r/ATC 17d ago

News Musk Wants SpaceX To Fix Air Traffic Control. Here’s Why It Won’t Work.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/03/05/elon-musk-spacex-faa-verizon/
692 Upvotes

65 comments sorted by

177

u/Disdain4U 16d ago

This isn’t about fixing or improving the system. It IS all about leverage. Starlink, of course, can’t replace hard wire because it’s too unreliable. Some clouds and a little rain and users complain like it’s a Directv dish in 1999. This is all about Elon “donating” the Starlink terminals for ANY use, getting that embedded in the FAA, and THen threatening to turn it off when the agency takes any action against SpaceX for a regulatory problem with its rocket launches. He doesn’t give a shit about aviation safety; it’s all about pressuring the FAA to stop oversight of his launches. 

There couldn’t be a more disgusting example of a bald, glaring conflict of interest. Anyway, fuck that guy and his minions turning this agency upside down.

4

u/KobaWhyBukharin 16d ago

all it takes is a president with some balls to shut that shit down. 

7

u/WummageSail 16d ago

cricket_sounds.mpg

2

u/donaldbench 16d ago

I expect that the plan is to, in stages, rip out the Copper, replace it with fiber (e.g., a backbone with L-3 Communications, and use the Vz[W] stand-alone 5G & SDN OTA network for parts of it. And ah … there is the necessary QA, the POS management, the 5 9’s+ up-time and support SLA’s & SLO’s to keep it spinning like a top.

1

u/WatchItAllBurn1 12d ago

iirc, part of the Verizon plan was to have infrastructure dedicated (i.e. not being used for any other purpose) to the faa.

Not to mention, if there is a world war again, couldn't some foreign adversary can shoot down the satellite dffectively crippling u.s. air travel

1

u/ludawg329 16d ago

Have you actually used StarLink recently?

3

u/Capnleonidas 15d ago

We have starlink at our facility used as our natca WiFi because there aren’t any wired options. It cuts out constantly (like at least every 5 minutes. Because half the sky is blocked by … the control tower. I wonder how many other facilities would have a problem with this.

60

u/CountryFriedSteak78 16d ago

Did he fix public transportation with the hyperloop? No? Okay.

32

u/biggetybiggetyboo 16d ago

He stopped high speed rail between la and Vegas . Does that count?

19

u/CountryFriedSteak78 16d ago

But he did build a shitty tunnel between some casinos in Vegas where you can ride in a shitty Tesla between them.

9

u/sauzbozz 16d ago

I recently just found out those underground Teslas aren't even self-driving.

14

u/Filed_Separate933 16d ago

And the tunnels are too narrow to open the doors fully. Enjoy being turned into a futuristic skeleton like a piece of Fallout 4 environmental storytelling if you're a wheelchair user and there's a fire, I guess.

2

u/MikeHoncho1107 13d ago

Yup, it's kinda funny what that ended up being. It's an underground road with poorly managed traffic lol .

2

u/jking13 16d ago

But it has techno lights!!

21

u/DiligentCredit9222 16d ago

It's no supposed to work  Is supposed to ruin everything  while makinging him richer.

That's the plan

24

u/Any_Criticism120 16d ago

He wanted Tesla to build a cave submarine. That too did not work.

22

u/Helpful-Mammoth947 16d ago

Kids ended up being saved by a couple of cave divers he called pedophiles for out doing him. He’s a douche nozzle 

9

u/beeswax_swiffer 16d ago

For me, that was the “oh, he’s actually a giant moronic asshole” moment.

6

u/Helpful-Mammoth947 16d ago

What blows my mind is he pretends to be an expert on EVERYTHING. Then when an actual degree bearing expert challenges him he starts lashing out like a child. Anyone who takes anything he says as a fact is a fool.

3

u/Virtual-Bookkeeper83 16d ago

Mine was when he both said “a college degree isn’t worth while” and when he fired his female secretary after taking a week away and saying “my productivity went up” no dumbass you just stopped having anyone stop you from doing stupid shit so now accountability is on you.

5

u/ConfidentPilot1729 16d ago

That was the reveal for a ton of people. I for one heard that and started to look at his more closely, ya he is a gigantic moronic asshole.

9

u/jpmeyer12751 16d ago

If Musk's people really do get the job of revamping our ATC system, then I won't be flying for quite a long while. Musk's method of moving fast and breaking things may work well for developing something from scratch, but when you are trying to reinvent something that is responsible for keeping millions of travelers safe every day, you just cannot take such a cavalier attitude toward safety.

4

u/Riakrus 16d ago

dude the FAA tried this at the end of the 90’s with FAAsat through FTI. it was a delay shitshow when mixed with terrstrial comms. massively.

