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Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

>The FCC is responsible for regulating commercial satellites, including minimizing the chance of accidents in space.

Perhaps also important is that Swarm is an American company.

And the FCC is a group chartered with regulating interstate communications, not with being orbital traffic cops.

And the secret service was originally tasked with protecting the monetary system. Organizations can expand their duties based on criteria other than their initial charter.

The FCC is charged with regulating communications of all distances, not just those crossing state lines. One of their primary missions is ensuring fair access to the wireless spectrum and keeping someone from jamming it and preventing others from communicating legally. Satellites must communicate to be effective, and satellites form a significant portion of our communications backbone. A rogue satellite operating over spectrum it isn't licensed for prevents other from using that spectrum, and a rogue satellite colliding with another satellite could cause debris and disable a bunch of other communications platforms.

The FCC isn't being orbital traffic cops, it is doing its job. While the FCC has done a bunch of distasteful stuff regarding net neutrality recently, the folks taking actin agains Swarm are clearly in the right.

Perhaps swarm set up a foreign subsidiary to do the launch, and then got permission from a foreign regulating body.

Its possible, but the fact that they applied for a US license that was denied makes any actions taken by a foreign headquartered company look fishy. At the very least, the US based portion of the company is still responsible for following the law in the US and the foreign country would be held responsible for approving the launch of a dangerous satellite if there is ever a collision. Considering that the founder and the employees live and work in California there probably isn't a foreign headquarters and probably isn't approval from a foreign country.

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