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Comment by booboofixer | Hacker News Reader

When does/do the research/space programs enabled by these more frequent launches start to benefit us all? It must have already contributed to something somehow. Agriculture? Defense? Oil exploration? Seems like the sort of information that's hard to find.

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Falcon9 launched Starlink, without which the course of the Ukraine war might have been significantly different.

There's also the plan to pull CO2 from the atmosphere to create rocket fuel. https://labusinessjournal.com/manufacturing/aerospace/big-pl...

There's the Dragon 2, the only US human space vehicle in operation, as the Space Shuttle has been retired in 2011 due to expenses and safety issues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon_2

Something I’ve wondered about Starlink. What data does that company glean from the communication that traverses its network? What are the privacy implications?

There is a lag between the service being available and missions being planned to use it. The US government is finally starting to see the light and is presently benefiting from lower costs and better performance compared to legacy providers. Starlink wouldn't have been possible without this, both competitive constellations are considering using SpaceX for launch services too. This area alone is providing incredible value to humanity already but also doesn't require human capabilities.

Ukraine has access to world class command and control with it and is leveraging to obliterate the Russian military.

People living in areas that telco and cable refuse to serve are finally able to join civilization.

Starlink? Not sure it would be economically viable without reusing a good deal of equipment

One benefit is the connectivity provided by Starlink to Ukraine's front line defending forces. Which, amongst other things, increases the quality of reconnaissance, tempo of battle, and should translate to fewer defender and civilian casualties.

The long term effects of a more rapid Ukrainian victory (and a dramatic Russian defeat) are difficult to estimate.

What exactly are you referring to? If you mean the satellites, Earth observation satellites run by governments play a big role in things like agriculture by aiding weather predictions. Defense should also be relatively obvious from that (even private Earth observation services are proving helpful to Ukraine for instance).

If you mean the rockets, there's the perk of making it easier for smallsats to get rides, enabling all sorts of smaller research/Earth observation and making it easier to train the next generation of talent in the field.

If you mean things like Starlink, one thing coming in the next few years that should play a decent role in the world is the idea of cellular connectivity anywhere by direct satellite uplink. It would be extremely low bandwidth, basically text-only, but likely to still be a fairly big deal for monitoring remote environments and for search and rescue purposes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

This doesn't perfectly answer your question.

Starlink already provides decent internet to places it didn’t reach before.

Not sure what kind of impact you are looking for. Nobody is going to show up at your doorstep with a check. That said, you can look around you for a lot impacts. If you really want to be specific to the frequency of launches, increased availability of starlink for indidvidual and military needs.

Millions of people are benefiting from Starlink, which is SpaceX's biggest launch customer.

Another benefit is the thousands of high paying, high skill jobs this market creates.

it's more just lowering the price of getting things to orbit, so there are certain thresholds that will probably make new businesses viable.

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