Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Low Earth Orbit Visualization

platform.leolabs.space

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 195 posts

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#131

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

schiffern wrote: post #128
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Even low Earth orbit is absolutely gigantic. It’s considerably larger than the surface of the Earth after all. Scott Manley has the same issue that this website: for things to be seen, you need to magnify them extremely. Each dot here represents things at most meters large. Most are centimetres large especially if you look at debris. Yet each dot is the size of a large urban area on Earth. Do the same thi…

>Obviously, to size would be less scary. I was expecting this, since it's probably the most common criticism of this type of visualization. Problem is, that analysis only looks at half the dataviz fidelity coin. It recognizes the (unavoidable) loss of fidelity in size , but it ignores the (also unavoidable) loss of fidelity in time. In the real world these objects do not remain orbiting Earth for a few minutes (ie th…

> I was expecting this, since it's probably the most common criticism of this type of visualization. Problem is, that analysis only looks at half the dataviz fidelity coin. It recognizes the (unavoidable) loss of fidelity in size, but it ignores the (also unavoidable) loss of fidelity in time.

It’s a real time visualisation. There is no loss of fidelity in time.

Noticing the important distortion in size is legitimate. It’s not really a criticism by the way. It’s simply that the impression of fullness inherent to this visualisation is misleading. Space is obviously mostly empty.

> Instead, objects above ~800 km remain in Earth orbit for hundreds to thousands of years.[1]

And satellites bellow 600km are only there for a couple of years and those bellow 500km a year top. Let’s not forget that area scales with the square of radius.

> Mathematically this second inaccuracy tends to cancel out the first inaccuracy, therefore (presumably) making this "a lot more scary/impressive."

I’m guessing you mean we have to take into account the fact these objects orbit a long time when considering collisions but that’s a separate issue entirely. The two don’t cancel out at all mathematically in any meaningful way.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying debris are not an issue. The new deorbiting rules are definitely a good thing.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#133

Post by yazzku »

gus_massa wrote: post #125
jcwayne wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. While the visualization is useful/interesting, it frustrates me how often similar visuals are used in news stories about space junk. Yes, it's a problem, but using visuals like this without proper explanation misrepresents it terribly.

It would be nice to have a selector for the scale level of the satellites, perhaps x1000, x100, x10 and x1.

And perhaps a density map too.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#134

Post by schiffern »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #131
schiffern wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Obviously, to size would be less scary. I was expecting this, since it's probably the most common criticism of this type of visualization. Problem is, that analysis only looks at half the dataviz fidelity coin. It recognizes the (unavoidable) loss of fidelity in size , but it ignores the (also unavoidable) loss of fidelity in time. In the real world these objects do not remain orbiting Earth for a few minutes (ie th…

> I was expecting this, since it's probably the most common criticism of this type of visualization. Problem is, that analysis only looks at half the dataviz fidelity coin. It recognizes the (unavoidable) loss of fidelity in size, but it ignores the (also unavoidable) loss of fidelity in time. It’s a real time visualisation. There is no loss of fidelity in time. Noticing the important distortion in size is legitimate…

>It’s a real time visualisation. There is no loss of fidelity in time.

Unless you're going to spend multiple lifetimes watching it in "real time," there is unavoidable loss of fidelity here.

I don't mean fidelity in rate-of-time, but in duration-of-time. The total time available limits the duration fidelity, just as our eyeballs and screens limit the size fidelity.

Again it's less obvious (hence this confusion), but it's no less unavoidable.

>Noticing the important distortion in size is legitimate. It’s not really a criticism by the way. It’s simply... misleading.

Extrapolating real-time events into long stretches of time is also demonstrably misleading to humans. See: the history of scientific discoveries in geology.

Your point about "legitimacy" is right on. In data visualization the goal is finding the most useful (least misleading) transform of the data, not raw fidelity.

It's just that, for the purposes of lifetime collision probability estimation, rate-of-time fidelity is more misleading than duration-of-time fidelity (since you can't have both!).

>the fact these objects orbit a long time when considering collisions

Bingo. The "scariness" comes from (where else?) the collision probability, and our estimate thereof.

>The two don’t cancel out at all mathematically in any meaningful way.

I don't claim perfect cancellation with nothing left, just that it "tends" to cancel out (ie it pushes in the opposite direction), and that this factor was being ignored.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#135

Post by mlindner »

georgeg23 wrote: post #113
s1artibartfast wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just shows what an orbiting satellite constellation looks like and why so many are required. That is the similarity

Actually SpaceX IS working on what that video shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Military_capabilities

No, SpaceX is NOT working on space based interceptors, as your link clearly shows.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#136

Post by xwdv »

Imagine a visualization of all debris and litter that’s on the ground. Low Earth Orbit is very clean by comparison. This visualization makes it seem impassable and treacherous.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#137

Post by mickdeek86 »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #124
johnklos wrote: post #119

Scott Manley, unsurprisingly, did a nice video showing what it'd look like if you could see all the satellites and debris in space from the surface of Earth. It's scary how much stuff there is up there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJNGi-bt9NM

Not really. Even low Earth orbit is absolutely gigantic. It’s considerably larger than the surface of the Earth after all. Scott Manley has the same issue that this website: for things to be seen, you need to magnify them extremely. Each dot here represents things at most meters large. Most are centimetres large especially if you look at debris. Yet each dot is the size of a large urban area on Earth. Do the same thi…

Does this mean the concerns about a Kessler event are greatly exaggerated?

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#138

Post by perilunar »

johnklos wrote: post #119

Scott Manley, unsurprisingly, did a nice video showing what it'd look like if you could see all the satellites and debris in space from the surface of Earth. It's scary how much stuff there is up there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJNGi-bt9NM

> It's scary how much stuff there is up there

No more scary than the number of airplanes in the air at any given time, which is a similar order of magnitude. flightradar24 tracks around 200k flights per day — there's probably ~10k–20k aircraft in the air at any time.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#139

Post by cwillu »

mickdeek86 wrote: post #137
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Even low Earth orbit is absolutely gigantic. It’s considerably larger than the surface of the Earth after all. Scott Manley has the same issue that this website: for things to be seen, you need to magnify them extremely. Each dot here represents things at most meters large. Most are centimetres large especially if you look at debris. Yet each dot is the size of a large urban area on Earth. Do the same thi…

Does this mean the concerns about a Kessler event are greatly exaggerated?

You're kinda asking if a number is too big, without saying which number you're asking about.

Re: Low Earth Orbit Visualization

#140

Post by jen_h »

perilunar wrote: post #138
johnklos wrote: post #119

Scott Manley, unsurprisingly, did a nice video showing what it'd look like if you could see all the satellites and debris in space from the surface of Earth. It's scary how much stuff there is up there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJNGi-bt9NM

> It's scary how much stuff there is up there No more scary than the number of airplanes in the air at any given time, which is a similar order of magnitude. flightradar24 tracks around 200k flights per day — there's probably ~10k–20k aircraft in the air at any time.

True, but they can be methodically grounded if need be, and we’ve done it successfully before. We don’t have any good playbooks for clearing space debris.
Post reply on HN