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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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This is not an economic issue but rather one on human rights and democracy. I don't think it's a good idea to become dependent on a single company and/or a single government (Elon Musk has agreed to sell a portion of Starlink assets to the U.S. Department of Defense as you may know)
Space debris is a real issue which threatens humanity even in the short term. And it is another reason for international collaboration as we should not allow a single company "launching more satellites every week" without reaching an irrevocable and immutable agreement that it is for the good of all the people on earth (see my other comment in this thread).
[Edited for a typo.]
About the space trash issue, that's a really hard one but low orbit satelites don't really contribute because they fall and burn down if they ever stop moving. There is a awesome clip online where a bunch of them go down and look like a metrior shower, kind of beatiful and nice to watch Musks money burn!
That's how you get space trash like GLONASS and beidou. Their only purpose is being "not GPS".
So, you see, these projects are primarily for warfare. Civilian applications are often permitted but that's not the point of those projects.
I get your point, but seeing how not even the Russian military uses GLONASS...
Wait what? Shouldn't that enable the US to end this war relatively easily? They could instantly break a lot of the advanced weaponry of Russians by disabling GPS for them.
You can't disable GPS for individual devices, what they can do is disable the civilian signals and only send out the military ones which are both scrambled and way more accurate. GPS is one-way communication, from satellites to ground devices, no backlink.
And I bet they absolutely would, but Ukraine is also using civilian devices and asked the US not to.
No they couldn't. GPS works by sending the time stamps and position of the satellite. By measuering the difference between when the signals reach the gps device it can triangulate its position.
There is the civillian coarse and an encrypted fine version for the military. I think the US will not allow the Ukrainians access to the second and their tech is probably not suitable for it.
If they cut GPS it cuts for everyone in that area.
That's just a consequence of classic Russian corruption. That's not the system working as designed ๐