The degree to which SpaceX has fundamentally changed the space launch industry 🚀 is truly amazing. As Ars Technica notes "this was the sixth Falcon 9 launch in less than eight days, more flights than SpaceX's main US rival, United Launch Alliance, has launched in 17 months."
🛰️ There Appears to Be a Huge Problem With SpaceX's Starlink | Futurism
「 Despite eclipsing the total number of all operating satellites in Earth's orbit, Starlink isn't just struggling to cut even. Experts are concerned that trying to provide the entire globe with internet via satellites — instead of expanding coverage with cell towers where needed — could prove difficult, with speeds already beginning to decrease in 2022 」
There is a wonderful period in the late 1950's and 60's where science fact and science fiction intermingle as enthusiasm for the space age was gaining momentum.
In this Solar System map (c. 1966) the latest views from the Mariner IV are mixed with a manned vehicle to Mars and views from the surfaces of numerous planets. There's and optimism that made things feel attainable.
The satellite-internet devices are helping Russian fighters in Ukraine and paramilitary forces in Sudan; SpaceX hasn’t shut them off.
Sudanese authorities have contacted #SpaceX and requested help in regulating the use of #Starlink, including by allowing the military to turn off service areas where it was helping the RSF. Starlink never responded to the request, Sudanese officials said.
#SpaceX's market isn't the average city-dweller. It's the people in the rest of the world who, thanks to mobile phones, don't have anyone laying any cable nearby and are not likely to. Now, if I had a 200 tonne payload on #Starship V3 and a history of beaming stuff via #Starlink, know what I'd beam? Space-based solar power. Low altitude SPS from multiple interconnected satellites eliminates the need for geostationary gigastations. A small 1MW LEO one might weigh, oh, I dunno, about 200 tonnes...