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The ongoing dispute between wireless carriers and the aviation industry heated up over the holidays, with AT&T and Verizon on Sunday refusing a request from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to delay their planned 5G deployments.

Why it matters: The Federal Aviation Administration has warned that potential interference from 5G signals, especially in bad weather, could cause flight cancellations or force planes to divert to different airports.

Instead of further postponing their 5G plans for a second time, the wireless providers offered to beef up protections around airports to address concerns about potential signal interference with aircraft equipment.

It looks like Elon is putting more of his money into SpaceX. This makes sense as he has tons of money and SpaceX seems to have more growth potential than Tesla because his Starlink and Starship will both be very hard for other companies to compete against. (Just the amount of capital it would take to make competing products is staggering.)

I’m not saying that Tesla won’t be worth $10 trillion one day, I’m just saying SpaceX has more growth potential. Elon seems to agree.

What’s Elon Musk doing with the billions he’s collected in the past two months from selling shares in Tesla?

Continue reading “The curious story of Elon Musk’s Tesla stock sales and SpaceX’s fundraising” »

The U.S. and China are vying to control the world’s digital infrastructure, and the new “Peace Cable” has Europe caught in the middle.

AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. rejected a U.S. request to delay this week’s launch of a new variation of 5G mobile service that airlines said might interfere with aircraft electronics, posing a safety hazard.

SpaceX drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) departed Port Canaveral on January 1st, heading to sea on the first day of the year for SpaceX’s first launch of 2022.

With a launch manifest that’s never been more jam-packed and seemingly achievable, it’s no surprise that SpaceX is wasting no time kicking off what could be its third record-breaking year in a row. Barring delays, drone ship ASOG will arrive about 640 km (400 mi) downrange at its recovery site – just northeast of the Bahamas – a day or two before Falcon 9’s first launch and landing attempt of the year. Known as Starlink 4–5 (Group 4 Launch 5) and scheduled to lift off no earlier than (NET) 4:49 pm EST (21:49 UTC), Thursday, January 6th, it will be SpaceX’s 34th dedicated Starlink launch since May 2019.

Perhaps more importantly, if the mission goes to plan and doesn’t have rideshare payloads, SpaceX will start 2022 having just launched its 1997th Starlink satellite, including two prototypes that came to be known as Tintin A and B and kicked off the constellation’s in-space hardware testing phase in February 2018. Excluding all prototypes, Starlink 4–5 will mark the launch of more than 1900 (1922) nominally operational Starlink satellites.

US authorities asked major telecoms operators to hold off on their planned rollout of 5G networks for a second time, after aerospace giants Airbus and Boeing voiced worries about potential interference. US requests delay on 5G rollout amid air traffic concerns.

The rollout and delay represent financial problems for two key US industries.

The telecom operators that paid billions for frequency licenses are eager to launch the commercial use of the 5G technology.

Continue reading “US requests delay on 5G rollout amid air traffic concerns” »

This year, billionaire CEO Elon Musk reached several milestones across Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. WSJ reporters Rebecca Elliott and Micah Maidenberg break down some of his biggest moments in 2021 and what’s to come in 2022. Illustration: Tom Grillo.

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In a recent interview, Elon Musk rejected the claims about Starlink satellites crowding the space.

Couple of days ago, China complained to the UN that their space station had two close encounters with Starlink satellites and for safety reasons they implemented preventive collision avoidance control. China’s complain stated that the first incident occurred on 1st July and the second one was on 21st October 2021.

For your information, Starlink is the satellite internet constellation started by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and it aims to provide low cost high speed broadband internet service in every corner of the world, especially in rural places where cell services are not that advance. Currently there are over 1200+ Starlink satellites in space.

An echo chamber is an infinity of mirrors. Photo: Robert Brook via Getty Images

“One way the internet distorts our picture of ourselves is by feeding the human tendency to overestimate our knowledge of how the world works,” writes philosophy professor Michael Patrick Lynch, author of the book The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data, in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “The Internet of Us becomes one big reinforcement mechanism, getting us all the information we are already biased to believe, and encouraging us to regard those in other bubbles as misinformed miscreants. We know it all—the internet tells us so.”