To be fair, it’s not just him. Other countries and gazillionaires are planning to send their space junk into orbit too. But Musk is ahead of the pack, and it would be a good idea to do something about it before things get too crowded up there.
“Constellations” of thousands of satellites promise internet everywhere, with profits for the owners of the constellations. It makes sense for enormous countries like Russia and China to consider this, and they are doing that.
But there are a number of problems. Musk’s Skylink is ruining optical astronomy.
A traffic jam is forming at the altitude these satellites orbit. There has been one near miss already.
Improved communications between satellite operators are also necessary: in 2019, the European Space Agency moved an Earth observation satellite to avoid colliding with a Starlink satellite, after failing to reach SpaceX by e-mail. Internationally adopted ‘right of way’ rules are needed to prevent games of ‘chicken’, as companies seek to preserve thruster fuel and avoid service interruptions.
Then there are the atmospheric effects from carbon black and alumina in the rocket fuels to put the satellites up there and from the destruction of the satellites as they are de-orbited. This may work against global warming, but the experiment is being done without any planning.
Oh, and some chunks of satellite may make it to the ground.
There are reasons for hope. SpaceX is showing some leadership with rapid end-of-life deorbiting, automatic collision avoidance, and visors to reduce light pollution, even if these are not yet sufficient. Spacefaring countries, moreover, recognize that debris threatens all satellites, including military satellites. Some are strengthening their national regulations, including by incorporating non-binding international guidelines into binding national laws. However, there is little recognition that Earth’s orbit is a finite resource, the space and Earth environments are connected, and the actions of one actor can affect everyone. Until that changes, we risk multiple tragedies of the commons in space.
It’s an easy paper to read and has references to others.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner
Baud
Missed opportunity to title this post “Excuse me, while I wreck the sky.”
Albatrossity
Yep. No dark-sky place is available now.
Baud
This is up Billin’s alley.
catclub
Hubble space telescope in high orbit is the only way around this.
I can only see satellites with the naked eye around sunset, when they are still reflecting the sun.
NotMax
Problem with Starlink is it works much better on paper than in practice.
schrodingers_cat
Fuck Elon Musk. In other news mini-EW of white board fame just endorsed Nina Turner.
wenchacha
Several “space” movies have space junk damaging a spaceship. I hope we don’t ever hear, “Nobody could have imagined…”
HinTN
Sadly, until real broadband is a utility and comes to my doorstep (hope for the infrastructure bill springs eternal), Starlink is my way forward. Currently, Nomad provides a max 20 Mb/s download (often around 3 and sometimes less) via cell signal, and that’s better than the execrable HughesNet I had previously. I feel Billin’s pain for the abomination of the light pollution but it was ever thus. I remember my best friend’s father lamenting the light pollution intruding on his stargazing in our tiny hamlet in the 60s.
ETA: I see @NotMax: knows how long I’ll have to wait. ?
Baud
@NotMax:
They’ve been trying to do Internet by satellite for 30 years.
RR_Mikey
@Baud: Brilliant!
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, that is disappointing.
Chet
It doesn’t seem to be “ruining optical astronomy” if you have to use artificial techniques like photo stacking in order to accentuate and visualize the effect of these satellites.
So, just, don’t do that. Anyway there’s no difference between the astronomers complaining about this and the people who sue to prevent wind turbines from being installed because they “ruin the view.”
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Well I never did like her or her stupid white board shtick. I have had teachers like her who loved to humiliate their students. Do. Not. Want
HinTN
@Chet: You have to stack images to build deep looks at celestial features. These trails add the burden of editing and removing the corrupted frames.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
@Baud:
Is there a link to an official announcement? I feel like Twitter has been lying to us more than usual lately.
MattF
And it’s not just optical frequencies— microwave frequencies are the workhorse of astronomy. Since observed frequencies are Doppler-shifted and red-shifted, one can’t predict what frequencies are going to be important. It’s all becoming a huge mess.
VeniceRiley
@schrodingers_cat: Not one more dime! Muy disappoint.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Whiteboard aside, I always thought of her as grounded and practical, so this is unhappy news to me.
Emerald
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah. She’s been heading that direction for awhile now.
She’s still aces at the whiteboard stuff but it’s highly disappointing.
eclare
@Baud: I thought so too. My eyes are open now, I’m done.
VeniceRiley
Just gave to Shontel M Brown (Running in the primary against Turner) the $ I would normally have sent to Porter.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: NBC reporter tweeted it
Old School
@Baud:
Here.
Another Scott
It’s been a problem for a while, and Elon’s stuff makes it worse.
