I see you can track its current position here: http://www.thehumanitystar.com/#tracker but a flyby predictor is notable by its absence, I wonder why that should be?
Click 'Find My Location' in the top left of the map view.
Aha! Thanks.
'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
31–40 of 77 posts
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#32Some comments have intoned "it's not that bright," but from the article "It is expected to become the brightest object in the night sky for nine months"
Can anyone shed some information on this?
I know if someone made it difficult for me t oget my planned work done for the next nine months, my boss and I would be pretty ticked off.
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#33Do you want regulations? This is how you get regulations. Once low Earth orbit is easily accessible to anyone, what can be done? There are all kinds of intentional and unintentional misuses of such a capability.
> Do you want regulations? This is how you get regulations. A finite resource, great cost necessary to access it, danger of catastrophic failure when things collide. Long-lasting consequences of such failure. I'd expect regulation in this scenario. It seems inevitable and necessary.
I’d hardly call space a finite resource.
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#34The Rutherford engine alone and its manufacturing process is a far greater accomplishment than any one of these “scientists” has ever managed. Maybe they ought to come and join the real world?
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#35Great, NIMBYs now want to stop space development. And it's just for 9 months, take a chill pill.
Personally I think it's awesome, I'm going to try to track it and show it to my daughter. I hope one day we'll have structures on the moon that are visible to the naked eye! Can you imagine how motivating and achievable that would make space exploration seem to a new generation.
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#36This has me thinking about how absurd privacy/protection of vision can be. If I stand in my apartment and face my photon receptors towards the apartment across the street, place some carefully constructed glass lenses in front of them, and receive photons from the sun bouncing off the surface of a pretty specimen, that is pretty universally abhorred behaviour. Of course this is absurdly reductionist. But interesting, nonetheless.
If you don't like the giant "PEPSI PRESENTS: MARS" billboard we placed in space, close your curtains at night!
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you want regulations? This is how you get regulations. A finite resource, great cost necessary to access it, danger of catastrophic failure when things collide. Long-lasting consequences of such failure. I'd expect regulation in this scenario. It seems inevitable and necessary.
I’d hardly call space a finite resource.
Access to space might be.
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#38This is utterly, utterly overblown. The Space Station is thousands of times bigger and throws back a hundred times more light than this will. Every evening, for most of the populated world, dozens of brighter satellites than this go overhead. I just checked the orbits for my evening here - 57 brighter satellites. But what about the flashing? Well, we've got those already too. The old, awesome Iridium satellites have…
It's the precedent. We do not want space based ads.
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#39This is utterly, utterly overblown. The Space Station is thousands of times bigger and throws back a hundred times more light than this will. Every evening, for most of the populated world, dozens of brighter satellites than this go overhead. I just checked the orbits for my evening here - 57 brighter satellites. But what about the flashing? Well, we've got those already too. The old, awesome Iridium satellites have…
No. It's good to criticize this now, before everyone starts doing it. I really don't want ad banners in the sky twenty years from now.
Re: 'Space graffiti': astronomers angry over launch of fake star into sky
#40> director of astrobiology at Columbia University Caleb Scharf wrote in Scientific American, the star represented "another invasion of my personal universe" There's hyperbole, and then there's comments like that. His "personal universe"?
I read that comment as making an analogy to intrusive advertising.
That's how I read it, too. And I can somehow relate to it. In many places, you can't walk down the street without being annoyed by ads. You'd have to go through parks and nearby woods. And now it doesn't even help to go camping far away in a natural reservate without being annoyed by ads (at night).