[flexie]

Yes, technologically, this is amazing. But I honestly think it's sickening that a company controlled by one man is allowed to send 30,000 pieces of junk into space.

The fact that the one man who controls it is a billionaire demagogue (yes, by now Musk is a political leader) with his own media company just makes it worse.

Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga. There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.

[afavour]

People will object to what you're saying but IMO there's a core truth in it. One person in control of this many things is capital B Bad, no matter who they are. Like the fact that he gets to decide whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not, this level of centralized control feels like a time bomb. Compared to technology like GPS it feels like we're backsliding.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/europe/elon-musk-st...

[pokstad]

How is it any less bad for someone else who didn’t build the thing to decide what is done with it?

[jstarfish]

You're abusing the Kuleshov effect to make a dishonest point. Even your own link says something very different than what you are claiming: "Elon Musk Acknowledges Withholding Satellite Service to Thwart Ukrainian Attack."

Ukraine has always had access to Starlink. Musk proactively offered it for free when competitors' infrastructure was bricked by the Russians and basic communications were disrupted. He only decided "whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not" when it came to military operations, and rightfully so-- SpaceX would have become a military target itself. He's allowed to not want to declare SpaceX an enemy combatant without being labelled a despot. Russia started with a cyberattack and eventually started physically shelling ground stations. Being on the receiving end of a Howitzer is bad for business.

In no universe would doing otherwise have made sense in any goddamn context. Having his shit wrecked too would not have helped anybody. What he did allowed him to play the Red Cross card of neutrality, so SpaceX could continue operating in the area unmolested.

Musk sucks, but at least vilify him for things he's actually done and not invent made-up narratives.

[mlindner]

> Like the fact that he gets to decide whether Ukraine is able to use Starlink or not

That's entirely the result of Ukraine getting the service pro-bono and not signing any kind of contract with SpaceX. The US government has signed contracts with SpaceX and it's perfectly fine like that. All of the hemming and hawing about Starlink's somehow ability to go outside of US law is rather silly and not endorsed by reality.

[mensetmanusman]

The federal government considered Crimea part of Russia and does not allow spacex to operate in Russia…

[inemesitaffia]

He decided to give them too. Did you object to that when it happened?

[baz00]

I suspect if he does enough fucking around he will end up doing some finding out. And he's doing a lot of the former and annoying nation state and union level entities.

[Dig1t]

The US government has literally unlimited money, like they can print as much as they want. They can just put up their own satellite network and use it to wage wars on the other side of the world. Why is it the responsibility of a private entity to enable death and destruction in a country on the other side of the world?

Side note: How the heck is the anti-capitalist camp somehow aligned with the pro-war camp now?

[stainablesteel]

this is such an insane stance

the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis

the political parties in control are also holding hands with media companies, and have no regulation on their own actions either personal or public, they can trade whatever stocks they want and move onto whatever job with a conflicting interest that they want afterwards.

musk has nothing compared to politicians, and much more oversight than any of them because he's spending his own money. it didn't fall from the sky, he has it because he's successful. unlike the politicians who print as much money as they want and retire with $100m+ and zero accountability for all of their failed and inefficient projects

[FireBeyond]

> the US government spends orders of magnitude more cash, at much lower levels than the federal level, more than any billionaire does in their life on a yearly basis

Are you really comparing a government responsible for something approaching 350 million people a year and all their infrastructure and support services with a billionaire's lifestyle expenses?

Fun trivia: I once looked at Bezos' net worth and the City of Tacoma, and according to all their records, he could "afford" to buy Tacoma. A city of 220,000 people. Every residential, commercial, industrial, government building in the city. Every street, road and highway. The utilities. All of it. One person... buy a city of a quarter million people.

And I posted about it on HN, thinking people would be similarly agog as I was. Apparently not. Several said "Oh, that's not as much as I thought he could", or "not too bad", etc.

[sschueller]

It should not be possible for a single human to amass any amount over a billion maybe even less. We managed a global cooperate min. tax rate of 12.5% we can manage to also tax billionaires down to billion. Stock can be converted to voting only, don't let them borrow against their stock etc. etc.

[robertlagrant]

> It should not be possible for a single human to amass any amount over a billion maybe even less.

You are constantly told about "billionaires" as though they actually have billions. They don't. They have shareholdings, which if they all sold at today's share price would equate to billions. In reality that will never happen, because the price would instantly start dipping.

[screamingninja]

How do you propose to implement that?

[ryan93]

the whole point of the law is to avoid people being able to take their base insticts out on others. your feelings about what is "too much" are irrelevant.

[warent]

Sharing this in a forum full of "billionaires temporarily down on their luck" is bold and not likely to end well; yet, I agree with you and GP. Hacking should not be synonymous with runaway capitalism, siphoning human energy, and plundering the earth.

Star Trek economy for all!

[keep_reading]

> 30,000 pieces of junk

30,000 pieces of junk to you, a life changing technology for lots of people all over the world. Check your privilege.

