[moralestapia]

>The collateral damage would be mind boggling.

Nah.

Nothing critical is running on top of any of SpaceXAI's offerings.

[thephyber]

Arguably Ukraine is still alive because of StarLink.

Granted, Russia is trying hard to make every mistake in the book, but StarLink’s benefits for UA and cutting off RU units from StarLink was very advantageous this year.

[thephyber]

For those who don’t know, for a ~$400 terminal, UA can C&C a medium-long range drone/ plane or cruise missile which has low latency, massive global coverage, and which is resilient against EM jamming (apparently the terminal handoffs from one satellite to another make it ideal for resisting an enemy’s jamming efforts). Also the obvious: it maintains MUCH better resilient comms between front lines and HQ (RU depended on this, but they were cut off a few months ago, causing coordination chaos).

There is discussion that if Taiwan gets a similar deal to Ukraine for StarLink access, it makes the porcupine strategy much more viable.

Conversely, any country which can’t get access to it loses a massive tool in the tool chest.

And sadly, it means that if the US continues to be fickle with allies, those allies may not be able to rely on such a valuable tool.

[oskarkk]

NASA mostly runs on SpaceX, so it depends if you consider ISS to be critical. But I wouldn't say it would be mind boggling.

[well_ackshually]

Cool, nationalise SpaceX, reintegrate its costs into NASA, done.

The US would never let its access to space be cut off.

[hersko]

The US actually did just that when it retired the shuttle program. We had to rely on Russia to get to the space station.

[adampunk]

Watch lmao.