Starlink have already put a lot of effort into their satellites being much less bright than most satellites, including tilting their PV away from earth during the terminator crossing, so from what I've read you'll mainly see them while they're being deployed and while de-orbiting.

(Part of my still-expanding draft blog post about space data centres is to work out how bright a million much larger objects would look. If they were in the orbit with the most sun, that's a terminator-following sun-synchronous orbit, which is maximum brightness).

The compute part may be a rack or a cabinet worth of GPUs (though TBH the public designs are currently vague to the point of being artistic impressions), but they also need to come with a PV array big enough to power that, plus a cooling array that's going to be close to 25% as big as the PV array regardless of what unit size they go for in the end.

If they settle on making e.g. 120 kW satellites, that would be about 400 m^2 for the PV and another 100 m^2 for the radiator.

I still cannot believe it's economical to have "data centers in orbit" but I guess the truth will be seen in whether or not it actually happens.

The FCC has regulatory jurisdiction for communications on US objects in space, regardless of distance from earth.

Even very optimistic estimates (by people who aren't Elon Musk) say it will take a decade to get the costs low enough to be worthwhile for LEO; higher orbits are much more expensive.

Maybe we could just blast Anish Kapoor into space on a one-man prison vessel instead?

You can see that SpaceX (and probably other LEO operators as well) are already doing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfJWli7YKPw

This video is a good visual illustration of that effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8I25H3bnNw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflect_Orbital

Edit: A 5km diameter spot illuminated from 600km altitude.

Plants can absorb some more CO2 and it improves their growth slightly but saying they LOVE CO2 is an exaggeration.

Is that something that should be permitted?

I see that from the 400 miles altitude they filed with the FCC, you'd expect them to be able to provide maybe an extra 2 hours before + after sunrise/sunset near the equator. However, that appears to improve to almost 4 hours at 50 degrees latitude - assuming 30 degrees of elevation is sufficient for the light to not get too scattered through the atmosphere. If you assume a much more conservative 60 degree elevation requirement then it would be 3 hours before+after sunrise/sunset at 50 degrees latitude.

It also depends on the season, but this has a much smaller effect than latitude.

Shortening the night by a combined 6-8 hours might be quite useful for operations in Ukraine which occur near 50 degrees latitude.

What a terrifying thought. My dad was in Bangladesh when Americans landed a man on the moon. The man next to him said he couldn’t believe the Americans had punched through the dome of the sky. You want to achieve a consensus with them?

This has been approved:

* https://ca.pcmag.com/networking/16760/fcc-approves-reflect-o...

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866452

Was it not a big issue for you that aeroplanes were flying overhead?

Whos responsibility was it that you were living were you lived?

I guess there is a small difference between being able to choose or parents have choosen for you vs. everyone on the whole planet needs to endure it.

A lot to unpack

/s - obviously

I’m an occasional astrophotographer, and the baseline of photos you can took are absolutely breathtaking now. Seeing this destroyed in real time is depressing.

I used to see a rare flyby of a satellite in the complete dark, but now it’s much more, and besides my personal annoyance, many people much more serious about sky and space are rightfully angry. Maybe you can ask them to grow up, too.

Not every progress is good progress. We should understand that by now. You should understand that better than all of us combined, since you’re apparently grown up, way more than us.

And you're the judge of this based on your likes and hobbies?

Anyway, I agree. Just ask the people blocking the HS2 or CaHSR about how sad the train plowing through their communities makes them feel. We need to tear down all trains, not every progress is good progress

The top comment here is someone lamenting how depressing it is that supposedly a single person owns the night sky.

Another one is asking if we will be the last generation to see the night sky.

Yet with how political and dramatized the discussion around this is even on this website here, I fear that any opportunity to block or delay more SpaceX satellites will be used to the fullest.

I am concerned that this might hinder innovation. If you involve other countries, would this not be likely to become an extremely hard and slow regulatory process?

I understand that SpaceX's mitigation methods have been effective, and that the current satellites are on average around the limit of being visible to the naked eye under a very dark sky.

Personally I am eager to see more of these satellites enable 5G like cellular coverage outdoors in rural areas.

Perhaps I am more open to change in the appearance of nature than others. Some oppose also wind turbines in our mountains, where I usually think that they look cool and typically make the landscape more interesting.

With that said, I think we should have honest conversations about the benefits vs. the impacts, but also realize nothing is stagnant, not even nature.

The impartiality of those processes is a bit in question when the prime mover here is so far in bed with the executive that he gets to go up on stage during inauguration to sieg a few heils.

(And is then given a free hand to fire whomever he wants from the federal government.)

The ITU has also approved SpaceX actions.

And yes progress is good progress.

Many weapons designers thought they were making war “more humane” by creating weapons that killed faster and more decisively.

Haber, on chemical warfare: “The gas weapons are not at all more cruel than the flying iron pieces; on the contrary, the fraction of fatal gas diseases is comparatively smaller, the mutilations are missing.”

https://fortune.com/2026/02/21/laptops-tablets-schools-gen-z...

Do you think the world would be better off if we still killed ourselves with swords instead of drones? The result is the same. A death is a death. The real cause of wars is not "better weapons".

Perhaps another offputting aspect of this is Musk-hate. People were excited about SpaceX and Tesla a decade ago. It was a rare burst of popular techno-optimism, but now they aren't able to appreciate anything Musk does because their minds are clouded with hate.

The problems you declare imaginary creates real problems for many scientists. Mostly for astronomers. There are projects created solely to track space objects and space debris, so they can find windows to do their experiments without affected by these satellites. It's not Starlink only. We're crowding space so much that probability of Kessler Syndrome is increasing ever faster.

The world gets better and better, that's true, but it's not linear. How hard is it to accept that we make, sometimes costly, mistakes? Many "wonder" chemicals turned out to be deadly. We used to drink radon infused water. PFAS dangers have been knowingly hidden from general population for decades. Overuse of plastics is showing its effects now. I mean, we used to spray DDT to people's hair.

I don't care about high-speed low latency internet in the middle of a jungle. While I can understand its applications for remote sensing applications, there can be other ways to do that.

Personally, I don't "hate" anyone, it's a so strong of a word, but I dislike who damages ordinary people's lives for monies the same. For me Tesla's outrageous claims and AI datacenters' footprint is a bigger source of dislike. Starlink works at least, but it doesn't mean I'm favorable against its existence.

When the world is transforming to the techno-dystopias the SciFi books I have read warned about, how can I be happy? There's nothing to be excited about right now, maybe except renewable energy and some aspects of electric cars. Other than that we're going full-bore surveillance and oppression combined with destruction of nature and planet turned up to 11.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

It disgusts me that now, at all times, I can see strings of man made objects polluting the skies.

