Without getting too spaced-out with the the Bezos-Musk dynamics, I personally hate the idea of having private companies getting on the SpaceX bandwagon and clogging up outer space with thousands of satellites.
Some doors are very difficult to un-open, and caution is warranted when making sweeping changes to space that may do any number of negative things, including make future spaceflights more difficult, make ground-based space research impossible (increasing the price of future space research and making satellites the only way to do get good data), etc.
You are basically saying 'nobody is allowed to put a boat on this river because I like nature'.
> caution is warranted when making sweeping changes to space that may do any number of negative things, including make future spaceflights more difficult, make ground-based space research impossible
And that why FCC exists and they have mostly agree that this is not actually a problem.
Nobody has a larger intensive not to make future spaceflight harder then SpaceX.
And the idea that all ground-based space research is impossible is equally nonsense that has often been disproven.
Even in your dystopian nightmare, the reality is that within a few years the orbits SpaceX used would be clean again or that based on government order SpaceX could de-orbit 99.9% of all sats in a week.
So how about we allow boats onto the river and figure out if its really the end of civilization to do so.
Does the world need it ? Does the world even ask for it ?
Sure, I like internet... but only WHERE and WHEN I want to, not anytime and everywhere !
For example Self driving would really benefit from connectivity for deeper learning models to get to level 5.
Telemedicine , remote learning all have huge potential with connectivity all around the world. Education in developing countries which suffer from lack of infrastructure can (and already does) benefit from tech driven learning
It is easy to say you don't want connectivity everywhere when you don't experience that lack of connectivity a lot of the people do.
It is hard to imagine the kind of applications that will come just like it was hard to imagine what came with web 2.0 /1.0 before .
Also a lot of pressure on urban migration would really reduce with global connectivity. I already know many people moving or considering to move to a rural location with better quality of life only because of starlink.
In that case, how will people in "poor" countries will be able to use it ? Self driving cars ??? Even for the few that can afford it (in the next 10 years), you'll obviously will need a decent road infrastructure... Telemedecine ? Super !!! But is there enough doctor and basic med supply (and cheap enough) ?
So, I guess that the real use will be for internet... In the best case for news and education. But in that case, will it be "cheap enough" for the people in these countries to afford it ? Or will it financially available only to tourists and remote worker ?
For primary care, it helps in preventive care more than cure. Earlier detection of issues can make handling them a lot easier.
You need telemedicine precisely because there are few doctors to go around, and care can be expensive.
There are already few well funded startups offering this along with medicine delivery in India for example, who are doing well. 4G and mobile penetration makes it possible, it doesn't cover everyone but it makes a difference to a large chunk of the population.
Yes
> Sure, I like internet... but only WHERE and WHEN I want to, not anytime and everywhere !
Turn of your phone.
But if we have a commercially viable solution that solve a number of problems, why not do it?
It looks like noboby learned from air or sea pollution, where SOME people pollute for their own benefit a ressource that they don't own... and then let the others pay to clean it
Irrelevant to the point, but: It's more that they get pulled further down into atmosphere by... atmosphere. With just gravity alone, they'd stay perfectly in orbit.
Not quite true. For example quite a few orbits around the moon are unstable and you will end up crashing into the surface. This is due to essentially all celestial objects not being spherical.
Sovereignty in space above 50 km is complex and not really well established, countries have differing claims like bogota declaration etc.
Most countries launch satellites they don't necessarily tell each other.
There is nothing stopping a French company from doing the same as spaceX.
Infact OneWeb is owned by UK government partially and a Indian teleco Bharti Airtel. They manufacturer satellites in UK (a lot of satellites are manufactured in UK) and launch in Russia.
France or any other country does regulate and operators do respect who can transmit/use radio frequencies within their geographic areas.
Can't we learn from history and - for once - try to talk and agree on common rules and management together BEFORE doing something to a world shared resource ?
Satellites before starlink OneWeb were much lesser problem in terms of resources utilization .
Starlink growth is unprecedeted in part because there is little regulations stopping them , so the current model has its advantages
Moreover, there's more and more incidents in space, and it will only grow in the near future
In a way, maybe the "request for comments" should be lead by a worldwide org (ONU based) and not only a US one ?
Do you also complain about buildings ruining your french nights? Or billboards? Or traffic noise? Should we ban all automobiles and buildings and outdoor lighting? Should we ban all combustion engines to ensure there's no amount of smog in the air as well?
Satellites are extremely far down on the list of public nuisances and don't serve any threat to our health unlike smog and carbon emissions.
And even more: some are against "renewal energy" like wind fields because of both!
Satellites are down on public nuisance BECAUSE there's not a lot of it ! But how will it rate when there will be 100 times more ? And then, we will have to live with it for 10 years maybe... and surely more (because you know: once it's done, it's hard to lose the investment)
Just to be clear: maybe it's not the worst idea... but we should ALL talk about it, and not only the US people
My impression was that the low orbits used by Starlink and similar are the best place for this since it will all naturally deorbit on short timescales.
It's just space who cares if we clog it up some with more useful things.
It is worth considering the ocean is ~2d while air and space are 3d.
Is the tradeoff worth it?
It is certain that your life today would not be the same without GPS, so in a sense it does support it.
I'm in no way equipped to give a scientific risk assessment of either, so I'll defer to others to share if they feel it's major concern. But whether these are present issues or not, they're worth considering and thinking about as we move forward with more LEO deployments. The latter issue especially, given that once it occurs, it'll be extremely difficult (nigh impossible?) to rectify in short order.
A small city 40 miles away hurts the view far more then the Starlink satellites do.
Maybe you should think about what is really "useful" for you... and what other people find "useful"
And it's only with 700 satellites around the world right now...
I understand basic network connectivity problem, but I'm not sure that satellites are the right answer wrt the impacts
"ultimately, the question is not whether we should do it; it’s who’s gonna stop us". You're right... and I can't anything else but law... coming a world agreement on how to manage space around the world