[Dig1t]

There are millions of people in Africa and rural areas around the world who have access to the internet because of these satellites. This massively reduces human suffering. Millions of people can now get medical information, farming, manufacturing techniques, talk to experts around the world. Connecting people to the wealth of human knowledge has a huge impact on reducing suffering. It also just directly saves lives by connecting people in an emergency to people who can help. Additionally, Ukraine would have lost the war a long time ago if these satellites didn’t exist. You could go on for a long time listing the ways these satellites reduce suffering.

[digitaltrees]

Government could be the creator of this just like it was with GPS. We are very tolerant of government innovation and infrastructure when it’s a military resource. But when it’s a pure public good everyone claims it’s wasteful or less efficient than the private sector.

Why do we need to let this be a monopoly controlled by one person. A king in a board room is still a king.

[Dig1t]

>Why do we need to let this be a monopoly

This is the opposite of a monopoly, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are both planning competing constellations. Eventually there will be many competing constellations in orbit delivering service.

>Government could be the creator

Okay so why wasn’t it? The lifetime funding for NASA is 700+ billion dollars. With that incredible sum of money they weren’t able to even make reusable rockets let alone the satellite constellation. Launching a constellation with NASA’s pre-SpaceX approach (using Russian rockets) would have been literally impossible because Russia could have never built nearly enough rockets. Launching even a small fraction of Starlink would have consumed the entire NASA budget several times over.

Comparing GPS and Starlink doesn’t really even make sense because the scope of each project is so vastly different. Starlink if delivered by the same people who made GPS, would have been literally impossible, because the mass to orbit is orders of magnitude larger than the GPS project. Starlink was only possible because of the efficiency provided by SpaceX’s reusable rockets and the leading minds in the government literally said that reusable rockets were impossible and impractical until SpaceX actually delivered reliable reusable rockets.

[digitaltrees]

What percentage of market share do they have in launches? In awarded contracts? In satellites in the sky?

Also pointing to blue origin which is substantially related to the Amazon monopoly isn’t the best refutation of my argument. When all competition and innovation requires behemoth monopolies rather than ecosystems of entrepreneurship and capital markets capitalism has been replaced with oligarchy.

Nasas mandate wasn’t to build reusable rockets. They built the space shuttle, which was reusable. The GPS network is a constellation of satellites. They also launched numerous spacecraft that landed on planets and moons. If we wanted nasa to do what spaceX has done it could. At then end of the day teams of humans do things. If we want the teams of humans in government to do things we can arrange them to do it. I don’t see anyone saying private military, fire departments or police departments are significantly better than public government systems.

[electriclove]

If they could have, they would have.

[digitaltrees]

Could logically, logistically, financially and technologically also require politically. That’s the only thing that has been missing. When there was a political will there was a space race. Remove the political motive and suddenly it isn’t happening. Why do you conflate all of those abilities when it’s merely a political problem.

[Dig1t]

Before SpaceX demonstrated viability of reusable rockets nearly every single government industry expert on the topic dismissed the idea of reusable rockets as impractical and infeasible.

It’s not simply a matter of political will, the quality of what governments have been able to produce just is no match for what companies can do. It’s the same for rockets as it is for cars, computers, or anything else. Ever heard of a government-made car? There were a few that came out of the Soviet Union and they were laughably bad and only obtainable in small quantities. Rockets and satellites are the same way, the government just does not have the same incentives to produce things that companies have.

The proof is in the rockets. Compare SpaceX’s rockets with any government developed rockets anywhere in the world, it’s not even close.

Falcon 9, Heavy, Starship, Dragon. The government never would have come close to developing any craft like these let alone being able to launch a constellation like Starlink.

[digitaltrees]

Dude. Stop worshipping private companies. At the end of the day human organizations creating things whether it’s a government, a partnership, a corporation. The US government created GPS, the stealth bomber, all kinds of basic tech. Thomas Edison created things as an individual and by creating a lab. Those two realities can coexist. But they have trade offs. ATT being a monopoly was bad for consumers. But breaking up ATT resulted in bell labs being disbanded and a lot of innovation stopped.

I would fully acknowledge that spaceX pushed space exploration and commercialization forward. But you have to admit 1. The government paid for that by awarding contracts. 2. A monopoly isn’t an agreement we have to accept.

[Dig1t]

>The government paid for that by awarding contracts.

Only about 20% of SpaceX's income is government contracts, and for that 20% the government receives an absolute bargain. Compare cost per launch of the space shuttle or a Russian rocket to a Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy.

>A monopoly isn’t an agreement we have to accept.

There isn't a monopoly anywhere in sight, you use that word without any understanding of its meaning obviously. Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Relativity, etc are all competing with SpaceX. Rocket Lab and Blue Origin are both planning their own exact copies of Starlink.

Incentives drive outcomes, the government lacks incentives to produce high quality objects at scale, there's a century's worth of data to prove that point.

Compare the cost per satellite to operate the GPS constellation vs the Starlink constellation. The private company is an order of magnitude more efficient. GPS was launched in an era where the government had a monopoly on spaceflight, if it were launched today by SpaceX, the cost would be an order of magnitude cheaper.

>The stealth bomber

I don't know which bomber you're talking about but if you're talking about the B-2, that was developed and manufactured by private companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit

The government is great for funding basic tech, i.e. redirecting taxpayer money back into the private sector with a specific goal. Arguing that we should let the government have a monopoly on spaceflight is like arguing that we should let the government have a monopoly on building cell phones or cars.