Elon Musk ordered Starlink communications system to be turned off during Ukraine attack, book says [AUTHOR NOW CLAIMS THIS IS WRONG, please see the text in the body below]

0x815@feddit.de to Ukraine@sopuli.xyz – 383 points –
CNN Exclusive: 'How am I in this war?': New Musk biography offers fresh details about the billionaire's Ukraine dilemma | CNN Politics
edition.cnn.com

Elon Musk biographer admits suggestion SpaceX head blocked Ukraine drone attack was wrong:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/12/elon-musk-biographer-admits-suggestion-spacex-head-blocked-ukraine-drone-attack-was-wrong

57

You are viewing a single comment

Half of all active satellites are now from SpaceX. Here’s why that may be a problem (March 2023)

SpaceX’s rapidly growing fleet of Starlink internet satellites now make up half of all active satellites in Earth orbit. [...]

"These big low-orbit internet constellations have come from nowhere in 2019, to dominating the space environment in 2023,” says McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “It really is a massive shift and a massive industrialization of low orbit.”

Why do governments provide Low Earth Orbit to one awful person?

Low Earth orbit is the safest orbit because the orbits will naturally degrade due to friction with the atmosphere and fall back to Earth after a set number of years without a boost.

Higher orbits are much worse because the satellites can be there forever and clog up space. Space is really big though, and we are not close to blotting out the sky with satellites, but we want to encourage the use of low Earth orbit whenever possible so we have control over it.

What I mean is that such a communications system should not be controlled by a private company or a person. That should be under public control.

5 more...

All true, but blotting out the sky isn't what everyone's afraid of. A chain reaction of space junk impacts that locks us on Earth for a century or two would be the worst case scenario.

5 more...

Because governments are run by politicians, and they need money for campaigns.

5 more...