Frederick Bott
1 min readJun 29, 2024

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Really, just one criticism? I can see an infinity, though I agree with your instinct, to try to expose Musk's claims for Starship as investor snake oil, am not sure this does it.
Do you have a reference for the paper that predicts maximum number of satellites?
I expect this would be highly arguable, perfect for investor snake oil which is always stated as certainty.
Whereas it's a much stronger argument to just state that a Kessler event is already a certainty, even if no more satellites are sent up, the probability of Kessler event is already 100%, we just don't know when it will happen.
And look, at some point collision of satellites with manned spacecraft on transit into space, will become a real risk, even before any Kessler event, and Musk has to know this.
Hence why he can gather crazy funds into both Starship and Starlink, with no concerns of it ever having to be redeemed. If he does enough of it, events will start to happen where he will be able to welch out on Starship promises blaming events "Nobody could have predicted", ending the Starship venture.
But really, will we not blame him, if his own satellites started to collide with his own Starships?

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Frederick Bott
Frederick Bott

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