The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has refuted claims that his satellites are taking up too much space thereby preventing competitors from joining the satellite industry. This comes after the head of European Space Agency (ESA) claimed that Elon Musk “was making the rules” for the space industry.
China also claimed that its space station was forced to dodge possible collisions with satellites launched by Elon’s Starlink project. According to Beijing, China’s space station had two “close encounters” with Starlink satellites this year.
These incidents happened on 1 July and 21 October. This was revealed by documents submitted by China to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
“For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control,” Beijing said in the document published on the agency’s website.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, has reportedly launched into space 1,900 satellites as part of the Starlink project and there are plans for the company to launche thousands more on the future.
Elon Musk did not take those allegations lying down. He responded to the allegations of ‘’space hogging’. He said that space is big enough for many satellites.
“Tens of billions of satellites can be accommodated in orbits close to Earth” Musk told the Financial Times.
“Space is just extremely enormous, and satellites are very tiny,” Elon Musk told media during an interview.
He also responded to the allegations that his Starlink Internet Services Project was preventing the entry of competitors to satellite industry.
“This is not some situation where we’re effectively blocking others in any way. We’ve not blocked anyone from doing anything, nor do we expect to,” Elon Musk said.
“A couple of thousand satellites is nothing. It’s like, hey, here’s a couple of thousand of cars on Earth, it’s nothing,” he added.
Space scholars have said that much larger distances are needed between spacecraft to avoid any possible collisions.
Scientists have also previously raised concerns about the risks of possible collisions in space and called on governments around the world to provide information about the estimated 30,000 satellites and other space debris that are orbiting around the Earth.
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Elon Musk is worth emulating, he is a force to reckon with!