Let them eat starlink!
Let them eat starlink!
261 comments
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I only have this to say: Fuck the sky pollution. Starlink has been ruining stargazing and star photography and Elon lied about its impact. He claimed they would be invisible with his amazing paint but they're still visible and fuck it up for people who enjoy watching the stars.
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I see them all the time without a camera. They are bright as the stars when they pass over.
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pros and cons...
pros:
- internet in remote places
cons:
- at the cost of literallt everything else
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If you think ruining stargazing is the biggest problem, don't look up Satellite Collision Cascades
The fucking muskrat is going to lock us down to Earth and make launches too dangerous due to debris fields
And all of you are just complaining about artificial light
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Well I don't see myself going to space any time soon. But I do see myself watching the nightsky a lot.
You're right though. It's another thing he doesn't care about.
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It's important that we think of future generations, statistically this cascade could easily happen in our lifetimes
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They are low enough that it'd probably fix itself over time. It'd be a big problem, but I feel comming generations have bigger ones.
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Ok well I have aerospace engineering friends that disagree, and if those quiet mousy guys are panicking then I think they may be on to something
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Oh, I mean, it would be bad, even if it "just" meant no/unsafe launches and no LEO for X months/years. I just kinda feels it pales compared to the climate related problems coming generations are likely to face.
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... an ablative cascade would destroy nearly every satellite and would render ALL launches russian roulette with 5 chambers filled, and it would last for centuries.
I really have no idea where you are getting your numbers from but there's ALREADY enough high velocity mass to make LEO a minefield for generations and we're not stopping launching.
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Pulling them out of my ass, mostly. Like, the people I know in the field don't seem overly worried, but my own opinion mostly comes from a general awareness that stuff in LEO comes down eventually, and that for the orbit the Starlink Stuff is on, that would probably mean a few years max.
Not my field, and if I actually research it, I might find I'm wrong.
I still maintain that even a complete loss of launch and orbital capability, while of course a great and horrible disaster, wouldn't doom us much more than our current course as a species already is.
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Starlink satellites are in low earth orbit and deorbit naturally after a few years because of the small amounts of escaping atmosphere slowing them down. A collision cascade can't really happen because it's a fundamentally decaying orbit.
At least, there's no risk of lasting orbital debris, at the cost of the satellites having a much shorter lifespan.
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I have aerospace engineering friends that disagree, but I'm sure your wikipedia university degree is useful somewhere
Ablative cascades have more than enough energy to kick debris fields up orbit as impact velocities can hit 10 kilometers a second
JSYK that kind of energy can punch a paint flake through a quarter inch of titanium
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... Well, fortunately, I don't manage satellite deployments, but your friends are welcome to tell NASA that their aerospace engineers are actually wrong and need to stop SpaceX before they ground humanity. I'm sure they would love to hear it.
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The fucking NASA scientist that came up with this scenario is Donald Kessler, it is literally named after him
They have been warning about this since before you were born.
Why are you so fundamentally resistant to truth?
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Really playing to your username, eh. I am familiar with Kessler Syndrome. You'll note that the most important aspect of said event, is the height, at which objects orbit, as that determines how long it takes for it to deorbit. The level of risk declines precipitously the closer to the earth the orbit is, and even if there was a catastrophic cascade at the height Starlink orbits, it would clear after a few years at most.
Impact ejection can cause eccentric orbits, but at that height, those deorbit even faster.
Fortunately, the very clever scientists at NASA have long since determined that there is essentially no risk from Starlink and similar satellite constellations, because they've been paying attention to this since before I was born.
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Fortunately, the very clever scientists at NASA have long since determined that there is essentially no risk from Starlink and similar satellite constellations,
That is patently not true to the point that it is effectively a lie
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/nasa-starlink-warning
This entire discussion you have been intellectually dishonest and using propaganda talking points. You are no longer welcome on my internet.
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Right. I'll note, that your linked article says nothing about Kessler beyond a quote of his saying that space debris would continue to increase even if all launches stopped. Otherwise, the article mainly comments that the sheer number of Starlink satellites below the ISS could interfere with launch/entry opportunities while drastically increasing the number of space objects being tracked by the DoD and NASA.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Starlink, all I'm pointing out is that Kessler Syndrome is not one of them. I'm assuming you've somewhat ironically blocked me, but since we're exchanging links, here is an article that interviews several scientists including one that worked under Kessler at NASA and now works on NASA's orbital debris modeling.
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/understanding-the-misunderstood-kessler-syndrome/
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261 comments