10 hours
You must log in or register to comment.
- BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.todayEnglish47 minutes
I was a space kid, followed every space shot since 1965, was a super fan of Apollo 11, I had a subscription to Nat Geo growing up, just for the Space photos.
So I can’t believe I’m saying this: Maybe we’ve gone far enough for now, and we should have a moratorium on space for the next 50 years.
We should concentrate on Earth for awhile, dontcha think?
- betanumerus@lemmy.caEnglish4 minutes
Right. Elon hires people on the basis they’ll be making Mars travel possible, but that Starship is really for dumping metal all over the night sky.
3 hoursElon Musk is such a goddamned literal supervillain that he managed to make the theme of Firefly wrong.
Apparently, they can take the sky from you.
That’s where you draw the line?
(Also, say hi to your chickens for me)
Billionaires don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves, not even their kids. And, we’ve all agreed to let billionaires run the world, it seems.
- 1 hour
While this very well might fuck up land-based stuff looking at space, people are often overlooking what this would mean to stellar photography from space.
If they can truly launch these million data center sats profitably, that means starship works. That means payload to space is relatively cheap.
That means we could also send large quantities of large telescopes into space on the cheap, and avoid the crazy expensive cant fail telescopes because the cost to get them up there isnt prohibitive and a technical failure in the telescope isnt a disaster.
Things very well might change, but it will also open up possibilities in the same area.
- pigup@lemmy.worldEnglish1 hour
Elon will not make it cheap. Falcon 9 prices keep rising. He’s an exploiter and will enshitify his service once enough people are hooked on it.
- brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish1 hour
Theoretically, even if we assume SpaceX is overshooting, that’s an interesting thought:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-cost-of-space-flight/
In practice? I’m more concerned about interest in funding astronomy in the first place.
That, and big fat telescopes are fundamentally expensive. And (at least for the optical variety) “swarming” them with a bunch of cheaper units isn’t as effective as building a big one.
I’d love to be wrong though. There are some interesting papers on swarms of optical telescopes for a larger effective aperture, but I’m not qualified to assess them.
- 58 minutes
Oh, I wasn’t thinking swarms the same way these million sats will be, I was thinking just using the whole payload diameter of around 9m for the lens/mirror (minus any housing) but they could potentially just buy the whole starship and be cheaper than past options and that is the housing.
James Webb cost billions because of it’s complexity and launch costs, none of which is needed when there’s 9meters to work with without any complexity at all.
If you wanted, you could make a super crazy expensive satellite that worked just like James Webb and have a massive mirror as well, but that’s a bit different than my large quantity of cheaper telecopes in space. I wonder how big you could get the mirror if you did it James Webb style in starship.
- brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish42 minutes
I wonder how big you could get the mirror if you did it James Webb style in starship.
Presumably 7x ~8m hexagons folded up?
That is a good point though. And if one were to design a “budget” 9m space telescope, they could amortize the R&D dramatically by launching the same design many times, perhaps with different sensors for different purposes? Amortization is why the Falcon Heavy and such are so cheap, and why the Space Shuttle and JWST are obscenely expensive.
Okay, you’ve sold me. I hope this does happen.
- 38 minutes
Ya, that would get costs down further if they were able to amortize it over a larger quantity.
We could also get them pretty far out with starship refuelling, but refuelling a starship back to full capacity to then go somewhere would raise the cost a lot. But imagine a 7x 8m folded hexagon one sent out into deep space. That would be super expensive though, we wouldn’t get a lot of those haha.
This is all a massive big IF though. Starship being fully reusable like they think is still very far from a given, so none of this might come true in our lifetimes.
- brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish24 minutes
Yeah. I prefer the idea of a bunch of 9-meters unless they can really perfect a cheap folding mirror to mass produce.
A small upper stage, an ion drive or something could get them to deep space. It’s not worth flying a whole Starship out there and burning more fuel to get it back; the return trip only makes sense for LEO.
- MuteDog@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
They might put a million satellites into orbit, but they’re certainly not going to be orbital data centers. At least not as we currently understand data centers. The idea that space is cold and therefore a great place to put data centers that get hot is the idea of a stoned moron talking out of their ass. Space is a vacuum, you know what else is a vacuum, the part of your portable coffee mug that keeps your beverage warm or cold for ages, because vacuum is a crazy good insulator. Just because space is cold doesn’t mean the heat from an orbital data center can dissipate into it. This dumb idea is never going to happen unless data canter technology improves to the point where they aren’t environmental disasters anymore.
- Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish3 hours
It’s either data centres in space or giant mirrors to reflect sunlight.
Presumably his engineers have explained this to him but he didn’t listen
- fishy@lemmy.todayEnglish38 minutes
To cool the iss they’re exchanging heat into water pumping to ammonia exchangers then radiated through infrared. The radiators for a space data center would need to be prohibitively massive as I understand it.
- chahn.chris@piefed.socialEnglish34 minutes
Who needs the night sky when you can download the old night sky via satellite internet with gig speed downloads in vr? /s
- 4 hours
Welcome to SpaceX where we provide a garenteed night sky view that is simply to die for. Subscribe now to enjoy your favorite night sky. Subscribe now for a lower price than normal. Remember, Subscription to SpaceX’s night sky is mandated by USA law. Those who don’t subscribe will be executed as Traitors and Terrorists. SpaceX’s Night Sky experience normally costs $399 per day but if you subscribe in the next 30 seconds using the following code (insert code here) you can enjoy SpaceX’s Night Sky for just $99.99 a day. subscribe now. Terms and conditions apply. SpaceX is not responsible for any propery damage, injuries, and/or deaths related to SpaceX satellites falling from orbit. Prices scale based on your race and gender with White men receiving a 100% discount.
There are roughly 15,000 total at the moment ? I wonder what that will do to animals and insects lives.
- thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
is already so bad. i do astro timelapses and it’s all you see anymore. they stand out so much now, if the quantity gets 100x’d it’ll be a nightmare.
it will blot out the stars…
- 2 hours
exactly nothing as most animals and insects can’t even see the stars; their sense of vision isn’t good enough for that.
- 4 hours
There aren’t many animals or insects in low-earth orbit though, thankfully.
Yeah but they use the light to navigate too. They use this planet too.
- Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish3 hours
I think local illumination is probably going to be more of a problem than reflected light of a satellite.
- THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
Well that wannabe nazi took everything else, so why not the sky?
LEO satellites decay very quickly every one of them will burn up in the atmosphere within 10 years. They need to be replaced constantly. As soon as spacex goes out of business these will all fall out of the sky.
- Manjushri@piefed.socialEnglish5 hours
Don’t count on it. These things don’t just zip along in their orbits. LEO is crowded. They have to maneuver to avoid collisions… a lot.
Over the past six months, Starlink satellites have been increasingly performing collision avoidance maneuvers. According to a report filed by SpaceX with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX broadband satellites were forced to avoid more than 25 thousand times from December 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023. And since their launch in 2019, the total number of maneuvers has reached 50 thousand.
If Starlink or any other mega-constellation company loses control of their satellites for any reason, there could be collisions. A recent study (Note: PDF) suggests that a sufficiently powerful CME could cause a runaway Kessler Syndrome in as little as 2.8 days if the loss of control lasts that long.
- 2 hours
Eh, i’m not so sure. I just did a quick doodle.
My opinion is that when a collision happens, it’s probably very unlikely for a single fragment to actually stay on a stable orbit around Earth. Chances are high that it gains a lot of energy and the orbit is significantly distorted. Now, if an orbit is already very close to Earth, that means that any distortion will make it not fit tightly around Earth anymore, instead will make it go elliptic and therefore on trajectory of collision with Earth. The only way a fragment would not do that is if it’s accelerated perfectly sideways, in which case it would continue to circle around Earth for 10 years before deorbiting due to atmospheric friction. So, the cascading is a bit limited.
- childOfMagenta@jlai.luEnglish1 hour
I don’t think you are familiar with orbital mechanics. A collision would barely disturb an orbit.
- tempest@lemmy.caEnglish4 hours
I mean with proper regulation or would be slightly better. If they can maneuver to avoid collisions they can likes deorbit themselves at a quicker pace.
The main issue is if ever they went under someone would buy it, or try to buy it, at a discount. So they likely wouldn’t go away even if Star link went under.
