risking change for the worse. But if your experiment is of globally significant scale with potentially global consequences, maybe running it by some people willing to honestly speak their mind first isn’t such a terrible plan?

[inemesitaffia]

You're repeating a meme about people around Musk

[afavour]

Because those people can be held accountable for their actions. e.g. if the US military decided to decommission GPS tomorrow morning the democratically elected government would be able to force them to change track.

Moreover these institutions are set up to make it very difficult for one single person to make a unilateral decision. Which is a good thing.

[robertlagrant]

This would work if governments were empowered on a granular level, but they aren't. If you've decided (Republican|Democrat)s are evil then you'll always vote for the same party, and there is no accountability.

[afavour]

> If you've decided (Republican|Democrat)s are evil then you'll always vote for the same party

Which describes some voters but certainly not all. You'll notice power changes quite often in the US, clearly some voters are changing their minds.

In any case, what's the endpoint of this argument? Democracy isn't worth it because voters can get polarized?

[robertlagrant]

> Which describes some voters but certainly not all. You'll notice power changes quite often in the US, clearly some voters are changing their minds.

But not on individual issues like this, unless they are extremely important to many voters, and highly party-aligned (e.g. abortion). You vote for one party or the other, each of which having 1000s of positions like this.

> In any case, what's the endpoint of this argument? Democracy isn't worth it because voters can get polarized?

The endpoint is not thinking that democracy as it stands can reign a lot of things in, unless they become the issue for an election. Not every issue can become the battleground of an election, but there are alternatives to fighting.

[squigz]

Did Musk build Starlink? TIL

[numbsafari]

With his bare hands. Out of boot straps.

[jstarfish]

You're abusing the Kuleshov effect to make a dishonest point. Even your own link says something very different than what you are claiming: "Elon Musk Acknowledges Withholding Satellite Service to Thwart Ukrainian Attack."

Ukraine has always had access to Starlink. Musk proactively offered it for free when competitors' infrastructure was bricked by the Russians and basic communications were disrupted. He only decided "whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not" when it came to military operations, and rightfully so-- SpaceX would have become a military target itself. He's allowed to not want to declare SpaceX an enemy combatant without being labelled a despot. Russia started with a cyberattack and eventually started physically shelling ground stations. Being on the receiving end of a Howitzer is bad for business.

In no universe would doing otherwise have made sense in any goddamn context. Having his shit wrecked too would not have helped anybody. What he did allowed him to play the Red Cross card of neutrality, so SpaceX could continue operating in the area unmolested.

Musk sucks, but at least vilify him for things he's actually done and not invent made-up narratives.

[mlindner]

> Like the fact that he gets to decide whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not

That's entirely the result of Ukraine getting the service pro-bono and not signing any kind of contract with SpaceX. The US government has signed contracts with SpaceX and it's perfectly fine like that. All of the hemming and hawing about Starlink's somehow ability to go outside of US law is rather silly and not endorsed by reality.

[mensetmanusman]

The federal government considered Crimea part of Russia and does not allow spacex to operate in Russia…

[axus]

Which federal government?

[mensetmanusman]

The one that spacex has to listen to.

[inemesitaffia]

He decided to give them too. Did you object to that when it happened?

[baz00]

I suspect if he does enough fucking around he will end up doing some finding out. And he's doing a lot of the former and annoying nation state and union level entities.

[Dig1t]

The US government has literally unlimited money, like they can print as much as they want. They can just put up their own satellite network and use it to wage wars on the other side of the world. Why is it the responsibility of a private entity to enable death and destruction in a country on the other side of the world?

Side note: How the heck is the anti-capitalist camp somehow aligned with the pro-war camp now?

[mcpackieh]

> [The US government] can just put up their own satellite network and use it to wage wars on the other side of the world. Why is it the responsibility of a private entity to enable death and destruction in a country on the other side of the world?

The US military doesn't build their own hardware, they contract that out to companies. If the US government were buying a very large number of satellites, they'd be buying it from a company like SpaceX.

(Spoilers: they are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities)

[afavour]

> How the heck is the anti-capitalist camp somehow aligned with the pro-war camp now?

I think both of those labels are way too generalistic. "I think people should cap out at a billion dollars" isn't anti-capitalistic. It's anti unrestrained capitalism.

Similarly, "we should aid Ukraine in defending itself against an invasion" isn't "pro-war". It's accepting of reality, i.e. there is a war no matter your feelings on it. And letting an aggressor do whatever they want is likely to lead to more war.