Unfortunately you need a government that cares for the whole; in the USA oligarchs rule, so the general public are treated as paying slaves.

This is such a weird framing, as if Starlink was a frivolous project for some rich person's fun.

There is genuine demand for orbital ISP from people, including people in poorer countries whom a better connectivity may help improve their incomes and lives, where an alternative is basically impossible (you won't get optic fibre in the Himalayas or Papua or the Andes anytime soon, if ever).

20 million people are now using Starlink and that number will almost certainly grow to maybe ten times as many, eventually. Ukraine uses Starlink to defend itself from being devoured by an aggressor. Sailors and other people in far away places use Starlink to keep in touch with their families.

Did you know that before Starlink, the South Pole Base had just 2x256 kB connection for everyone?

I get the "pollution" angle, but not the "hey, one guy is ruining the planet" angle. At the very least, all the customers are complicit, and I would add all the governments that don't seem to be able to build terrestrial connections for their own population.

In my YC batch there were rocket companies. We should see more.

If someone really fits the description of a quasi-monopoly systematically supported by the government for decades, it is Boeing and ULA in general. They get/got all the cost-plus contracts that were the real cash cow. SpaceX only got fixed-cost contracts.

I rooted for a lot of companies, my favorite was Armadillo Aeronautics by John Carmack, because I admire Carmack. But space seems to be genuinely hard.

You are emotionally disregulated and unable to think critically.

Many people are too morally outraged to think straight anymore, as plainly demonstrated, but who can blame them. Hope they take it as a gentle nudge for them get out of the outrage cycle.

life for our kin will only be better.

we will have space stations where you can visit and see all the stars you want.

there will be space tourism and that will be pretty cool.

that’s what i wanted as a kid and its cool to see it play out irl.

edit: dang didn't expect so many negative people

I am disappointed that SV is shifting to a disregard for the dangers of monopolies and monarchies.

I don't need a space station with space tourism only the richest can afford and will be still very dangerous to see the stars right now.

What you will see is how Starlink satelites will poisen our atmosphere at re-entry.

and they would have been 100x more brutal.

What world do you want to live in? A monopoly where a corporation can decide who lives and dies? Because that’s effectively what you are arguing for up and down this thread.

The stolen land meme is a good example. My parents in 60s migrated to the u.s and in no way am I to blame or responsible for what occored just because of where I live.

Do I feel bad for what happened? Absolutely. But those were nethanderal times where everything was primitive instinct. Its not the world we live in today.

I also have to point out that the effects of that history persist and affect this generation. Lots of financial effects still affect our society.

The US spends up to $4 billion a year just to keep a few people alive on the ISS. And they can’t stay there too long because it’s too dangerous to their health. The idea that we’re going to “colonize space” in the foreseeable future is laughable.

Starlink is a global phenomenon, good ISPs were at best a local phenomenon.

For what it's worth, this also happens with printed books.

I wasted the latter half of my teens taking New Age occultism and magical powers as a profound topic rather than a literature and culture topic, thanks to a combination of a bookstore chain near where I grew up and a mother who also took this all very seriously.

i feel like all these problems people come up with stem from the fact they suck at parenting and have to project.

i and most people i know don’t have these problems. we actually care, and our parents cared about us.

when i was growing up it was kids who drank or smoked (we didn’t have smartphones).

just avoid them.

these days if kids are glued to the phone that’s the parents fault. bad parenting.

take kids to the museum or get them to a classical show or something.

if parents make excuses why they can’t, again L parents.

Also let me guess, you have high speed internet avaiable at your house so starlink isn't your only high-speed option right now?

I’m not against advancing in this area, but there is nuance. Progress can be short sighted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama_%28New_York_World%27s...

This vision is absolutely horryfying, yet at same time incredibly interesting.

We need to ensure our progress is balanced taking into account the whole system instead of just one part.

You are seeing this in this thread. I doubt anyone likes to be described as contra-progress. But nevertheless people would rather conserve the current night sky than see it transmute into a shimmering sea of a million artificial satellites. It's not really obvious to me why one state should be preferable to the other.

Not only you didn’t get the point, but you still hold on to your delusions:

> life for our kin will only be better.

Right? In this subscription economy? Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved? You can’t afford to rent the house you loved let alone buy it? (previous generations could afford) the list goes on and on.

Maybe stop spreading lies and see things more objectively?

services meant for the LCD. and those people pay for them.

all the context was there. you failed.

lol at you

What a horrible existence we live in, just the absolute WORST.

People truly had it better in the past, watching their children die from easily curable infections, enduring routine tooth extractions without anesthesia, working six-day weeks around lethal machinery, watching entire neighboring towns slowly starve to death in famines, living in huts that were crawling with insects, subject to the brutal whims of whoever their local thug ruler happened to be with no human rights at all, and often being enslaved by the millions and worked to death in brutal conditions. Those softies just couldn't possibly imagine how truly hard we have it today.

I mean just the other day I got SPAM in my inbox and they used a dark pattern so I had to click THREE links instead of ONE before I was off their list!!!!!

For a planet which gets warmer and warmer.

When did you became that compliant?

But do you really think life has been getting better in the last 10 years say?

Do you think trickle down economics works?

Are you happy with the way things are going under this administration, which favours those BILLIONAIRES you mentioned, but couldn’t really give a damn about the rest of us or the commons?

Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?

Uh, yeah. My TV's much better, my video games are better, programming is easier and more fun with these new AI options added on top of better frameworks than we had in the past, there are way more restaurants serving better food, way more great shows and movies, there's mainstream awareness of the ills of social media, I can take driverless taxis around my city, I can tap to pay pretty much everywhere, wayyyyyy more of my friends work remotely. I'm 40 now, and myself + most of my friends + family are making more money now than we were at 30.

> Are you OK living in a future where there are zero checks and balances and the .1% fully controlling and owning the political and policy space, i.e. the return to the Robber Barons era?

You sound like you've been reading a bunch of gloom and doom scenarios. Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights. Stop reading so much negative news that's telling you the sky is falling and that everything is going to shit.

Of course there are massive problems and inequities we're solving, of course! But that's always been the case. Relax. Breathe. Put it in perspective.

Your response is basically 'Works on my machine!'.

And speaking of touching grass; what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) under this administration will mean to our commons?

I'll tell you, it will mean that the new rule will make it easier to legally destroy wildlife habitats. And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back, because solar is woke or something. I guess you're OK with that too, since it doesn't impact you (yet).

Even though living standards have improved in the last 100 years overall, that it's not a guarantee that it will continue like that, if we let the Robber Barons take full control again.

