I hope there get to be alternatives to Starlink soon. Ideally it would be a publicly held company that (somehow) limits that no single individual can own more than 1% of the company. Honestly, that’s how all publicly traded companies should be set up!!
One could argue that low earth orbit is a natural monopoly like water pipes, electricity poles or railroads, and should be owned by governments, that could rent bandwidth to companies.
There are a few problems with that, would it be owned by the UN with US, Russian, British, French and Chinese veto powers over its use? Would it just be one country, and then the US would be able to help let’s say Russia by turning down physical speed limits of internet connections for drones cutting out musk from the equation? Would it be based on whose airspace they are in at the time to rent out the data as required, thus stopping Ukraine from doing deep strikes into Russia? Also and most importantly figuring this out would be hard work and politicians are historically lazy on things that don’t affect them personally and why would they fight Elon musk to nationalize SpaceX or the satellites they own for Starlink when they can just sit back and be bribed much more easily?
Allot each country a certain number based off their population with a minimum of 1, and have that country pay for their satellites. Then each country decides what to do with them.
I hope there get to be alternatives to Starlink soon. Ideally it would be a publicly held company that (somehow) limits that no single individual can own more than 1% of the company. Honestly, that’s how all publicly traded companies should be set up!!
One could argue that low earth orbit is a natural monopoly like water pipes, electricity poles or railroads, and should be owned by governments, that could rent bandwidth to companies.
There are a few problems with that, would it be owned by the UN with US, Russian, British, French and Chinese veto powers over its use? Would it just be one country, and then the US would be able to help let’s say Russia by turning down physical speed limits of internet connections for drones cutting out musk from the equation? Would it be based on whose airspace they are in at the time to rent out the data as required, thus stopping Ukraine from doing deep strikes into Russia? Also and most importantly figuring this out would be hard work and politicians are historically lazy on things that don’t affect them personally and why would they fight Elon musk to nationalize SpaceX or the satellites they own for Starlink when they can just sit back and be bribed much more easily?
Allot each country a certain number based off their population with a minimum of 1, and have that country pay for their satellites. Then each country decides what to do with them.