[sexobon]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

YES although it will be subject to geopolitical considerations, for example SpaceX could be bullied by USGov on behalf of any other govs.

It's long been recognized that some other countries could also directly inhibit SpaceX.

Elon Musk's plan to blanket Earth in high-speed internet may face a big threat: China

Dave Mosher Nov 21, 2016, 11:47 PM

… But as far back as January 2015, when Musk first debuted his global internet project at a new SpaceX satellite factory in Seattle, he noted how China could pose a significant hurdle for his plans.

The Chinese government would have to agree to let SpaceX build antenna dishes, or ground links, to send and receive data to and from the company's spacecraft. But that nation routes internet access for its 1.37 billion inhabitants through "the Great Firewall," a censorship technology that blocks foreign news, mentions of citizen uprisings (like the Tiananmen Square Massacre), or anything else Chinese officials don't like on the web.

"Obviously, any given country can say it's illegal to have a ground link. [...] And from our standpoint we could conceivably continue to broadcast," Musk said during the event. "I mean, I'm hopeful that we can structure agreements with various countries to allow communication with their citizens, but it is on a country-by-country basis."

So what if SpaceX continued to broadcast uncensored internet over China, despite not being given permission?

"If they get upset with us, they can blow our satellites up, which wouldn't be good," Musk said. "China can do that. So probably we shouldn't broadcast there."

Musk has good reason to fear the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China.

In January 2007, the PLA launched a "kinetic kill vehicle" — the space equivalent of a giant bullet — atop a mobile, multi-stage rocket.

The target was an old Chinese weather satellite called Feng Yun-1C (FY-1C), and the head-on collision between the two objects happened at roughly 18,000 mph (8 km per second).

It was an impressive, if frightening, demonstration that echoed the US military's anti-satellite test of October 1985. That US satellite-killing exercise blasted an old solar observatory called Solwind into more than 280 pieces.

In the case of China's 2007 anti-satellite test, however, the impact created nearly 4,000 new detectable chunks of space debris. …

.. There may also be as many as 35,000 fingernail-size bits of FY-1C debris circling the Earth which — like so many tiny bullets — even the most advanced ground radar stations can't track, according to Popular Mechanics.

In fact, despite the vast distances that separate satellites hundreds of miles above Earth, pieces of FY-1C have already destroyed a Russian satellite and nearly whacked the International Space Station. …

… So even if China doesn't exercise its satellite-killing capabilities, which it has continued to develop, SpaceX will have to confront the persistent threat of space junk smacking into its giant constellation of internet satellites — and creating even more of a danger if that happens.