The Chinese government smacks of SpaceX as well as the United States government. The reason was an incident where the Starlink satellite almost hit the Chinese space station. What does Elon Musk say about this?
SpaceX is passionate about flying many Starlink satellites to provide internet access from space. Well, the Chinese authorities apparently complained to the United Nations that there were two near-collision conditions between the satellite and its space station.
"For security reasons, the China Space Station implemented controls to prevent collisions," China said. The events took place on July 1 and October 21 this year.
"The US has neglected its obligations under international treaties, posing a serious threat to the lives and safety of astronauts," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.
Netizens also spilled their frustration on Weibo social media. Some call the Starlink satellites just space junk and useless, even dangerous. Some even accused him of being the United States' space weapon.
"The risk from Starlink is slowly opening wide, all of humanity will pay for their business activities," wrote one disappointed netizen.
In his statement, Elon Musk said that outer space is so vast that he refuses if the thousands of Starlink satellites currently in space take up too much space.
In fact, according to him, tens of billions of satellites fit in Earth's orbit. "Space is very, very large and satellites are very small," Musk said.
"This isn't a situation where we effectively block the other party. We don't block anyone from doing anything, nor do we expect it to. Those few thousand satellites are nothing. That's like a few thousand cars on Earth, nothing, said Elon Musk.
