What do you think about Elon Musk owning so many satelites?

He is a visionary and was able to come up with the various technology ideas to make this satellite array possible. For that he deserves great credit. He put up the $$ and spent the time to make it work.

He’s also an undeniably jerky human being, but that doesn’t matter.

I saw the NYT article. I think their attitude is wrong. As mentioned above, Musk risked his own money and time on the Starlink idea. And he was successful.

The US has this nasty habit of trying to penalize successful people who have profitable ideas. (Musk, Google/Alphabet, AT&T, Standard Oil, etc.) – you can go back decades and see how the government penalizes people and companies who were successful.

[Now, it’s one thing to be a successful company, which is fine, and it’s quite another to be a predatory monopolist. Musk is not a monopolist.]

The message that I see in the NYT is don’t be successful because you will be criticized for your success – which is the exact WRONG thing to say.

It’s one of the problems of privatization of the space program. It is also an interesting study in human nature.

Musk sees a potential new enterprise, sinks the time, effort, and money into it. No one stops him and no government resists him doing it. I suspect they (the governments) all saw a way to increase their communications abilities at someone else’s expense. Now that he has a huge system of interlinked satellites and communications, Musk is deciding that he doesn’t want to support war with his equipment. Countries that are at war and were tapping into his cheap communications are suddenly without communications. Since SpaceX is a private company, the governments really have no way to leverage him out of position and they have to deal with him. There really is no “discrimination” other than he doesn’t support war.

I’d say people have the option of not using his StarLink system or they get to deal with his quirks.

What musk has done is limit the Ukrainianins access to starlink outside of the Ukrainian (in Russia controlled territories). He is still providing them with free access in Ukraine. This prevents them from using it to control drones to attack Russia. Personally I think there is a big difference between providing people with tools defend their homeland and tools to attack another’s. Now you could argue that the best defence is a sting offence etc.

As for whether a company should have so much control of the space program that comes down to what individual countries think is important. For example most years in the last 2 decades the US spent more on AC in Iraq than it did on NASA.

He’s privatized the commons without paying anyone for it and then seeks to control the commons without input from anyone else. I want my monthly lease payment for my 1/8,000,000,000th of the low Earth orbit real estate, or I’ll forgo it if Musk is held accountable to a governing body elected by the people. When you have billionaires playing finders-keepers with scarce and valuable resources such as low earth orbit space then we’ve abandoned capitalism and entered Neo-Feudalism.

@gorillapaws when he has to pay to build the satellites, pay to set up the electronics that control them, pay for the software development and pay to operate the entire thing, it is not commons. To claim that is just silly. You want him to put out all the funds and take all the risks and then claim they belong to everyone. That is the communist in you speaking.

Who owns or manages ‘the commons’, @gorillapaws. There are a couple of treaties – Debris, Exploration, etc., – but nothing about commercializing in low earth (or upper earth) orbits.

Read the Space Treaty. which has 108 signers.

The closest you can get is this: which is bullet point 5 in the treaty ->

Signatory states are each responsible for their space activities, including private commercial endeavors, and must provide authorization and continuing supervision. which says that the US is ultimately responsible for what SpaceX does.

And the US already does that.

So legally, there is no ‘commons’ in the sense you are saying. Maybe morally, but not legally.

@seawulf575 If I built a robotic drone system that could kill and collect every fish in Lake Tahoe does that entitle me to every fish in Lake Tahoe? Why should Ernie, the fisherman, care how much I spent on my drones when he goes fishing and he has nothing left to catch? If I spent $1M or $1T dollars to build and maintain the drone fleet, does Ernie care? does it in anyway diminish Ernie’s right to enjoy common public resources?

This whole issue stems from a desire to defend the fairytale of the self-made billionaire, as a necessary requirement to justify the historic levels of wealth inequality in the US and the world. Neo-Feudalism.

Well, first, “is that true?”

Largely it is, although I would quibble with, “Elon Musk has steadily come to dominate satellite internet technology [...] he has used that dominance to restrict the activities of Ukraine’s military.” I would say that’s not correct. It’s very sloppy thinking and/or bull shit. The “dominance” Starlink may have is about business and communications satellites. And while those satellites have been very useful to Ukraine’s defense efforts, and Musk did withhold their use, which screwed with Ukraine’s military, it is NOT accurate to describe that as being a result of Musk/Starlink’s [business] “dominance”, and it didn’t “restrict the activities of Ukraine’s military” per se. What it did was unexpectedly withhold a resource they were using. That’s all. So that author didn’t understand and/or mis-represented that situation.

