I'm giving my first colloquium talk on satellite pollution since November tomorrow (online for St Mary's University in Halifax) and I am SO tired of giving this super depressing talk.
So I'm going to to restructure it from "Satellites are ruining the night sky" to "Here are guidelines for sat companies to not destroy the sky, the atmosphere, and orbit." I started this process last time I gave this talk and it definitely felt a lot more positive.
Still pretty depressing though.
Oooof almost 400 more in 3 months. Fuck.
3,633 Starlinks in orbit out of 3,930 launched (failure rate still ~10%, gross)
7,312 total sats in orbit. Well fuck, Starlink is finally about to pass the 50% OF ALL SATELLITES mark.
Think about that: 50% of all satellites are owned by the same ego-maniac billionaire who most of us here on Mastodon are now extremely familiar with. This is so bad.
The Starlink Gen2 sats are apparently each 7m x 3m and 1250 kg, the size and almost the same weight as a Ford F-150, in case you were wondering.
But of course, this isn't actually public information that you can find officially anywhere, because private companies are awful, so I'm just gathering this from press releases.
Oh god I redid the math on re-entries:
Each Starlink v2 sat weighs 1250kg. They plan to have 42,000 of them in orbit.
Each satellite has a planned lifetime of 5 years. That means they'll be de-orbiting and replacing ALL of them every 5 years.
That comes to 23 sats per day, which is 29 TONS OF SATELLITE every day.
It doesn't go away, it gets added to the upper atmosphere. Most of the mass is aluminum. What the hell is that going to do?
WHY THE FUCK IS THIS OK?!
And yes, there are about 50-60 tons of meteorite material that gets added to the Earth's atmosphere every day (shooting stars), but that's mostly silicates. This is going to be WAY more than the natural amount of metal added to the upper atmosphere.
But please, FCC, tell me again how Low Earth Orbit is not subject to environmental regulations.
Lots of comments on this thread, I'm not going to be able to respond to all of them, sorry. Stuff you can do:
Tell others what is happening! Most people have no idea how terrible the consequences of unregulated development of orbit will be in the very near future.
Don't buy satellite internet! Or if you have to, tell your provider that you care about safety and dark skies
Go enjoy the beautiful night sky! And bring a friend!
Join IDA https://www.darksky.org/ or CPS: https://cps.iau.org/
They fucking did it. Starlink is now more than half of all active satellites in orbit.
Well this fucking sucks. I'm going to go outside and look at the auroras and continue to wonder if these cheaply mass-built Starlink satellites are actually going to keep functioning through this coming solar max, or if that part of orbit will soon be unusable.
Sources: https://planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html (Starlinks)
https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/table.php?GROUP=active&FORMAT=tle (all active sats)
The error budget to avoid cascading effects is really tiny. With only human nature in play, too small. And then this piled on, randomly from time to time.
Hmm.
That is very concerning. I'd quite like there to still be space missions in my lifetime.
Yes, exactly. Ruining the night sky. Might as well be carving ads onto the face of the moon a la 2000 AD. So dystopian and a law unto themselves.
@nafnlaus
""Here are guidelines for sat companies to not destroy the sky, the atmosphere, and orbit.""
Hey random man, if you'd read the OP by the astronomical professional than you'd doubtless have a better interjection.
Just because you don't understand the problem, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
@Homebrewandhacking @Earthtoerika @sundogplanets I read their thread, and it was frankly embarassing.
And as for whether the night sky has been destroyed, ***Step Outside And Use Your Bloody Eyes***. It hasn't been. It's entirely unchanged. Just ***Look Up***.
The only thing that is embarrassing is you. You don't know that things would look different through a telescope. You don't know what Kessler syndrome is but I just saw this EXCELLENT post about sealions and thought of you. :)
https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/109879707832112819
Which is why you won't get to read this because you're blocked.
If you wanted to spend just one minute talking to every person on the planet, it would take you more than 200 lifetimes to do so*. So don’t waste even a minute on some cynical troll or sea lion. Block and move on. Life’s too short and there are countless people out there more worthy of your time. 💕 * 8,000,000,000 people * 1 minute / 60 minutes / 24 hours / 30 days / 12 months / 73.4 years average life expectancy in 2019 according to WHO data.
@nafnlaus @Homebrewandhacking @Earthtoerika @sundogplanets I look up and see Orion - and StarLink.
I see the the Jewel Box - and StarLink.
I see the Southern Cross - and StarLink.
I see Jupiter, Mars, Venus - and StarLink.
I don’t see the band of the Milky Way any more due to light pollution. But I do see StarLink.
The sky has changed.
@nafnlaus @Homebrewandhacking @Earthtoerika @sundogplanets you have to look up during the brief periods at morning and evening when it's dark enough to see stars but the sun is high enough below the horizon to reflect off satellites.
I'd guess that good telescopes gather enough light that earth's own light emissions, reflected off satellites, will interfere, but your eyes wouldn't see it.
Fortunately they move out of the way quickly, so the interference can be filtered out of the data.
@janvenetor The person I responded to wasn't talking about telescopes.
And astronomical telescopes already have to have systems in place to remove streaks; it just means a greater number of streaks. There were early concerns that Starlink would also be bright enough to wash out adjacent pixels, but the brightness has been reduced dramatically since the early satellites. Feb 2021 is obsolete.
FYI, a number of the images are misleading, like the Blanco one. That was *ascending* Starlink sats.