The majority of people in Western countries are not in the lower income brackets, but in the middle and upper brackets. Plus extreme poverty has been in decline all across the world. In other words, things are working well on MANY people's machines, not just mine. And they're beginning to work better on many more.

> what do you think the recent change of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)

> And this on top of all the climate protection policies this administration is eagerly rolling back

Yes, there are new+continuing problems in the world. Duh. And not everything is getting better all the time. Duh.

These things will always be true.

What's your point? Why do you and other people like you feel compelled to bring up obvious statements like this anytime anyone tries to say that things are generally getting better? You act as if when people say things are getting better they are saying things are perfect. Nobody thinks things are perfect. But you react as if it's some sort of crime against humanity to list ways in which life is genuinely getting better for many hundreds of millions, if not billions of people over the decades.

What is this allergy that you have toward acknowledging progress when there is progress? Why do you think that somehow warrants some totally unnecessary lecture about how there are still obviously problems in the world?

> it's not a guarantee it will continue like that

Again, has anyone ever said or even implied that progress is guaranteed to continue happening automatically?

To address your 'What's your point?' question - here are a few things:

- Society needs a strong middle class and social upwards mobility. The middle class is shrinking and this is by design. If we continue to vote in Billionaire backed politicians, who rig the system so it favors them and screws the rest of us over then the middle class will continue to shrink and poverty here will increase.

- Under this administration, the progress we've made to address our pressing problems (like global warming) is being rolled back. Are you OK with making it easier to destroy natural habitats and increase pollution, just so some Oil or mining companies can make more money? Are you OK with consumer protection rights being weakened?

- Mr Doge thought it was a good idea to plunch many more people into poverty or removing vital resources to the poorest of the poor and causing their death, e.g. cutting USAID because he thought it was woke. You good with that?

But hey, I'm glad you've got a better TV now.

The main reason the middle class is shrinking is because the upper class is growing. And we do have a strong middle class. The fact that it has been stronger at times in the past does not mean that it is weak now.

> - Under this administration, the progress we've made to address our pressing problems (like global warming) is being rolled back. Are you OK with making it easier to destroy natural habitats and increase pollution, just so some Oil or mining companies can make more money? Are you OK with consumer protection rights being weakened?

> - Mr Doge thought it was a good idea to plunch many more people into poverty or removing vital resources to the poorest of the poor and causing their death, e.g. cutting USAID because he thought it was woke. You good with that?

No, I'm not okay with it. But again, I keep asking you this, and you keep not really explaining: what is your point of bringing up arbitrary things that are bad? I've already acknowledged that there are bad things in the world and that there will continue to be bad things in the world. In a world with a thousand axes by which to assess progress, there will always be some axes that are in the process of backsliding.

Progress is not a monotonically increasing thing.

Based on your original post you seem to only see overall progress from a zoomed out view. Yes we've made immense progress, but my point is that in the last 10 years things have gotten way worse.

You don't seem to acknowledge that the divide between rich and poor is rising immensely (e.g. your 'disgusting BILLIONAIRE' snarky comment) and is the root of many of our problems and that voting for Billionaire backed politicians like the current President and the likes - will lead us down a path where we will lose our democracy and end up like Hungary did or god forbid Russia.

And since you're not OK with those things I mentioned this administration is doing, I hope you'll make your vote count and vote out the threat to our democracy and world order.

If rich people got 10x poorer, would that make you equally as happy as if poor people got 10x richer?

If rich people got 10x richer and poor people got 5x richer, would you be upset?

Genuine questions.

That's why. Historically, when wealth concentrates at the top, it tends to stay there unless there’s strong counterpressure.

Wealth brings political influence and that influence is often used to preserve the status quo and not change the system so the poor would get 5x or 10x richer.

If everyone were genuinely getting better off, i.e. the necessities of life not getting more expensive or wages rising in accordance to things getting more expensive, then the rich and poor divide wouldn't matter as much.

The problem is that’s not what we’re seeing. What we get is:

Wages for many people haven’t kept up with key costs. Housing, healthcare and education have surged. Meanwhile, gains at the top have massively accelerated.

So it’s not “rich up 10x, poor up 5x.” It’s closer to gains being concentrated while a lot of people struggle to keep up.

Your previous statement that the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up is not 100% correct. Some move up, but most decline.

That’s why inequality matters. It’s not about envy. It's about preserving democracy, rule of law and not falling into a pit of corruption.

See what's happening with Mr Doge, he's happily using his platforms to meddle in foreign elections. Recently supporting Le Pen (another criminal, found guilty of embezzling European Union funds) and also supporting AFD and other extreme right wing parties. You have to ask yourself why.

My thoughts:

1. Wealth is indeed super duper concentrated. IMO we need a more effective tax system with fewer loopholes. But there's limited specific popular support for these measures, as they typically are getting co-opted by much vaguer messaging like "eat the rich" and "there are no ethical billionaires" and things like that, which politicians can easily shrug off.

2. Wealth is indeed converted into political power in very powerful ways. To me, I think this is a bigger problem than #1. Although yes, they are related. But it's also largely a cultural problem, as half the country has been happily VOTING for this to happen for decades.

3. Democracy, imo, is quite healthy. Despite the increasing political power of wealthy individuals, there are other shifts happening as well. 70, 60, 50, 40, and even 30 years ago, a very small number of wealthy and powerful gatekeepers controlled almost all public messaging. There was less chaos as a result, but also an extreme limitation in the diversity of viewpoints. Fewer independent organizations. Less investigating reporting. Worse suffrage, in general. It was harder for citizens to organize and communicate cheaply. Etc.

4. I highly disagree that the quality of life across income brackets has gotten significantly worse for people at the bottom. I think this is based on misinformation and cherry-picking data that supports that case

So let's just look at #4.

Housing, healthcare, child care, and education are indeed way too expensive, especially in certain regions. But it's also the case that real wages have risen for almost everyone, and in post-pandemic years that's even more true for lower-wage workers. Also, not everything is getting more expensive. Lots of things have gotten cheaper and more accessible: consumer electronics, communications, clothing, appliances, lots of manufactured goods. And then there's quality and variety, too: we have bigger houses than ever, safer cars, more effective medical treatments, far more affordable and varied entertainment options, better phones and computers and connectivity. Technology in general is vastly better, and it's an extremely democratizing force that tends to improve quality of life at the lower ends more intensely than at the upper ends.

So it's not super duper clear to me things are so much worse.

If you went back to the 50s and 60s, sure, rich people weren't making as much money. But were lower-income people suffering less financially? I don't think so. Based on all the data I can find, there was much more widespread deprivation. People without enough food, with inadequate housing, with no plumbing, with very low consumption, or living in abject poverty. The US is far better off today. But at the same time, yeah, there's less security around housing, healthcare, and affordable education.

