The article is not far off from the mob mentality in this thread. It makes one good point, that one oligarch should not be in control of a global communications network, but it fails to notice that this move would take the power from one wealthy individual and hand it over to another, who now holds all the power.

And let's be clear, if we nationalized, Trump would ruin SpaceX, run it right into the ground like every company he's ever touched. Starship would never be finished, despite being within sight of the rocketry holy grail, reusable rockets. Washington would take control of starlink, which would probably be good, except it gives trump control over a communication system, which is a terrible idea. But it wouldn't last long, because when we mismanage and underfund SpaceX and it crumbles, we'll have no way to replace starlink sats and the whole network will disappear.

Nationalisation is SpaceX is a dumb idea because people aren't really thinking it all through. The outcome would be a lot worse for everyone, especially with a vindictive president that would like nothing more than to seize the assets of his opponents and liquidate them into his own coffers.

Fediverse is superior to state-owned.

Now that you mention it, we need an Amazon replacement too.

Never lived up to the hype. Take almost as much effort to get ready for another flight as building another one.

It might! But the article I linked also suggests it might destroy ozone and have a net warming effect. We just don’t know. The upper atmosphere has never before had this level of direct pollution injection.

You want a truly multinational organization responsible for it, nothing that can be controlled by a single nation, even one as (ex)influential as the us.
Something based on the UN perhaps.

Combine that with making internet access a human right, to stop denying connectivity outright.

Ideally then you could't enforce meaningful censorship, but more realistically you would route regions to their respective governments servers so they could censor as before on their territory.
That would not guarantee free access to the internet to everyone, but should be an acceptable compromise to basically all nations.

After that, other doubting nations could still pull their own constellation, nothing is stopping that.

I would love if the internet program was uncensored, but that probably needs personal circumvention same as now, if such a program wants any degree of success.

Shouldn't be incompatible with nationalizing SpaceX and Starlink. Just give it all to NASA, actually.

Hardly. Usually the process goes like this:

African Nation - has natural resource and has no way to get it out of the ground.

Foreign company that does this all the time: Yo, we'll literally pay you to let us dig up this stuff.

Regime: Yes, I was paid, perfect. Thanks. And we'll charge you what seems like tons of money also.

10 years later

New Regime: Hm.....that's an awfully nice mine you have there. We've increased taxes on it 400 times and you are still not closing. It means there's too much money to be had! So we will take it and do the mining ourselves! How hard could it be?!

New regime nationalizes mine

3 months later

New Regime: Sadly, we must now close the mine and send everyone with jobs home because my drunk cousin is not a good mine director, and all the things broke and we didn't know you had to order more spare parts.

New Regime places FOR SALE sign on mine and waits for another foreign company to start the cycle over again.

It sounds like we don't disagree that much, I just think other doubting nations is extremely likely.

Edit: but gosh darn that is nice to imagine. Everyone, everywhere, having free internet.

We no longer live in a world where our biggest fear would be the government controlling high level corporations and their operators.

We now live in a world controlled by Sociopathic Oligarchs who can afford to create government level technology. Right now it's mostly tourism rockets and satellites, but now we see Skum weaponizing that technology, and/or using it as a bargaining chip. He has cut off Starlink in a war zone to benefit the county who defers to him, but is openly hostile to the US, and now he's threatening to cut off our access to the space station. He is using tech that WE PAY FOR with government contracts and grants, to pursue his own diplomacy, for his own benefit, and against our interests.

Eventually, someone will start building and stockpiling actual weapons, perhaps even atomics. Then we will be asking why someone didn't step in and stop them before they became a bonafide threat.

We paid for Skum's technology, and he gets to control it as a courtesy. Just the threat of using it against us should be enough reason to declare him a national security threat, confiscate his American-taxpayer financed businesses, and imprison him.

Maybe... But never going to happen. Privitization and capitalism work the other way in the imperial core.

Where's the grift tho? What's the angle? How will this enrich an uber-privileged pale bro?

wow, tell me you know nothing about West Africa without telling me you know nothing about West Africa.

I'm all for the Sahellian states getting rid of the French, but the Burkinabe gold mining system is pure chaos, often costing informal miners their lives. Burkina, in particular, didn't have anything other than use of the CFA really tying them to the French anyway. Sure, some gold mines, but that's more like a final vestige.

Like, just overall, Bukina Faso is a weird place. Every time I've been there, the only bird I really see around is vultures. Like, no doves, no pigeons. Just vultures.

If that was actually their expenditure I don't think they'd have their budget cut.

The author probably forgot who runs the nation of usa.

Eventually, someone will start building and stockpiling actual weapons, perhaps even atomics. Then we will be asking why someone didn’t step in and stop them before they became a bonafide threat.

Bruh this has already happened over and over again. Nobody stops them because the most violence empire on the planet is leading the way. AFAIK the USA is the only state to have actually nuked people.

See also the zio regime. Imperial allies supreme.

Samson Option - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

Yeah.
The maintenance of these conatellations is pricy, so perhaps if such an international program does prove itself trustworthy you'd see other national alternatives get retired.

I mean it's not like the US would do it anyway as things stand, more likely for such a program to get started independently and to end up outcompeting starlink down the line.

Global communities reveal the disgusting chauvinism of the nationalist "we". It's cult speech.

Civil religion - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

So it takes a spectacular failure of capitalist grifters? Check.

Technically no. Bailout =/= nationalization.

let’s not forget the agency that launched the probe that passed the edge of the solar system and is still functional and doing valuable things…… in the 70s