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Comment by po1nt | Hacker News Reader

I'm sometimes baffled how people's knee jerk reaction is to think how to ban this. And yet those same people complain about their parents that claimed that Rock'n'Roll or DnD should be banned because it's satanic.

This is literally the coolest thing we as a species achieved that doesn't serve self-preservation purposes.

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Problem is this capability is concentrated in the hands of

1. A private company.

2. Of a single country with inconsistent leaders.

I’d be less anxious if Europe had this capability instead.

Europe isn't the sort of place that would develop this capability

France has Eutelsat: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutelsat>.

Germany had SES/Astra: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SES_Astra>.

The EU as a whole as the Galileo satnav / GPS project: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation_...>.

There are numerous other EU satellite comms providers, though most are aimed at commercial/broadcast services. That's a departure point for satellite-phone or satellite-internet, however.

Europe can and has developed similar and/or precursor capabilities.

The EU can technically do it but they won’t. Starlink dwarfs all the services you mentioned. The EU doesn’t even believe in air conditioning much less making a robust satellite network

Also I'm betting he himself has never bought these services. I signed up here on Intelsat.

I don't like that either, but nothing's stopping others from following the same path and achieving the same capabilities, other than their own inability or refusal to do what's already been done. It's been over a decade since Falcon 9's first successful landing and we're only recently starting to see similar feats from others.

Except the space in these orbits is finite and a collision at say 520 km requires quick action or the entire fleet in that orbit will eventually be destroyed.

https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3...

You will be fine. China will have this capability soon.

The reason why Europe doesn't have this is the regulation.

> This is literally the coolest thing we as a species achieved that doesn't serve self-preservation purposes.

couldn't be more wrong

We shot thousands of tiny cubes into a heights people thought heaven would reside. Then we communicate with them at the speeds of "The whole data storage of 2000's computer" per second. They survive radiation, accelerations and flying through electromagnetic field at thousands of km/h. We can predict their movement, steer them and provide consumer priced service for tens of thousands of people. It's astronomy, mechanical, material, electrical and computer engineering at it's peak.

This is a civilization level defining achievement.

PoV dependant.

It's a civilisation that has failed to clean up its own waste and byproducts threatening its own existence.

For some, that's an outright failure, for others, less than stellar.

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