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After giving in to Putin/Xi's demands to not provide starlink internet service over Taiwan, DOD officials are growing nervous about trusting Elon's Space company with our national secrets

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[–] Willie@lemmy.world 184 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Aw man, if only there was some sort of space administration that you could invest some of your trillions of dollars into so that your satellites could be launched by a group that you can monitor and trust.

[–] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 97 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nope, everything in the US must be privatized. EVERYTHING. Capitalism DEMANDS it

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

To be fair here... The old guard still aren't working on reuse even after SpaceX not only championed it but actually succeeded and proved reliability.

The old launch providers are still just throwing their shit away and still cost billions of dollars for launches.

The Commercial Resupply Service and Commercial Crew Programs have also achieved better standards than NASA had when they started them, and at much cheaper cost than the previous solutions.

Privatisation isn't inherently bad, and importantly, the money is still being handled through NASA for oversight.

[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 week ago (8 children)

I bet if you offered them grant money to develop it... it wouldn't have been left on the table.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

Yeah i mean look how much money telecoms got over the last century. That paid off really well.

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

the money is still being handled through NASA for oversight.

Oversight of the money is far from the problem here. This is not an issue of cheating the government or mismanagement of money, this is a national security issue.

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[–] Intergalactic@lemmy.world 79 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Revoke his security clearance. They did it to Oppenheimer for a lot less.

[–] Tyfud@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah, but he wasn't a capitalistic wage exploitation illegal immigrant billionaire. That was his first mistake.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

No, Oppenheimer was a..."communist"!! 😱😱😱😱

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 59 points 1 week ago (12 children)

In what would be an unprecedented move, the US needs to nationalize SpaceX in the name of national security.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They don’t need to go that far. Just force Musk to divest. (And prosecute him for any crimes he’s committed, but that might be asking too much of the government.)

[–] curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They should go that far though.

This entire position that things are in are a direct result of a certain party trying to privatize space travel, and "run it like a business", which is how the Challenger disaster happened.

So wouldn't be the worst idea to pull waayyyyyy back.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

It's not unprecedented, though.

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[–] BMTea@lemmy.world 53 points 1 week ago (2 children)

If you're going to rely on private firms for your aerospace espionage endeavors, maybe factor in their leader's sanity before you sign the contract with them.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nah. Loads of things just shouldn't be privatised.

[–] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

What do you value higher - that one company's profits or the public? Why are you so selfish? Why can't you just be happy that that one company gets to hold the entire population hostage over the necessary good or service that they can then monopolise? It's so much easier to squeeze the poor for all they own when their very survival depends on the things you can hand out or hold back at a whim. Something something the free market will probably prevent abuse or something, so it's perfectly okay.

[–] Burninator05@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I 100% agree with you but is there someone else in thr US who can reliably launch satellites? I know several othe companies are developing these systems but I don't think any are anywhere close to Space X's reliability or capability.

Space X is doing some awesome stuff and I hate that the awesome has to be tempered by the owner is a piece of shit.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 week ago

They're only able to do it because they've received trillions of dollars from the federal government.

They should nationalize SpaceX before they ever let someone like Musk get the security clearance needed to be in that position.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago (5 children)

SpaceX is wasting government money, they have almost spent all of the money they were given to land people on the moon, on building a rocket that can't do basic stuff.

That is not awesome.

[–] piecat@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

And somehow they want to make him in charge of government inefficiency

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[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 43 points 1 week ago

You want to trust him after what happened in Ukraine? Are you out of your mind? And he's admitted that he chats with Putin on a regular basis.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

he worships a russian asset. dont give him any access to defense

[–] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

But he has money. If you're rich, they let you do it.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago

Yet another reason billionaires shouldn’t exist. Dude is making international policy based on requests from foreign leaders, along with having conversations with them while launching the US government’s satellites of national security importance.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 week ago

They should be, it's a spectacularly bad idea.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 18 points 1 week ago

Just outsource DOD too, they basically work for their main sponsors anyway.

/s

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

why the hell would you be?

What even is the DOD/DOJ doing here?

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago

Surely you meant "wouldn't"

[–] cultsuperstar@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

In his defense, the GOP also answers to Putin, so it makes sense he would too.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Satellite internet already existed way, way before Starlink. You know, good satellite internet where you have a single geostationary satellite giving you high speed instead of these small Leo ones that will fall out of orbit within a decade...

Why would Taiwan even need Starlink?

Having said that: fuck Musk, and yeah, they should never have allowed this dumb ass anywhere near rockets

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The traditional satellite internet is slow and high latency. With the Starlink approach, it is indeed an issue that the satellites need to be continuously replaced, but it does provide a superior service to the user, and combined with SpaceX often launching them "almost free" by piggybacking on free space around their customer's payloads and not having to pay anyone for launches otherwise, it does come out cheaper than the old satellite internet.

But that's just the technology. The fact Musk is anywhere near that project makes Starlink a liability.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The vast majority of starlink are launched on their own flights.

They get a few freebies here and there but it's not the defining factor of their success.

The success is their reusable rockets and turning satellites into a smaller mass manufactured item amd getting economies of scale, not a giant super expensive item.

Edit: also they made reusable rockets then had to figure out a use for them as there wasn't enough global launch demand. They made their own demand. Then they used their own flights to test riskier things like the rockets with the most launches to fine tune the system without risking customer payloads.

Edit: Also for reference launch masses and dish costs

  • Hughesnet JUPITER 3 (EchoStar XXIV) has a launch mass of 9200kg. ($445 million)
  • Starlink V1 is 260kg (200k USD)
  • Starlink V2 Mini (current) 740kg (800k USD)
  • Starlink V2 (future satellites for starship) 1250kg (??? USD)

And obviously the Jupiter 3 will stay up there forever so they can recoup costs if starlink doesn't kill them, but thats a lot higher up front cost and they aren't making a lot of them so they don't get efficiencies of scale. Instead they're made with very custom stuff meant to last forever which costs big $$$.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Geostationary satellite internet is not "good." There's about 200ms of latency built into the system because of the distance to the satellite, which means you can't use it for anything real-time. If it's all you have it's better than nothing, but LEO satellite Internet is a lot more useful.

Old sat internet is not high speed unless you have your own private sat and are willing to spend crazy amounts of money and they suffer from very high latency. I’m a musk hater but starlink preforms pretty well. My dream is that the US will nationalize spacex and remove musks influence. Nothing but a cancer

[–] ofcourse@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Wtf is this article? If there’s a doubt about someone’s national security clearance, revoke it immediately until further review. Being anxious means nothing. Do or don’t.

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