PhysicsWorld (from 2017).
(Includes an ESA image of a model of everything we’ve put up there larger than 1 mm.)
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@wenchacha
One of the missions included in the AMOS system here on Maui, atop Haleakala, is to map and track man-made space debris. On the job 24/7, using infrared observation and tracking during daylight hours, facility has been operational for sixty years.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: I doubt if anyone in her district cares what Katie Porter thinks, or even knows who she is.
Baud
@sab:
Probably true for every rep in every district.
ETA: Never mind. I misidentified the ‘her.”
schrodingers_cat
@sab: I agree. Biden won that district overwhelmingly and its population is 55% black. Not a smart political move on the part of mini-EW if she wants to be known for more than the white board performance art.
The so called progressives can miss me with their performative bullshit.
sab
@Baud: I was afraid that I was phrasing it badly. Her being Katie Porter.
ETA Wromg again. Her being Shontel Brown, she being Katie Porter.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Haha, I had a feeling you were also not on the Katie train. Come sit by me.
Baud
@Old School:
Thanks. Not to be overly conspiratorial, but is it odd for the endorser not to say something publicly?
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s it! I couldn’t put my finger on why she fails to charm me. A hectoring teacher.
J R in WV
@Chet:
You miss the point in both paragraphs. They aren’t stacking in order to show the satellites, that is a standard astronomical tool destroyed by the sats.
And if you can’t see the difference between NIMBY complaints about windmills and the destruction of a science that could save the world in case of a major asteroid heading for a collision with Earth…
So, total fail on every point you thought you were making.
randy khan
I have an astronomer friend who is quite unhappy about the design of the SpaceX satellites, which are a reflective color, rather than matte, but doesn’t appear to be as concerned about the number in orbit.
Space debris has been a thing for a while, and it is something that the regulators take seriously. The FCC has changed its rules in the relatively recent past, and it’s something that has had bipartisan support for a long time.
Another Scott
@Baud: I just did a quick check of the Progressive Caucus and Porter Twitter things and didn’t see anything. (Of course, they may have more than one Twitter thing.)
The cited Tweet seems pretty anodyne to me (‘like my Progressive Caucus colleagues…’).
I’m not going to get worked up over this, myself. Porter is a credit to the House and I’m not going to beat her up.
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: It reminds me of the olden days when everyone outside of Ohio liked Paul Hackett better than Sherrod Brown.
randy khan
@Chet:
If you’re trying to, say, get an image of a specific star and need a long exposure to do it (for instance, if you’re looking for exoplanets), having a satellite that reflects the sun pass through your field of vision (or even nearby) can ruin your whole night.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Fine. I won’t move forward with the #BurnTheWitch hashtag. But I still get to be disappointed. You can’t take that away from me.
WaterGirl
@Old School: What the hell is Katie Porter thinking????
schrodingers_cat
@sab: I have no idea who Hackett was or is.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I am on Team Baud re: Katie Porter.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Is it because we have known many EWs and mini-EWs in IRL?
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Possibly, although EW doesn’t bother me as much. She has more substance. I’m glad she didn’t get the nomination, though.
sab
Nina Turner does have good ads. I have only seen one Turner yard sign, and it is in a yard not in her district.
Chet
@HinTN: Well, tough shit. Nobody cares if astronomers have to use Photoshop, or should. Rural broadband is genuinely more important.
J R in WV
@zhena gogolia:
“A hectoring teacher”? Really…
These guys are CEOs of major corporations, and can’t or won’t answer pretty straightforward asked by a member of congress. Off by an order of magnitude when they offer their best guess. If you are being paid an 8 digit salary to run a company, you really ought to be able to prepare to appear before a congressional committee.
Even if you can’t or won’t memorize the details, you could bring a well organized breifing book prepared by your experts back at your HQ. But NO, that would make it too easy.
So Congresswoman Porter accumulates the data showing that your corporation is a pile of deceit, asks you the questions, you refuse to answer because the actual data proves you are a slimy crook, and she shows the world you ARE a slimy crook. I bet it works well in a courtroom when cross-examining a hostile witness also too.
And all these corporate witnesses are as hostile as it is possible to be. Perhaps excepting crooked cop witnesses…
This is what we pay these congress members to do in my book, and Congresswoman Porter does it better that most judging from her questioning I see on the TV coverage of her participation in hearings. So much better than a Congress member using his 5 minutes to beat his own drum, as opposed to digging into a witness.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Personal injury lawyer and Marine reservist back from Iraq who ran for Congress and then wanted to run for Senate back when Sherrod Brown first ran. The national media and progressive imternet loved him. My guess is he would have turned out to be somewhere to the right of Joe Manchin, but progressives loved him.
