Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Slightly tangential, but I'm really interested at the political influence of what space satellites or balloon Internet might do.

I'm considering a scenario where a nefarious, space-capable entity is capable of disabling satellites. Idk I guess from the perhspective of like a civil engineer or something, it seems that an idea where your infrastructure is out of reach or particularly vulnerable seems like a bad idea.

There could be """accidental""" space object collisions, direct attacks on them, or even just unforeseeable maintenance difficulties trying to take care of dozens or hundreds or thousands of objects not immediately available to us, serving an incredibly critical and global backbone of infrastructure, for more or less every industry on earth, or potentially ventures off earth as well.

What an exciting time to be alive, it's like some Twilight Zone Star Trek mashup lately.

Edit: the title of this post is pretty dumb btw, I contend it should be changed to reflect changes in the program, not its abandonment



> it seems that an idea where your infrastructure is out of reach or particularly vulnerable seems like a bad idea.

Is it better to have your infrastructure where someone with a shovel, or a fishing boats dragging its anchor can cause catastrophic damage?


No, but you might notice I didn't exactly advocate for under sea cable proliferation either. It has the same (percieved, I'm no expert) flaws.


So how should we connect e.g. the US to Europe, then? Sure there are flaws and vulnerabilities, but the alternative seems ... worse.


Well I don't know, I didn't say I knew. I'm just pointing out that there are obvious weak points in critical infrastructure in space, as there are weak points in undersea cables, etc. Lots of infrastructure has bad aspects. I wish I had some deeper, enlightening insight about it all, but I don't.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: