Dear everyone,
Please stop accelerating an arms race which puts thousands of objects into low earth orbit.
Sincerely, Astronomers
dear astronomers, we hear you, but you are not the priority when it comes to making sure a country can fight back against oppression and fascism. also, oxygen is not a metal in general, unless we are talking about very specific pressures and temperatures of course.
Oxygen is not hydrogen. Therefore metal.
In fact hydrogen is a metal as long as it’s not undergoing fusion.
Lithium - metal.
Helium, believe it or not - metal. It’s pretty much just lithium anyway.
Look, can’t we fight back by shooting starlink down instead of sending up more and more until the sky is just a cloud of (actual) metal?
Good. I hope everyone moves to these new alternatives, and puts starlink out of business. Same with Tesla and EVs.
Boycotting Musk services is the easiest thing I have ever done!
Yeah I almost feel bad I didn’t have to do anything.
and EVs
I don’t think going back to fossil fueled cars should be the route to go. There are a lot of other manufacturers of good EVs outside of the USA.
Yes, I meant people should be buying their EVs from other companies.
Ah, right.
Let’s be real, it’s a musk product, it won’t be difficult to do far better and likely for much cheaper.
That just seems wrong. The one thing Musk actually is relentless about is the cost-cutting, often at the expense of reliability, safety and security. Musk has literally cut the entire development aid agency of the US, which does save a bunch of money in the short term, before it predictably comes back around as US international influence lost and waves of new diseases.
Cost cutting ≠ Sales Price cutting
Fair point. But even so, SpaceX, parent company of Starlink, has competed rather successfully with national/supranational space agencies in terms of cost.
That, I can’t deny.
They managed the cheapest space missions in a high cost country.
THIS is what it took to replace starlink…
The EUs IRIS 2 Programme has been in the work for way longer. Once the importance of such a satelite network was realised EU started drafting plans for their own network
oh i didnt mean as in making a replacement, i meant as in getting one in Ukraine’s hands
I’m glad we’re working on replacing starlink, though AFAIK IRIS² won’t be ready until 2027 at the earliest.
I do think that with the increasing use of LEO satellites for drone control and the general breakdown of international agreements and institutions we’re seeing, the moratorium on weapons in space will not last much longer. Every player will work on anti-satellite systems to deny command-and-control links to the enemy.
The anti-satellite weapons we have today are mostly focused on taking down single satellites, and would not be practical against these mass swarms of LEO satellites. We’ll probably see a revival of ideas like EMPs in orbit to knock out large batches of satellites all at once. Obviously such a weapon would be indiscriminate and would take down everything within the blast radius.
…and as IRIS² was supposed to launch with SpaceX, but thanks to Musk-madness we’ll stick with Ariane, VEGA and so on, Arianespace/Airbus can’t believe their luck right now.
They’ve been WAY behind SpaceX and their price offerings, but with the far-right moron Elon shitting around like that, the only rational choice is to launch with our own (old, low-performing) launch systems.
Another reminder: We HAVE to push development in so many sectors we’ve neglected in the past. Same goes for Social Networks. Mastodon and Lemmy are nice, so is pixelfed. But we need an OpenSource, Europe-hosted and -controlled Facebook alternative as well. And we need a proper replacement for PayPal and Amazon for and by Europe as well.
Just as a sidenote: The UK/French OneWeb by Eutelsat is supposed to be ready later this year. So at least there might be another system ready faster…but yeah, LEO problems are still there.
Has SES done LEO satellites before? They seem like the obvious people to do this
Before 2025: GOVSATCOM will rely on existing national satellite communication systems and accredited private operators.
After 2025: Existing satellite communication systems may be complemented by additional dedicated space infrastructure
It’s not much aside from a good start. But small steps still get you where you need to be.
