Elon Musk is "making the rules" in space, European Space Agency boss told the Financial Times.
The ESA boss urged European countries to stop enabling Musk to dominate the space industry.
Governments in Europe should give equal opportunities to internet providers, he told the FT.
Rapid expansion of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service is letting CEO Elon Musk make the rules in the sector, the head of the European Space Agency said.,
You have one person owning half of the active satellites in the world. That's quite amazing...
then you have this: China is also upset: from the South China Morning Post (which was independent and owned by AliBaba until China took over Hong Kong and is started censoring stories):
China / Military Why China reacted so strongly to its Tiangong space station’s near-misses with Elon Musk’s satellites The two incidents this year involving satellites from Elon Musk’s company SpaceX prompted a complaint to the UN and calls on the US to act
China is worried America wants to dominate space and some observers believe the tech entrepreneur’s company may serve that ambition
AP gives out the Chinese side of the story but of course doesn't question if it is true. Mustn't upset our Chinese masters (who lie all the time).
The backstory can be found at BehindTheBlack, a space blog:
The story became news today because there was suddenly a flurry of outrage against SpaceX on Chinese social media, responding to Lijian’s statement, with much of it very likely astroturf posts prompted by the Chinese government itself.
ya think?
but BTB notes it is so China can deflect criticism for it's own
This announcement likely signals that China is getting ready to launch the next module to that station. During that launch the large core stage of the Long March 5B rocket will reach orbit, but only for a few days. It will then crash uncontrolled somewhere on Earth. The Chinese government knows it is going to get a lot of bad press because of this fact, and is likely making this complaint to try to excuse its own bad actions....
The crash of the Long March 5B core stage however is due entirely to a bad design that does not allow for any controlled maneuvers. Once the stage’s engines shut down after delivering the station module into orbit, they cannot be restarted, as designed. The stage must fall to Earth in an unpredictable manner, threatening every spot it flies over during that orbital decay.
Italics mine.
So what about their claim of the dangerous satellites?
The two issues however are not the same. Satellite orbits are very predictable, and any maneuvers required by China to avoid Starlink satellites were very routine. Moreover, if necessary SpaceX can adjust its own satellite orbits to avoid a collusion.
and by the way, Russia is also busy launching oodles of satellites.for ONEWEB.
not a lot about that in the news, or if Musk's Starlink project is their rival. (which they deny, but hey, who wants to check if they might be lying about this and sending money to folks to slow down Musk.)
---------
the Green lobby in the USA govt is doing their best to screw up Musk's spaceport by using the excuse they need to do an "environmental" evaluation. Even though the Florida site is on the edge of the American space facility that has been there for 50 years.
BTB notes:
In fact, this is beginning to look like the situation in Hawaii with the Thirty Meter Telescope. There protesters blocked the start of construction, and the government, controlled by Democrats, worked with those protesters to step by step keep that obstruction active and working. If so, SpaceX faces a very dangerous situation, as it appears the Biden administration is about to do the same thing to it.
Reminds me of how the rich elites (with a few locals) tried to block an observatory on an Arizona Apache reservation because the mountain was "sacred"....At the time I was working at another Apache reservation, where the tribe put a casino/resort and ski area on their "sacred mountain". Because jobs for the locals was an important issue, and the locals had plenty of mountain left for them to do the ceremonies.
Environmentalists are also blocking of the SpaceX tower in Texas.
as Spiked notes: a lot of the luddites who lament modern progress have never gotten their hands dirty or faced famine.
Not surprisingly, nations like India and China, whose populations haven’t yet reached such a luxurious level of development that they can sit around for days on end bemoaning the eco-impact of human extravagance, were not so keen on this neo-colonial attempt by Western elites to virtually criminalise certain forms of energy.
China figures a bit of pollution and smog is a small price to pay for prosperity.
But are they also manipulating the powerful "green"lobby to eliminate and discourage their rivals?
Given the silence of the green environmental movement on China's destruction of the ecosystem in the West Philippine Sea, I suspect so.
But China's ultimate goal is to take over the world, so they are pushing on many fronts to do this, including pushing environmental regulations to slow the economies of the US and Europe.
But this doesn't explain why so many others are trying to stop Musk.
How dare he do something that the governments didn't do!
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
50 China
31 SpaceX
23 Russia
7 Europe (Arianespace)
So NASA used the European Arianespace rocket to launch the Webb telescope from French Guiana.
oh well: He could always move to French Guiana
when you read such stories, the rule used to be "follow the money" and "cui bono" ("who benefits").
There is a long history of how China is manipulating/funding environmental groups to push it's agenda (2018 story)
This past week, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations wrote a six-page letter to the president of a major environmental group — the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) — asking for information regarding its relationship with the Chinese government. The letter noted; “While national discourse about undue foreign influence in the United States has largely centered around Russia, recent media accounts also highlight China’s ‘vast influence machine.’”
And they are using everything, including the covid epidemic. to weaken the west.
China's pervasive and interconnected covert campaign of military and industrial espionage, intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices and political infiltration (often lubricated with economic bribes) is an immediate threat that exploits patience.
sigh.
-------------------
update: The problem of uncontrolled reentry of discarded rocket parts is not limited to the Chinese Long March Rocket.
From InsideOuterSpace:
No comments:
Post a Comment