Surfers in China attacked billionaire Elon Musk, founder of Spice X and Tesla, after authorities filed an unusual complaint against him at the UN, claiming that his satellites endangered their space station, which had to perform evasion maneuvers for fear of being hit.
According to a complaint lodged by the Chinese with the United Nations Office on Outer Space, the space station operated “anti-collision control” after two “close encounters” with SpiceX’s Starlink satellites, which took place on July 1 and October 21.
SpiceX has so far launched about 1,900 tiny Starlink satellites out of about 12,000 planned satellites, in a project designed to provide high-speed broadband Internet.
Although no official confirmation of the Chinese claims has yet been received, social media surfers rushed to attack Musk.
“Starlink’s risks are gradually being exposed, and the entire human race will pay for their business activities,” wrote one surfer. “The satellites are American weapons for space warfare,” another post accused, adding that “Musk is the new ‘weapon’ created by the US administration and the military.”
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Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, noted that Starlink’s satellites have contributed to an increase in the number of space collisions in recent years due to the load of satellites and space debris, but stressed that China is also contributing significantly.
“The U.S. space station has also been forced to evade remnants created by a Chinese anti-satellite weapons test in 2007 over the past decade,” McDowell told the Guardian.
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