I feel bad for the reasonable employees at SpaceX - this sucks for decent people.

I don’t. Look, we already had this discussion years ago. You don’t feel bad for the stormtrooper, or their families when you blow up the deathstar. They knew what they were getting into.

I’m sure there are plenty of people who started at SpaceX before we all truly knew the monster is. Also, the work they are doing is incredibly important. It’s hard to give that up. It shouldn’t be this hard to empathize with people

I thought that spacex was “incredibly important” once. Now I realize it’s a fast track to a more fucked earth. By the time we get to “planet B” “planet A” is going to be a fiery ball of shit.

I’m not saying SpaceX isn’t without valid critiques, but if you don’t see the value of reusable rockets and can’t even give them credit for spearheading that, I’m not sure what else to say. Make no mistake I think Elon Musk is a bigoted piece of shit, but I can also acknowledge that SpaceX has done important work

Yes, the rocket is reusable. The fuel is not, and by lowering the cost per kg of space freight, it has driven more usage of rockets. Which use non-renewable fuel at astounding rates and make huge emissions for a minor payload total.

We’re seeing extreme temperatures and unseasonal weather events already - James Webb is cool and the ISS does need service missions but Starlink is just more orbital trash waiting to happen.

Starlink will never be orbital trash in any meaningful way. If everything failed today, they’d all deorbit within 5 years. It’s only in higher orbits where shit gets stuck for decades or hundreds of years.

Starlink will never be orbital trash in any meaningful way

You’re right. They’ll be atmospheric pollution. That’s what “burn up on reentry” means.

Well in that case, 100% of things that we’ve launched into space are either

1: Space trash 2: Atmospheric Trash 3: Ocean Trash

Except for the 1st stages of F9 and it’s fairings, and one or two first stages of some other small start ups.