For the rich rulers of our world, them only, All’s Well that Ends Well: so that even their catastrophic and potentially catastrophic “outcomes” can be presented as for the good. Thus a large and heavy piece of a Space-X Falcon 9 rocket─used to launch one of its Starlink satellites─ gone astray and crashing into the one moon our planet has is presented as a great opportunity for greater knowledge of it because a crater will be created and can be studied, possibly, by other satellites. Starlink has over 7,100 satellites in orbit and has plans to grow to 30,000 according to Reuters Meanwhile China is said to have created enough factories to make 7000 satellites a year. However it faces a “bottle neck” when it comes to launching them. Here, Space-X with it Launching rockets dominates. This column has already pointed to the power accruing to Space-X and its top man Elon Musk; from warfare to surveillance and Uber taxi rides, the dependence on satellites is everywhere. The grabbing of “low-orbit” space in Space─it is getting so crowded that satellites often have to have their orbits shifted to make room for more─ is not however subject to even a shred of democratic control. The only worldwide agreement on the issue is the Outer Space Treaty signed by multiple parties in 1967. It is far out of date since the large majority of space objects are being launched by commercial companies and not government as in that Treaty. The ITU’s enforcement power is negligible and instead self-interested ad hoc groups like The GSM Association (GSMA) the advocacy and lobbying organization for the mobile communications industry, suggest and make regulations as they go along. Meanwhile Space -X’s launching de fact monopoly will be strengthened by the development of its Starship and its power over NASA.
” Poverty is not caused by men and women getting married; it’s not caused by machinery; it’s not caused by “over-production”; it’s not caused by drink or laziness; and it’s not caused by “over-population”. It’s caused by Private Monopoly. That is the present system. They have monopolised everything that it is possible to monopolise; they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolised the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it.
If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air – or of the money to buy it – even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessities of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it.
Most of you here, for instance, would think and say so. Even as you think at present that it’s right for so few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: “It’s Their Land,” “It’s Their Water,” “It’s Their Coal,” “It’s Their Iron,” so you would say “It’s Their Air,” “These are their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?”
Robert Tressell , The Ragged -Trousered Philanthropists (published 1914)