[snapplebobapple]

You're missing the whole point of the free market system. Musk didn't start a billionaire, he got there by founding companies that created a lot of value, then he reinvested and did it again. The system is somewhat self regulating in that regard and it makes me pretty happy to see him getting richer and richer when he's doing it by taking things others thought too hard and making them reality (online payments, then electric cars, now, most spectacularly decimating launch costs and increasing launch capacity to space.) Spacex is building the factory now that will make all sorts of things possible in space just by the sheer volume of gear they will be able to pump up there, it's going to be amazing, we may actually end up a multiplanet species because of this guy (or my hope is he figures out planets are probably stupid and goes for whatever the latest, most feasible version of o'neill cylinders ends up being.)

[panick21_]

This is just complete nonsense.

First of all, its not even remotely junk. These are sophisticated pieces of equipment and they will in almost all cases not be junk. Its standard regulation that all sats deorbit themselves at end of live.

And even in the very few cases where the sat fails Starlink sats are low enough orbit they will only be junk for a very small amount of time.

> Tesla's revenue in 2 days are roughly the same as the yearly GDP of Tonga. Space X's revenue is 10 times the GDP of Tonga.

Completely irrelevant statistics. Why don't you compare it to the Vatican City? Or you the local lemonade stand? Or to Apple?

> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.

Except of course the tons of regulation that Starlink and SpaceX in general have to agree to in order to be allowed to operate.

Before you are allowed to launch you need to actually tell the regulator where you are gone deploy, what your end of life policy is. Of course lots of regulation about spectrum and so on.

[jagtstronaut]

You can look at it this way if you want. Or you can look at it as people in rural areas and undeveloped countries are no longer slaves to the single telecom company that is out there charging them an atrocious amount of money for horrible service.

[Dig1t]

I can personally attest that this happened for me. Starlink was an absolute game changer for my neighborhood.

[bryanlarsen]

SpaceX is an American company. They are regulated by both the FCC and the FAA. Those regulators are effective -- otherwise the second launch attempt of Starship would have happened at least a month ago.

[fasteddie31003]

I would say this "billionaire demagogue" has done more to reduce CO2 emissions and advance space accessibility than any other human in history.

[gambiting]

Hundreds of millions if not billions of people gain absolutely no benefit from this yet they have the common good(night view of the sky) polluted by an American billionaire so he can make more money. I hate it with passion - as much as Starlink is amazing from a technological point of view and the nerd inside me loves it, I don't think it should be allowed, full stop.

[stainablesteel]

that's not true, the technological innovations of yesterday have brought more wealth, less poverty, and more overall benefit to the entirety of humanity than saying "i don't like these inventors who make new things that make life easier for everyone, lets kill them"

the roman empire literally killed people who invented new things because the emperors thought it would have put too many people out of work. we know now through economics that this is nonsense, and more productivity ends up not only making more for everyone but also making plenty of jobs to fill in what has been automated or made more efficient.

there is easily going to be plenty of benefit for the future of this, you're trying to view it through the lens of "how does this benefit me or some rando on another continent right now". and your lack of knowing an answer doesn't mean there isn't benefit, but for some reason you've mistaken it as that.

[krona]

There's lots of infrastructure which people gain nothing from directly. This sounds like an Anarcho-primitivist line of argument.

[mensetmanusman]

You should focus your anger more on airplanes, they will benefit far fewer people (and spread global disease to the poor) and there are far more of them.

[robertlagrant]

What's the thing you're objecting to? Elon Musk? If someone else did this would it be fine?

[ramraj07]

The semi good news is these seem low enough orbit that even with everything they could do they don’t last longer than a few years/decade. https://cybernews.com/news/starlink-lost-200-satellites/

[rewmie]

> (...) longer than a few years/decade.

Also known as a lifetime.

[inemesitaffia]

That article and subsequent ones I've seen from that site are disinformation

[Dig1t]

I think perhaps the fact that you refer to advanced satellites, some of the most advanced and scientifically interesting objects humans have ever produced, as "junk" maybe reveals some personal bias.

It sucks that propaganda is producing people who are anti-science and anti-progress. As they say "Rocket man bad".

[mlindner]

> 30,000 pieces of junk

Please try to follow the rules of this site... Calling operational satellites "junk" is not conducive to any kind of intelligent discussion.

> a company controlled by one man is allowed

We live in a country that (thank God) still allows (for now at least) people to run their own businesses and create products to sell to people. It'll be a sad day if that were to ever change.

> There will be no real oversight of this billionaire on the loose.

Getting the ITU license through Tonga does not suddenly make all regulation in the US disappear. They'll still be covered by the FCC, just like any other operator in the US.

[mensetmanusman]

The are 100,000 flights daily into ‘space’ where they are (gravity) forced to fall back down to earth.

Think of starlink as a far smaller network of planes that are a bit higher but are also slowly falling down to earth.

[mcpackieh]

This is an ignorant take; your thoughts are clouded by hate. 30k satellites are not "pieces of space junk". When they reach end-of-life they will deorbit and burn up. Just because you don't like the man that would own them doesn't change this.

[pmontra]

Tonga is 100,000 people. They could have aimed to Tuvalu, close to Tonga and only 10,000 people. Or Niue, same area and less than 2,000. I'm not sure Niue is an ITU member though.

[mensetmanusman]

Focus on Omaha, the fact that some piece of land is a country or a city doesn’t matter much…

[newsclues]

Would you feel better if it was a public company really? I don’t find them to be particularly accountable to anyone or anything beyond profit.

[mucle6]

Junk? Why do people who dislike the outcomes of capitalism use hyperbole?