• indigomirage@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    161
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Since Twitter has nothing to do with Tesla (beyond the emotionally stunted owner) this is serious line being crossed. I mean - I don’t care about Tesla. But I do care about SpaceX and Starlink as they have serious geopolitical implications.

    Some country’s leader disses Twitter and they don’t get to launch satellites. Or their people don’t get satellite internet.

    This amount of power should not be in the hands of one rich guy with an inferiority complex.

    • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      23
      ·
      1 year ago

      SpaceX and starlink are dead in the water and utterly useless until Musk has them taken away. As long as he’s running those, they’re just shitty companies with lots of empty promises

        • indigomirage@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The mars thing is really a small part of what they do, although it gets the press. They are pretty much the only real game in town for satellite launches, and, I think ISS transport (especially since Soyez is Russian and there’s not a lot of good will going on there…). Even Amazon uses them for launches. It’s approaching monopoly status for critical infrastructure (we’re very dependant on satellites as a society now).

          Mars is a labour of love for future ambition, but it’s not the main show.

          Whether the root cause is historically poor NASA funding or not (I think there’s a strong argument for competition and private sector IF it’s properly governed, but it never is…), the fact is that we’ve created a situation where vast amounts of geopolitical control rest with a single person.