Ukraine’s digital minister has reported concerns about the country’s overreliance on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system amid the war with Russia, The New York Times reports.
They’re right to be concerned. There is simply no reason whatsoever to trust Elon Musk. He is an unhinged right wing extremist agitator.
I read that as unhinged right wing extremist alligator, and was wondering what you know that we do not lol
Something involving LSD and reptilian aliens
Who will apparently go to bat for anyone that strokes his ego a little bit.
Similar to Tesla, his bullshit has the potential to cost lives. Only now on a much greater scale. Gdi.
Starlink satellites make up the majority of satellites orbiting Earth
This is so wild to me.
That’s just how impactful reusability is. Buying a tank of gas vs a new car.
Reusability had nothing to do eith it. Hardly any of the rockets have been reusable (in terms of saving significant money on launches). It’s just that spacex is dumping enormous amounts of satellites in LEO. It’s going to become a huge problem when other companies/countries does the same.
Its only possible bc a launch is cheap enough for them to do it. Cost of of placing them in orbit is the whole reason there is a problem.
Yes, but that’s not because of reusability. They’re not at that stage yet (willl they ever?)
What the fuck are you talking about?
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters?wprov=sfla1
Yet the cost doesn’t go down. Spacex boss defined reuse as that the stage can be reused the next day with just an inspection. The reuse they avtually so is rebuilding it with the older parts. At least last time I checked the cost savings were just a few 10 % while they promised 90+
Edit: did some more checking, and it appears third party(military and government) pay significantly higher launch costs ~100mill vs 60mill list price), so might be they’re subsidising the starlink cost by funneling money from the state.
Wow, I wonder why SpaceX which has a monopoly on reusable rockets are charging as much as they can from their customers.
Lol, lmao even
Cost didn’t go down because there’s no competition. They’re just pocketing the extra money. Why would a private company charge even less for something they’re already the cheapest and best at? Why not make extra money?
ULA I believe said reuse would be profitable for them after 12 launches. For SpaceX, it’s likely lower since they’re built more from the ground up for reusability. But they’re up to reflying 20 times, so it’ll be even more profitable for them.
Also, starlink latches have been on older boosters, pushing the max reuses. So they benefit much more from reusability than the average falcon 9 customer.
They should be concerned. He has the mentality of a 5 year old and could just decide to cut off their infrastructure on a whim.
Thankfully he seems to be distracted fucking around with Twitter instead
And has!
Or keep feeding the data to Putin. <I have no basis for this logical claim>
Breaking news: Starlink to be renamed to X.
I’d be concerned too.
100%
The way you know that Elon is a chaos agent: now that this is reported, he will not feel the need or desire to assure them of his good intentions; he’ll say some crazy, bombastic shit and then do something unhinged and blame the Ukrainians somehow.
Relying on Musk is a deal with the devil. I get Ukrainians desperation though, obviously.
Never put all your eggs in one basket…
Fair. But name me one time Elon Musk has let anyone down?
Well his own child disowned him for being a transphobic piece of shit. So I guess we could start there…
Okay, fine, but name one other time?
His constant lies about his products maybe? Like how we’re on year 6 of “all Tesla’s will be self driving” and it still hasn’t happened?
Or the roadster that still doesn’t exist and we’ve had no updates on. Or the truck that’s years overdue and has been beat to market by several others.
Or Hyperloop that he’s now admitted was purely to try to kill HSR development in California.
Besides those, though?
That time he called a cave dive rescuer a paedophile?
Even if he wasn’t a fragile narcissist, having one point of failure would be bad.
Elon is when Ironman decided to be evil instead.
and stupid
Mostly stupid
Justin Hammer, except he unfortunately isn’t played by Sam Rockwell.
Can’t imagine why, he seems like such a stable genius…
Wait till he enables a rate limit on that internet.
They’re right to. He might start cutting service off to those who express the rights over their own body.
But that’s totally legal so you’re cool with it.
I’m not saying this is happening, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if we found out that Musk was leaking any and all traffic from Starlink, including Ukraine military comms, in the name of “”“free speech”“”.
That not really possible though. In the same way your isp can’t see what YouTube video you’re watching, encryption stops musk from seeing what the military sends to each other. Unless of course the Ukrainian military doesn’t to the whole security thing, which is doubtful.
DNS can be used to leak some information, but DNS over HTTPS is maturing, and hopefully Ukraine is using something like PGP or the signal protocol.
I hate musk as much as every self respecting person, but this isn’t possible. These systems are designed to run over the Internet, and thus heavily encrypted.
Ah, well, “designed to run over the internet”. Okay then. I guess no ISP has ever been able to MitM intercept traffic.
That’s literally what I’m talking about yes. Well done. The internet is essentially open traffic and that’s what “designed for the internet” has to deal with, so you encrypt and kill mitm attacks in many many ways.
Yes, designed to run over the internet, as in they use end to end encryption, which has long been the way of defeating MitM intercepts.
Nationalize that shit. Imminent domain Starlink and pay Musk its value. Let him sue if he thinks it’s not enough. It’s not about the money, but having that important tech in the hands of a bureaucracy that will delay political maneuvers and temper tantrums alike from hindering the Ukrainian military.
It’s not a Ukrainian company is the problem. You can’t just nationalise a foreign entity.
Couldn’t the US nationalize it and then set up an agency to maintain the network/ensure it doesn’t get shut off again by Elon Musk?
Edit: Obviously I mean the US should do an imminent domain / purchase first, so they have access to the satellites first, smh.
The U.S. isn’t a banana republic. That’s how they roll in Venezuela and it’s not working out so well. They’re certainly not going to undermine the integrity of the U.S. economy to provide marginally more intel security to Ukraine. The government can make an offer to purchase SpaceX, but I don’t see why they need to.
That’s such a strange way to use banana republic. Banana republics were created after the US instituted coups due to the threat of land reform (nationalization of US company owned plantation land). Denying the right to nationalize things is what creates banana republics. (Not that I think anyone should do something so stupid as try to nationalize satellites they have no access to.)
Should belong to the UN.
