SpaceX Starlink

Elon Musk
by Walter Isaacson
Published 11 Sep 2023

In late 2014, he turned his attention to what was a much bigger pot of gold: providing internet service to paying customers. SpaceX would make and launch its own communications satellites, in effect rebuilding the internet in outer space. “Internet revenue is about one trillion dollars a year,” he says. “If we can serve three percent, that’s $30 billion, which is more than NASA’s budget. That was the inspiration for Starlink, to fund getting to Mars.” He pauses, then adds for emphasis, “The lens of getting to Mars has motivated every SpaceX decision.” To pursue this mission, Musk announced in January 2015 the creation of a new division of SpaceX, based near Seattle, called Starlink. The plan was to send satellites into low-Earth orbit, about 340 miles high, so that the latency of the signals would not be as bad as systems that depended on geosynchronous satellites, which orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth.

…

he asked me during a late-night phone conversation. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.” In the end, with Shotwell’s help, SpaceX made arrangements with various government agencies to pay for increased Starlink service in Ukraine, with the military working out the terms of service. More than 100,000 new dishes were sent to Ukraine at the beginning of 2023. In addition, Starlink launched a companion service called Starshield, which was specifically designed for military use. SpaceX sold or licensed Starshield satellites and services to the U.S. military and other agencies, allowing the government to determine how they could and should be used in Ukraine and elsewhere. 71 Bill Gates 2022 With Gates at the Boao Forum for Asia in Qionghai, China, 2015 The visit “Hey, I’d love to come see you and talk about philanthropy and climate,” Bill Gates said to Musk when they happened to be at the same meeting in early 2022.

…

But the Starlink team did not seem to feel much urgency, a cardinal sin for Musk. So one Sunday night that June, without much warning, he flew to Seattle to fire the entire top Starlink team. He brought with him eight of his most senior SpaceX rocket engineers. None knew much about satellites, but they all knew how to solve engineering problems and apply Musk’s algorithm. The engineer he tapped to take over was Mark Juncosa, who was already in charge of structural engineering at SpaceX. That had the advantage of integrating the design and manufacture of all SpaceX products, from the boosters to the satellites, under one manager. It also had the advantage of that person being Juncosa, a feverishly brilliant engineer who could mind-meld with Musk.

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach
by Ashlee Vance
Published 8 May 2023

And it would continue to do so if the situation were static—which it most certainly is not. By the end of 2021, there were five thousand satellites in orbit. About two thousand of them were built and launched by SpaceX. These satellites do not take photos but rather are part of SpaceX’s Starlink internet system. The machines orbit around the earth and beam down high-speed internet to antennas on the ground. The major near-term objective of Starlink is to create the first truly global internet service. Anyone with a Starlink antenna can tap into the Web from wherever they are. For roughly 3.5 billion people who cannot get a high-speed internet connection, this could be a godsend.

…

The 3.5 billion people without access to high-speed internet tend to live in the poorer parts of the world. How much money SpaceX or Amazon could make from those customers remains to be seen. Businesses and wealthier individuals will pay for the convenience of a quick connection wherever they go, but, again, nobody knows how large the audience will be. As things stand, SpaceX is valued by its investors at more than $100 billion, and the vast majority of that figure is premised on Starlink creating a major revenue stream. Even for a company as efficient as SpaceX, there are not huge profits in rocket launches. It’s much better to be a worldwide telecommunications company with subscribers paying monthly fees.

…

And when other bombings or attacks occurred, open-source analysts began matching satellite images with photos and reports from the ground to try to establish more truths about what was going on in the war. No other conflict had ever been documented this way. When the Russians attempted to destroy Ukraine’s communications infrastructure, SpaceX sent Ukraine thousands of Starlink antennas. The space internet enabled Ukraine’s military to keep operating in a fashion that would have been impossible a couple of years earlier. Military units could still talk to each other safely with the Russians unable to penetrate Starlink’s encryption technology. The same Starlink systems allowed Ukrainian drone operators to orchestrate thousands of bombing missions from locations all around the country. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Elon Musk to thank him, and Ukrainian generals posted similar thanks online.

A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?
by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
Published 6 Nov 2023

Sadly for many a geeky heart, the prices stopped falling around the early 1970s, and the Space Shuttle, which was supposed to make travel routine, cheap, and safe, failed on all three fronts, remaining, by one estimate, the costliest way to put mass in orbit for decades. That was the state of play until the 2010s when, largely as a result of a US policy shift and SpaceX in particular, the cost of putting stuff in space began to fall dramatically again. This doesn’t just mean more rocket launches, it means more spacecraft. In 2015, there were about fourteen hundred active satellites. As of 2021, there were about five thousand; and as of October 2022, around three thousand working satellites are controlled by SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink. Space tourism, long promised but rarely delivered on, appears to actually be happening. Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin regularly sends people on 100-kilometer-high hops, and SpaceX has contracted to send tourists around the Moon.

…

If you’re like most of the nonexperts we’ve talked to as we researched this book, you might have some ideas about space settlement that aren’t quite right. We don’t blame you—the public discourse around space settlement is full of myths, fantasies, and outright misunderstanding of basic facts. In 2020, for example, SpaceX’s internet service provider, Starlink, released a Terms of Service agreement that declared that “no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities.” This clause is like many statements about outer space settlement: it was promoted by a powerful advocate, widely shared and commented upon, and profoundly misleading.

…

Measuring exactly how militarized space has become is tricky, however, because satellites are “dual use.” Almost any object orbiting the Earth can be repurposed for tactical reasons. This was apparent from the earliest days of space-travel theory, when Hermann Oberth proposed a giant mirror in space, for combination agricultural and death-beam purposes. The latest example is SpaceX’s thousands of Starlink satellites. Launched originally for the purpose of transmitting internet stuff, they became integral to the Ukrainian resistance against Russian invasion after Elon Musk had several thousand terminals shipped over. Soon after, the Russian Federation felt compelled to announce that “quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for retaliation.”

The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility
by Robert Zubrin
Published 30 Apr 2019

David Grossman, “The Race for Space-Based Internet Is On,” Popular Mechanics, January 3, 2018, https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a14539476/the-race-for-space-based-internet-is-on/ (accessed October 14, 2018). 9. Patrick Daniels, “SpaceX Starlink: Here's Everything You Need to Know,” Digital Trends, August 5, 2018, https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/spacex-starlink-elon-musk-news/ (accessed October 14, 2018). 10. Committee on Achieving Science Goals with CubeSats, Achieving Science with CubeSats: Thinking Inside the Box (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2016). 11. Sandra Erwin, “US Intelligence: Russia and China Will Have ‘Operational’ Anti-Satellite Weapons in a Few Years,” Space News, February 14, 2018, https://spacenews.com/u-s-intelligence-russia-and-china-will-have-operational-anti-satellite-weapons-in-a-few-years/ (accessed October 14, 2018). 12.