[leereeves]

Anyway, the anti-capitalist camp being aligned with the pro-war camp is nothing new. The Soviets were both.

[stainablesteel]

this is such an insane stance

the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis

the political parties in control are also holding hands with media companies, and have no regulation on their own actions either personal or public, they can trade whatever stocks they want and move onto whatever job with a conflicting interest that they want afterwards.

musk has nothing compared to politicians, and much more oversight than any of them because he's spending his own money. it didn't fall from the sky, he has it because he's successful. unlike the politicians who print as much money as they want and retire with $100m+ and zero accountability for all of their failed and inefficient projects

[FireBeyond]

> the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis

Are you really comparing a government responsible for something approaching 350 million people a year and all their infrastructure and support services with a billionaire's lifestyle expenses?

Fun trivia: I once looked at Bezos' net worth and the City of Tacoma, and according to all their records, he could "afford" to buy Tacoma. A city of 220,000 people. Every residential, commercial, industrial, government building in the city. Every street, road and highway. The utilities. All of it. One person... buy a city of a quarter million people.

And I posted about it on HN, thinking people would be similarly agog as I was. Apparently not. Several said "Oh, that's not as much as I thought he could", or "not too bad", etc.

[stainablesteel]

yes i am comparing that, its a legitimate comparison given the context. and i don't know what "lifestyle expenses" you're referencing, these are companies we're talking about. afaik musk doesn't even own a house

and i'd love to know how much bezos could afford if you could provide that link, it sounds interesting. because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k. that adds to my original point that the government spends way more. any "power" a billionaire has is truly just a drop in massive bucket.

[FireBeyond]

> afaik musk doesn't even own a house

This trope is old, and was never really accurate.

He was living in a $50M mansion at the time, mostly by himself. Flying back and forth between California and Texas almost daily, private.

That the world's second or third richest person "doesn't even own a house" is something that beggars belief, made for a good soundbite. I'm sure he doesn't. I'm sure Elon Holdings VIII Inc. or similar owns plenty of property. Just like he "did everything possible to anonymize his private jet, so it was doxxing him to show its location"... when in reality it is registered to a company with a SpaceX-related name, whose company office is at 1 Space Drive in a city in California, whose address, when you enter it into Google says "Businesses associated with this address: Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company". Very anonymous indeed.

> because how much would be left over for him? out of all the US, with all his wealth, would he buy tacoma and then be broke? because that's a pretty small influence if one of the wealthiest people in the world could only afford a city of 220k.

I don't want to diminish Tacoma - I lived there once, but it is a city of 62 square miles and I really struggle to fathom the grandiosity you envision. What would be impressive to you? Seattle? Austin? Phoenix? Chicago?

Presumably he wouldn't be broke, because being the landlord of all those structures would provide rather significant income, no?

I got the data a few years ago, just from the City of Tacoma's tax records and assessed property values.

[stainablesteel]

lol fair enough, i took elon's word for it but i guess i shouldn't be surprised that he owns a house through subsidiaries. he's got to sleep somewhere.

and i think a city of a million would be impressive, i've lived in cities of 100k, 200k, ~6m, 30k, and 350k. even at a million, that's still only ~0.003% of the US population.

while the example makes for a nice way of measuring wealth-to-power, so kudos on that, realistically it makes for a bad investment. you'd get a lot in rent but you'd get crushed in repair fees, insurance, and property tax. plus if someone else really wants to buy that property (or they dislike whoever bought it), its probably cheaper for them to sponsor state-level politicians to raise property tax in some obscure way on only people who own 100+ properties. forcing you to dump everything at once, thereby decreasing prices in the area.

[sschueller]

It should not be possible for a single human to amass any amount over a billion maybe even less. We managed a global cooperate min. tax rate of 12.5% we can manage to also tax billionaires down to billion. Stock can be converted to voting only, don't let them borrow against their stock etc. etc.

[robertlagrant]

> It should not be possible for a single human to amass any amount over a billion maybe even less.

You are constantly told about "billionaires" as though they actually have billions. They don't. They have shareholdings, which if they all sold at today's share price would equate to billions. In reality that will never happen, because the price would instantly start dipping.

[FireBeyond]

To a degree. However, they're also able to take out loans for liquid funds at near zero or zero interest rates (because the banks want their business) secured against stock holdings.

