Billionaire-backed space companies like Blue Origin say their goal is to make life better on Earth. Here's what they're not talking about.

As Musk’s SpaceX, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and other companies expand into space, they risk causing more problems for Earth in the process: air pollution, climate effects, and light pollution. The practice of downplaying these negative consequences while trumpeting the message that space operations can make life better on Earth has a new name: “starwashing,” a term the space researcher Melissa E. Yingling helped popularize in an article published in The Conversation earlier this month.

It’s a play on the term “greenwashing,” used to critique companies that highlight small sustainable investments to divert attention from the pollution their businesses cause. Space companies are appealing to a sense of “cosmic wonder” and making promises to benefit humankind, along with promoting their environmental bona fides, Yingling wrote.

  • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    11 hours ago

    I think without him and tesla (especially the supercharger network), the EV market would be significantly behind where it is now. Granted that isn’t anything to do with space, just answering your question as written.

      • CosmoNova@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 hour ago

        The biggest problem with Starlink is that most people who have it should really have access to fiber. Starlink just really exposes the shortcomings of our terribly handled infrastructure. Of course satellite internet servers other purposes too but it really annoys me how otherwise fairly developed places have so shitty internet that they need freaking satellite to get a more reliable connection. It would be far cheaper for everyone to just massively expand fiber like everywhere in the European Union for example.

        Of course there are also the SpaceX launch sites that devastate communities and environments in ways that are absolutely unacceptable but I digress.