…

See also nanotechnology SETI, 256–57, 258 SFS (Small Falcon Spaceship), 111–12 Shackleton Crater (on the moon), 76 Shakespeare, William, 22, 34 SHARAD ground-penetrating radar, 14, 106 Shelley, Percy B., 334 Shergotty (SNC meteorite), 343 Sieck, Paul, 180 silicon, 72, 82–83, 149, 171, 232, 285, 303–304 single-stage rocket systems, 40–41, 45, 344 payloads for one and two stage reusable rockets, 42 skyhook, 93–97, 115–17 Skylab space station, 118, 132 Slough, John, 179 SLS rocket (NASA), 36, 77, 132, 134, 157 Smallest Possible Affordable Robust Compact (SPARC), 177 Small Falcon Spaceship (SFS), 111–12 Smolin, Lee, 262, 263 SNC meteorites, 119–20, 343 Snyder, Timothy, 308 Socrates, 312 SoftBank Group, 53 Sojourner (Mars lander), 105 solar energy, 31, 34, 57, 73, 76, 159, 265, 304 limited availability in outer solar system, 167, 173–74 sending from moon back to earth, 82–83, 90 solar power satellites, 34, 57–60 use of on Mars, 111 solar flare, 101, 343 solar light pressure at 1 AU, 200 solar sails, plate 13, 116, 196–98, 221, 234, 235, 258, 344 use of as reflectors to increase solar flux, 222–23 use of to amplify brightness of stars, 237–38 See also IKAROS solar sail spacecraft; light sails solar wind, 73, 74, 87, 88 solar-wind pushed magsail, 203, 204 Soyuz (Russian space launch system), 36 space activism, how to achieve, 327–31 what individuals can do, 331–34 space business parks, 50–51 Space Exploration Initiative, 105 spaceflights/space travel commercial benefits of communications and data satellites, 51–56 developing commercial energy system in space, 57–60 fast global travel on Earth, 40–43 going beyond Earth orbit, 66–68 orbital industries, 48–50 orbital research labs, 47–48, 50 space business parks, 50–51 space tourism, 45–47 fundamentals of rocketry, 43–45 change of mass ratio and payload of a rocket, 44 health effects of long-duration spaceflight, 133–35 military uses and deterring a war, 60–66 outer solar system need for advanced second or third generation systems to settle, 173–74 statistics on getting to and back from, 162 program of action to achieve, 328–31 what individuals can do, 331–34 reasons for pursuing for the challenges, 271–86 for the future we can create, 315–25 to gain more freedom, 301–25 for the knowledge gained, 249–69 need for a frontier and challenges, 272–74, 275–84 for survival of humanity, 287–99 spin-offs from space program, 284–86 STEM graduates in US (1960–1990), 285–86, 285 See also interstellar travel Space Frontier Foundation, 332–33 Space Internet, 53 space launches comparison of space launch systems, 36 costs of, 89–90 consequences of cheap space launches, 24–28 for developing solar power satellite systems, 57–58 getting to a $200 per kilogram cost, 27–28 importance of a two-stage system to reduce costs, 39–45 lower costs allowing for orbital industries, 49–50 See also commercial benefits of spaceflight Elon Musk and development of SpaceX, 30–37 impact of cost-plus contracts, 22–24, 330–31 need for reusable spacecraft, 21–23 rise of microlaunchers, 37–38 skyhook as alternate means of Earth-to-orbit transit, 93–94 See also propellants and propulsion space power, use of and deterring a war, 60–66 Space Resources (Lewis), 136 Spaceship One, 29 space superiority vs. space supremacy, 62–63 space tourism, 45–47 SpaceX, plate 6, plate 7, 12, 19–21, 21, 27–28, 53, 77, 84, 175, 211, 328 development of SpaceX, 30–37 heavy-lift rockets, 107 Interplanetary Transport System plan, plate 7, 107–10 Mini BFR, 110–12, 339 See also Starship (rocket) (SpaceX) planned 2023 artists’ cruise around, plate 9 sending Tesla Roadster past Mars, 11 size of, 39–40 Starlink satellites, 53 and two-stage systems, 41, 45 See also Falcon (rocket) (SpaceX); Musk, Elon SPARC (Smallest Possible Affordable Robust Compact) fusion reactor, 177 specific impulse (Isp), 45, 143, 160–61, 163, 193–94, 296, 297, 341, 344 spherical tokamak (ST), 175–76, 176, 180 “spheromak,” 180 spin-offs from space program, 284–86 STEM graduates in US (1960–1990), 285–86, 285 Spire Lemur-2 CubeSats, plate 4 Spirit rover (NASA), 106 SPS (solar power satellites), 34, 57–60 Sridhar, K. R., 147 SR-71 (Boeing), 277 ST (spherical tokamak), 175–76, 176, 180 Stapledon, Olaf, 238 Starlink (SpaceX), 53 Star Maker (Stapeldon), 238 stars, travel to. See interstellar travel Starship (rocket) (SpaceX), 11, 12, 27–28, 28, 41, 77, 112, 134–35, 344 originally known as BFR, 110, 334, 344 reducing launch costs of, 27 See also Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) (SpaceX) Star Trek (television series), 323 Steins (asteroid), 130 stellarators, 84 STEM graduates in US (1960–1990), 285–86, 285 Stoker, Carol, 333 Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) (US), 13 Stratolaunch, 12, 29–30 stromatolites (bacterial fossils), 260 Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), 29, 34 “Summer Triangle,” 240 sunlight as source of propulsion.

