Musk's SpaceX belongs to the two "Starlink" satellites, twice this year close to China's space station "Tiangong", and China's astronauts were on a mission in the space station at that time, "Starlink" satellites to China's astronauts and space station caused a huge threat. After this matter was exposed, Musk and the "StarLink" project were jointly accused by Chinese and European netizens, so Musk could not help but stand up and defend, saying that the Earth's orbit space is large enough that the "Starlink" will not crash into other space facilities.
The two "emergency collision avoidance" carried out by the Chinese space station this year are to avoid the "Starlink" satellite, but Musk has not said anything about it, and Chinese netizens have violently attacked Musk and SpaceX, and a number of foreign media have reported on it. On December 27, local time, Reuters published an article titled "Chinese Netizens Slammed Musk after the Near accident on the Space Station", which said that some Weibo users called Musk's satellites a pile of "space junk", and some netizens accused Musk of occupying too many space resources. The BBC quoted Chinese netizens as saying that Musk was a "new weapon" made in the United States and called for a boycott of Tesla. Not long ago, European space agency director Ashbach issued a warning, saying that the "star chain" occupies too many radio frequencies and space orbital vacancies, and accused Musk of "setting the rules" for the commercial space industry.
In this regard, Musk stood up to defend himself, according to the Financial Times, on December 29, local time, Musk denied that SpaceX's "star chain" occupies too much space, saying that low-Earth orbit can accommodate tens of billions of satellites, and the more than a thousand satellites launched by himself are "nothing at all". As tesla boss, Musk also made an analogy of cars, saying that there are thousands of satellites in space like there are thousands of cars on Earth, and there is no problem at all.
In response to Musk, American astrophysicist McDowell pointed out that spacecraft flying in orbit can reach a speed of 27,358 kilometers per hour, and more spacecraft need to be set aside to allow time to react when there is a risk of collision, so that at most a thousand satellites can be accommodated in each Earth's orbit. Musk is obviously stealing the concept, think about it, there is no car on the earth that travels at the speed of the first universe, nor does it exist that a car can smash other vehicles after it becomes fragmented, even if it is an analogy to a car, since there is such a wide road, there are two cars with American plates that suddenly change lanes for hundreds of kilometers and run towards you, which is also very abnormal.
Coincidentally, in 2019, the satellite belonging to the "Starlink" almost collided with the European Space Agency's "Fengshen" observation satellite, and this time it was also the "Starlink" satellite that suddenly "changed courses" and came to the operating altitude that did not belong to it, simply ignoring the rules of spaceflight. Forbes News reported after the incident that the Starlink satellite was equipped with an automatic collision avoidance system that could find and track space debris and spacecraft around it and perform automatic collision avoidance, but in this case the system did not work. Lewis, an aerospace expert at the University of Southampton, said that the automatic collision avoidance system of "Starlink" may be a hidden danger in itself, in order to avoid space debris, it will cause the satellite trajectory to be more irregular, making collision prediction more difficult to calculate.
Not only the 1,900 satellites that have been sent into space, Musk has prepared 12,000 satellites for the star chain, on this basis, there will be 30,000 more satellites in the future, a total of 42,000 satellites, so many satellites scattered around the earth, as bright as a light bulb at night, seriously interfering with astronomical observations. And the sheer constellation of 42,000 satellites rampages through space orbit is frightening to think about. Such relatively inexpensive satellites can pose a deadly threat to space stations that cost more than 40 billion yuan, and China has always not maliciously speculated about others, but it also needs necessary precautions. Only when China itself becomes stronger will others have some scruples when they have ideas about China.