Photo credits: Public domain and Steve Jurvetson (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Amazon’s Project Kuiper is sending its first satellites into space. The company’s founder and executive chair, Jeff Bezos, seems keen to challenge all things Musk—including Elon’s SpaceX Starlink system.

The satellites in Amazon’s $10 billion-plus Kuiper Atlas project are being launched with the Lockheed Martin-designed Atlas V rocket, at Cape Canaveral’s Space Force Station.

OK, a few thoughts on the matter that corporate media probably won’t contemplate.

Astronomical Funding

Fifteen years ago, Barack Obama’s White House trumpeted an increase in NASA funding. Obama said it would “help improve the daily lives of people here on Earth” and help companies produce “new means of carrying people and materials out of our atmosphere”—first to an asteroid, later to Mars. I’m just a little unclear about how, overall, sending hundreds of billions of dollars into space has been improving my daily life so far. If........

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