Science fiction of the 90s was the time to discuss philosophy. We didn’t come to a conclusion then. The future is now. A global low latency, highly available communications network is technologically inevitable. In our timeline, a rich narcissist has gathered enough support and competence around himself to start building that network. So now we have real, concrete questions that need answers: who should have access to that network, and who should decide?
The way I see it, the options are (besides opening the network for everyone globally):
- limit access to non-military purposes: practically impossible
- limit access to the country of which Elon calls himself a citizen: what happens if he moves?
- destroy the network: everyone is worse off
- have the government take over control of the network: I don’t think we want this precedence
Do you have another suggestion?
Then what are we even discussing? we’ve had orbital cameras for decades. These are just networked better and launched different?
This is a huge network (hundreds) of very low orbit satellites, making surveillance far closer to realtime, with more global coverage, with presumably a higher resolution. Since there are so many of them they’re also more resistant to anti-satellite weapons than traditional surveillance assets.
Remember that the existing Keyhole satellites are basically the same build as the Hubble Space Telescope, meaning fewer, larger, more expensive satellites. This is a huge leap in capability.