WhatsMyNym
@Chet:
wikipedia
There are less than 1,000 operational Starlink satellites at the moment. Add the other companies and countries that will want to do this and you get a huge mess.
zhena gogolia
@J R in WV:
If you’re at all concerned about how Dem reps look to the squishy middle of voters (whom we need), she looks like a hectoring teacher. Counterproductive, IMO
ETA: Full disclosure, I am a teacher. I try not to be hectoring or to use the humiliation mode. It has a bad effect on everyone, not just the student being attacked.
J R in WV
@Chet:
Rural broadband IS important, and satellites won’t ever be able to provide it in most cases. Fiber to every home should be the plan, just like Rural Electrification was the plan in the post WW II era.
My foreman in my first job after I got out of the Navy told me that was his first job after he got out of the Army in 1946. Rural folks in WV had no electricity before the late 1940s, and most of the rest of the nation was just like that.
burnspbesq
Lest we forget, in addition to all the other sins committed by Musk SpaceX’ Boca Chica project is ruining critical habitat for several threatened/endangered bird species and America’s last breeding population of ocelots.
J R in WV
@zhena gogolia:
But the power relationship between a congresswoman and a guy making 8 figures annually is nothing like a student-teacher relationship. Porter’s relationship is more like an attorney to hostile witness relationship, which it should be.
Her purpose is to expose the facts about a company’s activities, especially when the company is stealing from desperate patients who need the best possible medication to address their condition.
This is not, nor should it be, anything like a teacher-student relationship. The witness is guilty of something, and it is her job to dig those facts out of the witness. Not to teach the witness — CEOs are supposed to already know how to run their company without running into legal problems. That’s why they get the big bucks, isn’t it? But these guys look like failing sophomores, not like “Masters of the Universe” CEO level people.
Gravenstone
@Chet: Ya know, I live in the country and have gone on any number of diatribes here about the dearth of quality broadband for rural areas. But you’re kindly invited to fuck yourself and your anti-science POV with what Musk and his cronies are doing to fuck up ground based optical observation in the name of the almighty dollar.
burnspbesq
From time immemorial, hectoring and humiliation have been tactics used by law school professors to “encourage” students to prepare for class. Porter is just going with what she knows.
Which does not excuse her inexplicable endorsement of Turner.
Another Scott
Made me look… SpectrumNews1 (from April 27):
She’s got roots there and people know who she was before she got on the Bernie bus.
I’m reminded of Neera Tanden and a few others. Being a firebrand in one position does not mean that one will be that way in other positions. Maybe she will, maybe she won’t.
We’ll see how the primary turns out. I assume whoever wins will have the strong backing of the party. I’m not burning anyone on our side down for picking sides in a primary.
FWIW. YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dog Dawg Damn
@Chet: There is no difference, that’s right. Wind turbines are also terrible and should be abandoned for solar.
It absolutely ruins the night sky. You can see them, low, bright, and overhead, and there’s only 1500 in orbit, bu the’s planning on 42,000!
I see them frequently already…
Sebastian
And whocoodanode that these satellites are absolute garbage performing the thing they were send up to in the first place?
Having worked years for a HUGE networking company I have many telco and network engineers in my circle of friends and coworkers. These satellites are just atrocious at peer to peer traffic and the whole design is complete shit. Pretty much what you would expect when someone full of themselves believes they have come up with something better than decades of tens of thousands of engineers could have.
Turns out the answer is no. This is the Elon’s pedosubmarine in the sky.
zhena gogolia
@burnspbesq:
And the average viewer receives it as assholery. Counterproductive.
sab
@Another Scott: 11th district isn’t just Cleveland. It’s also a lot of inner ring suburbs to the east and south, clear down into Akron. My housing development is 40 miles from Cleveland and about a quarter of our houses are in that district.
I have seen nothing in Nina Turner’s career to suggest that she has any interest in the rest of us outside of Cleveland. Marcia Fudge and Stephanie Tubbs Jones were down here all the time. Nina has been spending all her time on national TV, not on or in Ohio.
Another Scott
@sab: Thanks for the info.
The 11th looks to be gerrymandered quite bad. Apparently Cook’s PVI is D+30. It’ll be interesting to see how the lines change.
It looks like she was Ohio State Senator in the 25th district which (at least now) includes the eastern Cleveland suburbs.
Politicians above all want to be re-elected, so presumably she’ll be able to count votes if she does win. We’ll see what happens.
