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I’m a human that just so happens to disagree with you. I don’t like Elon either, but what I dislike more is that it’s impossible to talk about any of his companies without people like you assuming my motives.

What precisely are your motives, then?

The umpteenth example of Musk companies behaving poorly and here you come to suggest that we can’t let pesky things like science stand in the way of “the internet”. As if Starlink services is synonymous with the internet itself. The implication is clear, to me at least.


Yeah Starlink is clearly so much better than the satellite internet that came before it that I think it's reasonable to want to expand it, even at the cost of making radio astronomy on Earth's surface harder. Fast, reliable internet access in places where it's infeasible to string high-bandwidth physical connections is a pretty valuable human good, and radio astronomy can be done in space (perhaps using technology similar to Starlink satellites themselves!).

Precise motives? I don’t know, I don’t think I have any. I don’t use starlink myself or have a Tesla or invest in any of his companies. Feels silly to disclaim that, but there you go.

Having used starlink before on a plane and on land, it’s fast and seems far superior to previous generations of satellite internet. I’m earnestly asking if creating problems for astronomers is outweighed by giving more people access to the internet. Not just giving them “access”, but giving them very fast and low latency access.




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