At first, I was like, "now that the governments haven't pursued space for 20-30 years, I think it's great that the private sector can finally push for space exploration and inventions and space stuff."

But now...I don't really like the idea of Space X sending up and downing thousands of satellites including heavy metals through our atmosphere every year, just to keep a shitty proprietary network online.

It's my atmosphere, but it's not my network. Space X can fuck off my night sky for all I care.

Also in the next couple of years, they're expecting so many "retirements" of satellites that they can't guarantee safety for the people on the ground. They're literally expecting an "acceptable" number of people to die from this.

https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/falling-spacex-satellites-faa-report-space-junk/

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/space-news/2023/10/19/faa-warning-falling-spacex-satellites-will-soon-pose-fatal-risk-for-earthlings/

Etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

"‘The problem isn’t the Starlink satellites surviving, reentering, hitting somebody,’ says Moriba Jah, an associate professor at UT Austin. ‘The problem is other older objects.’"