So ultimately I don't subscribe to any messaging similar to "the sky is falling" and "things are worse than ever" and stuff like that. To me this is misinformation, and an extreme oversimplification of what's actually going on today.

When you actually look at the data and you look at the information and you actually compare a broad perspective of today to the past, it's not at all so clear that things are worse for the lower income brackets, and in fact I think there's a much stronger and easier to make case that things are better.

> Your previous statement that the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up is not 100% correct. Some move up, but most decline.

This is false. "Most decline" is not true.

Yes, people move out of the middle class in both directions. But all the data I could find concludes that more people have moved up than down. The reason the middle class has shrunk is much more to do with people graduating into the upper income brackets than falling into lower income brackets.

But of course this never gets talked about. Because it contradicts the narrative that things are getting so much worse, and that narrative is Sacred and Unquestionable.

So in fact, the exact opposite gets said, "The middle class is shrinking," and then it's just left at that, in order to imply something negative. But it's just a straightforward lie, it's total misinformation. Yet it spreads, because people like to repeat things like this.

And that's kinda how I feel about this "things are getting worse." The actual facts and complexity of the situation are taking a backseat to the fact that people just like to spread this narrative.

But I don't think it's about screaming the sky is falling down... anyway, more thoughts on this later.

> But all the data I could find concludes that more people have moved up than down.

I based my comment on research done by Pew, OECD, and economists like Saez/Zucman. The middle class is shrinking both upward and downward, but a significant share is moving down or stagnating, not up!

Even billionaires themselves comment on this: https://fortune.com/2026/07/17/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-artifi...

So you're right, we made great progress since WW2 and no the sky isn't falling down.

But my point is we're now going down a dangerous path that leads to authoritarianism. If the convicted felon and his gang aren't being kicked out then corruption will increase, more surveillance (i.e. Flock and Palantir), more austerity and more loss of our freedoms.

> 3. Democracy, imo, is quite healthy.

It's not though. Listen to historians like Snyder or Heather Cox Richardson. Or listen to financiers like Anthony Scaramucci and his guests. Our democracy is being dismantled and if we don't stop them, then we'll end up with a sham democracy like in Russia.

You're just not someone who has to deal with these problems. Are we solving them? Not sure what you're being that of.

> Get offline. Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe. People are still going out to eat at restaurants, they're still playing intramural sports, they're still going to the beach with their friends, they're still watching plays, they're still visiting family and hosting movie nights.

I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective

Almost every major measure of human progress and prosperity over time?

What are you basing your doom and gloom beliefs on?

> I suggest you stop touching grass and go and talk to a few less fortunate people. Maybe that can broaden your perspective

I would wager my perspective is much broader than yours. Being so anxious and pessimistic that you only focus on the negative, to such a degree where when people point out real positive progress you feel COMPELLED to say something negative, doesn't mean you have a broad perspective. It just means you're miserable.

But I'm not talking about luxuries like super cars that most people couldn't afford.

I'm talking about the necessities of life. Food, shelter and energy have become more expensive and under this administration's policies it's not getting any better.

Poverty rates have barely improved and under this administration desire to reduce SNAP budget heavily, what do you think this will do to child poverty rates?

A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.

> A lot of progress has externalities and the benefits and downsides of progress are rarely equally distributed.

The vast majority of humanity has benefited from progress, compared to most decades and certainly centuries in the past. So I don't really know what your point is here?

A significant portion of the human populace still lives like this in various degrees today. You are just blind to it because you'd rather live in your delusion for comfort.

I believe it should’ve been possible to not leave so much people behind and so much behind. Requiring those at the front to not leave people so far behind (and forcefully funneling away their riches if they do) would’ve been enough.

I don't think this is true. Of course, rich people will always benefit the most from any technological advances. But there is no indication that the average Joe will be worse off in say, 20 years, compared to today. Medical advances alone coming down the pipeline will likely tip the scales towards future average Joe being better off compared to today. If I have to make a choice, for example: do I want to cut the deaths from diseases by half and fill the sky with Starlink satellites, or do nothing? I am picking the better medicice and Starlink-filled sky.

> Where you have just limited time to watch the movie you loved?

You know how many movies the average peasant watched in the 1800s? 0. The closest equivalent was live theatre and that was an expensive luxury. You'd also likely get see one or more of your children die to diseases that are trivially treatable or preventable today.

this is why it is important to give toys and distractions to the masses and meaningless grind so they can stay busy and happy.

while other people actually build the world for them.

Markets require competition and customers.

There will always be people like you, who will accept every single shit, then call them “gift from builders”.

The issues you enumerated were very well addressed in the socialist USSR.

I have no problem with billionaires. Or trillionaires. I do have a problem with monopoly because it destroys the very ecosystem that creates the increased well being you describe.

So it’s fine.

For less starving people? For less child abuse? For less climate change?

I look up at the night sky and i want to see stars and the endlessness of the universe and don't want to be reminded that Elon Musk will poisen our atmosphere.

Yes. The only way to truly solve these issues is technological progress.

It's not technological progress we need; it's cultural progress.

IIRC no place in the world which has hard-paved highways has ever seen a peacetime famine. That's almost exclusively the domain of mud road territories. Of course, this is partly a correlation (mud road territories have worse governance and more banditry), but there is causality as well.

So clearly you are in favor of starvation and human suffering due to climate change because of your irrational distaste for seeing satellites in orbit.

I suspect the root cause is you've overdosed on propaganda on the internet.

Mostly, Kessler syndrome isn’t something to worry about at all; there are just a lot of orbital planes available. But in LEO, the mechanics don’t even apply.

First graph is a list of deorbit times: https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/deorbit-syst...

As expected, higher altitudes, higher mass, and lower surface areas correlate to longer deorbit times. It looks like altitude has an extreme effect on deorbit times, as you can see the 100 KG satellite (solar min) deorbits in a little under 2 years at 400 KM, but over 15 years at 500 KM. So 1.25x the altitude results in 7.5x the deorbit time.

Stuff at 800-1000 KM can take centuries to deorbit, and that's within both NASA's (under 2000 KM) and the ESA's (under 1000 KM) definitions of LEO. There is a definition for VLEO of under 450 KM, which would have fairly short deorbit times, and therefore a relatively mild Kessler Syndrome.

A lot of people get upset about such things, even those are rather more important than just adding to the world's existing widespread internet access.

Starlink is cool, and has some niches, but this is a fairly limited argument in its favour.

The level of servility of some people never ceases to amaze me. This sentence is viscerally repulsive to me.