…

See also nanotechnology SETI, 256–57, 258 SFS (Small Falcon Spaceship), 111–12 Shackleton Crater (on the moon), 76 Shakespeare, William, 22, 34 SHARAD ground-penetrating radar, 14, 106 Shelley, Percy B., 334 Shergotty (SNC meteorite), 343 Sieck, Paul, 180 silicon, 72, 82–83, 149, 171, 232, 285, 303–304 single-stage rocket systems, 40–41, 45, 344 payloads for one and two stage reusable rockets, 42 skyhook, 93–97, 115–17 Skylab space station, 118, 132 Slough, John, 179 SLS rocket (NASA), 36, 77, 132, 134, 157 Smallest Possible Affordable Robust Compact (SPARC), 177 Small Falcon Spaceship (SFS), 111–12 Smolin, Lee, 262, 263 SNC meteorites, 119–20, 343 Snyder, Timothy, 308 Socrates, 312 SoftBank Group, 53 Sojourner (Mars lander), 105 solar energy, 31, 34, 57, 73, 76, 159, 265, 304 limited availability in outer solar system, 167, 173–74 sending from moon back to earth, 82–83, 90 solar power satellites, 34, 57–60 use of on Mars, 111 solar flare, 101, 343 solar light pressure at 1 AU, 200 solar sails, plate 13, 116, 196–98, 221, 234, 235, 258, 344 use of as reflectors to increase solar flux, 222–23 use of to amplify brightness of stars, 237–38 See also IKAROS solar sail spacecraft; light sails solar wind, 73, 74, 87, 88 solar-wind pushed magsail, 203, 204 Soyuz (Russian space launch system), 36 space activism, how to achieve, 327–31 what individuals can do, 331–34 space business parks, 50–51 Space Exploration Initiative, 105 spaceflights/space travel commercial benefits of communications and data satellites, 51–56 developing commercial energy system in space, 57–60 fast global travel on Earth, 40–43 going beyond Earth orbit, 66–68 orbital industries, 48–50 orbital research labs, 47–48, 50 space business parks, 50–51 space tourism, 45–47 fundamentals of rocketry, 43–45 change of mass ratio and payload of a rocket, 44 health effects of long-duration spaceflight, 133–35 military uses and deterring a war, 60–66 outer solar system need for advanced second or third generation systems to settle, 173–74 statistics on getting to and back from, 162 program of action to achieve, 328–31 what individuals can do, 331–34 reasons for pursuing for the challenges, 271–86 for the future we can create, 315–25 to gain more freedom, 301–25 for the knowledge gained, 249–69 need for a frontier and challenges, 272–74, 275–84 for survival of humanity, 287–99 spin-offs from space program, 284–86 STEM graduates in US (1960–1990), 285–86, 285 See also interstellar travel Space Frontier Foundation, 332–33 Space Internet, 53 space launches comparison of space launch systems, 36 costs of, 89–90 consequences of cheap space launches, 24–28 for developing solar power satellite systems, 57–58 getting to a $200 per kilogram cost, 27–28 importance of a two-stage system to reduce costs, 39–45 lower costs allowing for orbital industries, 49–50 See also commercial benefits of spaceflight Elon Musk and development of SpaceX, 30–37 impact of cost-plus contracts, 22–24, 330–31 need for reusable spacecraft, 21–23 rise of microlaunchers, 37–38 skyhook as alternate means of Earth-to-orbit transit, 93–94 See also propellants and propulsion space power, use of and deterring a war, 60–66 Space Resources (Lewis), 136 Spaceship One, 29 space superiority vs. space supremacy, 62–63 space tourism, 45–47 SpaceX, plate 6, plate 7, 12, 19–21, 21, 27–28, 53, 77, 84, 175, 211, 328 development of SpaceX, 30–37 heavy-lift rockets, 107 Interplanetary Transport System plan, plate 7, 107–10 Mini BFR, 110–12, 339 See also Starship (rocket) (SpaceX) planned 2023 artists’ cruise around, plate 9 sending Tesla Roadster past Mars, 11 size of, 39–40 Starlink satellites, 53 and two-stage systems, 41, 45 See also Falcon (rocket) (SpaceX); Musk, Elon SPARC (Smallest Possible Affordable Robust Compact) fusion reactor, 177 specific impulse (Isp), 45, 143, 160–61, 163, 193–94, 296, 297, 341, 344 spherical tokamak (ST), 175–76, 176, 180 “spheromak,” 180 spin-offs from space program, 284–86 STEM graduates in US (1960–1990), 285–86, 285 Spire Lemur-2 CubeSats, plate 4 Spirit rover (NASA), 106 SPS (solar power satellites), 34, 57–60 Sridhar, K.

The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration
by Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees
Published 18 Apr 2022

An excellent and detailed discussion of the hazards of radiation in space is “Space Radiation,” NASA Human Research Program Engagement and Communications, accessed August 15, 2021, https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/space_radiation_ebook.pdf. Regarding other causes of death revealed by the data: for non-Russian astronauts, 38 percent of deaths resulted from accidents; the comparable figure among Russian cosmonauts was only 17 percent. 14. Adam Mann, “Starlink: SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Project,” Space.com, May 28, 2021, https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html. 15. Christian Davenport, “Thousands More Satellites Could Soon Be Launched into Space. Can the Federal Government Keep Up?,” Washington Post, July 23, 2020. 16. Louis de Gouyon Matignon, “The Kessler Syndrome,” Space Legal Issues, March 27, 2019, https://www.spacelegalissues.com/space-law-the-kessler-syndrome/. 17.

…

Advances in miniaturization and changing economics have now enabled the launch of entire flotillas of small satellites—as many as one hundred on a single rocket. These satellites enable companies such as California’s Planet Labs to obtain daily images of the entire globe with a resolution sufficient to reveal road traffic, building sites, land use, and related information. Even greater advances lie in the near future, as SpaceX envisages that its Starlink project will place up to 40,000 satellites in orbit to create a network for enhanced global broadband communication.14 Other companies, including Amazon, have announced similar plans. In principle, these are exciting and welcome developments, the more so if they establish broadband internet connectivity in places currently without it, including many parts of Africa.

…

Recent improvements in modern rocketry, both technological and economic, have come more from private projects than from governmental efforts, and in particular from Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation, which has developed the capability of recovering the massive casing of a rocket’s first stage for reuse. SpaceX currently charges the United States government $1,250 per pound to send cargo to the International Space Station.7 Though this price may not reflect the true cost, since SpaceX seeks to secure government contracts for the future, it represents a good number to bear in mind. SpaceX’s success with its Falcon rockets contrasts markedly with NASA’s repeated problems with its next-generation SLS launch system, currently still in development while its efficacy remains in doubt.8 In summary, just as expected, experience and the geography of space have rendered access to near-Earth space fairly reliable, as well as considerably less expensive than travel to the distant objects that populate the solar system.

Elon Musk: A Mission to Save the World
by Anna Crowley Redding
Published 1 Jul 2019

You are going to want the Internet available to keep in touch with Earth while chilling (or engaging in your daily fight for survival) on Mars. In January 2015, Elon announced his plans to develop a space-based Internet called Starlink. The first step is providing satellite-based Internet for all of Earth. The satellites, some four thousand of them, would beam down broadband Internet from low Earth orbit. The price tag for a space-based Internet? $10 billion. And the number of people on the planet who would have improved access or their first access at all to the Internet? Roughly three billion. “Yeah, there is no question,” SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said. “It will change the world.”144 It took a while, but in 2018 Elon finally won approval from the Federal Communications Commission for his plan to build a global broadband network using SpaceX satellites.

…

“It will change the world.”144 It took a while, but in 2018 Elon finally won approval from the Federal Communications Commission for his plan to build a global broadband network using SpaceX satellites. Elon has approval to launch a whopping 4,425 satellites to create his Starlink network. When Elon first announced the project, he made his ultimate goal clear. Eventually he wanted his network to deliver an Internet to Mars. “It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well,” he said, adding, “I don’t see anyone else doing it.”145 CHAPTER 12 THIS IS THE BORING BIT In the spring of 2018, Gary took center stage for a big talk.

…

Air tanks on their backs and diving masks pulled into place, SpaceX employees fished rocket debris from the adjacent reef. Elon reassured his team. “SpaceX is in this for the long haul and, come hell or high water, we are going to make this work,”98 he said. Even though the launch had not been successful, SpaceX had made enough progress that the company was in the running for a NASA contract to build a cargo ship to resupply the International Space Station. In August, NASA awarded SpaceX a $278 million contract to start development. This was a huge win for SpaceX. The development would lead to the Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule.

Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
by Eric Berger
Published 2 Mar 2021

Altan would go on to lead the avionics department at SpaceX, before leaving the company in January 2014. On his last day, the cafeteria in Hawthorne served his goulash to employees. He returned to SpaceX in 2016 for two more years. With his programming skills, Altan served as a senior engineer on the company’s new Starlink project. This is SpaceX’s ambitious plan to put thousands of small satellites into low-Earth orbit, and provide global internet service. To make this work, the satellites must communicate with one another as they zip overhead, creating a seamless stream of data for users on the ground. Altan left SpaceX just before the first prototypes were shipped.

…

The list must start with Elon Musk. When I first proposed this book idea in early 2019, he eagerly agreed. His message to me was that I should talk to everyone. With this signal, both current employees at SpaceX and former employees agreed to talk with me at length about their experiences. Elon himself made plenty of time, generously inviting me to sit in on his technical meetings for Starship, Starlink, Raptor, and other projects at the company’s factory in Hawthorne. This helped me understand his leadership style. He also opened the doors to his factory-beneath-tents in Boca Chica where a new generation of engineers are building Starship, much in the iterative, fast-paced style of the Falcon 1 days.

…

After learning of the Merlin engine’s modified design, Northrop sued in California state court, alleging Mueller and SpaceX had stolen trade secrets. SpaceX countersued, saying Northrop had used its position in an advisory role to the Air Force to essentially spy on SpaceX. Reagan said the Northrop lawsuit was ridiculous because SpaceX must have gone through fifty different designs for the Merlin’s injector, iterating all the while, blowing things up, and keeping his machinists busy in 2003 and 2004. “It seemed like a big joke to me,” he said of the lawsuit. By early 2005 the companies agreed to drop their mutual lawsuits. Neither admitted wrongdoing, or paid legal fees or damages. SpaceX likes to operate on its own terms and its own timeline.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
by Matthew Ball
Published 18 Jul 2022

Once a wireless user’s data hits the tower, it moves to fixed-line backbones. Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet company, promises to provide high-bandwidth, low-latency internet service across the United States, and eventually the rest of the world. However, satellite internet doesn’t achieve ultra-low latency, especially at great distances. As of 2021, Starlink averages 18–55-ms travel time from your house to the satellite and back, but this time frame extends when the data has to go from New York to Los Angeles and back, as this involves traveling across multiple satellites or traditional terrestrial networks. In some cases, Starlink even exacerbates the problem of travel distances.

…

See augmented reality (AR); virtual reality (VR) “mobile internet era,” 12, 35, 63, 64, 240, 242–44, 269, 291 Mojang, 114 Monsters University, 36, 89–90 Moore’s Law, 100, 161 “most favored nations” (MFN) clauses, 180–81, 183 Motorola, 158, 212, 213 multiplayer games battle royale games, 32–33, 91–93, 98, 114–15, 117n, 146–47, 268, 275 computing and, 75 “massively multiplayer” online games, 55 matchmaking, 81, 176, 178 the problem of concurrent users (CCUs), 54–55, 90–92, 122, 146, 234, 245, 261, 268, 283 see also specific games and gaming platforms Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and related topics, 7–8, 12, 13–14, 30 Musk, Elon Neuralink, 154 SpaceX, xi, 4, 87 Starlink, 87 Tesla, 101, 166, 271 X.com, 61 MySpace, 34, 274 Nadella, Satya, xii, 18, 141, 239, 279–80 Naked Sun, The, 5 Namco, 173 NASA, ix NASDAQ, 309 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, ix National Basketball Association (NBA), 218, 259 National Football League (NFL), 139 National Science Foundation, x native apps, 26, 194–95 near-field communication (NFC), 142, 189, 199–200, 203 Nest Labs, 158 “netcode” solutions, 81–82 NetEase, 19–20 Netflix, 19, 49–53, 96, 100, 111, 187, 194, 196–98, 244, 270, 276n Netherlands, 203 Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive, 74 networking, 71–88, 85 acceptability thresholds in, 80–81 bandwidth and, 27, 41, 48–51, 64, 72–79, 80, 96, 100, 305 broadband operators, 15–16, 38, 49, 271 fiber optic networks, 27, 84, 87, 128 4G networks, 81, 87, 244, 245, 249 5G networks, 87, 243 the internet as a “network of networks,” 16, 23–24, 62 latency and, 27, 48–53, 64, 79–88, 95–96, 99–100, 230, 243, 248, 271, 305 network gateways, 130 rent-seeking and, 15, 299 3G networks, 243 undersea cables, 84–85, 85 Neuralink, 154 Neuromancer, 5–6, 8 Newsweek, 308 New World, 277 New York Times, xv, 4–5, 73, 224, 256 as an app, 149, 185, 194, 196, 202 Live Election feed, 49 Nexon, 105 NextVR, 144 Niantic, 115, 144, 275 Nike, 121, 139, 189–90, 208, 248, 264 Nintendo, 11, 104, 151–52, 173, 303 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), 32, 173 Nintendo Switch, 30–32, 75, 97, 134, 174–76 Nintendo Wii, 132 Nokia, 136–37 non-fungible tokens (NFTs), 140, 216–22 avatars and identity, 218, 229, 293–94 fractionalization into fungible tokens/shares, 202 marketplaces, 202, 301 “minting” in, 217 speculation, 128, 220, 231 as useless, 220 nonprofit organizations, 227, 231 Nouns DAO, 229 Nuance Communication, 212 Nvidia, xii, 66, 97–98, 282 Android and, 213 GeForce Now, 131, 282, 286 market capitalization of, 166 NVM software development kit, 175 Omniverse, 136–37, 282 see also graphics processing units (GPUs); Huang, Jensen Nye, David, 242 “Oasis, The,” 22, 289 OBJ file format, 299 occlusion, 97 Oculus VR, xi, 21, 57, 143, 153, 160, 274, 276 Horizon Worlds, 115, 204, 277 Oculus Quest 2, 143, 145–47, 161–62 Population: One, 146–47, 268 Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), ix–x OKCupid, 19, 261 Omniverse from Nvidia, 136–37, 282 OnLive!

…

See also PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG); Samsung Spaces, 144 SpaceX, xi, 4, 87 Spinal Fusion Laboratory, 268 Spotify, 96, 184–85, 196–98, 244, 255, 308 Square, 172, 187, 210, 299 Square Enix, 106, 303 standards and protocols file formats, 39, 41, 121–24, 123, 136, 299 OBJ file format, 299 open standards, 14, 17, 38 OpenGL, 175, 176 open-source, 15, 136, 175, 212–13, 231–33, 287 OpenXR, 193, 287–88 proprietary, 15, 35 “Protocol Wars,” 42, 62, 129 3D standards and exchanges, 135–40, 248 Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) standard, 240 see also Border Gateway Protocol (BGP); Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) Starlink satellite internet, 87 start-ups, 14, 17 acquisitions of, xiii, 141, 144 decentralization and, 214, 283 investments in, 190, 201 regionalization of the internet and, 302 see also CTRL-labs Star Wars, 8, 119, 139, 257–59 Steam, 67, 107–8, 177–82 ban on blockchain games, 234 “most favored nations” (MFN) clauses, 180–81, 183 real-time gaming chat in, 67 Steamworks, 108, 178, 180–81 Stephenson, Neal Cryptonomicon, 101n Diamond Age, The, 255n Snow Crash, 3–5, 8, 21–22, 43, 46–47, 66, 68, 305 Stimson, Henry L., x Stoll, Clifford, 308 Strategic Development Partners, 266 streaming, 77, 192, 132, 187n, 280.

Vassal State
by Angus Hanton
Published 25 Mar 2024

The Apollo space missions and the myriad inventions which NASA conceived and supported were not funded by private enterprise, even though many of these have been developed further by private capital. This backing includes funding the launch of 4,000 satellites by SpaceX, where even now state support continues: SpaceX has received $15 billion in US government contracts since 2003, and through Starlink has enabled worldwide internet access.5 3. Invest in people Thirdly, the British should protect their people and invest in them. By contrast, the US invests heavily in its citizens, including new arrivals. US immigrants are more likely to gain degrees than those in other OECD countries, and the US is a world leader in adult education.

…

The Financial Times has been a close follower of the exploits of US private equity in Britain, with implicit warnings contained in articles by Daniel Thomas, Peggy Hollinger, Harriet Agnew and Kaye Wiggins. And Stephen Glover (the Daily Mail) has asked the essential question about what happens when critical authority over strategic assets is placed into the hands of billionaire tech titans – as is the case with Elon Musk’s Starlink internet provision in Ukraine. What’s striking is that the concerns about US economic power over the UK and the world cut right across many domestic political differences. The rest of us can see the outlines of the problem: our high streets and small businesses are under pressure, crushed by slick, US-dominated online competition and a tax regime which makes far greater claims on domestic businesses than on US corporations.

…

Ronald Steel (New York: Atheneum, 1968). 2 Joanna Partridge, ‘UK arm of EDF returns to profit as household electricity prices soar’, Guardian (17 February 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/17/uk-arm-of-edf-returns-to-profit-as-household-electricity-prices-soar. 3 Quoted in Leila Abboud, ‘France’s state-backed BPI raises “lake of cash” for stakes in domestic companies’, Financial Times (26 May 2020), https://www.ft.com/content/e66fb49d-1ab9-4442-8677-3d283bb5de60. 4 ‘Gross domestic spending on R&D’, OECD [website], https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm. 5 Noor Al-Sibai, ‘It turns out SpaceX and Tesla get way more government money than NPR’, Futurism [website] (15 April 2023), https://futurism.com/the-byte/spacex-tesla-government-money-npr. 6 John B. Horrigan, ‘Lifelong learning and technology’, Pew Research Center [website] (22 March 2016), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/03/22/lifelong-learning-and-technology/. 7 Omri Wallach, ‘The top 100 companies of the world: the U.S. vs everyone else’, Visual Capitalist [website] (19 July 2021), https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-top-100-companies-of-the-world-the-u-s-vs-everyone-else/. 8 ‘Ownership of UK quoted shares: 2020’, Office for National Statistics [website] (3 March 2022), https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/investmentspensionsandtrusts/bulletins/ownershipofukquotedshares/2020. 9 See especially Figure 3 in Mike Brewer and Tom Wernham, ‘Income and wealth inequality explained in 5 charts’, Institute for Fiscal Studies [website] (9 November 2022), https://ifs.org.uk/articles/income-and-wealth-inequality-explained-5-charts. 10 18.6 per cent of people in Britain and 15.4 per cent of people in Poland are below the poverty line, according to CIA statistics.

Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire
by Brad Stone
Published 10 May 2021

Just as he had nurtured the projects that became Alexa and the Amazon Go stores, he helped to develop Project Kuiper, an ambitious plan to launch satellites that would provide high-speed internet connectivity to people around the world. Amazon’s $10 billion project directly challenged the Starlink satellite system already deployed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The two companies battled before regulators over portions of the radio spectrum and lower Earth altitudes where signals are strongest; once again, it pitted two of the wealthiest people in the world against each other in another high-profile competition. Similarly, Bezos continued to oversee Amazon’s play in the roughly $4 trillion U.S. healthcare market.

…

Heyman Spirit of Service Award, 343 Samsung, 38, 77 Sanchez, Eleanor, 325–27, 346–47 Sanchez, Lauren, 136, 310, 325–28, 382, 383, 403, 405 Bezos’s meeting of, 326 Bezos’s relationship with, 17, 283, 318–19, 321–22, 324, 326–28, 344–47 marriage to Whitesell, 136, 325–28 National Enquirer story on Bezos’s relationship with, 17, 319, 328–42, 344 Sanchez, Michael, 325–30, 332–36, 338, 340, 342, 345–58 Sanchez, Paul, 325–26 Sanchez, Ray, 325 Sandberg, Sheryl, 251 Sanders, Bernie, 355, 356 SAP America, 360 satellites, 404 Saudi Arabia, 17, 321, 340, 342–45, 347 Saunders, Paul, 372–73, 376 Sawant, Kshama, 291–92, 303 Schmidt, Eric, 88, 193 Schoettler, John, 290, 299, 303, 304, 312 Schultz, Howard, 6 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 328 Scott, MacKenzie (formerly Bezos), 5, 12, 15–17, 22, 41, 124, 136, 143, 144, 154, 180, 244, 245, 269, 322–25 Bystander Revolution and, 323–24, 346 divorce of, 16–17, 318–21, 334, 345, 346, 349 divorce settlement of, 346 Giving Pledge and, 346 name change of, 346 philanthropy of, 323–24, 346, 402–3 Traps, 64 remarriage of, 403 Seattle, Wash., 289–95, 303–5 Amazon headquarters in, see Amazon headquarters in Seattle Bellevue, 304, 305 Employee Hours Tax in, 303–5 Seattle Times, 290 SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), 7 September 11 terrorist attacks, 117 Sequoia, 192 Service Merchandise, 214 Seymour, Greg, 276 Shanghai Snow, 153 Shark Tank, 170, 374 Shimmer, 22–23 Shopify, 378 Shotwell, Gwynne, 265, 282 Showtime, 140 Shriver, Maria, 136 Silicon Valley, 6, 22, 48, 96, 98, 111, 129, 187, 234, 252, 253, 290, 295 see also big tech companies Simons, Joseph, 366 Simpson, Andrea, 329–30, 332, 338 Singer, Marty, 334, 337–39 Siri, 26, 27, 30, 32, 34 Sirosh, Joseph, 54 60 Minutes, 233, 397 SKDK, 311, 314 Skyfall, 252 Slifka, Janet, 42 Smalls, Chris, 394–95, 397 Smart, Bradford, 111 Smart & Final, 192 smartphones, 38–41, 77, 92 Fire Phone, 2, 13, 15, 22, 33, 38–42, 45, 46, 58, 70, 95, 189, 382 iPhone, see iPhone smart speakers, 50 Echo, see Amazon Echo Google Home, 50 Smith, Bob, 265–66, 280, 281 Smith, Fred, 227, 235, 242 Smith, Ryan, 296 Smithsonian Institution, 1–3, 382 Smugmug, 96 Snapchat, 103 Soderstrom, Tom, 96 Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques, 392 Soloway, Joey, 143, 144 Son, Masayoshi (“Masa”), 90 Sony Pictures, 252 Souq.com, 343–44 Sowers, George, 279 So You Think You Can Dance, 326 Space Flight Award, 277 SpaceNews, 272 Space Symposium, 278, 279 SpaceX, 264–65, 268–69, 270–74, 277, 278, 280, 282–83, 404 Falcon rockets of, 264–65, 278 Spacey, Kevin, 153 Spain, 71, 80, 81 speakers, 50 Echo, see Amazon Echo Google Home, 50 speech, computer-synthesized, 28–29 speech recognition, 28, 36, 55 in Alexa, 28, 33, 36, 37 Spheres, 150–51, 288, 289, 327, 381 Spiker, 28 Sprouts Farmers Market, 197 stack ranking, 110–12, 114, 219 Stahl, Lesley, 397 Starbucks, 6, 305 Starlink, 404 Star Trek, 23, 30–31, 35, 274 Stephenson, Dave, 246–48 Stephenson, Neal, 267 Stone, Roger, 336 Stonesifer, Patty, 403–4 “Stop BEZOS” bill, 355 Stracher, Cameron, 332, 339 Streisand, Barbra, 325 Streitfeld, David, 109–10 Stringer, Tom, 311 Sullivan, Holly, 235, 298–300, 308, 311–13, 316 SummitLA conference, 322 Sunrise Telecom, 92 Super Bowl, 48, 131, 283, 347 supermarkets, see grocery business Susi, Steve, 252 Sutton, Nate, 202, 368–69 Szulczewski, Peter, 171, 172 Tal Yguado, Sharon, 149 Tambor, Jeffrey, 143, 144, 153 Taobao, 72 Target, 158, 192, 216, 231–32, 242, 363, 373, 378 taxes Amazon and, 117–18, 291, 301, 303, 335, 351, 354–57, 364 Employee Hours Tax, 303–5 income, 291–92, 303 sales, 11, 213, 250 Taylor, Mitchell, 310 Taylor, Tom, 51, 166, 167 Teamsters, 216–17, 242 techlash, 290, 305, 349–53, 364, 380 see also big tech companies Telesat, 279 Tencent, 88 Tesco, 190 Tesla, 235–36, 264, 282, 283, 294 Gigafactories, 73, 236, 293, 299, 315 text to speech (TTS), 28 Thiel, Peter, 360 Thimsen, John, 26, 35 Thompson, Ben, 103–4 Thompson, Bernie, 176–77, 375–76 Thomson, James, 377 Thornton, Billy Bob, 149–50 Thunberg, Greta, 381 Time, 6, 331, 345 Time Warner Cable, 140 Tmall, 72, 379 T-Mobile, 252 Tolkien, J.