Just because you don't have access to 100% of your net worth in liquid cash today doesn't mean it's not worth anything/as much.

[robertlagrant]

This is always the response, and it is true, but it is a vanishingly small point compared to the accusation. The conversation often goes:

We should tax billionaires to pay for everything

But they don't have billions - they have equity!

Well they can take out loans!

So... what're we going to tax?

[sschueller]

You can take away their value without taking their voting power. The billions stay in the company not with an individual which can then take out a loan based on that value.

[robertlagrant]

If they started selling a lot of them their value would dip massively anyway.

[screamingninja]

How do you propose to implement that?

[ryan93]

the whole point of the law is to avoid people being able to take their base insticts out on others. your feelings about what is "too much" are irrelevant.

[warent]

Sharing this in a forum full of "billionaires temporarily down on their luck" is bold and not likely to end well; yet, I agree with you and GP. Hacking should not be synonymous with runaway capitalism, siphoning human energy, and plundering the earth.

Star Trek economy for all!

[chippiewill]

As a fellow temporarily embarrassed billionaire I'm more than happy to be taxed down to just the one billion.

[Dig1t]

You can't create a Star Trek economy without advanced technology like replicators and AGI, not to mention space ships. This is how we get to that future, by letting people build the technology and profit from it. They are using the profits to build more technology. There is direct evidence of this, look at Starship, the most advanced rocket in the whole world and literally the only hope of humanity becoming a spacefaring species. It makes 0 profits itself and was built with the profits made by the evil rocket man.

[robertlagrant]

Star Trek economy is for worlds without scarcity. Given we have scarcity, we allocate finite resources to things we want. If someone does something a lot of people want, they get more money.

Some people get money in other ways (e.g. working in government and being extremely lucky in the stock market) but that seems different.

[pmontra]

By the way, there is always some form of scarcity even in a Star Trek world that can create stuff out of thin air. Do you want a house on that very scenic spot of the coast? There are only a handful of them. Hope that only two or three families like the place.

[robertlagrant]

Quite. Maybe the Star Trek utopia is everyone gets their own Holodeck, and then no one can ever do anything better than you?

[sschueller]

But someone still has the real house at the exclusive beach on that planet. "It's just not the same!" /s

[edgyquant]

> billionaires temporarily down on their luck

This is such a pretentious, bad faith line that you’ve heard from someone else and are repeating. Yeah I heard it in philosophy class freshman year too. You gloss over the possibility that maybe other people just aren’t as hateful and jealous as you and believe that capital allocating into the hands of those who have created the most value is an efficient economic system. That doesn’t equate to those people believing they will one day create that much value and profit for it. Maybe stop projecting your mindset on others.

[FireBeyond]

> capital allocating into the hands of those who have created the most value is an efficient economic system

Then let's try it in a different way, "less hateful and jealous"...

What is the net benefit to society of one individual having a net worth approaching $220,000,000,000? Or of ten individuals having a net worth of $1,200,000,000,000?

Explain the "efficiencies" of that with respect to the economic system as a whole.

[enslavedrobot]

The 220 billion is equity in companies that are growing at a ~50% 5 year compound annual growth rate. That is about 10x faster than the broader economy. The average Tesla factory worker has >40% higher total compensation than a UAW worker.

If Musk stops using his wealth to grow the economy and sells his shares then he gets taxed. His sales of Tesla shares to buy twitter were taxed at California rates and he paid 10 billion in tax.

If the government could replicate that record of growth and efficient allocation of capital I would be the first one in line to say tax successful capital allocators, but in this case you'd be giving up 10x the economic growth. The US government is incredibly inefficient and poor at doing their job. Just reforming the health care system to be in line with other western countries would free up >1 trillion annually and it wouldn't hamstring the country's growth. You don't see huge threads about that twice a week though. I wonder why.

[warent]

There is no hate here nor anything intended to be a personal attack on specific individuals, but clearly my comment struck a nerve.

This comes across as a saddeningly extreme armchair psychological evaluation and extrapolation to just attack my entire character.

[mcpackieh]

You should learn the difference between television fantasy and reality.

[keep_reading]

> 30,000 pieces of junk

30,000 pieces of junk to you, a life changing technology for lots of people all over the world. Check your privilege.

