China 'Deeply Alarmed' by SpaceX's Starlink Capabilities | Hacker News Reader

China 'Deeply Alarmed' by SpaceX's Starlink Capabilities

eurasiantimes.com

25 pointsjseliger13 comments

If SpaceX reaches it's goal of 42,000 satellites, it's going to be next to impossible to shutdown its communications capabilities. Other countries should be concerned. I'm glad they are working with the US not against it.

SpaceX's goal should be to make sure it launches all of its satellites as soon as possible. Since it's now a security concern I bet the US will make sure it happens and will supply all the money it needs.

When whole countries are scared of your capabilities, you've reached Iron Man status. Wow!

Some of these concerns have also been voiced by ESA. There's two main problems with it. One is taking up all the orbits and bandwidth simply by being there first (on a race to monopolize LEO), and the other is putting dual use technology in space. Both of them are rational concerns and afaik they remain unanswered.

What is dual use technology?

Civilian and military

Space is big, even LEO. As long as the large majority of all satellites have active collision avoidance, and coordinate between them, this shouldn’t be a problem. I’m not sure if there’s an international body working to coordinate this, but there should be.

Starship, if successful, will also change the economics of bringing down non-maneuverable satellites. I could see SpaceX cleaning up space junk as a public service.

Uplink/downlink bandwidth is licensed by the countries being uplinked/downlinked from/to, so that’s on them. China will no doubt not grant SpaceX a license.

Lots of space tech is “dual use”, e.x. GPS and many other communication satellites. As long as SpaceX isn’t hiding warheads on Starlink satellites or something I don’t see a problem.

> “The LEO can accommodate about 50,000 satellites, over 80% of which would be taken by Starlink if the program were to launch 42,000 satellites as it has planned.”

How do you think they came up with that 50,000 satellite figure? Is that an underestimation? LEO is big but it will get harder as it gets saturated by starlink and especially if other companies try to create their own variations of the idea like amazon has expressed interest in.

How are they ever going to achieve their dream of censoring the internet if freedom is visible from the sky?

> “Some experts said if SpaceX installs a few root servers in the space, it can make Starlink the second independent global Internet, which will pose a serious challenge to all countries in defending their cyberspace sovereignty and protecting their information security,” said the China Military Online article.

Sorry not sorry.

In the event of a serious war, I do not see how a side that is losing due to satellites does not just end up creating the Kessler Syndrome. Seems like the the continuation of scorched earth warfare in modern times.

The US at least is prepared for this. But bringing down sats will only happen in an open war between advanced adversaries. These days many nations can bring down a few sats but not dozens or hundreds, and kessler syndrome is a bit over-dramatized. It's bad on the long term but irrelevant during a conflict.

When Starship is operational, Starlink will be the least of their problems, because US will have the capability to launch a constellation of military mega satellites with powerful lasers and optics that can spot an ant anywhere on the planet's surface. That should give the so-called communists some sleepless nights.

Not gonna lie, I am not too hopeful about the SpaceX data privacy standards. Kinda worried about this development.

Sucks to suck, China

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