…

“Not the outcome any of us wanted”: Jeff Bezos, “Successful Short Hop, Setback, and Next Vehicle,” Blue Origin, September 2, 2011, https://www.blueorigin.com/news/successful-short-hop-setback-and-next-vehicle (January 24, 2021). SpaceX won the contract: Jeff Fouse, “NASA Selects Boeing and SpaceX for Commercial Crew Contracts,” SpaceNews, September 16, 2014, https://spacenews.com/41891nasa-selects-boeing-and-spacex-for-commercial-crew-contracts/ (January 24, 2021). $7.7 billion for the project: Nasa Office of Inspector General, “Audit of Commercial Resupply Services to the International Space Station,” Report No. IG-18-016, April 26, 2018, pg. 4, https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-18-016.pdf (January 24, 2021). sending unmanned spacecraft: Jonathan Amos, “SpaceX Lifts Off with ISS cargo,” BBC, October 8, 2012, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-19867358 (January 24, 2021).

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power
by Jacob Helberg
Published 11 Oct 2021

Internet Infrastructure,” Smithsonian Magazine, September 23, 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/first-detailed-public-map-us-internet-infrastructure-180956701/. 79 Winston Qiu, “China-Myanmar International (CMI) Terrestrial Cable Launches for Service,” Submarine Cable Networks, November 15, 2014, https://www.submarinenetworks.com/news/china-myanmar-international-cmi-terrestrial-cable-launches-for-service. 80 “Terrestrial Cable Resource,” China Mobile International, https://www.cmi.chinamobile.com/en/terrestrial-cable. 81 Ibid. 82 Kitson and Liew, “China Doubles Down on Its Digital Silk Road.” 83 Tom Stroup, “Comments of the Satellite Industry Association,” Federal Communications Commission, December 6, 2019, https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/12062609405024/SIA%20Regulatory%20Fees%20FNPRM%20Comments%20with%20attachment%206%20Dec%202019%20(002).pdf. 84 Mariella Moon, “SpaceX is requesting permission to launch 30,000 more Starlink satellites,” Yahoo! Money, October 16, 2019, https://money.yahoo.com/2019-10-16-spacex-30-000-starlink-satellites.html. 85 Jose Del Rosario, “NSR Reports China’s Ambitious Constellation of 300 Small Satellites in LEO,” Satnews, March 8, 2018, http://www.satnews.com/story.php?number=257303683. 86 Ben Westcott, “China’s GPS rival Beidou is now fully operational after final satellite launched,” CNN, June 24, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/24/tech/china-beidou-satellite-gps-intl-hnk/index.html. 87 Trefor Moss, “China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ Takes to Space,” Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2016, https://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/12/28/chinas-one-belt-one-road-takes-to-space/. 88 Westcott, “China’s GPS rival Beidou is now fully operational after final satellite launched.” 89 Jiang Jie, “Nation considers space-based ‘Silk Road of satellites’ to provide data services,” Global Times, May 31, 2015, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/924600.shtml. 90 “AIMS Data Centre,” Data Center Map, February 2, 2009, https://www.datacentermap.com/malaysia/kuala-lumpur/aims-data-centre_connectivity.html. 91 Prachi Bhardwaj, “Fiber optic wires, servers, and more than 550,000 miles of underwater cables: Here’s what the internet actually looks like,” Business Insider, June 23, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/how-internet-works-infrastructure-photos-2018-5#as-it-travels-any-information-transferred-over-the-web-arrives-at-internet-data-servers-which-live-in-data-centers-around-the-world-in-2008-an-estimated-95-trillion-gigabytes-passed-in-and-out-of-the-worlds-servers-but-more-on-those-later-2. 92 Brady Gavin, “How Big Are Gigabytes, Terabytes, and Petabytes?

…

Because signals must travel about 22,000 miles into low-earth orbit and back again, the “latency”—the time it takes to transmit data—can be up to twelve times slower than fiber-optic connections. Signals can even be impacted by bad weather, a phenomenon known as “rain fade.” Satellites carry just a fraction—only 0.37 percent—of online communications,83 though that may be changing. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is in the process of launching as many as 42,000 new satellites, seeking to create a “Starlink” system of high-speed satellite Internet.84 For now, satellites prove especially useful for reaching landlocked or remote areas. Antarctica, for instance, relies entirely on satellite-based communications. Peripheral though they may be to the broader infrastructure of the Internet, Beijing is hardly ignoring these satellite systems.

