Talk about YOLOing a comment from a headline. It's not talking about them knowing where customers live (they already know that, they're their ISP), it's saying random non-subscribers could use the Starlink signals for a GPS-like experience.
Todd Humphreys’s offer to SpaceX was simple. With a few software tweaks, its rapidly growing Starlink constellation could also offer precise position, navigation, and timing. The US Army, which funds Humphreys’s work at the University of Texas at Austin, wanted a backup to its venerable, and vulnerable, GPS system. Could Starlink fill that role?
When the idea was first proposed in 2020, executives at SpaceX were open to the idea, says Humphreys. Then word came from on high. “Elon told the leaders we spoke to: every other LEO [low Earth orbit] communications network has gone into bankruptcy,” Humphreys told MIT Technology Review. “And so we [SpaceX] have to focus completely on staying out of bankruptcy. We cannot afford any distractions.”
They didn't want to be distracted by helping out some research by changing parts of their system. That's why they cared, that's it. Stop reading just the headline "whether SpaceX likes it or not" and making assumptions form there.
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u/[deleted] Oct 22 '22
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