That’s fair but unfortunately nothing compared to the pollution from launching them
Which is also nothing compared to a slew of other pollution sources
- Zorque@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
Which is also nothing compared to the general entropy of the universe.
- teyrnon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish8 hours
I’m wondering from a pure academic standpoint here honest. Like What about a laser?
Lmao I wish. Satellites and their components have to be “hardened” to survive extreme temperatures and radiation in space. There’s probably nothing on it you could disable with any laser you could buy. Plus there’s the matter of targeting them.
- fartographer@lemmy.worldEnglish7 hours
Destroying these satellites with lasers poses a similar problem to what happens when you light zombies on fire: the satellites are held in space by their momentum and the reduced atmosphere vs Earth’s gravity. If you break the satellites into pieces via laser, then now you have uncontrolled and unpredictable space junk to deal with. Some of the pieces might return sooner, but what was once a concern is now a problem. Just like how a zombie at your door is very concerning, a zombie on fire at your door is an immediate problem.
Now, what could be interesting would be sending up another satellite that sprays black paint on the sun-facing side of other satellites. The energy absorbed and then exhausted could propel it towards Earth sooner. Maybe? I dunno, I’m just a simple country Fartographer, your honor.
- 2 hours
No, it would run out of black paint. Give it a robot arm with scissors or something to cut the power lines on the Starlinks. (And also push them out of orbit? Maybe exchange energy with some sort of maneuver to stay in orbit longer?)
- fartographer@lemmy.worldEnglish8 minutes
Why would we cut the power before deorbiting them? But if you wanna be more aggressive like that, then how about a magnifying glass to focus sunlight on the satellite like a bully to ants?
Maybe exchange energy with some sort of maneuver to stay in orbit longer?
“No officer, I did not ‘run into their car…’ I improved their gas mileage by exchanging energy.”
- 7 hours
Good ole brute force is the best method, though, as you said, targeting is a huge problem. Basically you need a low Earth orbit shotgun.
- 1 hour
i remember some startup tried to build a slingshot to shoot satellites into orbit with something like a bit catapult. that was 5 years ago, haven’t heard of them since.
- 5 hours
Probably. I imagine you could probably get one at a gun show in Texas
- 6 hours
Oh yeah. I keep forgetting about that. I suppose I need to study it a little more to make it stick.
- teyrnon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish7 hours
Now with lasers you buy perhaps, what about with the lasers you build?
In the future where Federal Authority is concentrated on robbing and stealing elsewhere, I cannot imagine a high energy beam could not take these motherfuckers out.
- 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish6 hours
If you have the capability to build a laser that can focus enough energy, from the ground through the atmosphere, with enough precision to lock on to an LEO constellation member long enough to disable it, you’d probably already either be captured, or working for DoD.
Also: great, you exploded it before reentry. Now we have a hundred thousand smaller, lighter fragments skipping off the atmosphere, disbursing randomly, and spinning around like hypersonic chaff bullets for actual worthwhile spacecraft and satellites to fly through, twinkling in infrared like a billion new streaky sparkles on those telescopes. It takes a lot longer for all that bullshit to rain down, and it pollutes just the same. Tell me, who were you fighting for again and why?
This is like when the humans blacken the sky in the Matrix to defeat the machines. Yeah it wrecked the earth, but is also didn’t defeat them and they just found something else to exploit.
- teyrnon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish6 hours
I mean I was trying to Broach a theoretical, completely academic, discussion about what could or could not take these satellites out.
sooo then this isn’t a problem if they all burn out eventually? hehe i’m just being pedantic of course
There’s reasonable hope at least that this is a problem that will solve itself, and unfortunately we have bigger problems to worry about.
- Einskjaldi@lemmy.worldEnglish8 hours
I expect that we will get in orbit refueling to extend their life once you get a good nuclear and solar panel power tug with an electric thruster that can deliver fuel, they’re in a similar orbit if you just do that.
Especially with the number of them it’s probably cheaper to just put up new satellites. LEO sats are designed to be temporary.
- thejml@sh.itjust.worksEnglish7 hours
Cheaper and easier to upgrade the constellation to newer and faster tech. If you have backwards compatibility, you just start launching v2 and v1 will eventually just burn up, and hopefully finish just in time for v3 to start launching so you only have to be compatible with n-1 versions.
