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Comment by aperrien | Hacker News Reader

> and declined for reasons the author is unaware of.

This is such an incomplete report, it reminds me of the old adage "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can put it's pants on."

A proper, less sensational reporter would have waited until they knew why they declined to move the satellite before writing the piece.

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The reason the author is unaware of the reason is because SpaceX refused to give a reason. Impotence? Incompetence? Malice? Different risk calculation? Game of chicken? Either way if they throw thousands of satellites into space they can't just say "sorry, tragedy of the commons, everyone else should shoulder the risk we created (& the costs to avoid risk)"

SpaceX might not bother giving comment to random bloggers. Especially on Labor day and regarding what they probably regard as a non-incident. There are probably a lot of such individuals asking for comment on any of thousands of different subjects.

You are blaming someone for speculating by speculating about it yourself.

SpaceX is a company with enough money from grants and a grandiose mission “to save the planet” and they can’t afford a PR release at the right time of the week?

I'm not blaming anyone for anything. I'm just explaining some additional datapoints might cast SpaceX's actions in a less sinister light.

Yet you are still speculating.

Ok? I never said it was wrong to speculate. That's all anyone in this thread is doing, and of course that is fine. As it happened, the real story was just that the message never got to the human Starlink operator. SpaceX didn't refuse, decline, whatever, they just didn't see the email. Just goes to show you that our assumptions about these types of things can be wrong.

Interesting. So if I am the only one to have some information as to why I wanted to move a satellite, you should not publish anything until I tell you why, and so I can simply prevent you from publishing by just not telling you anything. Interesting system.

You could publish that I'm not telling you, but you don't know 'why' I'm not telling you, so that makes you irresponsible too.

Yeah, then all SpaceX has to do is run their usual "we have no comment" playbook and the reporter is left with nowhere to go. Convenient for SpaceX I guess!

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