this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
478 points (99.2% liked)

News

23281 readers
3900 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

After giving in to Putin/Xi's demands to not provide starlink internet service over Taiwan, DOD officials are growing nervous about trusting Elon's Space company with our national secrets

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] cultsuperstar@lemmy.world 12 points 6 hours ago

In his defense, the GOP also answers to Putin, so it makes sense he would too.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 29 points 8 hours ago

Yet another reason billionaires shouldn’t exist. Dude is making international policy based on requests from foreign leaders, along with having conversations with them while launching the US government’s satellites of national security importance.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 26 points 9 hours ago

They should be, it's a spectacularly bad idea.

[–] ofcourse@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Wtf is this article? If there’s a doubt about someone’s national security clearance, revoke it immediately until further review. Being anxious means nothing. Do or don’t.

[–] Intergalactic@lemmy.world 73 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Revoke his security clearance. They did it to Oppenheimer for a lot less.

[–] Tyfud@lemmy.world 11 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Ah, but he wasn't a capitalistic wage exploitation illegal immigrant billionaire. That was his first mistake.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago

No, Oppenheimer was a..."communist"!! 😱😱😱😱

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 37 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

he worships a russian asset. dont give him any access to defense

[–] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 9 points 10 hours ago

But he has money. If you're rich, they let you do it.

[–] BMTea@lemmy.world 52 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

If you're going to rely on private firms for your aerospace espionage endeavors, maybe factor in their leader's sanity before you sign the contract with them.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc 30 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Nah. Loads of things just shouldn't be privatised.

[–] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago

What do you value higher - that one company's profits or the public? Why are you so selfish? Why can't you just be happy that that one company gets to hold the entire population hostage over the necessary good or service that they can then monopolise? It's so much easier to squeeze the poor for all they own when their very survival depends on the things you can hand out or hold back at a whim. Something something the free market will probably prevent abuse or something, so it's perfectly okay.

[–] Burninator05@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

I 100% agree with you but is there someone else in thr US who can reliably launch satellites? I know several othe companies are developing these systems but I don't think any are anywhere close to Space X's reliability or capability.

Space X is doing some awesome stuff and I hate that the awesome has to be tempered by the owner is a piece of shit.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 12 hours ago

They're only able to do it because they've received trillions of dollars from the federal government.

They should nationalize SpaceX before they ever let someone like Musk get the security clearance needed to be in that position.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 9 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

SpaceX is wasting government money, they have almost spent all of the money they were given to land people on the moon, on building a rocket that can't do basic stuff.

That is not awesome.

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

A single launch of a Boeing rocket costs as much as the entire R&D for SpaceX rockets. Launches that cost $5 billion with Boeing, cost tens of millions with SpaceX. I can absolutely agree with you that SpaceX is wasting some of the money given to them. But the amount of taxpayer money spent on launches has been massively reduced by them providing an orders of magnitude cheaper and more reliable option.

There is definitely an argument to be made that they don't deserve the money, but in the grand scheme of government spending, they have very much reduced it compared to the traditional launch providers.

And their rockets still have capabilities that no other launch provider has achieved yet. Boeing still wastes all their rockets by making them single use, when SpaceX uses the same rocket many times.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Compairing SpaceX and Boeing is wrong when talking about savings.

Compare a SpaceX launch to a Shuttle launch yo be more accurate, and don't forget the inflation

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Damn, we don’t have enough zeros for that. That’s more like the Russian fine against Bozos

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] piecat@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

And somehow they want to make him in charge of government inefficiency

[–] orcrist@lemm.ee 43 points 14 hours ago

You want to trust him after what happened in Ukraine? Are you out of your mind? And he's admitted that he chats with Putin on a regular basis.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

Satellite internet already existed way, way before Starlink. You know, good satellite internet where you have a single geostationary satellite giving you high speed instead of these small Leo ones that will fall out of orbit within a decade...

Why would Taiwan even need Starlink?

Having said that: fuck Musk, and yeah, they should never have allowed this dumb ass anywhere near rockets

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 7 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

The traditional satellite internet is slow and high latency. With the Starlink approach, it is indeed an issue that the satellites need to be continuously replaced, but it does provide a superior service to the user, and combined with SpaceX often launching them "almost free" by piggybacking on free space around their customer's payloads and not having to pay anyone for launches otherwise, it does come out cheaper than the old satellite internet.

But that's just the technology. The fact Musk is anywhere near that project makes Starlink a liability.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

The vast majority of starlink are launched on their own flights.

They get a few freebies here and there but it's not the defining factor of their success.

The success is their reusable rockets and turning satellites into a smaller mass manufactured item amd getting economies of scale, not a giant super expensive item.

Edit: also they made reusable rockets then had to figure out a use for them as there wasn't enough global launch demand. They made their own demand. Then they used their own flights to test riskier things like the rockets with the most launches to fine tune the system without risking customer payloads.

