Fortunately, no one owns space, so we don’t have to listen to these decels.
That's an insane take. Do you actually understand what is being argued? It's an threat to ground based telescopes in the name of more slop-generating infrastructure.
“Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
241–250 of 334 posts
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#24299.99% of the world would rather watch a train of Starlink satellites than some star they couldn't see anyway. Not to mention the satellites' other benefits.
Is this thread being astroturfed by bots from big tech? Some absolutely obtuse comments.
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#243>SpaceX plans to send one million more satellites into orbit, for space-based data centres, ... I think we should wait to see how the first satellite data centre works out. It seems fairly unlikely that it could be practical. It seems kind of nuts... >Reflect Orbital, a US start-up, aims to launch a constellation of very large mirror-like satellites to provide sunlight at night, with reflected beams that span at leas…
> I think we should wait to see how the first satellite data centre works out. It seems fairly unlikely that it could be practical. It seems kind of nuts... I strongly suspect that what'll happen is SpaceX does launch satellites with onboard GPUs, so the SpaceX hypemen can go "the skeptics said it couldn't be done!" and take off before the actual, more crucial question of "does it make _financial_ sense?" is answered…
Indeed. Even optimistic estimates say SpaceX have to launch about 370,000 tons to LEO before they get the costs down low enough to be worth launching them on pure financial grounds.
I suspect Musk reaches pension age before that happens.
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#244We should launch more orbital telescopes.
Sure but it doesn't we can replace ground-based oned with space telescopes. They don't make the same class of observations
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#245I am a science and astronomy fan, but I am sorry, in this case progress is more important. If we regret our decision, the LEOs will fall out of the sky by themselves in a few years and it will be ok.
Can you define what progress is being made by creating more space junk?
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#246I would be curious how impactful people here think SpaceX satellite fleet is.
Satellite communication is an impressive technical feet. In some very niche cases it is the only viable way.
In the vast majority of cases though it is terrible compared to laying down cables.
What LEO does is addressing a minuscule market. Sure you know a guy, or you might even has a dish on your van, and honestly that's cool. But that is also NOT normal. The van life or having Internet connectivity while crossing the Atlantic on a boat is NOT daily life for the vast VAST majority of people. Most people do 9 to 5 from one suburb to another part of a city. Not a tiny remote town, a city. Those cities are where people actually live and work for decades now already have electricity and in most cases telephony. We can use those.
I think when we have to make decisions that affect us all we have to step back. It is not anymore about a couple of sexy examples, it is about actual impact and actual usage.
This is the opposite of appropriate technology while spoiling a common good.
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
The year is 2026. Surely the orbits of all the satellites are known well enough, and optics are modelled well enough for telescopes to know which few pixels to ignore at any given moment?
There's at least two issues with this line of thinking: 1. many astronomical observations are long integrations (many minutes of open shutter) and you often cannot read out the pixels during the exposure. So you can't selectively ignore pixels on a "by moment" basis. And with enough satellites, enough pixels could be affected to render an entire image effectively unusable 2. It seems you're thinking only about optica…
How about putting our astronomy experiments into space as well? There'd be no light / em pollution there, as well as no atmospheric interference etc. and, 24/7 free power courtesy of our sun.
Id expect orbital observatories to be superior to ground based ones, thinking of Webb, Hubble.
I suppose the only downside is cost. So, the actual problem, is how to tax the shared resource that is our LEO. Aside from that, wed also want to incentivize not leaving space debris in orbit. Require insurance, and perhaps rent for orbital trajectories?
But, without working international order, theres no way thats gonna happen...
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#248Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#249I would be curious how impactful people here think SpaceX satellite fleet is. Satellite communication is an impressive technical feet. In some very niche cases it is the only viable way. In the vast majority of cases though it is terrible compared to laying down cables. What LEO does is addressing a minuscule market. Sure you know a guy, or you might even has a dish on your van, and honestly that's cool. But that is…
I'd say Starlink's main selling point is spying not utility for cell phone users.
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#250I’m shocked, an European agency wants to regulate how many satellites should orbit earth at a given time? Is regulation the only solution EU has for everything? Have they forgotten how to think a bit more creatively? Like developing algorithms to remove clutter added by satellites in observation data or even to deploy more space telescopes. Is that too much to ask?