SpaceX blasts FCC as it refuses to reinstate Starlink’s $886 million grant

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨L4s@lemmy.world [bot]⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/spacex-blasts-fcc-as-it-refuses-to-reinstate-starlinks-886-million-grant/

SpaceX blasts FCC as it refuses to reinstate Starlink’s $886 million grant::FCC doubts ability to provide high-speed, low-latency service in all grant areas.

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LWD@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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- SupraMario@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The level of ignorance from you musk haters is hilarious. Starlink has done 100xs more for rural areas than the nearly trillion we gave to the telecoms. Yea musk is a dick but you’re ignorant as fuck if you think starlink is a scam.
  
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  - czech@low.faux.moe ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    There were a dozen companies that applied for the grant. Musk won by over promising.
    
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  - MeanEYE@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    If it’s not a scam, then they don’t need that money.
    
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  - shartedchocolate@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Giving government money to muskrat companies is the scam.
    
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  - Marcbmann@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    People will keep down voting you, but I just wanted to stop in and let you know that there are other people like you who can read.
    
    People on Lemmy are leftist AF and their seething hate for Musk clouds their ability to think.
    
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  - thatgirlwasfire@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Have you tried gaming on satellite internet?
    
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Uglyhead@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Starlink’s grant was intended to subsidize deployment to 642,925 rural homes and businesses in 35 states. The August 2022 ruling that rejected the grant called Starlink a “nascent LEO [low Earth orbit] satellite technology” with “recognized capacity constraints.” The FCC questioned Starlink’s ability to consistently provide low-latency service with the required download speeds of 100Mbps and upload speeds of 20Mbps.

That’s Phony Stark for ya, everytime: Overpromise and Underdeliver. And then get angry when called on his bulkshit.

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- KyuubiNoKitsune@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  bulkshit
  
  I love it, because he is so full of shit, you get it in bulk.
  
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- Marcbmann@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The grant requires applicants to meet these benchmarks by 2025. Only SpaceX came close to meeting this standard and only SpaceX is being denied the grant for not yet meeting this requirement.
  
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  - kalleboo@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    “* RDOF rules set speeds of 25/3 Mbps as the minimum allowed for broadband service delivered by winners. However, participants were permitted to bid at four different performance tiers: 25/3 Mbps, 50/5 Mbps, 100/20 Mbps and 1 Gbps/500 Mbps*”
    
    If SpaceX had bid on a lower tier of service that they were actually capable of delivering, they would have been fine.
    
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wahming@monyet.cc ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Funny how the FCC decided starlink is incapable of doing this, but was happy enough to pay all the other ISPs who are still incapable of doing it after decades of payments

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- daltotron@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  God I hate how our options are between shit and shit like every time. I just want RC cola internet, instead of pepsi and coke, is that too much to ask? I want kirkland signature internet, that’s what I want.
  
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  - uid0gid0@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I would buy Kirkland signature internet in a heartbeat, all their stuff is so good.
    
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- Rapidcreek@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Which other ISPs? Do you mean the BOCs & RBOCs?
  
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  - wahming@monyet.cc ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes. Verizon, AT&T et al
    
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voracitude@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
To quote the man himself:

Go fuck yourself.

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reverendsteveii@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
pull yourself up by your bootstraps. no handouts.

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skozzii@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Musk cannot make a profitable company without government subsidies. Hilarious.

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- LordKitsuna@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Almost no major company can, have you seen how much the US subsidizes oil and gas despite their profits? How much we subsidize food production? Renewable technology such as wind and solar is only becoming so vastly popular because we’re heavily subsidizing it finally.
  
  Don’t get me wrong fuck Elon musk, but don’t kid yourself and pretend like most companies wouldn’t fail without subsidies. That includes other internet companies which we subsidize regularly
  
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  - set_secret@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    there’s no greater welfare than corporate welfare. And for some absolutely bizzare reason, people are ok with this. it’s even worse because a lot of these companies don’t just make obscene profits on the back of tax payer ‘donations’ they they go on to in some cases pay zero or close to zero tax. (gas and oil companies are the greatest offenders BTW).
    
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- brlemworld@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  SpaceX is estimated to have 8 billion in revenue this year.
  
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  - David_Eight@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    How much are SpaceX expenses though? Revenue is different from Net Profit.
    
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- cole@lemdro.id ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  SpaceX is doing just fine
  
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RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Maybe if they had just used the last subsidies payouts to expand coverage and reliability instead of lobbying local governments to kill off fiber coops, then they could have kept the tap open.

