It seems crazy that a company that’s only really known for cars, motorbikes, tuning forks, heat pumps, brake pads, pens, tractors, fertilizer, display panels, outboard motors, pneumatic systems, oil tankers, furniture, locomotives, bricks, solar panels, ATVs, generators, hot air balloons, dinghies, hydrogen fuel cells, submarines, crop dusters, jet engines, cultivators, hedge trimmers, lawnmowers, precision optics and robots would suddenly pivot to rockets.
Don’t forget, one the sleekest airplanes to ever exist.
It’s almost like they’re an engineering company.
This is the first I have heard they were doing this. Makes spacex accomplishments less impressive. Fuck elon
I imagine they poached a lot of Spacex engineers by simply telling them “we won’t make you work ungodly hours, nor will we subject you to a narcissistic manchild with no engineering education dropping in on your meetings and trying to tell you how to do your job”
Anything that erodes SpaceX’s monopoly is good for me
Unfortunately, the next competitor will be Amazon…
And then we’ll see what happens next, getting a whole constellation up is no small feat, I can’t see a third company getting a system working before 2050.
Also with starlink even one company’s constellation is causing issues with astronomers and launches.
How bad will it be if there are 5-6 different companies with their own network floating around up there. And then other countries with their own network.
Yeah, it’s a bad situation. I’m against monopolies, but I also see how filling the sky with redundant satellites is a terrible plan, so I don’t like the idea of lots of competition either.
I think low orbit satellite communications is a pretty awesome concept. It has the potential to become like a second Internet backbone, but a backbone that can bring data directly to users without the additional router hops that local ISPs introduce. On paper, it’s amazingly efficient and can distribute service to all of the world… But in practice the business and management side is deeply problematic. One company should absolutely not be in charge of global Internet service. And one country would not be any better.
The only solution I can see is to make it safe and feasible to have way more satellites operating in low earth orbit. I’m really not sure what that solution might look like…
Here’s an off-the-cuff idea though: One solution could be an extremely robust low earth orbit maintenance and “pruning” system. All satellites would need to be monitored by third parties. And those third parties would need the authority and ability to quickly deorbit (prune) any satellite that deviates from its exact expected orbit. If satellites can ensure no deviation from their path and can safely maneuver to avoid collisions, it could be possible for many more satellites to safely share an orbital altitude.
Deorbiting is all well and good, but more and more we’re finding that these satellites contain chemicals that are very disruptive to the ozone layer. It’s going to be CFCs all over again, but with even more corporate capture of government.
What the F is every corporation’s boner with rockets? 🚀
Because the last stage of existence on this planet. Will be febel plans to try and colonize other planets. Because our planet will start to poison us as a defensive mechanism. All of these Corporations need a plan to get off planet.
Imo it’s a good thing tho. Spreading our civilization across multiple planets is the only way to guarantee long long term success. Obviously we should also fix the climate change issue (and many others). But still, being spread across the solar system would give our species redundancy. An extinction event on earth like a large meteor strike would no longer be the end.
Well good thing it will never happen. ☺️
Imagine trying to undo thousands and thousands of years of evolution surrounding…. Earth’s gravity.
But you go ahead and fantasize about us destroying all the planets in the universe. After all; we’re the only thing destroying ours.
Call me an optimist, but I still hold the hope that we can one day do better as humanity than we do now. Humanity has become a “better” species throughout its existence overall. Even a hundred years ago we were much more horrible and brutal than we are now. The current trend is not great, with climate change and far-right grifters taking control. But I hold hope that in the end this is but a blip on the radar. Horrible for us now, but in the grand scheme of things not something that will end humanity. It might in the worst case set us back a few hundred years.
