The first stage of this Falcon 9 Rocket has now flown 4 times and returned successfully. The new rockets that land, instead of burning up, have reduced the cost of getting payloads to space by a significant extreme. A comparison made by the company is international travel. If you threw away each plane that flew from the US to Europe the cost of tickets would be extreme just like low orbit space transportation has been. These ships use hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. You know. WATER split to make the two gases. Very cheap fuel. When the fuel is cheap and you don’t throw the ship away the transportation cost to space has been greatly reduced,
FAST INTERNET BUT THE COST IS NOT ALL IN DOLLARS
This launch was to put 60 ‘Starlink’ satellites in orbit which will be providing internet services from space that are expected to out-perform terrestrial internet service providers by a vast margin in both speed and bandwidth. However, there are great concerns from folks like the ‘International Dark-Sky Association‘ who want to protect the night sky so that space exploration from earth based telescopes can continue. This ability is threatened by the number of these and similar satellites expected to be put in orbit in the coming years.
You can see the Starlink satellites in the night sky now. Space.com says, “SpaceX plans to launch at least 12,000 Starlink satellites for its megaconstellation and is eyeing adding another 30,000 satellites in the future. With other companies like Amazon, OneWeb and Telesat planning their own megaconstellations.”
Between the assault on ‘Net Neutrality’ and now the advent of a man-made sky, perhaps we should take a deep breath and consider alternatives. A wise government will be needed to consider the course we are on and to modify it so as to promote better information exchange systems to reach all people without trapping us in a satellite bubble and curtailing scientific advancement and human knowledge for commerce. What do you think?
