Lawsuits take time and money, and I think having a slightly higher-orbit LEO constellation under independent operational control could provide a fallback that many governments and commercial customers would be willing to pay good money for.
> Most of these competitors are likely using SpaceX launch capacity as well
That's a fair point, but there are ultimately alternatives, even if they might be non-competitive in terms of cost right now. It'd ultimately only be a backup, after all.
> Speech-conditioned funding is clearly afoul of the 1st amendment and related precedent
I was thinking primarily non-US government customers, so the first amendment has no bearing there. I'm pretty sure that the DOD has better ways to compel Elon to not shut off Starlink than e.g. the EU or an Asian government, so to them, that redundancy is probably less valuable.
This matters for the US because of the strong free speech protections here. Most EU countries & most Asian countries do not have similar strength of protections.
Yes, competition is good.
> Elon isn't known for being a de-risking factor, political or otherwise.
The government should not be awarding contracts because it 'de-risks' them politically. They should be writing better contracts for the specific thing they want.
Speech-conditioned funding is clearly afoul of the 1st amendment and related precedent, even if you dress it up in 'de-risking' language. And, as a society, we have to be very wary of how we run contract processes because this is one of the easiest ways for corruption to get its foot in the door.
> As a government other than the US
I've clearly been speaking from the perspective of the US this whole time (and the US clearly does have the pockets). Most other countries don't even really have free speech protections like the US does, so their problems are deeper.
> SpaceX, for whatever reason, decides to rededicate its launch capacity to other projects?
Violation of contract? Most of these competitors are using SpaceX launch capacity as well - given that it is 90% of all launch capacity globally.