this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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It doesn't make any sense to dig cables into rural areas. It would cost a fortune to connect some remote house to the grid. Going wireless is the obvious solution to this and satellite internet gives you much better connection than cell towers. They didn't dig landlines into poor african countries either but skipped right into mobile phones.
You might have a point if launching rockets was cheaper, but launching infinite rockets forever is not cheaper. The rockets fall out of the sky. So we're talking about one upfront cost or a cost forever.
We'll likely have much better technology in the future and the problem will more or less solve itself. In this day and age satellite internet simply just is the most sensible option and probably cheaper aswell. The amount of diesel machinery you'd need to dig all that cable in the rural USA alone would be mind boggling not to mention the enviromental damage of all that digging. These cables don't last forever either. They too need maintenance and eventually to be dug up and replaced.
Rocket is just the delivery vehicle for the satellites. It's not supposed to stay in orbit itself. Building the rocket is what has made space flight so expensive in the past because they were single-use but now with reusable rockets the cost is much less of an issue. They run with renewable fuel aswell - oxygen and methane.
Space travel is going to be getting much more common in the future and the number of rocket launches is only going to increase either way.
Shockingly, you don't need to dig. And handwaving away the cost, including the environmental cost of infinite rocket launches forever because "oh magical technology will save us some day" does not help your case.