Reddit commenters defend deal as routine classified contractor arrangement
3 Yesterday 7:05 PM · 9h ago · 1 post · 6 comments · 1 source · development 3 of 4
Multiple Reddit users argue the agreement is standard practice for defense contractors with government access, noting SpaceX is the only U.S. launch provider operating satellites at scale requiring such data, and that commercial arms of defense contractors routinely share classified information internally.
“defence contractor with classified government contracts is given access to classified DOD data? also, it's space tracking data for a platform the DOD use that tracks stars and is thus space tracking data.”
Iliyan61SpaceX Recipient of classified data accessJon Herman SpaceX senior director for Starlink constellation engineeringU.S. Space Force Government party to agreementBarbara Golf Head of Joint Commercial Operations CellCommercial space monitoring firms Industry competitors
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What people said 6 voices · verbatim
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SpaceX are the only US launch provider launching anything near the volume to require the data. ULA has a huge backlog, the others are all single digits a year or start-ups that haven't dipped into the defense launch side of things yet (and such haven't reached the degree of trust/integration that might be prerequisite to sharing this information)…
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defence contractor with classified government contracts is given access to classified DOD data? also, it’s space tracking data for a platform the DOD use that tracks stars and is thus space tracking data. it is a poor point that the commercial side of spaceX can use the space tracking data considering it’s coming from… space tracking firms, every…
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And of course, the more satellite operators provide their data to Stargaze, the more accurate its tracking capabilities become — further undermining for-profit providers. Ah, so SpaceX provides LEO tracking to everyone for free and the worry is SpaceX might use this new government data to improve their free service, making it harder for others to…
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They are the only launch provider who has thousands of satellites in orbit and whose technology is being used in several dow programs which also requires thousands of satellites. Once the others do the same they’ll be given the same. Until then, it’s not needed.
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Nowhere does it say that other companies, organizations, launch providers, etc. won’t be able to sign a similar agreement with them. They aren’t just going to make classified data public to tons of people just because one company came to an agreement to have it.
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What else are they going to do? Just tell him to launch his rockets and "try not to hit anything"?
All 4 developments of DoD grants SpaceX exclusive access to classified space… →
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