[snapplebobapple]

You're missing the whole point of the free market system. Musk didn't start a billionaire, he got there by founding companies that created a lot of value, then he reinvested and did it again. The system is somewhat self regulating in that regard and it makes me pretty happy to see him getting richer and richer when he's doing it by taking things others thought too hard and making them reality (online payments, then electric cars, now, most spectacularly decimating launch costs and increasing launch capacity to space.) Spacex is building the factory now that will make all sorts of things possible in space just by the sheer volume of gear they will be able to pump up there, it's going to be amazing, we may actually end up a multiplanet species because of this guy (or my hope is he figures out planets are probably stupid and goes for whatever the latest, most feasible version of o'neill cylinders ends up being.)

[panick21_]

This is just complete nonsense.

First of all, its not even remotely junk. These are sophisticated pieces of equipment and they will in almost all cases not be junk. Its standard regulation that all sats deorbit themselves at end of live.

And even in the very few cases where the sat fails Starlink sats are low enough orbit they will only be junk for a very small amount of time.

> Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga.

Completely irrelevant statistics. Why don't you compare it to the Vatican City? Or you the local lemonade stand? Or to Apple?

> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.

Except of course the tons of regulation that Starlink and SpaceX in general have to agree to in order to be allowed to operate.

Before you are allowed to launch you need to actually tell the regulator where you are gone deploy, what your end of life policy is. Of course lots of regulation about spectrum and so on.

[jagtstronaut]

You can look at it this way if you want. Or you can look at it as people in rural areas and undeveloped countries are no longer slaves to the single telecom company that is out there charging them an atrocious amount of money for horrible service.

[Dig1t]

I can personally attest that this happened for me. Starlink was an absolute game changer for my neighborhood.

[bryanlarsen]

SpaceX is an American company. They are regulated by both the FCC and the FAA. Those regulators are effective -- otherwise the second launch attempt of Starship would have happened at least a month ago.

[fasteddie31003]

I would say this "billionaire demagogue" has done more to reduce CO2 emissions and advance space accessibility than any other human in history.

[gambiting]

Hundreds of millions if not billions of people gain absolutely no benefit from this yet they have the common good(night view of the sky) polluted by an American billionaire so he can make more money. I hate it with passion - as much as Starlink is amazing from a technological point of view and the nerd inside me loves it, I don't think it should be allowed, full stop.

[stainablesteel]

that's not true, the technological innovations of yesterday have brought more wealth, less poverty, and more overall benefit to the entirety of humanity than saying "i don't like these inventors who make new things that make life easier for everyone, lets kill them"

the roman empire literally killed people who invented new things because the emperors thought it would have put too many people out of work. we know now through economics that this is nonsense, and more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.

there is easily going to be plenty of benefit for the future of this, you're trying to view it through the lens of "how does this benefit me or some rando on another continent right now". and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit, but for some reason you've mistaken it as that.

[gambiting]

>>hat's not true, the technological innovations of yesterday have brought more wealth, less poverty, and more overall benefit to the entirety of humanity than saying "i don't like these inventors who make new things that make life easier for everyone, lets kill them"

That's sounds like trickle down economics to me - it benefits people in rich countries so it's fine, eventually it will make everyone better, right? A person in a country with no Starlink offering now cannot take clear pictures of the night sky because an American billionare wants to make even more money, but it's fine because "overall benefit to humanity" might be there?

>>more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.

I don't see how that applies here at all. I wouldn't have any problem with Starlink(or similar constellations) if they were limited in their impact only to countries they are offered in - but for obvious reasons that's not possible, they impact everyone on Earth equally even if not everyone on Earth can access the service.

>>and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit

Oh but I have an answer - but I don't think the benefits outweight the disadvantages.

If you want to entertain a thought exercise for a second - imagine if an American corporation decided to use technology to increase rainfall everywhere on earth, so that they can increase harvests in US. Only they get the profit from it, but it impacts everyone on Earth. Sure you could argue that it's great, there is more food, there are more jobs being created, surely everyone will benefit at some point, right? But if I live in a country that is impacted by it, then I really don't care about this argument - your benefit doesn't balance itself against the negatives for me.