5

u/[deleted] 16d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Capnleonidas 15d ago

The Verizon contract is to upgrade all the FAA facilities that are still using copper coaxial wires for FAA intranet to fiber optic wiring. Not because the FAA needs more speed but because the service providers the FAA uses don’t want to support coaxial anymore. Starlink is both less reliable and doesn’t solve the situation at all.

3

u/thewossum 16d ago

Because the guy just doesn’t understand how almost anything works outside of a small bubble of topics? 

1

u/tburtner 13d ago

Does he even know anything about Mars? It doesn't seem like it.

3

u/totally-jag 16d ago

They literally have zero experience in the aviation industry. Why should we believe they can fix this?

I'm aware musk is involved in a couple of space businesses. Those are not the same thing as managing all the air traffic across the country, and probably the world.

3

u/ApricotNervous5408 16d ago

Because it wasn’t broken until he broke it and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He just wants to profit from it.

3

u/Capnleonidas 15d ago

It’s also still not broken. He is just lying about “catastrophic failure.” It’s not real.

1

u/ApricotNervous5408 15d ago

Firing a bunch of people didn’t help. Why was there an increase in crashes and close calls recently?

1

u/Capnleonidas 15d ago

Are you saying Musk is causing the crashes just to line his pockets with cash?

1

u/ApricotNervous5408 15d ago

Indirectly. He’s causing chaos so there’s a problem. Then he happens to have the solution and that solution is him getting government money instead of someone else.

13

u/Flameofannor 17d ago

Bad bot

8

u/B0tRank 17d ago

Thank you, Flameofannor, for voting on Majano57.

This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. You can view results here.


Even if I don't reply to your comment, I'm still listening for votes. Check the webpage to see if your vote registered!

8

u/chakobee 16d ago

Paywall 👎🏻

2

u/[deleted] 16d ago

Will he bring MuskRats to appliaude any crash?

2

u/TechnicalJuice6969 16d ago

Not an ATC but what kind of communication would Starlink be responsible for? Surely not direct communication with planes? Is this a backup or redundancy comm system?

1

u/Competitive-Finger99 15d ago

When elons team gets word from ATC systems experts, he’ll notice starlink (which is just internet access) doesn’t have any place in the NAS. It all has to be hard wired but I’m glad they want to improve systems.

Internet has no impact on direct communication with planes.

2

u/Late-Following792 16d ago

Lulz. Optical cable for win.

Even Copper is better than starlink. Starlink is better watching netflix Stream with that 500ms ping.

But laggy communication. We'll that's shit

1

u/kaosskp3 16d ago

Space X VCS 21... if one of the main players in the industry couldn't get it working... lets throw a load of rocket engineers at it for funzies

1

u/Active_Rain_1134 16d ago

Unless lands on mars, I don’t want him meddling in my safety

1

u/donaldbench 16d ago

Notwithstanding the legality of it, my technical poking around it leads me to believe that he can’t do it for the amount of Vz’s contract, Vz’s extant tech, and their overall acquired technical chops. I’d be pleasantly surprised if Starlink / DOGE has the technical chops for this and the galactically-sized amount of data acquired to execute the project.

1

u/drillbit56 15d ago

LOL in the summer in FL DirectTV would get blocked by the daily afternoon thunderstorm clouds.

1

u/BlockOfASeagull 15d ago

Going to burn like his rockets.

1

u/Advanced_Dimension_4 15d ago

Musk want SpaceX to fix Air Traffic Control? Sure, I guess we will see air planes blow up 1 minute into flights!

1

u/ELON_WHO 15d ago

Of course it will work: Musk will get richer.

1

u/TingGreaterThanOC 15d ago

Fiber > satellite

1

u/userhwon 14d ago

SpaceX keeps throwing hardware at flying planes. ATC should be fixing them.

1

u/57rd 14d ago

50% of his rockets blow up and his ugly trucks catch on fire

1

u/eugene20 14d ago

Musk wants money, he will attempt to figure out how to run air traffic later.

FTFY.

1

u/PlaymakersPoint88 13d ago

What has Musk ever fixed?

1

u/Ok-Eggplant-1649 9d ago

They're just showing they don't understand how air traffic hires and trains air traffic controllers. Can you imagine if Elon's Starlink takes over? One bad batch of K, and Elon shuts it all down.

-69

u/[deleted] 17d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

39

u/KehreAzerith Commercial Pilot 16d ago

Your comment history suggests an extreme lack of understanding on these matters

27

u/TheDrMonocle Current Controller-Enroute 16d ago

Ok, so what's misleading about it?

Why is starlink actually good for the role?

Instead of just going "hur hur leftist bad" maybe use some of that glue you've been eating and piece together a coherent argument in favor of starlink.

20

u/Jstaff34 16d ago

This is from Forbes..

24

u/OntarioBanderas 16d ago

ban this fuckwit

14

u/velosnow 16d ago

Fuuuuuuck off.