That's not actually true. The first thing privatized public companies do is cut maintenance. This save the new private owners money, and service degrades. Always.
^^ Another thread, perhaps? While I love a great discussion on this, that's not the point of this thread.
As far as Iridium, I believe they should be pleased they get bonus advertising and recognition simply because they chose SpaceX as their transit provider. I even watched their propaganda video and walked away impressed that they analogized computer devices to Dr. Seuss' Thing 1 and 2. Maybe that was the wrong message to take
Good point. The huge amount of publicity every satellite company gets from a SpaceX launch is worth something. Maybe a hundred grand or something. Still kinda dwarfed by the lunch costs ($65m)
That's not what I said. I said the first thing once a government company is privatized, is the new owners stop spending money on maintenance. Always. It's estimated that after the UK privatized London's water utility, now approximately 1/3 of water is lost due to leaky pipes. Blackouts due to lack of line maintenance. Railroad derailings due to lack of track maintenance.
So this whole controversy came to light only because SpaceX went to the NOAA to file a licensing application for the last Iridium mission. The article states that NOAA wasn't aware of other launches that had upper stage cameras onboard, nor had SpaceX previously filed for licensing. According to the NOAA Remote Sensing Director, “Our office is extremely small, and there’s a lot of things out there that we miss.” Yup, likely missed until someone looked up from their desk and noticed photos and video of a high flying car. Appreciate that NOAA is looking out for our national security by censoring distant earth photos from Space. Instead of pixelating those Roadster/Earth images, might suggest Kerbal. Hire some kid who could probably snooker the Russians. Here's an example that has so little detail you can barely detect the missile silo on the extreme right.