A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
by Scott Weidensaul
Published 29 Mar 2021

But the fact is that sometimes conservationists feel as though they’re playing whack-a-mole, as new challenges arise just as they begin to grapple with old ones. During the course of our conversation, Farnsworth mentioned the launch, a few weeks earlier, of the first of what is expected to be 12,000 small, internet-servicing satellites from Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, a project called Starlink with the promise—or threat, depending on your perspective—of creating an artificial galaxy blanketing the sky. Astronomers went ballistic when the first of these small, brilliant objects were lofted into low-earth orbit in 2019, concerned that the eventual “mega-constellation” (as it’s been described) would interfere with their ability to study the stars, and alter the character of the natural sky to everyone, everywhere on the planet’s surface—and that was before Musk said he was seeking permission to add a further 30,000 satellites to the total.

…

Astronomers went ballistic when the first of these small, brilliant objects were lofted into low-earth orbit in 2019, concerned that the eventual “mega-constellation” (as it’s been described) would interfere with their ability to study the stars, and alter the character of the natural sky to everyone, everywhere on the planet’s surface—and that was before Musk said he was seeking permission to add a further 30,000 satellites to the total. The Federal Communications Commission, which approved Starlink, assured the public that SpaceX would “take all practical steps” to protect astronomy. But no one, so far as Farnsworth and I could tell, stopped to wonder what effect a “mega-constellation” would have on billions of migratory birds, already trying—with ever-diminishing success—to find their way through a night sky bleached of its darkness.

…

See also ambelopoulia on British bases, 283–84, 299–301 with lime sticks, 280, 283, 287–91, 302, 307–9 with mist nets, 279, 280, 283, 287, 288, 290, 302, 303–5, 306, 308–9 South Georgia Island, 275–76 South Korea, loss of wetlands in, 41–42 SpaceX, 146 sparrows Baird’s, 194 white-throated, 72 spatial awareness, and hippocampus, 82–83 species complexes, 267–69 spoon-billed sandpipers, 31–35 conservation actions, 50–51, 57–58, 61 hunting of, 33, 293 map of breeding and wintering ranges, 56 Tiaozini mudflats and, 55, 56–58 squirrels, ground lead poisoning from scavenging of, 238n as prey for raptors, 238, 239, 241 Sreenivasan, Ramki, 324 staging sites, 27n Starlink, 146 Stenhouse, Iain, 2, 6, 7, 10–11, 341, 344–45 stints, red-necked, 26–27, 31, 37, 39, 52, 54 St.

Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History
by Ben Mezrich
Published 6 Nov 2023

Enough Raptor 2 engines in parallel could lift a rocket with an immense payload into orbit, hurl it 33.9 million miles across the darkness of space, and then back again, to be reused over and over. That was why SpaceX was already pumping out Raptor 2s at a breakneck pace: one a day, seven days a week. Elon would have passed through the shadows of a pair of huge satellite dishes. These were components of the Starlink system, an offshoot of SpaceX’s mission to colonize the solar system: a network of low-orbit satellites that could provide seamless internet to anyone on Earth. He approached a low-slung building with the word STARGATE running up the side in bright red lettering, another kitschy nod toward Hollywood science fiction, but to Elon a fitting label for the central building that housed engineering labs, teaching facilities, and his Command Center’s mission control.

…

In fact, the world’s media would have a very different reaction, as evidenced by the screaming headlines that would soon dominate mass media. AP News would breathlessly report: “SpaceX giant rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas.” CNBC would shout: “Starship rocket launches in historic test but explodes mid-flight.” The New York Times would tweet: “SpaceX’s Starship rocket launched but fell short of its most ambitious goals when it exploded minutes into its flight.” The Washington Post would exclaim: “Four minutes till failure: Watch SpaceX’s Starship come apart in flight.” And the BBC would report: “Musk’s SpaceX big rocket explodes on test flight.” All the headlines would be factually correct, but there were facts, and then there was the Truth.

…

In Elon’s point of view, because of this, humanity had but one choice to ensure survival: become interplanetary. SpaceX existed because Elon believed that for the first time in human history, humanity had achieved a level of economic security and technological advancement that made interplanetary life possible. A window was open, but there was no way of knowing how long that window would remain open. Already, what Elon and his engineers at SpaceX had achieved in pushing humankind toward the stars was nothing short of incredible. SpaceX was the first company to privately develop a liquid-propellant rocket that could reach orbit; the first to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station; the first to land a booster vertically, then reuse that booster in a later spaceflight; and SpaceX was the first private company to send astronauts into orbit, then to the ISS.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman
Published 4 Sep 2023

A ragtag volunteer band of drone hobbyists, software engineers, management consultants, and soldiers, they were amateurs, designing, building, and modifying their own drones in real time, much like a start-up. A lot of their equipment was crowdsourced and crowdfunded. The Ukrainian resistance made good use of coming-wave technologies and demonstrated how they can undermine a conventional military calculus. Cutting-edge satellite internet from SpaceX’s Starlink was integral to maintaining connectivity. A thousand-strong group of nonmilitary elite programmers and computer scientists banded together in an organization called Delta to bring advanced AI and robotics capabilities to the army, using machine learning to identify targets, monitor Russian tactics, and even suggest strategies.