And, as far as “one man” having so much power – I think that might or might not be acceptable, depending on the man. Since the man is Elon Musk, taking into account various crazy, stupid, backward, egomaniacal, and other general WTF words and actions, my opinion is that NO, he shouldn’t be in control of anything in space. Not even one satellite.

I also don’t think it’s that simple. Musk doesn’t operate like Goldfinger or Blofeld (James Bond villains, who operate in secret and do what they want). He has relationships with several world governments, and he and his companies’ activities are under observation, and they influence what he does. The fullness of those situations isn’t something I’d expect us to have a particularly clear view on. But you can find other articles about what effects China and Russia may have had on Musk’s withholding of Starlink access to Ukraine, and about what US and NATO governments and military have said about it.

@gorillapaws You are conflating two separate things. If you created a killer drone and killed every fish in Lake Tahoe, you are not doing the same as if you created a string of satellites and sent them up to provide a communication service. Nice try though. You view of the commons would apply to your killer drone. How does it apply to the communications? What are the resources that are being withheld by Musk? What you are saying with your “commons” comment is that you believe that when someone creates something for some use, you, as the common man, have some right to it for free.

@seawulf575 The drone harvested all of the fish so I can make a profit. likewise in sub-earth-orbit there are a limited number of satellites that can orbit in that volume. Each additional satellite in low earth orbit increases the risk of a Kessler Syndrome catastrophe. In otherewords there’s a finite amount of “real estate” in low earth orbit. Musk isn’t paying anyone rent for that space he’s occupying.

@gorillapaws Sooooo…you believe Musk is doing wrong because he is taking up space that someone else might have used? Someone that might have had a product you could claim as common? And you are using a theory as a basis for making that connection? I’m sorry, it’s really a stretch. I’m pretty sure Musk had to get the approval of the US Government to launch the satellites so they are managing the space. So they obviously didn’t see a problem with it. I don’t believe any other nation threw a hissy fit about it so there wasn’t a great worry about it.

And you continue to try conflating the drone with the satellites. Let’s put it simply: the natural resource with the drone, the “common”, was the fish. There is no common with the satellites. There is a product that was being created and sold with the satellites. The key difference is the created instead of harvesting.

@seawulf575 There is limited volume of satellite space in low earth orbit. You seem to think this limited resource ought to be doled out to whoever claims it first, like the Oklahoma land race, except only billionaires are allowed to participate. Do you understand how that creates dynastic wealth and how that’s antithetical to the American Dream. We fought a war of independence because we rejected rule by birthright and nobility.

Should I be allowed to broadcast on any frequency I want? or should the government have control over the common airwaves to delegate for things like military, emergency services, radio, tv, 5G, cellular, etc? The private companies that have access to our public airwaves have to pay the public for that privilege.

@gorillapaws And that is exactly why there is government authorization. I’d suggest that before sending up the first satellite Musk had to submit a plan laying out how many satellites, how they would be used, where in space they would be, etc. Just because the government gets involved for a coordination of the project so that there isn’t overlap with other things doesn’t make this a “common” thing. You are stretching to push a communist agenda…period.

The way you are looking at it, I could come over and camp out in your living room since your home is on land…I should be able to claim your house is a Common. What? It isn’t because of social practice? Huh. Well, to date social practice has not included space. There have been rules and controls about what goes into space and it sounds like Musk followed them. So now you want to change the social practice because it’s Musk?

@seawulf575 You’re talking craziness. My home is my property. The airspace above my house is common, you or anyone else are welcomed to fly over my home. This is not a communist agenda. It’s basic social contract stuff—the kinds of things that the founders of America were reading when they drafted our constitution.

Musk taking up a large quantity of low Earth orbit (real estate—for lack of a better word) without having to pay to lease that volume of space is extremely generous of the US government. We charge telecom for various frequencies. The point is, Musk’s satelights exist at the discretion of the US. It’s entirely reasonable that the US could compel him to use them in a manner that’s consistent with the interests of the US foreign policy (and be compensated appropriately for the costs).

@gorillapaws You are assuming the space (literally) belongs to the US. It does not. As @elbanditoroso posted there is a treaty that was signed by 108 countries. And basically, for space, if someone in the US wants to use it, the government gives authorization which we know they did. It says no one can “own” space or the moon or anything else like that. So your concept that it is real estate is bogus. It is a false assumption and you are getting worked up over nothing.

The New Yorker has an article by Ronan Farrow about this very topic. I was listening to the radio before and they were interviewing Ronan Farrow. I subscribe to The New Yorker but I haven’t yet read the article.