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Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#31

Post by scroogeydop »

roughly wrote: post #24
ceejayoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's fair. Other satellites are reflective, too. It's difficult to make a satellite completely dark, in part because dark = absorbs heat and it's hard to dump heat in space. The problem with these internet constellations is that, to work, they have to have thousands of them in each constellation. SpaceX has permission for 12k and is seeking permission for 30k more ( https://spacenews.com/spacex-submit…

It's definitely fair. Per the article, there's currently ~2600 satellites in orbit; Amazon is looking to more than double that, and SpaceX is asking to add ~16x that number. I think we're well within our rights as society and as humans generally to put the onus on them not to fuck up astronomy for the next century. And since when has "It's difficult" been a free pass? Both of those companies beat their chests about h…

Time to start building tools to jam the spectrum. Make these things useless.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#32

Post by scroogeydop »

ckdarby wrote: post #3

Is this really a worry? Won't all the gear eventually be moved off Earth and into space making this argument pointless? I'm guessing amateurs with a telescope in their backyard are the ones suffering?

By the time your children are dead, it will still be 100x easier to do anything on earth than it is to do that thing in space. This seems astoundingly obvious.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#33

Post by rscho »

thereisnospork wrote: post #21

Parisians hated the Eiffel tower when it went up, claimed it was an eyesore. Give it a few years, and these constellations will be something we look up at with pride and aesthetic appreciation.

Give me your address and I'll come and plant a light sculpture in your backyard for free. You don't get to choose anyways. At first, you'll think it's an eyesore but give it a few years and you'll learn to look at it with pride and aesthetic appreciation.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#34

Post by rscho »

briga wrote: post #12

It's a little baffling how monstrously big Amazon has become over the years. Pretty soon there won't be an industry left untouched by Amazon's tentacles. Hard to see how they can continue down this path without getting broken up. On the bright side: each new satellite launch should lower the barrier to entry for the next satellite launch. This combined with growing competition in the space industry could lead the way…

Pretty exciting, yeah.

Let me guess. Richer riches and poorer poors? I hope you'll enjoy the view from your off-planet 2 m^3 residential cubicle.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#35

Post by nindalf »

The two problems pointed by the article - light pollution caused by high reflectivity and potential crashes appear to be difficult to solve because solving one makes the other worse.

If the satellites tried to become more difficult to detect, perhaps with light absorbent coating they would also become more difficult to detect by other satellites in orbit.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#36

Post by thereisnospork »

ra wrote: post #25
thereisnospork wrote: post #21

Parisians hated the Eiffel tower when it went up, claimed it was an eyesore. Give it a few years, and these constellations will be something we look up at with pride and aesthetic appreciation.

There's a big difference between a landmark and polluting the entire planet's night sky with thousands of reflective satellites.

Other than scale I really don't see the difference between '''desicrating''' a skyline with ugly[0] architecture and starlink et al.

Sure some architecture stays ugly - but preserving the aesthetics of a sky(line) ranks really low on my list of things that are worth stopping progress over.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#37

Post by rscho »

missedthecue wrote: post #19
briga wrote: post #12

It's a little baffling how monstrously big Amazon has become over the years. Pretty soon there won't be an industry left untouched by Amazon's tentacles. Hard to see how they can continue down this path without getting broken up. On the bright side: each new satellite launch should lower the barrier to entry for the next satellite launch. This combined with growing competition in the space industry could lead the way…

It's regrettable and bitterly discouraging that the more Amazon works toward improving mine and millions of others daily lives, the closer they get to being broken up. At least, that's the way I see it. They've added new competition in so many areas. They've saved the consumer so much money that the federal reserve literally blamed them for lowering inflation, but instead, the federal government as painfully ironic a…

> Amazon works toward improving mine and millions of others daily lives

... thousands of small businesses and millions of retail workers are so thankful for this "improvement". The day is nigh where you and I will also get "improved", hopefully!

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#38

Post by DoingIsLearning »

thereisnospork wrote: post #21

Parisians hated the Eiffel tower when it went up, claimed it was an eyesore. Give it a few years, and these constellations will be something we look up at with pride and aesthetic appreciation.

It's not about aesthetics, if you keep adding satellites with extremely high density, at some point you run out of gaps in the sky, that are dark enough and unobstructed for long enough time to make any meaningful measurements of the observable universe.

Re: Amazon satellites add to astronomers' worries about night sky

#39

Post by jsilence »

scroogeydop wrote: post #31
roughly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely fair. Per the article, there's currently ~2600 satellites in orbit; Amazon is looking to more than double that, and SpaceX is asking to add ~16x that number. I think we're well within our rights as society and as humans generally to put the onus on them not to fuck up astronomy for the next century. And since when has "It's difficult" been a free pass? Both of those companies beat their chests about h…

Time to start building tools to jam the spectrum. Make these things useless.

So that we'll have the negative impact of the satelites, but no benefit? How is that supposed to solve anything?
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