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How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

nature.com

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Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#321

Post by valuearb »

liability wrote: post #212
valuearb wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answer is no. SpaceX is not NASA.

I know SpaceX is not NASA, that's not a valuable insight. Edit: It seems the situation is not nearly as clear as you believe: https://www.satellitetoday.com/government-military/2020/08/2... Considering a less direct relationship with China already has some congressmen evidently perturbed, I think there is a decent chance SpaceX would refuse any contracts with China if for no other reason than to avoid provoking Congr…

Ok so the answer you want is yes. Congress people can say whatever they want for political reasons, and because SpaceX is vastly out performing their preferred old space contractors, they are motivated to attack SpaceX for the smallest most ludicrous reasons like this.

But they also aren’t likely to pass any specific legislation or change what Elon does.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#322

Post by ardy42 »

ballooney wrote: post #307
gorgoiler wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaceships and radio waves are cool and provide a unique solution. Let’s not pretend this was the one true way to get around Comcast et al’s stranglehold though. That problem could have been solved politically with regulation plus (in the countryside) ground based radio, or (in cities) with regulation of cable infrastructure such that it was separated from packet-routing and customer-service. If satellite ISPs genuin…

This should be the top comment. It’s an especially prevalent view in the USA that bad politics is a law of physics and the only solutions are madly technological. It’s not true as many other parts of the world prove. You can just have a not-insane ISP/telco regulatory system if you so choose. (see also healthcare, food/agricultural standards, water quality, online privacy... all choices).

> It’s an especially prevalent view in the USA that bad politics is a law of physics and the only solutions are madly technological. It’s not true as many other parts of the world prove. You can just have a not-insane ISP/telco regulatory system if you so choose. (see also healthcare, food/agricultural standards, water quality, online privacy... all choices).

I agree. However it's going to be a tough nut to crack because that belief is self-reinforcing. People who believe the government can't do anything right also seem to advocate policies that make the government more ineffective, which provides false confirmation of the initial belief.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#325

Post by valuearb »

astrophysician wrote: post #273
valuearb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the entire field of astronomy is so educated on the subject, why do most not know Starlink was never visible except at dawn or dusk, and it’s already implemented successful mitigations for those tones with visors?

...wow. (1) astronomers are pretty darn aware of everything going on, and it's really shocking as an astronomer to see these sorts of claims. There have been close collaborations with Space X to try to mitigate some issues, but these are partial mitigations and the most important ones are only planned, not implemented. The "successful" mitigations I think you're referring to is their "DarkSat" coating, which is not a…

SpaceX has just implemented sun Visors on the latest batch of satellites, so why aren’t you aware of that?

In space infrared detectors are the most effective way of searching for dangerous NEOs, and SpaceX has made them far cheaper to launch. How come you don’t know that?

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/nasem_r...

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#326

Post by readams »

sandworm101 wrote: post #265
reitzensteinm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about being able to afford infrastructure. It's about population density in rural areas. North America and Australia (where I'm from) have the exact same issue. No country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in the middle of nowhere.

>> No country is going to spend a million bucks to lay fiber to ten person towns in the middle of nowhere. Why not? It has been done before. Every developed country went through a period of rural electrification whereby schemes were developed to encourage and/or force electric companies to run wires out into the rural farmland. Internet is the modern analogue for electrification. Those same approaches would work equa…

Large scale infrastructure is no longer possible in the US for all kinds of reasons. But you can't just compare infrastructure projects from the 1930s and pretend it will work. If you had to build the interstate highway system, or transcontinental railroad, or Hoover dam today, it would take decades and cost many times the price in real dollars.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#327

Post by gpm »

nikanj wrote: post #84

We paid operators huge sums of money to build fiber internet across the US, but they kept the money instead. Now we're trying with satellites. The whole astronomy problem could be solved if FCC had teeth and forced us to get the fiber connections we already paid for

Fiber never solves the problem of internet on a ship, or plane, or tank. It never economically solves the problem of internet in the middle of nowhere.

If the FCC had teeth the US would have internet going up to the "edge" of nowhere (for some definitions of the boundary), but there are always limits. Satellites nicely complement that by working best in non-dense areas.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#328

Post by welterde »

freeone3000 wrote: post #295
welterde wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CCDs are not really receivers that can be turned off for a couple seconds. A physical shutter moves in front of the detector and covers it (for most instruments as they exist right now).

what if we actually put the astronomical observation satellites above the spacex ones? that should solve the interference problems. Wasn't there a cool new telescope named after James Webb that launched recently?

JWST still hasn't be launched yet.

And space observatories are much much more expensive than ground-based ones. JWST for instance will cost around 10 billion dollars in the end - and they don't even have to pay for the launch cost (one of the contributions of ESA to the project is free launch on Ariane rocket). JWST will have a 8m mirror. Currently three 30m class ground-based observatories are being built (ELT is 39m, TMT 30m and GMT 24.5m) each with an estimated cost between 1 and 1.5 billion dollars. So you get three much much larger ground-based telescopes for the price of one large space observatory (and still have money left over).

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#329

Post by gpm »

guerrilla wrote: post #43
modeless wrote: post #38

There is so much unwarranted alarmism about this. This is not the end of astronomy, nor is it even super serious. The "unavoidable impact" they're talking about is that astronomers will have to care about when and where satellites will appear, rather than not bothering and just throwing away the rare image with a satellite in it. A small percentage of their pixels will be affected by satellite trails and they will ne…

> will cost you some effort and money and time. This externality needs to be captured for it to be fair.

This is a curious assumption. Why would the small number of astronomers get ownership over the resource of the night sky instead of the much larger population of people who want internet?

I'd argue that the positive externalities of the latter far outweigh the negative externalities of the former when deciding how to tax spacex.

Re: How satellite ‘megaconstellations’ will photobomb astronomy images

#330

Post by gpm »

swframe2 wrote: post #316

Since their internet service will generate a lot of money, maybe spacex should just provide very low cost launches of future telescopes. Or maybe spacex should launch their own telescopes in partnership with researchers and sell the service for a low fee. I also hope we tax companies that launch and own satellites to fund a clean up service that de-orbits all the junk before they cause the Kessler syndrome.

Part of getting a FCC license for space radios is having a plan to avoid Kessler syndrome. For things like Starlink that plan is "stick them in low orbits so they naturally deorbit within a few years in the absolute worst case".
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