@Homebrewandhacking @sundogplanets @Earthtoerika 😉 1st idea was a #book: dictator selects (via pre-WWII craniometry, why not) best of the best cryptobros, takes them 2 #Mars, fails to build a Platonian #Utopia, there’s an unrest. Working title: Mutiny on Mars™️
Prefer real #Martian #SF. Man Plus, by Frederik Pohl, #Nebula award winner in my birth year. Apart from 1k-page Astronomy, of my grandpa, my 1st sky book
@bekieark @Homebrewandhacking @sundogplanets @Earthtoerika
Another book about Mars:
"This Was A Shit Idea"
A prolific novel on the colonization of Mars, told from the perspective of a farmer.
https://vintage-covers.com/post/709968378201260032/this-was-a-shit-idea-a-prolific-novel-on-the
@bekieark @Homebrewandhacking @Earthtoerika @sundogplanets
Good premise for a movie, but presumably any initial Mars colony will need a lot of resupply from earth in its early days. So I think the villain shouldn’t activate the “Kessler shield” right away. But maybe that would be a fitting fate for the villain: maybe there’s some essential tool or medicine or substance they need to survive, and they can’t get it on Mars.
@zdrake @bekieark @Homebrewandhacking @sundogplanets
In a panic he sends a scout in a small ship to dodge between debris and bring him back what he needs
This depends on finding the shortest distance in which to complete the frantic zigzag, because every mile uses fuel. That's why success is counted in measures of distance not of speed...
(Trying to make a "Kessler run in under 12 parsecs" joke but failing cuz Mars isn't far enough away)
@Earthtoerika @Homebrewandhacking @sundogplanets @zdrake This is growing ;-) Quick, note it down, we can make a #Netflix series❗️
Now seriously, I’d prefer that everything this Boer guy would ever had to have in common with #Mars, was this semi-funny (but surely well produced) skit from my beloved #SNL:
@zdrake @sundogplanets @Homebrewandhacking @Earthtoerika A plot twist! Love such voltas!
He wants to return to save his n*zi colony, but cannot. The title: “[…] Part 2: Parable of the Prodigal Son”
😆
@Earthtoerika @Homebrewandhacking @sundogplanets Painfully ironic how people just assume that authorities don't know about Kessler Syndrome but you amateurs are here to say what's what. :Þ
This has been studied. Extensively. Kessler Syndrome is a real thing, but not a threat with Starlink at any realistic failure rate. It's low altitude; debris just doesn't last that long in orbit. There's also a lot of misconceptions about how Kessler Syndrome works in the public conscicousness.
According to this article, it could deplete ozone.
https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere
You are correct. I was referring to the addition of tons of alumina to the upper atmosphere when the satellites re-enter, which is the subject of the article I posted.
@sundogplanets There was an article about this very thing in 2021 - https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere
The scientists realised that megaconstellations have a significant potential to change the chemistry of the upper atmosphere compared to its natural state. But not only that. The burning of aluminum is known to produce aluminum oxide, also known as alumina, which can trigger further unexplored side effects.
@sundogplanets
Don't worry, Musk is going to screw up soon enough and create a Kessler cascade (soon to be renamed Musk Syndrome) in those orbits and it will become so much of a debris field he can't put up any more...
Well, between Musk and Bezos that is, because Bezos has decided he needs to keep up with Musk...
@sundogplanets Um, what? Meteorites only average 50% SiO2. And you'd MUCH rather breathe in iron dust than silica dust regardless. Have you never heard of silicosis? The body metabolizes iron.
Other composition is 0-30% Al2O3, 0-40% Fe2O3, 0-25% MgO, 0-20% CaO, 1/2% Na2O+K2O, ~10-1000ppm Ni, and tons more. And all this is dwarfed numerous orders of magnitude over by windblown dust.
Of all the absurd reasons I've seen to object to #Starlink, this one takes the cake.
What's the order of magnitude of equilibrium amounts of metals/nonmetals in the upper atmosphere assuming no satellite burnup? (I have no clue about the processes that would remove material from there, so I can't upper bound all of meteorite material anywhere lower than ~0.5% of the total mass of atmosphere, which seems ridiculously high.)
@sundogplanets Ah, I see. Is aluminum more harmful to the atmosphere or people than silicates?
Skimming Wikipedia doesn't give me anything that sounds dangerous (some slight environment effects such as inhibiting gill-breathing in acidic water and plant-growth on acidic soil).
I wonder how much aluminum ground-based entities emit into the atmosphere.
Ah to be clear on the policy level I absolutely think that we should Harberger-tax the orbits around the earth and Pigou-tax releasing material into the atmosphere by deorbiting satellites.
@niplav
Even if the effect of injecting vaporised aluminum in the atmosphere would very similar to that of silicon, doubling the amount from meteorites might be significant.
(But I am not an atmospheric scientist, and I don't know anything about this stuff.)
Maybe it will fix global warming?
@sundogplanets @hannorein There's a reason that SpaceX is pushing to launch them on Starship...
Which means, ironically, that the Artemis program both ensures that they have a launch vehicle (since NASA is paying for Starship development) and delays their large scale deployment (since NASA support launches will take priority).
@hannorein @sundogplanets Yes, a lot of F9s, about every other launch. But that's a lot more expensive than the Starship Starlink version, with a Pez dispenser like mechanism to spew them out.
The Starship payload mass to LEO is 150 tonnes and it's going to cost a few million per flight. It's hard to express just how disruptive it's going to be.
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