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- Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Any tasty sauce to sample?
  
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Brkdncr@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I love shitting on Elon but starlink is one of the most important things that has come out of the US. It made remote work possible for thousands. It provided real internet access for so many rural areas. The FCC needs to fix this.

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- mindlight@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  In rejecting SpaceX’s appeal, yesterday’s FCC order said the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau “followed Commission guidance and correctly concluded that Starlink is not reasonably capable of offering the required high-speed, low-latency service throughout the areas where it won auction support.”
  
  SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has acknowledged Starlink’s capacity limits several times, saying for example that it will face “a challenge [serving everyone] when we get into the several million user range.”
  
  Isn’t it Starlink that should fix this?
  
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- hperrin@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  this applicant had failed to meet its burden to be entitled to nearly $900 million in universal service funds for almost a decade
  
  Maybe we should invest in another company that will actually deserve it.
  
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  - CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The problem is that this company doesn’t exist.
    
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- FiFoFree@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  In Iowa, at least, the state had a pre-existing fiber network that got expanded to a shit-ton of rural communities and local (often municipal) ISPs. It’s more expensive than what you’d get in the cities, but much better bang for buck than Starlink.
  
  The only people still struggling to get service are those who live way, way outside those communities – the kind of people for whom “neighbor” means somebody who lives a significant fraction of a mile away. And, outside of comfortably wealthy individuals, those people are a dying breed, at least in Iowa.
  
  If Iowa of all places can pull something like that off, I figure it’s not out of reach of any state (or nation, for that matter) whose inhabitants give a nano-fuck about access to technology.
  
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  - Brkdncr@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Rural Iowa has phone lines and can easily put up p2p wireless as long as it’s above the tree line . It’s also easy to trench cable through most of the state . I used to live there.
    
    Many places in the US are much more difficult.
    
    Verizon offered me 3mbps/1mbps dsl for $60/mo 4 years ago and it was their best and only option. I had their LTE service and it was flakey due to mountain interference and distance from tower. Two p2p wireless services exist but 1 had 20% packet loss across all of their customers and after 2 years still refused to fix it and the other was offering single-digit speeds for $100+ per month.
    
    Verizon put up a sign 3 years ago that said “high speed internet coming soon!” The sign has since deteriorated and blew away. It’s symbolic.
    
    The fcc needs to support LEO so that areas like mine are serviced. Starlink doesn’t compete with any other terrestrial service. It’s for the people that don’t have another option, and there are a lot.
    
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  - I_Has_A_Hat@startrek.website ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Iowa is pretty flat, it’s not hard to run cable across flat land. Try doing that in a mountainous area like Montana or Utah and it gets much trickier.
    
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  - BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Iowa is pretty flat. It’s all farmland that’s been plowed a million times (making trenching much easier, and a lot more opportunity for things like directional drilling/conduit drivers).
    
    Try running cable through somewhere with harder ground/rocks, trees, mountains, swamp (Mid Atlantic, Florida, Alabama, Minnesota, etc) dealing with right-of-way, over-populated poles, etc, etc.
    
    Then there’s the connection rate. In a more populated area there would be many more final connects, which can drive the cost a lot more than running the mainline. If you run fiber across 20 miles with no connects (just point to point), there’s minimal hardware infrastructure along the way. Add in needing switching for 5 communities, now you need buildings, power, termination, switching, runs to houses, etc, etc.
    
    It’s not really a good comparison.
    
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- I_Miss_Daniel@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Hi from me, a Starlink customer in rural Australia. It’s a premium service but greatly outperforms the alternatives.
  
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  - Candybar121@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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ItsaB3AR@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I still think Starlink can be a great service for rural areas, but it seems they need to improve their capabilities first. Which in a way makes a chicken-egg scenario. If they expand servers to handle all those people, they should be eligible for a grant, but they don’t wanna do it until they get the grant.

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- echo64@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s just not a sustainable idea. To expand service, they need to launch even more satellites. Which degrade and fall down after a year. The only reason it could exist thus far is because the US taxpayer paid for it with subsidies like this.
  
  America has problems with getting cable companies to actually lay cable after giving them money to do that, which is a separate thing. But at least if you get cable laid, it is in the ground providing service for hundreds of years instead of 1 year.
  
