@carnage4life

And their Mars mission cost $74 million bucks. Not a typo!

And look at the scientists in their mission control room. Just look at it!

We can have space without space billionaires.

Putting all our eggs in the Elon basket is a choice, and not a good one.

@mekkaokereke @carnage4life Eeyupp.
I mean $74M does barely pay 2,5 Proton rockets, so it's not as if that's much considering one is needed alone for that thing and scientific missions never get the scalability bonuses of commercial aerospace like most satellite providers.

Speaking of Satellite Providers:
#Iridium replaced their aging fleet in 2019 at a cost of $2,8B and those were just 77 in-orbit + 9 ground spares that were sent to space literally in 6-packs and that covers the entire globe.

@Syulang @mekkaokereke @carnage4life Also to achieve the [compareably low] latencies and high speeds, he literally needed to litter the low earth orbits with a shitton of satellites so low orbited that they'll need to be replaced constantly due to Exosperic drag making them re-enter...

It would've been more reasonsable to lay down fiber links across Antarctica between research stations or upgrading Iriidum instead, but that would've been easy and boring.