> As Starlink continues to grow it will continue to add more and more satellites... at a certian point it will "become" the internet rather than just a part of it.

wrote:

Who would run it, then?

I don't know. Some qualified person chosen by the government.

Plenty of precedent for the government handling companies in receivership.

wrote:

How does the US government regulate space programs run by other countries?  I'll wait.

Space is still pretty much the wild west.  It is open and available to all nations.  If one nation decided to blow up one of their own satellites or somebody else's it's not at all clear what would happen.  It's really one of those "new things" that pop up in law from time to time.  As far as I know we don't even have good ethics papers on the right to space.

VP_Spiro_T_Cheney wrote:

Eventually a Kessler event will doom Starlink.  Just in the last few months there have been three satellite breakups in space that created three more debris clouds, one of which was a Starlink.  That shyt’s not all mapped and at 17,000 mph even a small fragment will destroy whatever it hits and potentially cause an uncontrolled chain reaction wiping out more and more satellites in a crowded orbit.

SpaceX flies too low for Kessler to ever be a problem. Even under the best conditions they'll only be up in the air for about 7 years.


If they fly too high the lag/latency gets too be too much.  This low lag/latency also would make it route traffic quicker than terrestrial systems if they are physically moving the data far enough.

Spanky wrote:

Through international treaties.

But let's not pretend that the problem is caused by other countries. It isn't.

80% of satellites in space were launch by US entities.

As if China and Russia will play along.