this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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[New York Times] Elon Musk’s Unmatched Power in the Stars (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 1 year ago by pigeonberry to c/[email protected]
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Soft paywall, more of a minor speedbump.

This is hard to dismiss as a mere "hit piece". The main point is some people expressing concern that one erratic person, sometimes seemingly pro-Russian, has so much control over important infrastructure. The main example is Ukraine, but Taiwan is mentioned too. Despite measured negativity, it is also mentioned how Starlink has helped Ukraine, with a positive comment from Ukraine's digital minister.

It also has some nice animations and pictures (though the Starlink interconnect diagram looks hopelessly wrong).

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As I understand it, the super high resolution satellites have to be super large because you run into optical limits on the lens structure. The Maxar 30cm resolution ones are the size of a small school bus.

While there's probably a market for imagery that's low resolution and ultra-fast refresh, it'd still add mass and complicate things and starlink is already a complicated project.

I half expect the next move will be space-based datacenters. I can imagine twitter's new owner seeing the benefits in hosting entirely outside the jurisdiction of any government.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I half expect the next move will be space-based datacenters.

The thermal management would be a nightmare

[–] pigeonberry 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe that international treaties require that each orbiting object be marked with the responsible nation, and that that nation has jurisdiction over it. I don't know how the International Space Station is handled. I could probably quickly search for it, but I shouldn't be spending time on this at the moment anyway (working hours).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Yeah, though honestly Elon could actually make his own country at this point and/or launch from international water.