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  - A7thStone@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    They could do it and make money too, but they are only thinking of short term gains. In my neck of the woods spectrum kept taking the money and barely putting up any cable until our state finally told them to pound sand. Fios then said we’ll do it, and they did. They have run thousands of miles of fibre in the last few years, and guess who everyone is paying for internet service because it’s the only service available up here.
    
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  - Botanicals@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    This is exactly it and everyone should keep it in mind even if it’s helped you individually in your rural area. Elon keeps taking shortcuts for a cash grab and shooting garbage into space is not a long term answer.
    
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  - variaatio@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Also not only would they need more satellites, but satellites more densely in any area with multitude of customers. Which eventually hits RF interference saturation.
    
    Radio signal has only so much bandwidth in certain amount of frequency band. Infact being high up and far away makes it worse. Since more receivers hit the beam of the satellite transmission. One would have to acquire more radio bands, but we’ll unused global satellite transmission bands don’t grow in trees.
    
    Tighter transmitters and better filtering receivers can help, but usually at great expense and in the end eventually one hits a limit of “can’t cheat laws of physics”
    
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  - Marcbmann@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    After 5 years.
    
    SpaceX sells services. Just because they’re selling services to the government doesn’t make it a subsidy.
    
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londos@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Subsideez nuts.

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- vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Got em
  
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nixcamic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
On one hand, ew Elon Musk.

On the other hand Starlink has given us the first decent internet we’ve ever had so…

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- variaatio@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  However this isn’t about your anecdotal experience. This is about what level of service they can guarantee as minimum and overall to meet the conditions of the subsidiary.
  
  I would also note this isn’t reinstatement. FCC refused to give them the subsidiary in the first place with this decision. What they are trying to spin as reneg on previous decision is them making the short list of companies to be considered. Well getting short listed is not same as being selected fully.
  
  They passed the criterion for the short list check, but the final authorization and selection included more and more through checking on the promises of companies to meet criterion and SpaceX failed the more through final round of scrutiny before being awarded the subsidiary.
  
  Government having awarded bad money previously isn’t fized by following up bad awards with more bad awards. SpaceX exactly failed since previously money was handed out too losely and FCC has tightened the scrutiny on subsidiary awards to not follow up bad money with more bad money.
  
  Nobody is prevented from buying Starlink, thus just means Starlink isn’t getting subsidized with tax payer money.
  
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- Fades@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The more people that use starlink the slower and less usable it becomes, additionally phony stark can turn it off whenever he sees fit.
  
  Good luck with that
  
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  - nixcamic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    In theory they’re gonna keep upgrading the network, they’ve been constantly launching new and better satellites since launch. Also yeah in theory they can turn it off but that’s such an odd hypothetical that who cares. In theory our old ISP could also do that.
    
    And if Starlink does die we just go back to our old garbage or hopefully someone else will have a functional LEO constellation by then.
    
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- Acters@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  cable companies literally took a billion dollar grant to expand infrastructure and didnt do much of anything. This is literally doing something. F elon but the engineers who worked hard to make this a reality deserve better
  
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- Vex_Detrause@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It looked so promising but I feel like once I fell in love with the service they will start enshitification. Like Gmail, maps, pixel phones, YouTube, g-drive. Etc…
  
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Shohmini@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t particularly like Elon, but I think a lot of people are forgetting what Starlink has done for rural areas, and areas that don’t have highspeed internet. I live in the Southern US, and the only other options at my address are AT&T DSL or other satellite companies. We don’t have 5G towers in the area so I can’t go that route, most satellite companies have extremely low data caps, Hughesnet has a cap of 200Gbs for $150, with horrible connection, and AT&T DSL makes a 200MB download take 30-45 minutes at the fastest. My town has a population of 10k, and we’re still dealing with those being the only choices. If you go 30 minutes over to the next town they have Satellite, and that’s it. ISPs don’t care to fix the problem unless there’s another company taking customers from them with better service. Starlink has opened up a lot of the internet, and the possibility to work from home for a lot of people.

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- n3m37h@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Sounds like y’all should start building your own infrastructure as others have done
  
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  - roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That only works when the republicans that run the place don’t ban municipal internet build outs.
    
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- CaptPretentious@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The real problem there is all of the government handouts that have gone to the other ISPs for the purpose of wiring up everybody… Taking the money and then not delivering. And I know some years ago it was said that Comcast’s internet division was running at over 90% profit margin… And like other companies that were regarded highly successful operate around 30% or less.
  
