744
US issues first ever fine for space junk to Dish Network
(www.bbc.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
744 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
59756 readers
3619 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Cool, now lets issue one to Dillweed over at X for Starlink. There was literally a petition put out by the astronomers at ground-based observatories begging him not to do it. What had already been put up was making issues for ground-based telescopes, the full constellation will likely make the multimillion-dollar optical telescopes overpriced tourist attractions.
https://www.astronomy.com/science/starlink-satellites-disrupt-cosmic-studies/
I'll bite the bait and ask you to explain how Starlink satellites contribute towards the space junk problem without having to reference astronomy or bringing up you-know-who's name.
But that's like half the problem with it.
Obviously some people don't care about science. But yeah, the inability to properly observe space from Earth would be crushing - while the new space telescopes are goddamned awesome, they're also ridiculously expensive and tiny compared to the massive surface-built structures we have on Earth.
Starlink adds a tremendous number of satellites to Low Earth Orbit. Like, Starlink is now something like 50 percent of all active satellites. That's a lot of traffic up there. And in LEO, where orbits criss-cross in an endless complex dance, the risk of collisions is far higher than in Geosync. While the advantage of LEO is that everything has a lifetime measured in decades until the orbits decay and they burn up, the risk is Kessler Syndrome, where shrapnel from collisions creates an endless cascade of destruction that makes LEO completely unusable for several decades. That would be the end of all LEO satellites and all manned spaceflight for possibly the rest of our lives. You could still get ships through the Kessler debris layer safely for launching high-orbit and geosync satellites, but low orbit would be too hazardous to place anything in for long-term work, especially since it would risk prolonging the problem.
If Kessler starts, it will be impossible to stop - the shrapnel is too small for satellites to detect and avoid with their adjustment thrusters. A pandemic-style S-curve of destruction as all the satellites in LEO die. And we'd have to evacuate ISS.