OREANDA-NEWS. Joseph Aschbacher, head of the European Space Agency, believes that Ilon Musk's Starlink is limiting competition in space by launching thousands of satellites. The entrepreneur rejects the accusations and compares satellite launches to the earth's traffic. This is reported by the Financial Times.

According to Musk, there is enough space for "tens of billions" of satellites. Therefore, a few thousand satellites Starlink does not limit competition in space and each company will find a place for itself in orbit, if it wants to occupy the same niche.

Joseph Aschbacher believes that Musk is trying to "dominate the new space economy". He says "space will become a much more limited place in terms of frequencies and orbital slots", so he calls for Starlink's expansion to fight its own rules in the industry.

"Space is just huge and satellites are very tiny. This is not a situation where we are effectively restricting others in any way. We haven't banned anyone and we don't intend to," Musk responded. The entrepreneur also compared satellites to the movement of cars on Earth: "A couple of thousand satellites is nothing. It's like, hey, here's a couple thousand cars on Earth - nothing."

Experts disagreed with Musk's comparison. According to them, satellites need considerably more space than cars on the road, including for calculating driving trajectories to avoid collisions.