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  - Shohmini@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think I’ve read about two occasions that the government handed money to ISPs to get Internet out to rural areas, and both times the results were essentially “ISPs pocket the money, nothing changes.” It’s infuriating, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s happened more than twice.
    
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autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:

SpaceX is furious at the Federal Communications Commission after the agency refused to reinstate an $886 million broadband grant that was tentatively awarded to Starlink during the previous administration.

But the satellite provider still needed FCC approval of a long-form application to receive the money, which is meant to subsidize deployment in areas with little or no high-speed broadband access.

The Starlink and LTD rejections were the two biggest changes to a $9.2 billion round of grants that, in the Rosenworcel FCC’s words, fueled “complaints that the program was poised to fund broadband to parking lots and well-served urban areas.”

The August 2022 ruling that rejected the grant called Starlink a “nascent LEO [low Earth orbit] satellite technology” with “recognized capacity constraints.”

In rejecting SpaceX’s appeal, yesterday’s FCC order said the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau “followed Commission guidance and correctly concluded that Starlink is not reasonably capable of offering the required high-speed, low-latency service throughout the areas where it won auction support.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has acknowledged Starlink’s capacity limits several times, saying for example that it will face “a challenge [serving everyone] when we get into the several million user range.”

The original article contains 508 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 62%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
While it’s always entertaining to read nonsense from haters as much as drama between haters and fanbois ……

Can’t y’all step back and look at the actual situation? US Government is spending our tax money to improve internet access for rural areas (good), but given the monopolistic behavior of telecoms, it will be going to one or more large companies (bad). The goal is improved access to the internet. The choice is between a turd and a shit sandwich.

Don’t anthropomorphize a corp: Starlink is one of the corps who can serve this goal. On their merit, do you really think they’re any worse than other candidates? Do you really prefer all that money disappearing into the mass of established internet providers, just like previous hundreds of billions, with nothing to show for it? Personally I see these companies with established technology but long history of not delivering, whereas Starlink has new technology not yet proven at scale, but really seems a lot more promising to serve the goal. Yes, I want grandpa Jones in North Haverville to have internet access and I really don’t care who runs the corp that provides it

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- wagoner@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They failed to meet the agreed requirements but you’re arguing they should still be allowed to provide sub standard service?
  
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  - AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m arguing that the bs from its ceo is irrelevant, that all the contestants to waste our money are big corps, and I’m less optimistic about legacy ISPs who will likely get most of the money.
    
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daltotron@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You know, on one hand, I do want to like. I have been looking into some cool space stuff more recently, and it seems like spaceX and starlink have been doing pretty well, relative to musk’s other business ventures, like X (no relation to spaceX, of course, which is great branding), and maybe tesla, which I kind of hate on the basis that they suck. But on the other hand, I wonder about how much of that is due to musk’s involvement, or if it’s just a factor of right place right time. I don’t think venture capital capture and attention capture from the balding manlet CEO of tesla, channeled towards reusable rockets, I don’t think any of that hurt, it was probably an advantage to those organizations, even if only like, by a small amount. But then, I dunno how much his mismanagement of these projects, and of most of his business ventures, have ended up hamstringing them in the long run, with unreasonable demands of his employees, and over-promising, and higher turnover rates than would probably be necessary. You know, I’m posting this from starlink internet, because I live in a rural place. Would that have happened without his idiocy? I’m inclined to say probably, but I’m also inclined to thank that guy that invented fertilizer, maybe even if he also invented mustard gas or whatever that story was. Which isn’t really to say that musk invented anything, or what have you.

Basically what I’m saying, is that I think it is probably a good thing, if you have gotten to a point where you can look at someone who’s “fucked up” history, and you can spin that into a good thing, even not by their intention, or even if it’s removed a causal step or two, it’s a good thing if you can spin their shit into gold. Probably. I dunno, it’s reassuring to me somehow, among the sea of situations that are the exact opposite where some guy’s cool idea gets taken by a soulless venture capital firm and drained like a vampire for investor hype before it’s discarded as useless vaporware. Mistakes into miracles.

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RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Ok, but we already have all those satellites up there now. Please fucking tell me those are not going to become space trash, because I will fully blame the government on that one.

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- Matthew@midwest.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They’re not high enough to become space debris
  
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  - 4onen@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Any altitude of orbit can become space debris. They just won’t stay space debris for nearly as long as geosynchronous or high orbit.
    
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