Live data from Hacker News

Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

arstechnica.com

21–30 of 275 posts

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#21

I disdain the owners of both but Bezos (fairly) seems to get a bit more ire here. The Verge’s piece elaborated that SpaceX hasn’t decided between two configurations and want approval for both even though they will only choose one, so everyone else has to plan around two different configurations. I’m not sure if that’s standard procedure but it does seem a bit unfair to add double work for everyone else.

I'll take the eccentric billionaire actually tackling real issues and making actual headway. People here are too narrow minded and have quarter to quarter short term memory disorder, seeming to forget that Musk and Tesla are the sole reason we have had the progress and momentum towards actually greener technologies, not simply greenwashed corporate nonsense that was churned out year after year without any was actual progress. Bezos is literally the greedy avatar of Edison in this race, who's only advances are only made through parasitic monopolies, tyranny, and his own ego. He literally walked out in a cowboy hat to tell the world "thank you for your money peasants!"

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#22
post #18

Without getting too spaced-out with the the Bezos-Musk dynamics, I personally hate the idea of having private companies getting on the SpaceX bandwagon and clogging up outer space with thousands of satellites.

Why? My impression was that the low orbits used by Starlink and similar are the best place for this since it will all naturally deorbit on short timescales. It's just space who cares if we clog it up some with more useful things.

"clog" is relative here and space (including LEO) is huge

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#23
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? My impression was that the low orbits used by Starlink and similar are the best place for this since it will all naturally deorbit on short timescales. It's just space who cares if we clog it up some with more useful things.

"clog" is relative here and space (including LEO) is huge

We once said the ocean is huge too.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#24

Without getting too spaced-out with the the Bezos-Musk dynamics, I personally hate the idea of having private companies getting on the SpaceX bandwagon and clogging up outer space with thousands of satellites.

I personally hate the idea of holding back rural connectivity, mapping, and the general advancement of space-based science and industry in order to preserve the sacrosanct emptiness of certain orbits. Why should your desire for empty orbits outweigh other peoples' desire to put those orbits to productive use?

For the same reason that we generally believe that my right to clean drinking water outweighs your right to dump toxic waste in a river, even if it is useful to you.

Some doors are very difficult to un-open, and caution is warranted when making sweeping changes to space that may do any number of negative things, including make future spaceflights more difficult, make ground-based space research impossible (increasing the price of future space research and making satellites the only way to do get good data), etc.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#26
post #5

A good friend of Bezos' (like his brother maybe) needs to pull him aside and tell him how pathetic and sad this tactic is making him look. He's ruining his reputation among people he needs to recruit, like engineers, who might not otherwise fall for the false Bezos-is-mustache-twirling-capitalist narrative. Bezos actually seems to be a fairly good person with good motivations in general. But he's also extremely compe…

Honestly, I think the main difference between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos is their PR. Elon Musk portrays himself as an affable nerd who posts memes on Twitter, whereas Bezos has forgone a hair transplant and embraced the Lex Luthor look.

In the early days of SpaceX, they filed a lawsuit asking the government to dismantle the company that was their main competitor for EELV[1] and no one blinked an eye. I don't think it hurt their recruiting at all. If you eventually[2] get good results from your product, it seems like people are willing to overlook litigiousness.

[1]: http://images.spaceref.com/news/2005/spacex.summons.and.comp...

[2]: Emphasis on eventually. Blue Origin hasn't put a payload in orbit yet, but OTOH when SpaceX tried to dissolve ULA neither had they.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally hate the idea of holding back rural connectivity, mapping, and the general advancement of space-based science and industry in order to preserve the sacrosanct emptiness of certain orbits. Why should your desire for empty orbits outweigh other peoples' desire to put those orbits to productive use?

For the same reason that we generally believe that my right to clean drinking water outweighs your right to dump toxic waste in a river, even if it is useful to you. Some doors are very difficult to un-open, and caution is warranted when making sweeping changes to space that may do any number of negative things, including make future spaceflights more difficult, make ground-based space research impossible (increasing…

This door is trivial to un-open. If we decide the Starlink constellation is a net negative for humanity, we just need to refrain from launching any more of them. The existing ones will deorbit themselves within a few years at most.

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#28

I disdain the owners of both but Bezos (fairly) seems to get a bit more ire here. The Verge’s piece elaborated that SpaceX hasn’t decided between two configurations and want approval for both even though they will only choose one, so everyone else has to plan around two different configurations. I’m not sure if that’s standard procedure but it does seem a bit unfair to add double work for everyone else.

It's a bit of a stretch to say they haven't decided; one depends on Starship being approved for launch (and working) in the right timeframe, and the other just uses Falcon 9s. I don't think regulators should force companies to be conservative in unrelated technical development when it doesn't have any material impact on others.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#29
post #18

Without getting too spaced-out with the the Bezos-Musk dynamics, I personally hate the idea of having private companies getting on the SpaceX bandwagon and clogging up outer space with thousands of satellites.

Why? My impression was that the low orbits used by Starlink and similar are the best place for this since it will all naturally deorbit on short timescales. It's just space who cares if we clog it up some with more useful things.

Not OP, but I can think of two reasons – too many LEO satellites can actually hinder views of the night sky[0] and additionally, the risk of kessler syndrome[1].

I'm in no way equipped to give a scientific risk assessment of either, so I'll defer to others to share if they feel it's major concern. But whether these are present issues or not, they're worth considering and thinking about as we move forward with more LEO deployments. The latter issue especially, given that once it occurs, it'll be extremely difficult (nigh impossible?) to rectify in short order.

[0] https://astrobites.org/2020/09/25/leosats/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

Re: Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally hate the idea of holding back rural connectivity, mapping, and the general advancement of space-based science and industry in order to preserve the sacrosanct emptiness of certain orbits. Why should your desire for empty orbits outweigh other peoples' desire to put those orbits to productive use?

For the same reason that we generally believe that my right to clean drinking water outweighs your right to dump toxic waste in a river, even if it is useful to you. Some doors are very difficult to un-open, and caution is warranted when making sweeping changes to space that may do any number of negative things, including make future spaceflights more difficult, make ground-based space research impossible (increasing…

Demanding clean orbits at deployments with built-in short term decay trajectories is a funny hill to die on though.
Post reply on HN