It is harder to break satellite constellation in a concealed way.

The US has tons of spy satellites, why not make some for the folks paying taxes? Why do we have to sell our firstborns (data) to Google for maps etc?

Social welfare is the top local spending category in many local/state governments

I believe some functions are simply best performed by non-profit-motivated government agencies. However, I would usually prefer an actual unregulated or black market over the corrupt frankenstein of private-public partnerships

There are plenty of solid reasons to despise Elon - no need for counterfactuals.

There really aren't that many. He's kinda a dick and briefly supported the president very publicly.

Most of the other reasons are just as fatuous as this.

What you're essentially arguing for is SpaceX building this for the government and government being the middleman.

More money would be spent. Not less.

The government has Starshield. And several other non SpaceX satellite systems. They famously sent four (4) recievers of that sort to Ukraine.

There's this idea out there that SpaceX is somehow stealing from NASA. Paired with the notion/assumption that the government builds its space vehicles. Completely incomprehensible.

For Internet, other satcom providers are now cheaper post Starlink.

Disinformation on the Internet? Never seen it before.

The contracts are not just publicly bid but paired.

Come off this nonsense.

Space is the sphere of government and the launchers and satellites have always been built by companies and SpaceX is very visibly cheaper.

Examples are

CCrew - Boeing

CCargo - Sierra, SpaceX is now a sub for another company bc their engines are made in Ukraine.

HLS - Blue Origin

NSSL - ULA, Blue Origin (Maybe RKLB)

NRO Starshield GMTI - Northrop Grumman

SDA - York Space

SEA-2 - OneWeb

>Can't speak to the world as a whole but the US has we spent 50 years gutting most government functions that aren't part of the police/military/surveillance apparatus (and many of those as well).

It's the likes of Boeing and Lockheed vs SpaceX not Government vs Private Sector. That's how it's worked since Apollo.

>SpaceX itself is an example of the primary mechanism of this: Diverting funding to private, no-bid contracts that remove both market forces and democratic oversight from those services while also ballooning their costs

This is the core of the disinformation. SpaceX has always been cheaper, see Europa Clipper for one of the most egregious examples. The post SpaceX era is also cheaper for the government because of the shift in contract types. That's how you hear Boeing is losing money on Starliner and Air Force 1, because companies now eat the losses they used to pass on. Raytheon (and SpaceX mind) dropped out of SDA because of this.

The contracts are also openly bid. And if they aren't classified you can bid too. Lots of these contracts don't even have pré-qualification.

This stuff is known to anyone that follows the industry. In fact, the fact other companies are involved makes it more expensive because they charge more than SpaceX per unit of work. But government keeps its leverage and industrial base.

The person you read from who claimed (I can tell they aren't original thoughts) these things is lying to you and any cursory check (sometimes just reading articles instead of just headlines is enough).

It's like the X company isn't paying taxes, "this is a bad thing" stories, then you look at the balance sheet and not only is the company paying taxes, it's lifetime and operationally unprofitable, so it has no corp tax incidence (like anyone doing part time work at minimum wage or below (at a charity))

Launch, Human Spaceflight, Satellites and Satellite Internet are now (and for most of a decade) been primarily American. Even the foreign competition is largely American (See Telesat)

Paired contracts (openly bid from a larger pool of qualified companies mind), a fixed cost for delivering ends/products etc have meant lower costs to the government, redundancy in case of failure, less time between having an idea and having it implemented (HASTE, LUCAS and Starshield).

Of course there's the risk that this means companies exit the market if they can't deliver in the old environment (SDA, Starshield) but there's still the option for old companies to compete in truly novel projects (F-47) with the old contracting system. And pairing also allows the government to bring in new companies to the fold to compete with the old guard.

As for corporate taxes, those articles are standard fare to direct misplaced anger at companies that aren't doing well on the whole (because they've never turned a profit or are in a low margin business) or are reinvesting all their money(something that's supposed to be a good thing). We aren't talking about transfer pricing and similar shenanigans. Accountants just roll their eyes. But it breeds unnecessary anger (See the "BlackRock is buying single family homes"; "SpaceX has got ~$30B of government subsidies" nonsense too)

>It's well-understood that a ton of companies operate in a mode that doesn't chase profitability

In the end these articles insinuate that said company isn't paying their fair share/ is freeloading on the polity.

The responses to the articles clearly show that it's not well understood.

It's the best and worst of times, but we should at least have clarity on what's better and what's worse.

As a broad generality, governments are utter crap at inventing/building/operating bleeding-edge technologies at giga-scale. Exceptions are generally narrow-focus military hardware, plus flood control, aqueducts, and other "obviously needed for the nation's welfare" stuff.

The 1 I suspect is some other satellite

I have no love for SpaceX but at least I can take a subscription or invest and the stock and pretend that those satellites are beneficial to me.

There isn’t a single US government owned satellite that is not actively harmful to me at the moment.

Elon doesn't own space, he just happens to be the one who is currently best at making it reachable. There is plenty of space for everyone else, and others will get there, eventually.

I could eat myself up with envy over the money he's making from it... or be glad that it's at least someone getting rewarded for moving humanity forward (while also being an asshole), rather than someone who is starting wars to profit from insider trading...

You get what you pay for and the service got paid for ultimately.

If it was important enough, it would have been paid for.

Please just stop this thing you're doing. It's nakedly markedly dishonest

You're Russian? Sucks to be you

The problem is not 'space' - it's getting ourselves sufficiently organized.

Unbelievably ignorant take and sadly typical for HN these days.

It's the same neo-liberal aggression couched in rhetorical trickery.

Why do we need to let this be a monopoly controlled by one person. A king in a board room is still a king.

It’s not simply a matter of political will, the quality of what governments have been able to produce just is no match for what companies can do. It’s the same for rockets as it is for cars, computers, or anything else. Ever heard of a government-made car? There were a few that came out of the Soviet Union and they were laughably bad and only obtainable in small quantities. Rockets and satellites are the same way, the government just does not have the same incentives to produce things that companies have.

The proof is in the rockets. Compare SpaceX’s rockets with any government developed rockets anywhere in the world, it’s not even close.

Falcon 9, Heavy, Starship, Dragon. The government never would have come close to developing any craft like these let alone being able to launch a constellation like Starlink.

I would fully acknowledge that spaceX pushed space exploration and commercialization forward. But you have to admit 1. The government paid for that by awarding contracts. 2. A monopoly isn’t an agreement we have to accept.

Only about 20% of SpaceX's income is government contracts, and for that 20% the government receives an absolute bargain. Compare cost per launch of the space shuttle or a Russian rocket to a Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy.

>A monopoly isn’t an agreement we have to accept.

