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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

The image itself is interesting, but the context in which it’s presented in this article is dishonest.

The headline is the worst offender, saying that the skies are “choked” with satellites.

The headline is misleading. The photo alone is interesting with the right context.

The guy who actually made the image seems to just think it's cool: "I knew if I carried on it would look even better and more impressive in terms of satellite numbers."

But the framing from others is terrible. "Who gave anyone permission do this?" Um, every single satellite ever launched has gone through government approvals. Sorry if you didn't start paying attention to the world of space flight until it ruined your attempt at photography, but that's on you.

lol what. Regular citizens don’t get a say on satellites and many would prefer we didn’t put so many up. “National Security” will trump any citizen concerns every time.

To be fair, the majority of satellites now seems to exist because "money" will trump any citizen concerns every time.

Agreed, I should’ve added that as the other overriding case

In other words, millions of people not only want those satellites to be there, but are willing to part with some of their hard-earned cash to make it happen.

This isn't some nefarious plot to manipulate the market or irradiate all the gold in Fort Knox or something. That scare-quoted "money" comes from providing useful services to people who want to pay for them. Yes, it turns out that millions of people wanting high-speed communication for their rural homes trumps people who get angry that they have to run their astrophotography through some software.

Sorry which regular rural people are parting with their cash to launch satellites?

There's this service called Starlink which currently accounts for the majority of satellites in orbit. Starlink uses those satellites to provide internet access to subscribers on the ground. They have several million paying customers. Their service isn't particularly competitive in most urban areas where more traditional internet services are cheaper and faster, but there are lots of rural areas where they're by far the most competitive option, so that's where most of these subscribers are found.

Not sure how you saw "government" and read it as "regular citizens," but do go back and read it again.

Exactly. The regular citizens don’t get to participate in the decision.

Are we suddenly acting surprised at the concept of representative government?

I don't understand what people actually want to happen here. Part of living on a planet with eight billion other people is dealing with the fact that some of them are going to do things you don't like. Governments, treaties, and international organizations are how we manage it. I understand if people disagree with the specific process that's in place for these things, or disagree with the decisions that get made, but they're acting like there isn't any process, or they somehow deserve to be personally consulted as part of it.

In what world is Elon getting to blanket the sky with tens of thousands of satellites a representative government?

He's a private citizen and he's allowed to do it because it isn't illegal.

Using legality to defend against a criticism that we don't live in a representative system is circular logic.

No it isn't, because in a representative system what is legal is a function of the will of the people who elect the representatives to write and vote on laws. It's legal because the people don't care enough to have it be otherwise, and so the representative system reflects that.

Are you suggesting that a representative government would certainly disallow such a thing? Why?

The suggestion is not that the number of satellites certainly would be fewer in any representative government, but rather that ours is not fully representative, and if it were, the number would probably be fewer.

I'm not agreeing necessarily - it's honestly hard to say. There are a lot of pros and cons to convince the electorate of. But there is certainly the simple universal problem of money putting a thumb on the scale in representative governments.

"In what world" conveys extreme certainty to me. In any case, why would it even be probably? What's the theory which concludes that it would be unlikely for a representative government to allow a company to operate 11,000 satellites? People like the above commenter express outrage but seem unable to express why they're outraged. I guess it's supposed to be obvious, but I don't get it. It's some moving dots in the night sky. I get why astrophotographers would be annoyed. But it's a massive leap from that to saying it should have been outlawed.

I 100% agree that there's a problem of money putting a thumb on the scale. But I don't understand why that would even be relevant here. As far a I've seen (I'm not an expert but I have been following SpaceX since before they put anything into orbit) there has been no undue political influence in getting Starlink authorization to launch their constellation. We live in a system where things are permitted by default. There's no reason for the FAA or the FCC or whatever other regulatory bodies to deny it. Musk is gleefully using his money to put his thumb on the scale in other areas (spending nine figures in the recent elections is obscene) but why would he even have bothered here?

There's another point: most of these satellites by far have been approved by the US, nobody else had any say in them. Right now the way it works is that approval is granted by the launching nation only.

As it clearly affects the whole world there should be some kind of international body governing it IMO. But I doubt that will happen because most nations are instead racing to get similar swarms of satellites up.

Most countries are party to the Outer Space Treaty, which specifically sets it up that way. An actual international organization would probably make sense now that space activity is ramping up so much, but it's not as if the current state of things is an accident the way "Who gave anyone permission do this?" implies.

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