NASA’s Voyager 2 has lost communication with Earth due to an unintentional shift in its antenna direction. The next programmed orientation adjustment on October 15 is expected to restore communication, while Voyager 1 continues to operate as usual.
A series of scheduled commands directed at NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on July 21 led to an unintentional change in antenna direction. Consequently, the antenna moved 2 degrees off course from Earth, causing the spacecraft to lose its ability to receive commands or transmit data back to our planet.
What a great project. Really puts perspective on what can be accomplished with public funds and vision. Meanwhile shit like Starlink exists and lasts maybe a couple of years. I wonder whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy???
As much as I’d like to agree, those projects have very different goals and constraints.
As much as I hate Musk and most of his idiot projects, Starlink isn’t that bad of an idea. Traditional SATCOM internet is more expensive for shittier service. From what I’ve read, Starlink has been fairly reliable, not overly expensive, and performance is pretty solid. Sure, in areas that already have “excellent” terrestrial internet providers available, it is pretty useless. But for rural areas, it’s a godsend.
It’s 100% a good idea, it just shouldn’t be privately owned
But private companies can do things public companies can’t do!1
Because private companies don’t have the GOP actively sabotaging them whenever they are in power so that they can argue that private companies work better than public ones.2
Unless your private company supports groups that the GOP hates.
Please don’t help infect this place with partisan politics. This is my safe haven.
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Because they’re low orbit communication satellites that require a lot of fuel to maintain said orbit, and are designed to deorbit pretty quickly so as to not pollute LEO with junk?
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That is just another way of saying imposes negative externalities.
I am wary of commercial anything, I don’t really trust any company. We are still having major pollution events, some being planned to this day. And even some of the smallest, most seemingly benevolent startups sometimes turnout out to be so evil they are literally scamming people out of life.
Maybe once we have real jail time for executives and the corporate death penalty by destruction of charter and a little bit of a time period without an event of awful corporate negligence, maybe then space commercialization might be a net benefit.
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