There isn't a monopoly anywhere in sight, you use that word without any understanding of its meaning obviously. Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Relativity, etc are all competing with SpaceX. Rocket Lab and Blue Origin are both planning their own exact copies of Starlink.

Incentives drive outcomes, the government lacks incentives to produce high quality objects at scale, there's a century's worth of data to prove that point.

Compare the cost per satellite to operate the GPS constellation vs the Starlink constellation. The private company is an order of magnitude more efficient. GPS was launched in an era where the government had a monopoly on spaceflight, if it were launched today by SpaceX, the cost would be an order of magnitude cheaper.

>The stealth bomber

I don't know which bomber you're talking about but if you're talking about the B-2, that was developed and manufactured by private companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_B-2_Spirit

The government is great for funding basic tech, i.e. redirecting taxpayer money back into the private sector with a specific goal. Arguing that we should let the government have a monopoly on spaceflight is like arguing that we should let the government have a monopoly on building cell phones or cars.

This is the opposite of a monopoly, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab are both planning competing constellations. Eventually there will be many competing constellations in orbit delivering service.

>Government could be the creator

Okay so why wasn’t it? The lifetime funding for NASA is 700+ billion dollars. With that incredible sum of money they weren’t able to even make reusable rockets let alone the satellite constellation. Launching a constellation with NASA’s pre-SpaceX approach (using Russian rockets) would have been literally impossible because Russia could have never built nearly enough rockets. Launching even a small fraction of Starlink would have consumed the entire NASA budget several times over.

Comparing GPS and Starlink doesn’t really even make sense because the scope of each project is so vastly different. Starlink if delivered by the same people who made GPS, would have been literally impossible, because the mass to orbit is orders of magnitude larger than the GPS project. Starlink was only possible because of the efficiency provided by SpaceX’s reusable rockets and the leading minds in the government literally said that reusable rockets were impossible and impractical until SpaceX actually delivered reliable reusable rockets.

Also pointing to blue origin which is substantially related to the Amazon monopoly isn’t the best refutation of my argument. When all competition and innovation requires behemoth monopolies rather than ecosystems of entrepreneurship and capital markets capitalism has been replaced with oligarchy.

Nasas mandate wasn’t to build reusable rockets. They built the space shuttle, which was reusable. The GPS network is a constellation of satellites. They also launched numerous spacecraft that landed on planets and moons. If we wanted nasa to do what spaceX has done it could. At then end of the day teams of humans do things. If we want the teams of humans in government to do things we can arrange them to do it. I don’t see anyone saying private military, fire departments or police departments are significantly better than public government systems.

It feels like there's no feasible solution here that would please you guys.

Should we all democratically vote on every satellite launched into space individually? It's already our elected representatives that approve it.

Earth orbit is more constrained, but it's very far from full. Geostationary orbits are about 20% full, but the rest is practically empty still.

Forward back to fascism. No thanks. He already caused astonishing harm.

Kind of fucked up lol

> rather than someone who is starting wars to profit from insider trading...

Your moral and ethical bar is Trump?

I do like big cities and their skylines though, sure.

The problem is that nobody asked the other 8.3 billions people what they think about seeing stuff in the sky. For the benefit of 1/1000th of humanity (~10 million starlink users).

We will be investigating him for decades and he deserves every second of it.

It's just the money.

If we were actually going to Mars, then yes, but somehow he made himself the 'First Trillionaire' - without even so much as getting out of Earth's orbit.

This is NFT progress, in that, there is some plausible economic value in NFTs, but in reality, it's just a hustle.

Money is a materialization of human desire.

The 'power' part is one of the most important things to understand.

In our every day lives, we see regular people 'creating value by working' and 'collecting money' and then 'spending according to their needs and desires'.

We see things like groceries, fuel, food - it all seems like relatively open and mostly kind of fair system - and it is, at that level.

But significant amount of wealth is accumulated into structure and by individuals that have power totally disproportinate to their value creation.

Kings of England didn't rule 'arbitrarily' - they owned most of the land - that was their power.

If you own all the land, the serfs can't escape your taxation - however you think you can create value, it will be taxed away.

Corporations have incredible economies of scale and leverage through division of labour that individuals could ever have - and - they are even 'limited liability.

We set individual up to compete against goliaths, and then give those goliaths special advantages.

'Parts of the Economy' are relatively fair, just, open etc. but much/most of it is not, it's a game of power leverage and accumulation, as it always has been. It's that part that people don't have a strong instinct for.

Power is exercised according to desire.

It's a fine point, because some people believe that everything is controlled by a cabal of secret bankers and rich people and that's not true either.

'Nobody is charge' - that's also unsettling. But there are centres of great influence, many of which do not have our best interests at heart.

If technological progress requires monopolies and the road toward serfdom is that really a path we want?

Fun fact, the first nuke in space had a lot of people very nervous as it was thought that making satellites impossible forever was a possibility, and quite a few did fail due to the nuke.

Me, I just do what I can and at least trash the ones covering the windows on public transport here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa

Wow it’s like when I move some pieces of wood or other items near my shed outdoors and I see a bunch of activity that I never knew existed.

Don't want to doxx myself but no outdoor ads on the main street here.

Maybe Stockholm has some.

People can acknowledge a difference of values and recognize what they consider a destruction of the commons without their stance being distilled to simply being a hater.

Would you also considering people who bemoan the degradation of Lake Erie by industrialists of the last century as “crab mentality”?

Similarly, people at the time took what may be closer to the opposite stance: “Fundamentally this level of environmental degradation was accepted as a sign of success.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught...

What we're seeing is humanity managing to become a space faring civilization. I look up and yearn to be up there as well. I'll never make it to space, but it would give me such joy if my children's children had the opportunity to.

Or basic locations in Europe, that can be as close to 20km from a big city. There are a ton of spots where you have at best spotty 4G coverage or no coverage at all.

Used to live where we had 1Mbit ADSL, and no cell ... Trust me, you feel the limitations of that. Keeping your PC running 24/7 to download/buffer, so you can use your day traffic for more important stuff.

Starlink is a insane deal in my eyes. Sure, it uses a lot of power but your paying the same as typical vDSL in Germany. And ironically, ... Starlink is faster then the fixed lines we have here in the "3th" biggest city in Germany.

People really underestimate how much underinvestment there has been in Internet connectivity even in rich countries.

Or if not, what am I missing?

As Aristotle said, all forms of government have a good form and a corrupt form. A just king can be highly effective and create human flourishing but a bad king is highly destructive. A good democracy and tyranny of the mob majority are equivalent. We need checks and balances in all forms of human organization. SpaceX has no checks or at least is on a path to where there will be none.

