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- cross-posted to:
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As Musk’s SpaceX, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and other companies expand into space, they risk causing more problems for Earth in the process: air pollution, climate effects, and light pollution. The practice of downplaying these negative consequences while trumpeting the message that space operations can make life better on Earth has a new name: “starwashing,” a term the space researcher Melissa E. Yingling helped popularize in an article published in The Conversation earlier this month.
It’s a play on the term “greenwashing,” used to critique companies that highlight small sustainable investments to divert attention from the pollution their businesses cause. Space companies are appealing to a sense of “cosmic wonder” and making promises to benefit humankind, along with promoting their environmental bona fides, Yingling wrote.
Is anybody here who’s life has been made better by Musk?
He has inarguably been a net benefit to the world. However that net benefit is decreasing rapidly every second his head remains attached to his shoulders.
Never heard such bs.
One person who has grabbed that much money for himself alone is obviously a giant net loss to everybody else!
There’s more to life than money.
Australia and NZ have country wide coverage for SMS via starlink.
Australia is a huge landmass , and being able to send/receive messages just by having a view of the sky is quite significant for emergency situations.
Here is a map showing phone coverage in Australia from all providers. There’s about 5 million square kilometres with no service at all, that now has basic communications via starlink.
Are you there? Has it made your life better?
Australia makes up 1.7% of the English speaking world, so you can assume it directly affects that percentage of Lemmy users (when posting in English).
I see that my question wasn’t clear enough to some, not quite many, readers. When I ask “are you” then I haven’t asked about assuming, I haven’t asked about statistics. If you aren’t such a person, I haven’t asked about you.
Ah, rather than meaningful data, you want anecdotal data points.
I understand now.
I think without him and tesla (especially the supercharger network), the EV market would be significantly behind where it is now. Granted that isn’t anything to do with space, just answering your question as written.
And I do really, really, hate to give it to him, but starlink is genuinely impressive.
The biggest problem with Starlink is that most people who have it should really have access to fiber. Starlink just really exposes the shortcomings of our terribly handled infrastructure. Of course satellite internet servers other purposes too but it really annoys me how otherwise fairly developed places have so shitty internet that they need freaking satellite to get a more reliable connection. It would be far cheaper for everyone to just massively expand fiber like everywhere in the European Union for example.
Of course there are also the SpaceX launch sites that devastate communities and environments in ways that are absolutely unacceptable but I digress.
The population density of the majority of the European Union is multiple orders of magnitude higher than it is in most of the places that Starlink is especially popular, like Australia.
The cost per customer of installing fiber in those places is extraordinarily high.