To be clear, were I there I couldn’t imagine voting for her in the primary. But would do so in the general.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@J R in WV: Hectoring teacher the kind that creates a life long distaste of math among students. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris manage to do tough questioning without sneering and the tiny white board and condescension dripping from every pore
And the math she does do, isn’t all that. It is mostly arithmetic for crying out loud. We get it lady you can add and know what an exponential function is.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: You rang…If you’re trying for a one shot of something, yes this will screw up your shot. We were in Anza Borrego(pretty famous sort of dark spot northeast of San Diego) this past weekend. When we got out of the car to shoot there was a straight line of lights in the sky. MUSK! But most of the shots you’ve seen from me in the past few years are either tracked photos or stacks of multiple photos. Both of these techniques handle Elon’s little lights. Deep sky astrophotographers, will shoot for hours(sometimes over several nights) and stack(they also track). So unless you’re purist with a camera that can do a one shot capture(mine can’t), it’s really not a big deal.
Jackie
@J R in WV: ????
StringOnAStick
I, as a semi Luddite, hate the idea that I can be in a wilderness area at night and the sky will be filled with evidence of humans, especially of Musk’s giant ego. That it’s crappy technology that won’t deliver what he’s promising is the cherry on top.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@catclub: I’ve photographed flares from the HST.
wenchacha
@zhena gogolia: Jim Jordan keeps getting votes. Yeah, I know he benefits from gerrymandering.
I haven’t had any negative feelings about Katie Brown before, so I will refrain from denouncing her. Let’s see how she does. She is a Dem. in a red district, I think?
I appreciate her willingness to hold feet to the fire. I don’t think she is rude. IMHO
HinTN
@Chet: I’ve paid my $99 deposit to the penurious Mr Musk. My expectation of receiving value from that is low but like I said above, hope springs eternal.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@HinTN: Nope, they get averaged out in the stacking.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia:
She was a law prof, they’re all like that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: The satellites are noise, they get taken out in the stacking.
HinTN
@J R in WV: I would much prefer fiber! The local government (!!!) provider of broadband in the town 12 miles away would be delighted to make the investment in infrastructure all the way out here but state law prohibits it today. Our local electric co-op could do it but they evince no interest. “We’re rednecks, we don’t know…” You know the rest.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@randy khan: Hope, just noise.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chet: They use Pixinsight, but point taken.
Another Scott
@?BillinGlendaleCA: She gets 5 minutes to get answers to he questions. She asks direct questions that she knows the answers to. She’s prepared and uses her time well to serve the cause of the investigation or legislation that she’s working on. She doesn’t strike me as mean or hectoring or condescending or anything else like that. People’s reactions aren’t universal.
She does her job well.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
This bit of environmental news set my hair on fire this morning.
Shocking.
cmorenc
@Chet:
WADR, your statement above is profoundly ignorant of the real-world requisites to capture anything better than low-res images of even bright celestial objects like Jupiter and Saturn, and to capture most deep-space objects (i.e. outside the solar system) at all.
Myself, I am purely a visual observer and don’t personally do any astrophotography. However, both via fellow local astro club members who are imagers. and via understanding gained as a long-time Cloudy Nights member (the most prominent site for amateur astronomers) – I can assure you that you have no clue what you are talking about with respect to any sort of astro imaging done from the ground inside earth’s atmosphere.
You do have a point asking whether objecting to whatever broadband gains might be gained via starlink are worth the sacrifice of astrophototraphy, just as with energy gains by offshore wind turbines vs the view. But the logic of this leads to a reductionist paradigm where *no* objections of appearance or taste will be regarded as superior relative to whatever economic or functional gain can be obtained for someone by the degradation.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Another Scott: I don’t have a problem with her and the whiteboard, but as far as hectoring goes, she was a law prof, goes with the territory.
Wag
From the immortal Billy Bragg’s song “A New England”:
I saw two shooting stars last night, I wished on them, but there were only satellites.
Its wrong to wish on space hardware…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@cmorenc: Stacking and tracking(both needed for deep space photography) remove satellite flares(good) and meteors(bad).
ETA: Now if you’re shooting startrails, then it’s a problem and you have to go through each frame and remove them, but you’re not stacking, it’s just accumulation. You have to do the same thing with airplane trails. But that’s why God invented Photoshop.
karen marie
@Baud: I saw a review of Musk’s satellite internet, and while the person didn’t draw a conclusion per se, it appears to be very shitty service, with nothing near the speeds promised. If there is ANYTHING that blocks the view from the dish to the satellites, you lose internet access. Unless you live in the middle of a barren landscape and put the dish on the roof, you’re screwed. It’s been my understanding that sun flares interrupt satellite service too.