[stainablesteel]

the trickle down argument isn't really catching with me, if someone makes a new, helpful, invention, they can proliferate it across the population. how that happens isn't really important. you're also saying benefit might be there, but its definitely there, and people want it. that's why they buy it.

i think a better argument you made was that satellites in general act to interfere with astronomical work on earth. and i hadn't heard of this before (its not my realm) so i looked into it.

the number of satellites in 2022 was ~8k, and about half are active. so the number musk is putting up there is definitely record breaking, and poses new levels of problems. he admits the trouble it might cause to astronomers and is trying to work on solutions such as a paint coating as well as data-level techniques to mitigate the problems. there are also a regulatory body, the ITU, that's looking to limit the frequency/bandwidths of what's used in satellites to help astronomers. none of this is perfect, but its acknowledged and with more technological development will likely come better compromises.

links on where i got this info:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2223962-spacexs-starlin...

https://earthsky.org/space/how-satellites-harm-astronomy-wha...

even despite that, i think people gain more from having internet than viewing the stars. and for organizations that seriously study the stars the best way around this seems to be to collect multiple shots when these satellites move. for amateur astronomers in their back yard, its probably not that important but they can use the same techniques.

the rain example is an interesting thought experiment, i don't think most people would disagree that causing this kind of effect is a serious misuse of technology. and surely something like that would run into regulation or agreements? Of which it has. The groups trying to green the sahara receive compensation from the brazilian government to not green the entire sahara. why? because the minerals that blow across the atlantic, from the sahara, help fertilize the amazon rainforest. So there's functional examples of this kind of problem that have already been solved, I haven't lost faith in humanity over this.

[pmontra]

> the roman empire literally killed people who invented new things because the emperors thought it would have put too many people out of work

This is news to me. Could you give at least an example?

[stainablesteel]

i'll quote this quora question for you

https://www.quora.com/Who-was-the-Roman-emperor-who-was-show...

question: Who was the Roman emperor who was shown an invention and had the inventor executed?

answer from andrew kirk:

"I think you are thinking of Vespasian. An inventor came to him with a way to transport columns to the Capitol at a low cost—that is, he offered a labor-saving device. Vespasian turned him down, saying, “How will I feed my people?”

It highlights that the point of government works was to create jobs and distribute money; efficiency was not a priority. Vespasian thought it would just throw people out of work and create civil unrest.

This may be the main reason the Roman Empire never industrialized; they had plenty of inventions, but they didn’t put them into practice except in rare cases. The emperor was more interested in being the ultimate patron than advancing the economy, which was not really a concept anyway. You get money by taxing conquered lands, not by increasing efficiency.

By the way, he rewarded the inventor—hint, hint, give out money, show gratitude, etc. to be the best and greatest patron. He didn’t kill him."

so i was wrong about the killing part afaik

[mcpackieh]

The following is an ancient Roman story that Romans told each other about Rome. It is doubtlessly fictional but reveals the perception Romans had about their own society:

A man invented a new kind of glass that wouldn't shatter. He brought a challace made of this glass to the emperor for a demonstration, and threw it to the ground. Instead of shattering, it merely bent. Then he hammered it back into shape. The emperor was very impressed and asked if he had told anybody else the secret to making this glass. The inventor said he had not. Then the emperor ordered him killed on the spot.

Pliny the Elder tells this story. He says he doesn't believe it actually happened, but that it was a popular story in Rome.

[krona]

There's lots of infrastructure which people gain nothing from directly. This sounds like an Anarcho-primitivist line of argument.

[mensetmanusman]

You should focus your anger more on airplanes, they will benefit far fewer people (and spread global disease to the poor) and there are far more of them.

[gambiting]

Planes are not as focused in their benefits and impact as Starlink is - people literally everywhere in every country of the world take flights, and the profits from these flights(usually) stay local. Starlink is affecting everyone in the world but only available to select countries and the profits are all flowing back to US.

[TheLoafOfBread]

Try to fly anywhere without talking to Air Traffic Control of that sovereign country. You will get shot down.

[robertlagrant]

What's the thing you're objecting to? Elon Musk? If someone else did this would it be fine?

[gambiting]

The pollution of the night sky with tens of thousands of satellites to provide a paid service. I only mention paid in there because I do think if it was free then at least it could be explained as a common good - but this isn't it, it's the opposite of a common good - it takes a resource available for ALL humans on Earth to make money for an American billionaire.

>>If someone else did this would it be fine?

No it wouldn't, I would be equally upset at any other constellations like this.

[robertlagrant]

It's not to make money, it's to do work. That's where the money comes from.

[gambiting]

? I don't understand the distinction.

[FireBeyond]

A government organization (I know, cringe) would be better, IMO. It's one thing for DirecTV to have 10 satellites providing TV and internet, and another to have a company with what will soon be exceeding 30 thousand. Why not make it a shared resource, like so many countries do with infrastructure projects?