…

Robert, 140 optimization problems, 98 organizational limitations, 148–50, 228 Orwell, George, 196 Otto, Nicolaus August, 23 Ottoman Empire, 38, 40 P Pakistan, 45 PaLM, 66, 68 pandemics, 205, 209, 243, 273–74 See also COVID-19 pandemic Pan Jianwei, 122–23 Paris Agreement, 45, 46, 263 Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963), 42–43 Partnership on AI, 246 patent system, 127 pathogens containment and, 273–74 gain-of-function (GOF) research, 175–77 lab leaks, 173–75, 176 PayPal, 188–89 peer review, 128 Pelosi, Nancy, 170 Perez, Carlota, 29, 132 pessimism aversion, viii, 13–14, 102, 236, 253 petrochemical industry, 87 Phantom camera quadcopter, 106 phishing, 171 phonograph, 35 physical self-modifications, 86, 200 Pi, 243 Plague of Justinian, 205 Plato, 5 PlayStation 2, 110–11 polio vaccine, 263 political polarization, 155 popular movements, 271–72 population size crisis of, 219–20 technology waves and, 27–28 populism, 153 post-sovereign world authoritarianism and, 185, 191–92 contradictions and, 202–4 corporations and, 186–89 decentralization and, 198–99, 200–202 dematerialization and, 189 democracies and, 185 ethnic cleansing and, 195 hybrid entities and, 196–97 power and, 184–85 surveillance and, 193–96, 206 power, 102 contradictions and, 202 nation-state fragility amplifiers and, 163–64 omni-use technology and, 182 post-sovereign world and, 184–85 power loom, 282–83 printing, 30, 35, 38–39, 40, 157 profit motive, 131–36 containment and, 254–58 proliferation, 30–31, 32–34 AI and, 68–69 inevitability of, 40–41, 47 protein folds, 88–90 Proteus, 94 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons (1995), 263 public benefit corporations, 258 Putin, Vladimir, 125 Q quantum computing, 97–99, 109, 114, 122 R R&D spending, 129, 134, 259 racism, 69, 239–40 radio, 157 railways, 23, 131–32 ransomware, 160–62 Reagan, Ronald, 201 Rebellion Defense, 166 red teaming, 246 Reformation, 35 regenerative technologies, 85 regulation as method for containment, 225–26 challenges of, 226–27, 229–30 legislation and, 260 licensing and, 261 nation-states and, 230–31 necessity of, 277 self-critical culture and, 269 reinforcement learning, 95, 117, 166–67, 240 See also machine learning Remotec Andros Mark 5A-1 robot, 97–98 Renaissance, 201 renewable energy, 100–101 Restrepo, Pascual, 179 revenge effects, 36, 176, 177 Ring, 227 RNA editing, 82 Robinson, James, 276, 278 robotics, 93–97 Chinese development of, 122 military applications, 165–66 profit motive and, 134–35 synthetic biology and, 109 Rogers, Everett, 56–57 Rotblat, Joseph, 270 Russell, Stuart, 115, 244 Russian flu epidemic, 173–74 Russian invasion of Ukraine, 44, 103–4 Rutherford, Ernest, 41 S Samsung Group, 188 Sanofi, 110 SARS, 174–75 scaling hypothesis, 67–68, 75 Schneier, Bruce, 167 Schumpeter, Joseph, 29 Scientific Revolution, 35, 127 SecureDNA, 247, 265 self-driving vehicles, 113 semiconductors, 32, 84, 249–50 SenseTime, 194 Shield AI, 166 silk, 41 Singer, Isaac, 133 Singularity, 74 See also superintelligence smartphones, 33, 60, 112, 187 Smil, Vaclav, 138 Snowden, Edward, 122 social media contradictions and, 202 disinformation and, 172 nation-states and, 155, 156 openness imperative and, 128 organizational efficiency and, 150 solar energy, 100, 198 Solugen, 86 South Korea, 188 Soviet Union, 171–72, 192 space debris, 36 space travel, 122 SpaceX, 104 Sparrow, 95 speed. See hyper-evolution Sputnik, 119–20, 126 Stability AI, 199 Stable Diffusion, 69 stagnation, 217–21 Starlink, 104 start-up myth, 141 steam engine, 23, 131 Stephenson, George, 131 stirrup, 183–84 stone tools, 26 superintelligence, 74–75, 77, 115 surveillance audits and, 248 dystopia and, 215–17 post-sovereign world and, 193–96, 206 regulation and, 228 resistance to, 277–78 Sutskever, Ilya, 59 swarming robots, 95–96 Switch Transformer, 68 Sycamore, 122 synthetic biology AI and, 89–90, 109 audits and, 247–48 catastrophe scenarios and, 208–9 computers and, 87–88 current applications, 84–85 decentralization and, 200 deep learning and, 90–91 defined, viii dematerialization and, 190 development of, 55 international cooperation and, 265–66 omni-use technology and, 112 potential of, 85–87 power of, 56 profit motive and, 134 research unpredictability and, 129–30 See also coming wave; gene editing synthetic media, 169–71, 172–73 Synthia, 84 systems biology, 85 Szilard, Leo, 41 T taxation, 261–62 technological unemployment, 177–81, 261, 262, 282 technology defined, viii, 26 failures of, 18 interrelated nature of, 56–57 societal dependence on, 218–19 as symbiotic with nation-states, 156–58 ubiquity of, 235–36 unintended consequences of, 35–36 See also coming wave technology characteristics; specific technologies technology cost decreases AI and, 64, 68 computing, 108 containment and, 39, 43, 233–34 genetic engineering, 80, 81, 83, 84 genome sequencing, 81 power and, 102 proliferation and, 31 robotics, 95, 96 technology waves, 6, 16, 25–26 acceleration of, 28–29, 92 diffusion and, 30–31 evolution and, 26–27 inevitability of, 29, 47 invisibility of, 27, 73 material and, 54–55 proliferation and, 32–34 resignation to, 47 unpredictability of, 29 urbanization and, 27–28 telephone, 31 television, 157 terrorism, 44–45, 160–62, 207, 212–13 Thiel, Peter, 201 3-D printing (additive manufacturing), 96, 109, 166, 190 Tilly, Charles, 157 Tiwari, Manoj, 169–70 Toffler, Alvin, 29 tokens, 63 totalitarianism.

How to Spend a Trillion Dollars
by Rowan Hooper
Published 15 Jan 2020

As we’ve seen, telescopes off-planet are better, because they are free of interference from Earth’s atmosphere. There is the atmosphere itself, then there are the radio waves that fill it from all our transmissions and TV shows and mobile phones, but then there are the soon-to-be-thousands of new satellites going into orbit. SpaceX is building the Starlink satellite constellation, a network of tens of thousands of small satellites launched into low orbit to provide internet access from space. (Some scientists are worried that they could ruin astronomy from Earth.) For all these reasons, we need to get into space, and we’ll sign off on optical and radio telescopes for the Moon.

…

Musk had that first flight carry a payload containing a red Tesla roadster with the roof down, a ‘Starman’ mannequin behind the driving wheel and the David Bowie song playing on the car stereo. The mannequin was positioned with one hand on the wheel, the other arm resting on the door. Some people were angry with what they saw as macho and patriarchal imagery and the same old middle-aged, rich, white, male-dominated agenda. The CEO of SpaceX is a woman, Gwynne Shotwell, but it didn’t help that the crowds cheering in the SpaceX launch control centre were almost entirely white men. Nor does it help that Musk likes to talk about establishing colonies on Mars, and ‘conquering’ the Moon. The language is inflammatory to some because it recalls the evils of imperial colonisation and slavery.

…

Police departments in the US, for example, are starting to use Teslas because they are more efficient and cheaper to run than petrol/diesel models (and have better acceleration). Electric cars get a lot of publicity, especially when they get launched into orbit round the Sun as part of a tie-in with a sibling company (as happened when SpaceX launched Tesla), but currently make up only a tiny proportion of the 1.2 billion personal vehicles in use. While we start to get petrol-based cars off the road, we need to improve their efficiency; we also need to increasingly switch to electric vehicles for personal use and especially buses and trucks.

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next
by Jeanette Winterson
Published 15 Mar 2021

Others are for mutual co-operation, such as telecoms, and the global GPS system that tells you (and others) where you are. TV and phone signals depend on our satellite network; signals are sent upwards to a satellite, and instantly relocated back down to earth again. This avoids annoying signal-blockers, like mountains, and saves thousands of miles of land-routed cable network. * * * Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme, Starlink, controls more than 25% of all satellites in space, and he is seeking permission to get 12,000 up there by 2025, and eventually 42,000. There are risks to all this, including light pollution and energy guzzling. As with so much of tech, most of us just don’t know what is going on, and by the time we find out it will be too late to regulate.