[dead]
“Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
281–290 of 334 posts
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#282I 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?
Do you ever use GPS (for navigation or time sync)? Do you ever use Starlink? Do you make use of weather forecasts? Or fly on an airliner that uses any of those three? Watch a televised program from the other side of the planet?
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do you balance human needs with pristine nature? How about we set a limit on how many satellites? That’s exactly how to balance
A limit that India and China are totally going to ignore?
If only there was some way that countries could make international agreements on things...
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#284I 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.
China’s constellations are going to orbits that will take hundreds of years to return to earth and could make launching much harder if there is a collision. As far as I know only SpaceX has satellites in low orbits that frequently need propulsion to push back up, and fall back within 5 years.
Fun fact: SpaceX has packed some segments of LEO so densely they surpassed the local Kessler syndrome density. In other words, even if the debris deorbits by itself in LEO, you can still cram enough sats in an orbit that just a single impact leads to follow on impacts fast enough to get a runaway chain reaction.
https://conference.sdo.esoc.esa.int/proceedings/sdc9/paper/3...
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#285This is not -progress-, is speculaton, at astronomical level, as 1M sat in orbit, only a very small part of humans will benefit (shareholders, but i doubt all), all the rest not even. We really need to surf web at Gb/s speed in the mid of nowhere?
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do you balance human needs with pristine nature? How about we set a limit on how many satellites? That’s exactly how to balance
A limit that India and China are totally going to ignore?
They won't ignore it if Americans and Europeans agree to contribute their fair share to the well-being of all the people and stop hoarding all the world's wealth to themselves. A situation where the minimum wage in some regions of the US is over $15, while in parts of India have the median wage is less than 50 cents, is an unjust absurdity.
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#287I 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.
[deleted]
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dinosaur killers? Yes. City killers? That size hits more often > Asteroids with a diameter more than 30–50 metres (100–150ft) are large enough to make it through our atmosphere intact, however, and the chance of this happening is estimated to be around once in every 100 years. > The damage from an impact of this size would be wide-ranging, and could wipe out an entire city if they were to impact a heavily populated a…
That "if it hits a populated area" reduces the probability by a factor 100 (because about 1% of the world's surface is urbanized [1]). So the actual frequency of "city wiped" is more like once every 10000 years. Completely negligible compared to other city-wiping events (earthquakes or floods for example). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_land_use_for_food_...
But it’s an additional risk.
The more risks the more likely one of them will hit you.
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compare it to air planes, which are already at a much more significant scale. Accounting for fuel type and combustion efficiency seems relevant. I recall around SpaceX 100th landing, that a day of just transatlantic flights was more than everything SpaceX had done to that point
Exactly, they don't matter when compared to general aviation or even just consumer shipping. And in all cases, if you produce the fuel using renewables then the CO2 output is trivially brought near zero.
> And in all cases, if you produce the fuel using renewables then the CO2 output is trivially brought near zero.
But...they don't.
Re: “Beyond the limit”: Satellites and mirrors in space pose threat to the night sky
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
>the constant threat of big enough objects showing up on a collision course with earth I don't really think this is a serious risk. This is a once-in-a-million-years kind of event. Also, asteroid detection is not seriously affected by satellites. We can easily tell the difference between a moving satellite and a moving asteroid because of their speed.
> I don't really think this is a serious risk. This is a once-in-a-million-years kind of event. Perhaps the last event was one million years ago and we are now (proverbially) 'due'. > The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the belief that an independent and equally probable outcome which happened less frequently than expected is more likely to happen…
> Perhaps the last event was one million years ago and we are now (proverbially) 'due'.
Ironically this is a great example of the gambler's fallacy.