SpaceX
The Russian legislature, the State Duma, is considering fines for individuals and companies in the country that use Western satellite Internet services. The proposed law seeks to prevent access to the Internet through SpaceX’s Starlink service, OneWeb or other non-Russian satellite constellations being developed.
According to a recent report in the Russian edition of Popular Mechanics, the recommended fines range from 10,000 to 30,000 rubles ($ 135- $ 405) for ordinary users, and between 500,000 and 1 million rubles ($ 6,750 to $ 13,500) for legal entities the western use satellite services.
In the Russian article, translated for Ars by Robinson Mitchell, members of the Duma claim that independent Internet access will bypass the country’s system of operational searches, which monitors Internet usage and mobile communications. As part of the country’s strict control over media and communications, all Russian internet traffic must go through a Russian communications provider.
It is not surprising that Russia would take steps to block Starlink’s service – the country’s head of aerospace, Dmitry Rogozin, sees SpaceX as a major competitor in space.
Rogozin was critical of NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense for subsidizing SpaceX through government contracts. (Although SpaceX received several billion-dollar launch contracts from the US government, it also provided launch services at a significant discount compared to other providers.) Recently, Rogozin said that Starlink is little more than a scheme to provide . U.S. special forces with uninterrupted communication.
Starlink, Rogozin said in August last year, is part of a rather predatory, powerful, high-tech U.S. policy that Shock and Awe use to advance their military interests. Rogozin also cites SpaceX’s claim that Starlink was created to provide “nonsense” to internet services on the 4 percent of the earth’s surface not covered by terrestrial internet.
The ban on OneWeb is more interesting, as the company uses the Russian Soyuz rocket to send almost all of its initial constellation into orbit. Monthly OneWeb satellite launches are planned this year, mainly from space ports in Baikonur, Kazakhstan and Vostochny, Russia. OneWeb effectively helps promote the struggling Russian launch industry at a time when SpaceX is signing the country on commercial launch contracts.
Not to be outdone by Western competitors, Russia is planning its own satellite internet constellation, known as ‘Sphere’. However, there are questions about the affordability of this constellation, which could start in 2024. The budget of the program has not been confirmed, but some reports have suggested that it could reach up to $ 20 billion. This is far more than the amount of money Russia spends on civilian space. The current budget for Roscosmos, the Russian space corporation led by Rogozin, receives about $ 2.4 billion a year.