41–50 of 93 posts
This is a placeholder for an opinion I would express if I would not get flamed and downvoted all the time I do this on a controversial topic like AMZN.
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This overstates the problem I think. It will be an issue for wide-field astronomy. On the other hand, even with tens of thousands of satellites, they will only be covering a tiny fraction of the sky. For narrow-field you should be unobstructed most of the time, and able to turn the sensor off momentarily when the odd satellite is going to obstruct you.
I think you are downplaying the problem. They are already reporting issues with Starlinks and there are "only" a few hundred of them right now, Amazon wants to deploy 3k low orbiting satellites.
Look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomical_observato...
The very large majority of the world's observatories are doing wide-field astronomy.
This is not scientific progress, this is just two billionaires trying to one up each other and muscling their way around the world to rub their egos.
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 distracts from better objects like the Louvre and others.