If you are following space exploration, you know that the new space race is not Russia vs NASA in the USA: It is China vs Elon Musk vs Russia, with Europe and NASA coming in last.
StrategyPage has an essay on Elon Musk who just rewrote the book.
when Russia invaded Ukraine before dawn on February 24th and the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation contacted Musk for help in dealing with Russian efforts to cut Ukrainian access to the Internet. Starlink officials had already been negotiating with Ukraine to provide Starlink service locally. Musk agreed to help and within four days hundreds of Starlink satellites were moved into position to provide Ukraine with high-speed Internet service using hundreds of Starlink user kits Musk sent to Ukraine.
Russian hackers are trying to prevent this, China is complaining about Starlink satellites being a danger to their space station (not true) and the US environmentalists are doing their best to slow down approval of launch sites.
For Russia and China, Starlink is but the latest irritation from SpaceX. China is trying to recreate the reusable boosters that make SpaceX launches so much cheaper without making their launch services even more unreliable than SpaceX. From a military point of view, Starlink is a major problem because Russia and China have been creating anti-satellite weapons that could cripple a conventional satellite communications and surveillance system. It would be much more expensive, time-consuming and uncertain to cripple an LEO network that is built around the concept of surviving major damage and continuing to operate,,,,
more here........
President Obama was first to encourage private space exploration, and this policy was also supported by the Trump administration. This might not be true in the present administration.
BehindTheBlack article about capitalism in space has more details.
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