[minhazm]

The federal government is incapable of efficiently allocating resources at scale, it's just the reality. Take a look at the defense industry. I have a friend who worked for a 3 letter agency, left and joined a private contractor and was assigned to the same team and project again but at 2x the pay. In practice the actual cost to the government is likely 3x factoring in the profits the contractor makes. Government pay scales also make it so that it makes no sense to work for the government if you're in a high demand / high pay field. That means the government tends to get the bottom of the barrel talent & then they end up massively overpaying for "butts-in-seats" contractors who do the same exact job at a way higher cost.

That's why we have things like the FCC, FAA and DoD who oversee things like telecommunications and rocket launches hopefully without putting too much of a damper on innovation and progress while also protecting lives.

[FireBeyond]

> The federal government is incapable of efficiently allocating resources at scale, it's just the reality.

The US is the Land of Middlemen. Government are capable of doing so (see 'medical care in much of the rest of the world'). That doesn't specifically change that it is generally better for the "common good" that large infrastructure projects are often better in the hands of an entity that is not corporate profit-seeking at all costs.

> That's why we have things like the FCC, FAA and DoD who oversee things like telecommunications and rocket launches

SpaceX is using Tonga as a 'flag of convenience' for these launches, likely because Tonga has a far more lax regulatory oversight system - it's certainly not because of SpaceX's heavy connection to the Pacific island nation.

[robertlagrant]

> it's certainly not because of SpaceX's heavy connection to the Pacific island nation

They do have some connection: last year Starlink were there helping restore internet access after the volcano[0].

[0] https://uk.pcmag.com/networking/138575/spacexs-starlink-work...

[bryanlarsen]

The DirectTV satellites are in GEO, a particularly crowded orbit which does not naturally deorbit.

10 DirectTV satellites pose a higher risk of causing Kessler than 30,000 satellites at a 300 mile orbit.

[mcpackieh]

The government had more than 60 years to do this themselves, and haven't. They had a decades head start and squandered it. If the government were so competent then we wouldn't be having this conversation.

If you think there is something wrong with the American government specifically, which doesn't effect enlightened progressive European governments, then I direct your attention to France and Arianespace's own failure to innovate.

[ramraj07]

The semi good news is these seem low enough orbit that even with everything they could do they don’t last longer than a few years/decade. https://cybernews.com/news/starlink-lost-200-satellites/

[rewmie]

> (...) longer than a few years/decade.

Also known as a lifetime.

[keep_reading]

A decade is a lifetime? I knew the life expectancy in the USA was contracting but I didn't think it was that bad

[inemesitaffia]

That article and subsequent ones I've seen from that site are disinformation

[Dig1t]

I think perhaps the fact that you refer to advanced satellites, some of the most advanced and scientifically interesting objects humans have ever produced, as "junk" maybe reveals some personal bias.

It sucks that propaganda is producing people who are anti-science and anti-progress. As they say "Rocket man bad".

[mlindner]

> 30,000 pieces of junk

Please try to follow the rules of this site... Calling operational satellites "junk" is not conducive to any kind of intelligent discussion.

> a company controlled by one man is allowed

We live in a country that (thank God) still allows (for now at least) people to run their own businesses and create products to sell to people. It'll be a sad day if that were to ever change.

> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.

Getting the ITU license through Tonga does not suddenly make all regulation in the US disappear. They'll still be covered by the FCC, just like any other operator in the US.

[mensetmanusman]

The are 100,000 flights daily into ‘space’ where they are (gravity) forced to fall back down to earth.

Think of starlink as a far smaller network of planes that are a bit higher but are also slowly falling down to earth.

[mcpackieh]

This is an ignorant take; your thoughts are clouded by hate. 30k satellites are not "pieces of space junk". When they reach end-of-life they will deorbit and burn up. Just because you don't like the man that would own them doesn't change this.

[pmontra]

Tonga is 100,000 people. They could have aimed to Tuvalu, close to Tonga and only 10,000 people. Or Niue, same area and less than 2,000. I'm not sure Niue is an ITU member though.

[mensetmanusman]

Focus on Omaha, the fact that some piece of land is a country or a city doesn’t matter much…

[newsclues]

Would you feel better if it was a public company really? I don’t find them to be particularly accountable to anyone or anything beyond profit.

[mucle6]

Junk? Why do people who dislike the outcomes of capitalism use hyperbole?