I’m glad that Musk’s project to destroy our view of the stars is getting attention but it seems like it’s too late to stop it. Another thing brought to us by people with more money than sense that we’re going to live to regret.
Another Scott
@cmorenc: Lasers and adaptive optics FTW!
OpenCulture:
If Starlink gets to be a big problem, there’s always the option of putting a few MW lasers in as replacements for the 15-40 W guys instead… ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Lawrence Schuman
Fucking Tholians.
karen marie
@J R in WV: Thank you.
Chet
@J R in WV: Of course they’ll be able to provide it. I don’t understand why everyone is turning their brains off about this.
Chet
@Gravenstone: Literally who gives a shit whether hobbyists can take photos of the night sky? Everybody’s brains are broken, it’s like they’ve decided rich people with $3500 cameras are more important than kids who need to be able to attend virtual classes. What in the everloving fuck is happening here?
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: These people who are being called to testify in congress are by and large uninterested in truth or transparency.
Katie Porter merely treats them like the hostile witnesses they are, where even in court you are allowed to ask leading questions.
I think Katie Porter is great. I am, however, appalled that she would support Nina Turner, let alone give her an endorsement. Katie Porter has dropped a big notch in my estimation.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Chet:
I’m a bit hurt by this comment…As I’ve noted there are techniques that you can use to mitigate the problem(I use them because I DON’T have a $3500 camera and you left out the cost of lens). But there are some purists that insist that the only valid shot is a single shot, anything else is a composite and is not a “real” photograph.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: Tend to agree, but she was a law prof before she got to Congress, that’s what they do.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: The problem with the 11th Ohio Democratic primary is that a plurality will win it, and Nina Turner is the only Democratic Socialists of America/Working Families Party/People’s Party candidate in the race. The other four are Democrats.
HarlequinGnoll
Personally I’m a bit more worried about Musk lackadaisical satellite placements and those near missed. 2 word term for the day would be Kessler Syndrome.
Stuart Frasier
Rocket exhaust is a rounding error already, but it’s set to get a whole lot cleaner. For various reasons, methane is going to replace kerosene for most medium and heavy lift rockets in the relatively near future. Inexpensive access to space means we can produce mass-produce space telescopes. Doing optical astronomy from earth is always going to be a compromise.
As for space debris, at the altitudes in question, dead satellites (or any bits thereof) will passively deorbit in a few years. It’s only at higher orbits that we have to worry about Kessler Syndrome. Musk is annoying, but being able to get high-speed internet over the entire planet is going to be beneficial to many people. A Starlink (or Kuiper or OneWeb) dish, a cell tower, solar panel, and battery could provide cellular and data access to an entire remote village, whether on a reservation or in a developing country.
quakerinabasement
@catclub:
You hint at the answer to the question that came to mind for me. Is the satellite-related light pollution reflected light or is it generated by the satellites?
If the former, why can’t they reduce reflection with an external coating? If the latter, wtf? Why do they need to generate light at all?
Stuart Frasier
@Dog Dawg Damn: You can only see satellites when they are in sunlight. At the altitude that the internet constellations are flying, that means for a short while after sunset. The VLEO sats are going to be much lower and visible for an even shorter time. Once it is night (from the satellite’s perspective), you can’t see them at all.
slybrarian
I’ve had to live with current satellite internet so I understand why it could be such a gamechanger for people in rural areas. At the same time, I look at the expense, then I look at how my local REMC is building out fiber to all of its customers, and wonder why we can’t just do that for everyone for the same cost as launching these rockets. I get that might not work as well for other countries but it’s certainly something the government should be doing here in the US.
WaterGirl
@Geminid: Not my finest moment, but all I’ve got is Fuck Nina Turner.
And Katie Porter for her shortsightedness and bad judgment on this.
NotMax
@quakerinabasement
Reflectivity is to help prevent the innards from being fried by overheating when they’re in the heat of sunlight.
Stuart Frasier
@NotMax: After the first few batches, they added a dark coating to lower the albedo of the birds.
Raven Onthill
@Chet: It isn’t just hobbyists; it’s all ground astronomers. And – hobby astronomers make major contributions to astronomy.
Raven Onthill
? You can’t take the sky from me… ?
Only it seems Elon Musk can.
Mission brief: “A power-mad car salesman has destroyed the night sky…” Read the rest at https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1397229245970145280?s=20.
Kirk Spencer
Space debris? Hoocudanode?
Planetes. 2003-2004 for the anime. 1999-2004 for the manga. And the concept was an old idea even then.
But still we’ll hear hoocudanode.