Edit: Also for reference launch masses and dish costs

  • Hughesnet JUPITER 3 (EchoStar XXIV) has a launch mass of 9200kg. ($445 million)
  • Starlink V1 is 260kg (200k USD)
  • Starlink V2 Mini (current) 740kg (800k USD)
  • Starlink V2 (future satellites for starship) 1250kg (??? USD)

And obviously the Jupiter 3 will stay up there forever so they can recoup costs if starlink doesn't kill them, but thats a lot higher up front cost and they aren't making a lot of them so they don't get efficiencies of scale. Instead they're made with very custom stuff meant to last forever which costs big $$$.

[–] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

Old sat internet is not high speed unless you have your own private sat and are willing to spend crazy amounts of money and they suffer from very high latency. I’m a musk hater but starlink preforms pretty well. My dream is that the US will nationalize spacex and remove musks influence. Nothing but a cancer

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

Geostationary satellite internet is not "good." There's about 200ms of latency built into the system because of the distance to the satellite, which means you can't use it for anything real-time. If it's all you have it's better than nothing, but LEO satellite Internet is a lot more useful.

[–] Willie@lemmy.world 175 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Aw man, if only there was some sort of space administration that you could invest some of your trillions of dollars into so that your satellites could be launched by a group that you can monitor and trust.

[–] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 92 points 18 hours ago (11 children)

Nope, everything in the US must be privatized. EVERYTHING. Capitalism DEMANDS it

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

"As much as I hate elon..."

"I hate elon as much as the next guy, but...."

"Look, I'm no elon fan, but..."

I'm sure you all know, but to be clear, when you see the above in elon posts... these are the beginnings of sentences from people who don't hate elon. They are sentences from people who like elon, but think you will hate them, or not consider their opinions, if they say out loud that they do, in fact, like elon.

On a separate but related note, this is elon speaking at a hate-filled rally featuring a series of bigoted speakers, including himself. The rally very intentionally cosplayed an American Nazi rally that famously occurred at Madison Square garden in the 1930s. To emphasize how on the nose this all was, elon wore a specially made hat - a hat that very deliberately used an especially prominent font from the Nazi era. They are literally SCREAMING it in your face and tattooing it on their foreheads

elon has done nothing good or admirable with his life and elon will will not do anything good or admirable with his life. You can't compartmentalize your opinion on this, he sucks, on the whole.

[–] Rubanski@lemm.ee 1 points 7 hours ago

Fraktur was a remnant from Kaiser times. Nazis were quite against it, maybe because of different reasons you might assume. Hitler said this: "In a hundred years, our language will be the European language. The countries of the East, North and West will learn our language in order to be able to communicate with us. The prerequisite for this is that the script known as Gothic will be replaced by what we previously called the Latin script and now call normal script."

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Jesus Christ.

[–] Travelator@thelemmy.club 56 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Apply the same standards the rest of us have to meet, revoke his fucking security clearance already! Same for the racist criminal spray painted orange Cheeto, too. This is completely obvious.

[–] Zaktor@sopuli.xyz 30 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

IIRC, you're supposed to report when you've had significant contact with Canadians and this motherfucker is talking with Vladimir Putin himself. I can't imagine he reported that to whoever his clearance is with.

[–] BlitzoTheOisSilent@lemmy.world 17 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

When I had my clearance, we were told if we had a conversation with a foreign national at a bar, we had to disclose it, even after we had already received our clearance.

I was put through a multi-hour polygraph interview from hell, where I was told I didn't know how to breathe and was threatened with being failed and losing my clearance, because I was having issues remembering online foreign penpals from high school.

But motherfucker is talking to Putin on the regularly, and he's a billionaire with billions worth of government contracts? Tell me again, US Government, why any of your citizens should give a fuck about anything, again?

[–] Pips@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 11 hours ago

They haven't made you do that in while. There's way too many foreign nationals in the U.S., it would be impossible, especially in a city. The standard is ongoing contact/close personal relationships. Having a one-off conversation with a Russian at a bar isn't going to trigger the requirement unless there's something suspicious about the conversation itself (like they keep asking about your job).

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 9 hours ago

Are you kidding me? The national security clearance process involves pseudo-science bs like a polygraph test?

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 12 hours ago

Because billionaires are not citizens of a country, they are essentially a country unto themselves.

[–] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 57 points 18 hours ago (12 children)

In what would be an unprecedented move, the US needs to nationalize SpaceX in the name of national security.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 34 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

They don’t need to go that far. Just force Musk to divest. (And prosecute him for any crimes he’s committed, but that might be asking too much of the government.)

[–] curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

They should go that far though.

This entire position that things are in are a direct result of a certain party trying to privatize space travel, and "run it like a business", which is how the Challenger disaster happened.

So wouldn't be the worst idea to pull waayyyyyy back.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 8 points 15 hours ago

It's not unprecedented, though.

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 13 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

why the hell would you be?

What even is the DOD/DOJ doing here?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 17 points 16 hours ago

Just outsource DOD too, they basically work for their main sponsors anyway.

/s

load more comments
view more: next ›