Elon recently said, if his plans go as expected, SpaceX will be more valuable the earth. And he is right. How is humanity going to have checks and balances when that happens?

Maybe some day we'll be mining asteroids near Earth or something. Maybe we'll mine the moon. Going to/living on different planets is pretty much science fiction though. It's hard enough to live on the earth, it's gonna be 1000 times harder to live anywhere else.

Can the government shut off your access to GPS? No. Can spaceX shut off your access to their network? Yes.

Do you have rights to judicial review if government harms you? Yes. If spaceX does? Probably not because their terms of service create a contract not a legal right.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp/gx04-who-owns-the-most-s...

* Most satellites were private owned, for communications or resource.

* Most government owned satellites have military use, the people that is trying to spy or nuke you or your neighbor.

* A small part is used for science and altruistic activities.

They're such an enormous part of the problem that it does a disservice to the problem to not metaphorically shine a spotlight on them.

I had trouble finding another source that summed up the data so nicely, but other sources did corroborate these figures: https://satfleetlive.com/blogs/how-many-satellites-in-orbit/

>They're such an enormous part of the problem

What an incredible life of privilege you must live to perceive a few glints in the sky as a huge problem.

But really, what point are you trying to make? I don't need to think that satellites glinting in the night sky are the literal worst problem facing humanity for that to be a valid topic of discussion.

I worked on technology for years that the FCC effectively killed for stupid reasons. So it’s heartening to me that someone can still just do stuff and build things. It’s amazing. If you asked me 10 years ago I would have thought that getting something like Starlink off the ground would’ve been impossible due to red tape.

And because it's so flexible, in states like California where we have aggressive environmental laws, it's leveraged as the NIMBY trump card. When it can't block a project, the process is used to make it inordinately expensive and take decades. One example would be the environmental studies for the CA High Speed Rail.[1]

[1] - https://ifp.org/fast-track-democratically-approved-transit-p...

That's why the cost estimates for CA HSR jump a bunch every time an administration hostile to it enters the white house.

A very good point.

I don't agree we can blame Trump for HSR though. 2/3 of the time that has passed have had Democrats in the white house. HSR is nearly all pure-California-style self-inflicted wound. And honestly it's just the most visible project California has failed with, there are many others. The one I'm personally angry about is Prop 1. We're now 12 years after, and have no additional water resources even broken ground. It's shameful.

I think the most recent cut was $4+ billion in federal funds for HSR. It's going to come from cap and trade instead, but the state could have had both.

Note: The way they divide up water usage. They have a third category, listed As environment, but that’s misleading because the people who have the water rights can always use a lot more water at their discretion at any time. where as the common citizen cannot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California

https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

If CA had moved quickly, that wouldn't have been an issue, or at least as much of an issue, but because construction took so long to start, it was.

I live in upstate NY, the rebuild of the GOP here is around hyper local issues, mostly apartments and solar. MAGA changed the discourse and allows the rabble rousers to say the quiet part out loud. (Ie bike infrastructure and apartments will bring poor black people to rape and pillage)

How can the solution to burdensome regulations be MORE regulation?

A law banning certain types of regulations at a lower level I would not call “state regulation” I would call that deregulation.

I suppose I agree with you that the solution to burdensome regulation is to write new laws which forcibly deregulate lower level things. But calling laws like that “state regulation” is true only in the most technical sense. Your example is a textbook example of deregulation.

Would you rather have a published regulation that is subject to democratic and judicial review and applies equally to every one. Or a company terms of service that forces binding arbitration and your only recourse is to not use the service?

I lived in a neighborhood with an hoa and it was the worst form of regulation I've ever dealt with. I own a health care provider and the regulation when it was direct medicaid was infinitely better than after it was privatizatized with managed care.

I know, that's why we've developed all of these systems of representation to discuss and come to reasonable regulatory standards.

But that's neither here nor there in regards to the point being made that people can still build things in a regulated environment.

The only mistake California made was not including one of the adjacent states as a destination, be it to Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Portland, all of a sudden business interests and those crazy Republicans would be on board because they’re concerned about missing out on making money, which is basically God in America.

I may not live to see it. but once they start going interstate with high-speed rail anywhere within the United States, the tune will change. It’s just amazing that so many people are short-sighted about it. More of that short-term thinking humans are famous for.

Note: Those who think ahead long-term obviously have already bought land on both sides of the route of that high-speed rail line in California, and probably along the proposed route leading to Las Vegas in the future, and the same applies to any possible line to Phoenix or to the Arizona high plateau.

Originally, the line was scheduled to run on the western side because that side was less populated. In other words, you had pretty much a clear lane as far as the right-aways were concerned, and this scenario will play out once high-speed rail runs out of California to the east.

All those conservative red areas will all of sudden change their tune, and there is no cope again money is God in those red areas that is the one thing those red areas understand particularly those at the top that and taking away the vote, firing a gun or blaming a worker that is less fortunate.

Yes, having a data center that raises your utilities costs by 300% jammed down your throat because the local mayor got blatantly bribed shouldn’t be a thing, especially when it’s powered by mobile gas turbines that stink up the entire area (note: I’m not against data centers on principle, but there are many ways for ultra-wealthy interests to leave people hosed). But things like faintly visible mini-sats don’t seem like a big deal, subjectively, unless you work at an observatory.

And by the way this guy is responsible for the death of multiple hundred thousands deaths according to estimates. Because he championed removal of Red tape and shutdown of that allegedly "criminal organization" (his words), USAID. Tell that your children.

Even the President of Mexico, who hates Trump, agreed on that one: https://www.newsweek.com/trump-musk-unexpected-ally-push-shu...

“This agency has funded everything from research projects to groups that oppose the government. In Mexico, 'Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción' has received proven support from this agency. So how is it that these so-called 'aid' agencies get involved in politics?" Sheinbaum questioned.

Likewise The Nation, which hates Trump and Musk: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/usaid-trump-musk-... (“Trump and Musk’s war against the agency should be opposed on principle. But we can’t overlook that USAID has been a destructive arm of American imperialism for decades.”).

There’s lots of rich countries to do this aid. China is investing in infrastructure without interfering with local politics. The world’s military hegemon has too much of a conflict of interest to do this job.

Bru-ha-ha.

What a zinger.

Explanation needed.

One example is environmental dumping regulation. Unregulated release of chemicals into the environment by a minority harms everyone. In north Carolina entire watersheds are polluted with forever chemicals because the power company was dumping transformers in rivers. Now no one can eat fish.

I am not saying we shouldn't have an electric grid. But clearly their unregulated right to dispose of transformers is in their direct economic interests and against the public interest. And clear simple regulation can support better development with reduced harm.

