NASA hasn't take the slightest risk since Challenger. They wouldn't have accomplished 1/20th of the launch capability SpaceX has developed in the last 5 years.

They say this is for enterprise and government, and they talk about "terminals". This seems more like a Hughes network, and let me tell you, if it's that bad, you want nothing to do with it.

Thanks for murdering a perfectly good bit.

From what I understand the Ukrainians never had control of the nukes, they didn't actually have the launch codes to use them.

Regardless, having global access to the internet is great. Ask the people living in remote areas of the Amazon, no chance for them to get fiber, or Africa, or remote islands, or ships/airplanes.

If youre speaking of rural America not needing starlink because fiber is a thing, then you should broaden your horizons

I'm sure digging fiber out in the Amazon rainforest will turn out great

Generally NASA doesn't "develop" rockets per se, they commission rockets to specification.

But they specifically don't want to do that because ensuring a 5 year service life means you are required to continue buying more satellites from them every 5 years. Literally burning resources into nothingness just to pursue a predatory subscription model.

It also helps their case that LEO has much lower latency than mid or high orbit but I refuse to believe that that is their primary driving concern behind this and not the former.

People paying for internet service don't live in the Amazon rainforest

I think during world war 2. But things were worse then 15% unemployment and people still had massive economic leverage. I don't think the US government is nationalizing anything anytime soon now. Neither party will participate in it because they are in the pockets of the oligarchs.

The automotive manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler were partially nationalized in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis as were several banks... these were less a full government takeover and more of a government guided restructuring, but the government owned large stakes in these companies. Before that, the only full nationalization of anything substantial was the bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad and subsequent establishment of Consolidated Rail (branded as ConRail) the US's only national freight rail company.

Conrail was later privatized into what is now the private companies CSX and Norfolk Southern. The collapse of Penn Central was the largest bankruptcy in history until Enron in the 1990's. Amtrak, our national passenger rail corporation, is also a nationalized entity created around the same time as ConRail, for similar reasons, and is still nationalized (although the Trump admin wants to privatize it).

Maybe do a cursory Google search before being confidently incorrect

What even is this comment?

The precedent that will set and the implications... No... We should not do this.

One way to get businesses to move their factories back to the US due to tarrifs: Start nationalizing them.

/s

It's the specification process that's the thing, nobody there would have gone out on a limb the way SpaceX has with their recovery systems. Look where they are on a shuttle replacement: the Apollo capsule with more room.

SpaceX and Starlink basically have no competition, and if they did, said competitor would also need to be heavily subsidized.

Fair enough, you got me there. Didn't realize there was such a population of internet craving people in what's supposed to be one of the last relatively untouched areas of nature on the planet.

That being the case though, why didn't this all happen in 2013, when O3b launched to specifically solve this problem for them? It's still running, by the way, after several rounds of upgrades, and significantly more stable than Starlink with their dinky little 5 year disposables. Microsoft, Honeywell and Amazon all use it. But the original and ongoing intent of the project was explicitly to bring internet access to all otherwise unreachable areas, such as islands, deep in Africa, and the open ocean.

I don't oppose Brazilian villagers having internet if they want it, but the situation in which it arrived to them feels suspect to me. I have no proof that Starlink actively went out and pushed internet service onto them like a drug dealer but it would not be out of character for Musk and his subordinates to do so, and that just feels bad.

Regardless there is already an existing solution to this. If you want internet in the Amazon you can use satellite internet. It does not have to be Starlink. If you want good internet, maybe don't live in the Amazon. People in general should probably be leaving that place alone. The article you linked even talks about one of the village leaders splitting his time between the village and the city. We can try and run a fiber line to Manaus and/or Porto Velho and that should be able to serve a reasonably large enough area around them, but even if that fails there are already other solutions.

Conrail?

Don't threaten me with a good time!

See, that's just cognitive dissonance. You start by saying it's only in theory, and when prompted with actual examples of this existing, you just shut your ears. I went as far as being honest on the particular points that were lacking, such as women/homosexual rights or climate/pollution regulation, but you're incapable of engaging with honest and reality-based analysis because it contradicts your absorbed anticommunist propaganda.