It’s been a game of cat and mouse between regional governments around the world and people wanting to keep information flowing and free from restrictions and censorship imposed by local authorities. The web is proving to be something that governments do not fully or properly understand as they seemingly bend to the will of large corporations who lobby them and “donate” to the major political parties to look after their interests.
“Hacktivists” are people rallying the cause against internet censorship and they have turned their attention not just to the skies but to space.
Space itself is not controlled by a single government (and I suspect if you go out far enough no one actually controls or owns it, at least not in our solar system). This would provide effective means to bypass restrictions imposed by local bureaucracies. However, this appears to be problematic with the initial solution to create space-based internet of launching satellites that would orbit the earth but not in geostationary orbit (i.e. remaining in the same place in the sky relative to a position on the planet). This is even before you consider trying to get a connection from the internet to these satellites.
That said, there is a German aerospace project code-named “Constellation” looking to address this problem by creating a device that would locate and track moving satellites in the sky, a bit like a “reverse-GPS”. Whether or not the overall concept itself will work remains to be seen but I reckon it’s good to have movements looking to keep one step ahead of the self-serving governments that are losing touch with the regular person.
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