Starlink is a continuation of giving away radio frequency bands, which doesn't thrill me, but it's not the worst offender.

The space it consumes in space isn't really concerning though. It's a tiny fraction of the potential total satellites. It's in low enough orbit that the satellites deorbit instead of consuming space in space forever. It's a huge economic driver for further access to space for everyone since it finances launch systems.

No one else wants that space right now, so why not let spacex borrow it.

>No one else wants that space right now

I know radio astronomers who might have a few choice words about that statement

Na, they also want the em spectrum not the physical space. The problem for them isn't that the satellites take up too much space (they don't - physically they obscure basically nothing even for astronomers) but that they're too "bright".

One important distinction is that GPS has no per-user cost.

While I agree the decisions the US government has made about GPS have been exemplary, we should at least consider whether a government owned ISP would look more like GPS or USPS. The gov. isn't always the best when it comes to pricing.

Roads have per user costs and are provided at no cost to the end user. Data is the new cargo. Packets are the vehicles.

The per-user costs for roadways were supposed to be paid via gasoline taxes. This is why it's illegal to put red gasoline in cars. Ultimately I believe they pay for around 50% of the cost depending on the state.

Taxes pay for libraries, pbs, gps, lots of tax dollars have gone to SpaceX and tesla and solar city. Billions.

We have already paid much of the costs for starlink.

Significantly more tax dollars have gone to Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, BAE, Northrop.

If we're going to start nationalizing things, why don't we start with those that have received the most government funds.

We are on the same page! :)

I see no reason we should let shareholders take excess profit from the American people for doing nothing but negotiating sweetheart deals with the politicians they own.

Shall we add banks and big Pharma to the list?

But seriously I'm not into the capitalist dogma that masks and enables the reality of corporate welfare.

We can give away trillions to the burgeois but merely feeding the proletariat is unamerican?

> It's like we learned nothing from the wholesale give away of our airways to corporate interests.

What giveaway?

EM spectrum is already owned by the public. But it's scarce, so it's tightly regulated, and bands are licensed. This already gives the public the ultimate control over Starlink: governments can, at any time, take away Starlink's ability to operate over their territory.

> Compare this opportunity to the magnitude of life changing innovations the GPS public good brought us.

GPS satellites are a public good. Civilian-use GPS receivers are private products.

And sure, one day maybe it'll make sense for there to be government-operated Internet satellites. But before that happens, it'll first make sense to have the government be the ISP and the cellular telephony provider. If you're worried about private control over the Internet, you're barking at the wrong ISO/OSI layer. The Internet is already a quasi-public-good due to the intersection of laws and Internet's distributed nature. The forces that want to control it are companies like Google and Facebook, that try to make Internet less distributed where it matters. Not Starlink.

> We've given away space.

It's funny to say that when talking about a product whose primary reason for being is to open up space for everyone. It's like everyone forgot that Starlink exists to fund Starship R&D. It's literally trying to give us space, so that we truly have it for the first time ever.

The ground based stations could be private products too. Just like cars.

My general point is that the USA needs a free public Internet.

Our politicians have no vision for the future of America. They should have done this. If they want to put up cell towers every where I'm OK with that too.

The world is leaving us in the dust.

There is limited bandwidth so they will have to charge for it or it will be overloaded. This would be true whether it's public or private. It's not like GPS, which is broadcast only and any number of devices can use it.

Same could be said of roads. Toll free. Rush hour sucks. We will adapt. There can still be commercial alternatives, like planes today if you want higher rates of travel.

Yes, it’s plausible, and charging money isn’t the only possible congestion control mechanism. But there don’t seem to be any serious plans to spend the tax money to do this.

That's a frequent glib response to good ideas, which boils down to, nice idea but it'll never happen, because no one cares. It's cynically defeatist.

"Defeatist" implies that it is somehow up to us but, realistically, we are just observers here, commenting on Hacker News about things we have no effect on. (Or so I assume. Are you doing anything about launching satellites?)

I don't claim that a public satellite network will never happen. However, as an observer, projects that are happening are more interesting to me than projects that aren't happening (yet).

It'll never happen, because no one cares and we can't do anything about it anyway.

More defeatism.

We should all just roll over and play dead because we are all going to die, no one cares, and there's nothing we can do about it anyway, right?

NO! We all have an effect on everything and every problem is ours to solve.

Even if that means just talking about it. Raising awareness. Creating ideas. Pointing out the flaws in our reasoning and direction. Opportunities for improvement.

Talking about climate change raises awareness. Grassroots initiatives matter. Our voice matters. Talking matters. Writing matters.

Dismissing good ideas with defeatism discourages people from even mentioning ideas that might change or society for the better.

The fear of backlash alone causes damage. It silences good ideas before they even leave the mind.

I agree that writing matters sometimes, but it seems like if you want to get attention for this idea then it means taking writing more seriously? If someone wants to write a blog post going into detail about how a public satellite network might work then that seems like a worthy effort.

I don’t think it’s a reason to stop cheering for Starlink, though, because it’s not everything you want? This thread started out as criticism of Starlink.