I dont follow your example and am not familiar with that issue. But I would be the first to acknowledge regulatory process can be abused and irrational but that doesn't mean it is always bad or worse that other approaches.

I agree with you that regulation should have a cost benefit analysis. I would remind you that it often does, look at the public comment process, congressional debate, judicial opinions where that analysis is done in public view.

I would argue that there are improvements to be made like requirements to make predictions on the effects of a regulation and a sunset if the predictions don't match outcomes and a mandatory sunset of all regulation based on time and changed circumstances.

But I would rather have the government regulatory process than anthropic, or Facebook, or Uber or cursor being able to change their terms of service to implement adaptive pricing or training on my data or making digital clones of my family and using them to advertise in misleading endorsements.

Too late for your endeavor, FCC is now a pay to play racket.

Perhaps you should try again?

Come off this nonsense.

The alternative is some company charging the government for the same exact thing.

Starlink satellites have low orbits and only reflect sunlight around sunrise and sunset.

They are not overwhelming, mind you, but I did notice them immediately. They stood out enough that I wondered what they were and started researching, that alone says something about the prevalence.

Edit: An LLM tells me that this is partly unique to how far South Australia is and the positioning of the sun in Australia's Summer. But I lack the physics knowledge to confirm that.

Did you actually check with a satellite tracker, maybe show your kids and inspire them with what humanity can accomplish?

I thought a good example of the pinnacle of government bureaucracy in action acting undemocratically both undermines your position and, secondly, might have you alter your opinion a bit.

You've, essentially, just appealed to authority to justify your position.

Actually many forms of government mandate and authority are generated by marketplace mechanisms, many of which are actually more true to desirable marketplace dynamics than those we see in private marketplaces, due to concentration of power, which is a known failure mode of marketplaces in general.

The idea that “government” is some mysterious mythical entity that just exists outside of people’s input and outside of marketplace forces is juvenile.

Neither government nor private market outcomes are intrinsically more legitimate than the other.

Isn't government the highest concentration of power? They, typically, hold a monopoly on taking money with the threat of violence. Seems ripe for market failure.

And just like you can have a good form of government or a bad form of government you can have a good form of market capitalism and a bad form. A monopoly is not market capitalism, it’s the equivalent of a monarchy. Say what you will but even the UK has checks and balances on the monarchy.

You’re also ignoring that a government is accountable to people. A corporation is not.

SpaceX has many owners, especially post-IPO. You, too, can buy the sky and sell the sky.

Perfect, how can this not be a win win for anyone not involved?

An opportunity for everyone to become wealthy and scale our riches together.

Without Elon, how would so many of us .. “ever have made it”?

Given the difference between Musk's optimistic timelines (and share price) and what he actually delivers…

would've been fun, perhaps, to be one of the first Martians. But even though I'm younger than Musk, I no longer expect him to deliver in my lifetime let alone his.

SpaceX utilizes a dual-class share structure where CEO Elon Musk retains between 82.4% and 85% of the total voting power, despite only owning roughly 42% of the company's actual equity.

A trillion dollars will accumulate $100 billion in passive wealth simply by existing

I'm not saying it's a good system, but it's "aiming" for realtively good things. Just needs a bit of rebalancing regarding what activities help people get voted for. Basically harm shouldn't pay, squatting on limited resources shouldn't pay.

Let's naively assume that money is a reward for doing a good thing. It might be beneficial to more highly reward people who did the good thing sooner rather than later. So it's a reasonable mechanism having undesirable side effects because it's not tuned correctly.

That's why it's silly to hold a lot of cash, it means you've been suckered by society. That's also why holding (certain kinds of) debt is smart; you want a net positive relationship with society, in terms of pure personal gain.

IMO it’s a marvel to look up at the sky and see man made objects flying through the sky, it’s incredibly inspiring to see the great feats of engineering that humans are capable of.

Also if you look up at the night sky you can still see ALL the stars, it’s just that you can now see a few extra tiny dots flying by, it subtracts nothing from the average stargazer’s view.

Your children will get much more amazing and inspiring sights from space telescopes and spacecraft that this new space industry will enable. They will benefit from new science and manufacturing techniques that are enabled by cheap access to space.

>when it’s the government

The government had a monopoly on space access for the past half century and barely managed to put a handful of extremely expensive objects in space. They were never capable of creating reusable rockets or lowering the cost of access to space in a meaningful way. Maybe it feels nicer when governments do it, but cheap access to space will never happen if they are the ones running the show.

Humans are capable of incredible feats of engineering and many man-made things are extremely inspiring.

We shouldn’t allow monopolies in the name of progress or the monopolistic rent seeking will stifle progress.

The government could have absolutely done all of this and more if there was any commitment to the investment. Instead nasa had its budget gutted.

My kids won’t have a future with any opportunity if resources are so concentrated that their bargaining power can’t have any effect in the world.

Yeah they totally could have, so why didn’t they? World governments have had massive budgets for space agencies for like 70 years, yet they were never able to build reusable rockets or do anything other than send a handful of extremely overpriced novelty science projects into space.

You say they could do it, but there’s no evidence to support that they ever actually would.

No private company would have been able to bootstrap the basic research upon which spaceX is now building its business.

The government isn’t a commercial for profit enterprise. It serves a different function, specifically providing services for which markets won’t be functional like fire departments, policing, broad categories of infrastructure.

And your argument is a distraction. Just because government doesn’t do something well doesn’t justify granting a monopoly to a private actor. And if a monopoly is necessary then it should be a regulated utility like power generation, telecom etc.

What exactly are you saying is a monopoly? SpaceX is not a monopoly by any stretch, they are competing with Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, ULA, Relativity, and others.

>providing services for which markets won’t be functional

We are talking about a situation (launches, satellite constellations) where the government had a monopoly for 70 years and then transitioned to a market model. Since switching to a market model mass to orbit has gone through the roof and costs have fallen off a cliff. So much so that entirely new types of missions are now possible because of the increased access to space (Starlink is one such example).

We are specifically seeing the opposite of your “markets won’t be functional” statement; the market is so much better than the state-run enterprise that the idea of returning to the old model would be unthinkable.

Starlink’s total addressable market is only so large because of these monopolies. As sad as it is that astronomy will never be the same, it is a strong net positive for the world that fast internet be available at an affordable price.

And for what? So that we can have more internet? Oh that’s just what we need. To spend even more time online. I’m sure Elon is quite excited for all of us, no matter where we are, we can be plugged into X just like him!

Vertical integration of launch capabilities and use of the satellites is an old monopolistic strategy.

Doubling prices over night is kind of an indicator of a monopoly.

https://www.corporatejetinvestor.com/news/starlink-price-ris...